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Provengreil
2010-06-15, 07:41 PM
Ok, so I'm new to the forums here but a friend of mine (IthilanorStPete) pointed me here to post my party's travels. also, any advice is welcome as I am fairly new to this side of the Dm screen.

that said, here's a summary of my PCs and their progress so far:

lvl 6 fighter, longsword and board, human
lvl 5 cleric of pelor, human
lvl 5 wizard generalist, human
lvl 5 warlock, human

I hooked em into the campaign from something else using the vraath keep treasure. They dealt with the marauder attack alright, the only outstanding thing was that they began calling the bladebearer dual-wielding doom because in what must've been 16 attack rolls only 5 hit the guy. fighter went into this campaign with a merciful longsword so taking prisoners was fairly easy for them, and they got one right at the beginning. they failed their checks to get information out of him, so they killed him and stuffed him in a bag of holding to interrogate via speak with dead at a later date.

They reached drellin's ferry and basically cruised right through: demanded payment from winston and went to see jorr bright and early the next morning with nary a thought for such things as useful magic items or something. they recruited him by saying the phrase "eliminate the goblins" in their first sentence, and a few hours of walking and a random encounter later they were at the hydra. during the encounter, fighter took all the hits but managed to lop off a couple heads, which due to random regen times grew back the next round. figuring the heads were a bad thing to target, wizard went all fire and lightning and downed the thing at range, and it sank into the river. this is where the nonsense begins.

our fighter, despite this being his role in the party, took all the hits and damage during the fight and was unhappy. after the healing, warlock used a bluff check bumped high by an invocation, and a nat 20 vs fighters nat 3 on sense motive and convinced him that they had, in fact, not just fought a hydra. (i should note at this point that my PCs like to consider things from what their characters know rather than what they know; it's annoying at times keeping track of who knows what but we find it fun)

anyway, upon reaching the keep they decided to sneak around the side (there's a hole in the wall) rater than use the broken doorway. this put them in sight of the goblins that were awake, who promptly signaled an alarm and had the PC's fight off every unit in the keep at once, or at an appropriate time for the worg riders. they failed to kill koth and even let him get his map, so they had to parse his notes instead for information. deciding that they should at least check out cinder hill for visual confirmation of the size of the red hand, they headed to skull gorge. upon seeing a dragon, they pulled back ad thought out a plan.

their first idea was to snipe from the warlock's 250 foot range while the wizard blasted the dragon with any spell that could reach. this fell apart quickly when the hell hounds were killed in one round by the fighter and the dragon realized he would be fighting this without support. i had him pull back and and had all the goblins start hiding behind the towers and parapets, waiting for the dragon to give an attack signal. this drew the PCs in wherupon the dragon flew mostly in figure 8's while the PCs dealt with the goblins as necessary. it was going well for the PCs until one bad acid breath took the cleric and warlock down to negatives in one hit. warlock was at -9 and bled out; cleric was still in the same spot but stabilized when another acid breath hit the area later in the battle (for some reason, they don't carry potions around for times when the cleric is down). the remaining archers (3 or 4 left at this point; fighter had been in their business for some time by now) took down the wizard, but so as not to give a TPK i allowed the fighter's taunt check against the dragon to succeed so it would land and attack him. he won on account of being enlarged and under a bull's strength, but at the cost of the rest of his party. leveled up from it all, too.

He saw the red hand at cinder hill and destroyed the bridge, but had no actual fights. he also saw old warklegnaw, but just ran away from the giant without a word. their new party, rerolled at drellin's ferry, is now:

level 7 fighter (nearly level 8, he got a LOT of XP from the bridge fight)
level 6 cleric, dwarf
level 6 warlock, human
level 6 wizard, elf, still no specialization

* you may notice that their deaths actually powered them up. this is because each of them except fighter was within 300 XP of leveling when they died, and starting them that far back would end up causing a very large divide between their levels and fighter's. as it is i'm fine with it because fighter is the least optimized in the group, but with him at level 8 while they were level five there might have been problems.

also, at our next meeting in maybe 2 weeks (cleric and wizard are going on vacation) there may be a new character coming into play, idk what he wants to play though.

i guess that's it for the first post. i'd appreciate any replies/ tips/ thoughts.

Provengreil
2010-07-03, 09:02 PM
ok, well, we just finished another session. since i dont remember exactly how many sessions it's been since we started, im going to count the sessions from when I started posting this, so this was session 1 that we just finished.

in drellin's ferry, i ran the the goblin raid encounter (the midnight one). none of our PCs could, at the time, see well so wizard threw a fireball into a nearby house for some light. then they dealt with the encounter predictably. The morning after, the PCs asked winston for a decision, so i set the meeting for that night and ran rumors of war to give them something to look for in part 2.

The PCs were quite insistent and inflexible in their desire to evacuate the town and convinced the council fairly easily. as the town evacuated and their next move came into consideration, however, problems arose. each PC was of a different mindset; cleric had nothing to contribute, warlock wanted to head for Rhest, wizard wanted to do his best to screen the evacuating town(s) as best they could from the red hand, and fighter wanted to LEAD the townsfolk (as in, put the townspeople between the PCs and the horde) as they headed for brindol and simply wait for the Red Hand. nearly a full hour passed as they argued this but warlock finally won out by suggesting that if the horde wanted the roads closed, there was a good reason and they should check it out. much of the rest of the session was taken by random encounters as the PCs went up the river, though i did give them the first razorfiend at the end.

the razorfiend managed to take out cleric and very nearly killed wizard as well. they met the elves and gave them the jade band from the owl, and used the staff of life to ressurect cleric. we left them midflight on the giant owls as they headed towards starsong hill.

I should be continuing next week, so i'll post again then unless someone wants to discuss anything.

Provengreil
2010-07-10, 12:39 AM
well, bad news: we lost warlock. as in, the player behind him cant be part of the group anymore. next session is in a couple days, i'll not how that plays out. on the other hand, is anybody at all actually reading this? im curious.

Provengreil
2010-07-10, 12:40 AM
well thats what i get for posting at 1:30 in the morning. previous post should read: "i'm not sure how it'll play out"

Dragonus45
2010-07-10, 12:45 AM
I am, but i have never run the red hand before so im just looking at this as another opportunity to see it done.

Provengreil
2010-07-11, 09:55 PM
ok, so session 2: rhest.

when we picked up from our last session the PCs were flying into rhest. upon meeting the elves and asked to explain themselves, fighter immediately said that there was a huge army coming for them (as is obvious to any of my PCs except him as he is uninterested in the map, this is untrue). wizard quickly rectified this with a fuller and more complete explanation. they made a good impression on the leader, but did not particularly impress trellara. they did manage to comfort her successfully soon after.

they made some good showing at the funeral; wizard managed to roll a natural 20 on the perform check and cleric rolled more than ten, but fighter did not want to risk failure. as far as the alliance points go, they have earned several so far, including the "kindness" one. they stayed for a full day after the funeral, and cleric decided to spend his time in the temple healing anyone who came in.

when they went for rhest the first thing they did was eliminate one of the lizardfolk huts. then they settled down for five hours and observed. originally they wanted to do six, but cut it short when the dragon left. night was falling at the time so they let the daylight die for half an hour, then headed for the city.

they went right for the town hall (they entered from the west side of the lake) and got into a fight with the ogres. wizard used a fireball here and managed to finally alert the watchtower. all the rest of the lizardfolk immediately headed for the center of town. they entered the town hall via the starways from the roof, and fighter took on the ettin while cleric and wizard took down the mindbender. this could have gotten bad, but fighter refused to fail a will save and managed to not be dominated, or suggested. they killed the mindbender, but fighter only knocked the ettin unconscious because his sword is merciful. this bit is important: he forgot to actually kill it, he just left it knocked out on the ground.

they went straight to the looting bit and raided saarvith's chest, stopping only to break the lock. this is when the lizardfolk showed up. All 30 or so of them(any huts you havent cleared immediately head for the town hall on an alarm), and the bladebearer as well. fighter stuck himself in the doorway while the wizard threw his fireballs, scorching rays, and magic missiles and the cleric started burning buff and healing spells. the bladebearer, not stupid, went back and got his buddies from the watchtower because he could see the lizards didnt stand a chance. upon getting back, they used their healing potions to knock off the subdual damage from the ettin and decided to make sure the PCs were stuck in the building for saarvith and regairix by the PCs boat and keeping them occupied as long as possible. with wizard down to his crossbow and cleric running on cantrips, fighter was the only bit of the team still running strong, though wizard began using his rod of wonder and, among other effect including the mouse, butterflies, and the fairy fire, managed to turn his skin blue. they managed to drive off the goblins and take down the ettin for real even so, but then they made a huge mistake. instead of bugging out and replenishing spells, they went down to the dragon's hoard and stole part of it (the platinum and the phylactery, specifically). naturally, this was a bad idea because they had stolen from a dragon's hoard before killing the dragon and had only one character capable of fighting. while cleric and fighter did that wizard downed a potion of fly and went out and grabbed another lizardfolk boat.

by the time they got back to shore and were running for their boat (they were afraid of the dragon finding the theft) regairix was back at the town hall and did, in fact, notice some of his hoard was gone. he and saarvith tracked them down fast (about 4 hours) and i decided not to have the whole party die here unless they chose to, so saarvith made a deal based on the fact that he had hated the mindbender the PCs had killed: the dwarf dies, and they return everything stolen from the hoard. by offering 670 platinum and a hat of disguise they manage to convince the pair that they could buy their way out. i had the dragon destroy their boat so they would have to hike to whatever their next destination was, and flew off, leaving the party to hike to starsong hill to rest, regroup, and maybe get some extra information. this is where we left them, right as they were entering the village.

their current plans are to return to rhest and deal with saarvith, though i have no idea what they think of the razorfiend's presence or if they even remember they were hearing it.

last thing we did for the session was level up wizard and cleric, they got a lot of XP for clearing most of rhest in one encounter. fighter did too, but not enough to level up, so next week we will be playing with 2 level 7s, a level 8, and the wizard's skin is permanently blue.

And Dragonus45, thanks for replying, it's nice to know at least someone is looking at this.

AslanCross
2010-07-12, 02:44 AM
Hey Provengreil, I suggest that you break each post into individual sections and spoiler them so that it doesn't scare off readers. I haven't really read anything yet, but since I just finished the campaign myself, I can give some advice when I get to read in detail. :D

Provengreil
2010-07-12, 10:03 AM
Hey Provengreil, I suggest that you break each post into individual sections and spoiler them so that it doesn't scare off readers. I haven't really read anything yet, but since I just finished the campaign myself, I can give some advice when I get to read in detail. :D

I'll try to do that from now on, then, I'm still getting used to this forum.

ToySoldierCPlus
2010-07-12, 10:28 AM
Cool. I'm reading along, and I can't wait for the next update. I've always wanted to play in the Red Hand of Doom.

Provengreil
2010-07-18, 09:14 PM
OK, so we officially have a new player: Ninja! for more info:
Ninja is a Drow ninja, level 7 (it'll be some time before he levels up) and, to boot, our only PC with play experience of more than a few months. whereas the others are content with the idea that they have weapons and spells and by god, they'll us em, ninja prefers a plan that will work regardless of how it's done. he has most of his money in an elven cloak and boots of spider climb, along with fluid cash as well.


Anyway, they ran all the way back to starsong village to report their temporary failure. it was at this point that cleric pops up and says: "I'm gonna eat mud." This is not me kidding around, he said that*. and then did it.

since nothing else interesting happened in starsong village, lets get to the meat of session 3: Rhest, take 2.

The Plan:
I hate hand waving a character in, and I had no idea how to put a drow into the elf village peacefully, so i decided to put him in prison there. the PCs picked him up on the terms that he helps clear Rhest, and he goes free. immediately upon arrival he has his plans. first, they wait for the night. they hit the bell tower first and disable the alarms, then camp there and set the alarm themselves the next day. when the dragon sees no reason for alarm, he will come to demand why the bell was rang, and they'll get him with an ambush.

The Execution:
Phase one went very well. Ninja spider climbed up the tower, supported by cleric, under the effects of invisibility and fly. fighter and wizard hit the bottom, fighter in front to take damage while wizard threw a fireball or two inside to kill everything. this worked pretty well, due to the silence spell. It took a bit of poison on Ninja's part to finish all the goblins on top but they pulled it off. they rested and initiated part 2 bright and early the next morning.

Regirax and Saarvith:
Normally I would like to think that a dragon would not have such predictable behavior, but in this scenario checking the tower was a good idea from the wyrmlord's point of view. as soon as the pair drew close, however, wizard caught the dragon with black tentacles, fighter flew in, invisible, and began hacking at saarvith. Ninja did his sneak attacks and wizard threw several lightning bolts at the dragon, who was unable to break from the tentacles until round 3, by which time he was severely wounded and Saarvith was already dead. to escape from fighter he dove into the lake and thus managed to escape from the encounter.

The Razorfiend:
the only fight of any worth left to mention is this guy. as anyone who's done this campaign knows, these things are incredibly lethal. as per the text, the razorfiend played it slow until the PCs entered its hatchery, at which point it jumped out and proceeded to maul fighter in a devastating surprise round(they all failed their spot checks.) both wings confirmed critical hits and did 90 damage total, which really means fighter died to bad luck. the others managed to kill it through sheer perseverance; wizard threw his last lightning bolt at the thing and did 33 damage, Ninja got a good couple sneak attacks off due to his invisibility ki power, and cleric soaked and healed most incoming damage during the fight.

We left off with the PCs having just looted the dragon's hoard (not including their little idiot tax from last session, i sent that away, but just about everything else was there) and they were preparing to return to starsong hill and see if they couldn't get fighter resurrected.

*EDIT: I just had a thought, that may have been a joke of some sort based on the fact that dwarves eat mud to tunnel in the Artemis Fowl reality, though at the time it was a complete non sequitur.

Provengreil
2010-07-22, 06:08 PM
session cancelled this weekend, half of MY PCs can't make it, sorry guys.

Drothmal
2010-07-22, 07:17 PM
This is great! Thanks for posting it. Btw, you can see in the general forum that you have a fair amount of readers (most of them lurkers, like me in most cases). Just thought I should point out that you have quite a few people following!

Darkxarth
2010-07-22, 08:30 PM
Your Ninja's plan was quite clever, especially since most RHoD campaign journals I've read seem to have the PCs storming Rhest and fighting nearly all of the groups at the same time, or sequentially.

Provengreil
2010-07-22, 10:19 PM
This is great! Thanks for posting it. Btw, you can see in the general forum that you have a fair amount of readers (most of them lurkers, like me in most cases). Just thought I should point out that you have quite a few people following!

i do? cool! how do i check it? i have this thread bookmarked so i just jump right to it.

and yeah, Ninja's brilliant. It's great we've got him because i was gonna have to figure out how not to maul the party with varanthian, but he's not dumb enough to just let that happen.

Draz74
2010-07-23, 12:42 AM
i do? cool! how do i check it? i have this thread bookmarked so i just jump right to it.

Scroll up to the top of the page and click the "Roleplaying Games" link to go back to the forum this conversation is in. Scroll down until you find this thread's title (it should be on the first page if anyone has posted here recently). To the right of the title, there will be a "Number of times viewed" column with a number in it.

Ruinix
2010-07-23, 12:14 PM
hi there im a lurker my self XD

im currently playing RHoD campaing, my party is at this moment after almost 2 years of play at ghostlord place ready to deal with him and with the bard in there.

it seams my party manage a bit better the part of koth and skull gorge. at the keep we fight all the way in and kill the bastard, only I die in that fight cause a stupid houe rule of 20 - 20 - confirmed by a nail of the manticora ¬¬ yes something with 1D4 damage kill my full helth PC ¬¬ that is why we kick out that stupid rule after that.

then we to the giant and use the rod of heal on him, wich with a little diplomacy check we turn him to our cause.

at the bridge i pulled the dragon to the range of our wizard wich he cast (i dont remember the name of the spell) a spell wich prevent the dragon to fly, so the goliat and the 2 dwarfs storm the dragon while the giant demolish the bridge in 2 strikes at a specifyc point (after a check of 1 of our dwarfs).

the rhest part go better even. at this point our wizard had to reroll cause he die stupidly several seassons before. and he reroll a beguiller changelling.

he manage to bluff all the lizard tranformed in they deity XDDD. he point a ""new high priest of him (?)"" XDDD and tell the lizard WE (our party) was his envoy to liberate them from the power of the black dragon XDDDD was a memorable roll play XDDD

the shifter gain from the lizardfolk a good predisposition for help and not be envolve in fight when (if) the alarm is given.

and they help telling us the right moment to strike. that moment come, and regiarix go for hunt and eat. our concern was the bell tower but our cleric hit the bell with silence spell from almost the middle of the lake XDDDD we get to the ruins and fight all the way and kill everyone. and rescue the goliat father wich was under control of the mindbender.

after that we wait in the bell tower for regain spells and for the dragon wich he return 1 hour before the replenish ¬¬

so the fight go tought till the goliat throw 2 natural 20 one after the other in the same round. i kill the ranger, and the dragon escape with 7 hp ¬¬

now we are at ghostlord dungeon and next seasson is in 8 days. :D

edit:

forgot to tell, our party is:

dwarf fighter dwarven defender lev 8
dwarf cleric war priest of moradin lev 8 and is the king of south dwarven kindom got a cohort fighter
goliat totem barbarian lev 7 got a cohort healer.
dopleganger beguiller lev 2
catfolk ranger lev 7 (my char)

Provengreil
2010-07-23, 05:21 PM
hi there im a lurker my self XD
... so the goliat and the 2 dwarfs storm the dragon while the giant demolish the bridge in 2 strikes at a specifyc point (after a check of 1 of our dwarfs).

the rhest part go better even. at this point our wizard had to reroll cause he die stupidly several seassons before. and he reroll a beguiller changelling.

he manage to bluff all the lizard tranformed in they deity XDDD. he point a ""new high priest of him (?)"" XDDD and tell the lizard WE (our party) was his envoy to

... all the way and kill everyone. and [B]rescue the goliat father wich was under control of the mindbender.

...
dopleganger beguiller lev 2
...

.... ok, I think you need to slow down with the typing. also, i have a few questions for you about the bolded bits(in order):

1. you said a giant demolished the bridge for you. was this old warklegnaw? he isnt supposed to join your party. if not, where did he come from?

2. Did he know which diety those lizardfolk serve? it's Tiamat. the same god as the dragon, who they also worship, kind of at least. this is questionable, IMO.

3. um... whose father? theres a mindbender, a bladebearer, a goblin, a dragon, a razorfiend, and ettin, some ogres, and some hobgoblins. are any of your party members descended from these things? and how did your DM decide he ended up here?

4. why is this guy level 2? doesn't this make him almost entirely useless to you guys?

AslanCross
2010-07-23, 07:11 PM
It's great to see how you guys dealt with Regiarix. Mine was a bit stupid as well---the alarm had gone off, and the PCs tried to bluff an "all clear, false alarm" by puppeteering one of the hobgoblin corpses, but the dragon didn't buy it.

I did raise Regiarix by one age category to prevent him from getting torn to pieces by the party, but withering artillery fire from the psion badly injured him before he even got close enough to use his breath weapon.

I should've made him dive into the water and sneak up on the PCs from inside the bell tower.

That said, Rhest didn't go as well for the PCs as they had hoped, because at least one lizardman escaped with word that Rhest had been compromised. Even though my PCs got the Starsong elves as allies, the ambush waiting for them on the way back to Brindol almost killed them. (The Marked for Death encounter is the only encounter I never tweaked. The Greater Barghests' Mass Bull's Strength and Mass Enlarge Person is very deadly.)

Provengreil
2010-07-30, 11:15 AM
OK, there's a couple new people joining our campaign: ranger and druid.

druid is a friend of Wizard's, who wants to see what this game is about. According to Wizard he'll be fine with just one session, but that could change easily.

Ranger is Fighter's GF, and will probably stay on for longer. so starting next session, most likely tomorrow, there'll be six party members, not four.

Ruinix
2010-07-30, 01:39 PM
.... ok, I think you need to slow down with the typing. also, i have a few questions for you about the bolded bits(in order):

1. you said a giant demolished the bridge for you. was this old warklegnaw? he isnt supposed to join your party. if not, where did he come from?

2. Did he know which diety those lizardfolk serve? it's Tiamat. the same god as the dragon, who they also worship, kind of at least. this is questionable, IMO.

3. um... whose father? theres a mindbender, a bladebearer, a goblin, a dragon, a razorfiend, and ettin, some ogres, and some hobgoblins. are any of your party members descended from these things? and how did your DM decide he ended up here?

4. why is this guy level 2? doesn't this make him almost entirely useless to you guys?

1. yes the giant chieftain join US cause we burn 1 charge of the healing staff on him, and the marshall with his ubber Diplo check aided by the cleric who use the staff to heal the giant rol and roll together and convince him to do his "last charge of his life" awesome moment ^^

edit for add. our party cleric/war priest is a dwarf, wich as part of his back story he IS the king of some south dwarven kindom wich was swarmed by duergars and his father was betrayed by his uncle (the brother of this father). anyway. he (our cleric) as part of his personal side quest back to reclaim his throne and figh to dead with his uncle, wich off course our guy win the match. being a youn prince he travel and know some other rulers of the valley, 1 of those was the warchief of the giants, so he know each other and thus was why he insist in expend 1 charge of the healing staff and save the life of the warchief wich we found (I found him, im the ranger of the party) very wounded and near death with his all tribu dead.

2. the lizardfolk serve regiarix for fear, and worship their own goddest of lizardfolk, that is was told to us after some checks of the bard and what it get the Doppelganger beggiler, sry my bad, the new guys was a Doppelganger so he use his *buga buga* power for read the lizardfolk thoughts, and he get the image of the goddes so he transform in that image and use his diplo and bluff check.

3. the Mindbender had mind-controlled the father of our colleague goliath, off course the father or our barian goliath was a barbarian goliath XDDD. the DM change somethings to flavor and adjust to the backstories of all party members. :d

4. cause he die and have 4HD of adjust, he pick a doppeganger for race an yes is almost useless IN combat but is very usefull for social skills, specially for subterfuge and gather information (not the skill, the means). wich is a common joke IC and mostly we f** with him XD

Provengreil
2010-07-31, 07:35 PM
Session 4

Ninja had a problem at the last minute and was unable to attend, so we gave his character to the one timer, druid from my previous post. that said, he didn't miss much. the entire session was spent traveling, and on a couple random encounters(a will o' wisp and the easy skirmish encounter from early in part two).

They had enough alliance points to get the owls, so now they can fly.

the in-town shenanigans:
when the group hit town, Ninja and cleric went off to resurrect fighter. wizard went to syrellia starsinger's home to report mission accomplished and talk to her about the phylactery. it was there that I had him meet ranger, thus introducing her to the group. I made it so that the resurrection ended just ass the pair arrived in the temple, but things went weird here. for no apparent reason, the cleric decided to cast conjure water on fighter. Ninja followed this with a kick in the balls. i swear I don't know why this happened, but fighter was going to kill ninja over that. wizard defused the situation by grappling everyone in the room with a black tentacles spell and talking them down, but it was very nearly a party splitting situation.

Terrelton:
the horde has already smashed terrelton and moved on, so when the party arrived it was a burned out husk of it's former self. i left them some battle remains and rewarded a big search check with a bit of unplundered gold, and gave them the skirmish here. they slept the night in a ruined building and moved on.

when we stopped, they were about a mile east of the ghostlord's lair, having scouted it with familiars and with a storm blowing in. we could've gone farther, but the PC's need all hands on deck for the varanthian fight, which means they're going to need ninja.

A little more on ranger:
ranger selected the ranged combat style, and carries a fiery burst longbow. she can do stealth, survival, and pumped the sensory skills to maximum. her companion is an eagle, and she mostly uses it for scouting. she is also a new player, but will be a permanent addition to our group.

Provengreil
2010-08-15, 09:23 PM
Session 5: The Ghostlord

note: Ninja's player was still unavailable, but at his request I played his character for him.

the approach:
they were already nearby from the traveling last session, so i just called in a storm as the PCs approached. ranger sent her eagle ahead to scout out, and i gave Varanthian a ten percent chance to decide it looked tasty. so of course it happened. this did, however, give the PCs a beneficial look at Varanthian BEFORE she was mauling them. the storm grew to very heavy proportions as they drew close, obscuring visibility. they decided ninja should sneak in and try to get a better look at V before they engaged. ninja obliged.

Varanthian:
ninja rolled a natural 2 for his move silently check, which resulted in V hearing him even over the storm. he noticed that she noticed, however, and booked it outside to tell his team the behir was coming. i gave them one round to prepare. wizard turned invisible and, for some reason, yelled a challenge. cleric threw a buff on fighter and range prepared a volley of arrows (in the heavy wind and rain, she turned out to be useless here). fighter, for his part, went total defenive and ninja climbed the lion with his spider climb, ready to deal some sneak attacks from above and behind.

when V appeared, she tried to bite fighter but bounced off his armor. he full rounded, cleric cast inflict critical wounds, wizard threw a fireball, ninja sneak attacked, and ranger failed. round 2: bite cleric, swallow cleric, bite fighter. fighter full rounds, wizard casts scorching ray, ranger fails, ninja turns invisible and sneak attacks, and cleric, having no weapon other than his dwarven waraxe, casts inflict critical wounds again, natural 20 on the concentration. kills V with a roll for 30 damage. the group cuts him out and he promptly burns most of his spells healing himself and fighter, so they retreat.

The Lair:
they enter the lair from the mouth, killing the first 3 monks easily. then they go down the left side, hitting absolutely nothing except one of the dire lions in the room with the undead tree. ninja did get sent down to the ooze room and he grabbed the ioun stone, but they didnt end up having to fight the ooze (yay spider climb; i'm taking this on any sneaky character i ever make from now on). wizard did the path choosing, everyone figured that it was fastest just to have ne person make the decisions since it, from their point of view, is random anyway.

in the room with the tree, the killed the lion easily, though fighter took some STR drain, and then someone thought that they should burn the tree. cleric and wizard opposed, fighter, ranger, and ninja were for it. in the end, ninja "borrowed" ranger's bow(it's flaming burst) and fired a shot. cleric put it out the same round, but the Ghostlord was still alerted.

The Ghostlord:
The ghostlord stormed in, very angry, and demanded they explain themselces as per the adventure. the Phylactery was mentioned and he demanded its return, a request that was immediately granted. he joined up with them and they all went to kill stormcaller and her group. it was over in about 3 rounds, though they took stormcaller prisoner. then things got creepy.

The interrogation:
Ninja and wizard decided to do the interrogation while the rest of the PCs went outside to make sure the owls were OK. i had ninja mostly just watch, ready to ask a few questions should wizard miss some very important info on their first real prisoner, but it didnt turn out to matter, he was thorough.

see, the PCs had gone from the sanctum to the fight by way of the main chamber, with the dex draining liquid. he dipped her in unitl she was rigid, the borrowed the dissection chamber and tortured some info out of her, IRL even going as far as to give himself a German accent. since he still had not turned her friendly AND used magical interrogation, she still gave him misinformation in some important cases. he correctly learned the identity of the remaining leaders, and all the dragons, living and dead. he got the giantshield fane location, which will take time away from the PCs, and i threw an extra dragon into the souther mountain range, supposedly making trouble for the dwarves (note: this does not exist). he also got a date for the invasion of brindol, but it's later than the actual invasion time. he then proceeded to ask about other notable potential assassination targets, out of which he got several, the only real one being skather. the last thing he asked about was his own party, as in what did the red hand know of them. she told them that she knew eveeryhting they had done, but acted as though she just found out (not true, regiarix got away and gave the red hand some info). he bought this act, though.

given what happened, i turned his alignment from neutral to evil. then they went outside and joined at the owls, and the session ends here.

the perceptive among you may have noticed that there was no point in this session which the PCs actually looted anything, giving them a significant reduction in treasure income, and therefore power. i plan to rectify this by running the mercenary gold encounter and giving them some extra magic items in it to make up for the lost treasure, and hoping they don't give it to the dwarves.

their next stop will be brindol, probably followed by the two false leads thrown up by stormcaller. i plan to set a trap for them in the giantshield mountains, however, probably run marked for death while having some extra units kill their owls to strand them there, seeing as they have some 20 days before brindol is attacked, it'll make it more interesting. what do you guys think?

ExtravagantEvil
2010-08-18, 05:33 PM
I haven't played RHoD yet, but your plan to strand them in the southern mountains seems interesting.

Provengreil
2010-08-19, 10:32 AM
actually thats the northern ones, but same difference really. i figure it'll burn time since they have about 20 days till the horde smashes brindol. they'll be stranded and have to make their way down, arriving within a coupe days of the invasion, it'll add some tension.

Provengreil
2010-08-29, 06:33 PM
Well, we just had another session.

Some good news: ninja is graduating college this semester. he isn't reading this, but feel free to give him a hand anyway.

Some bad news: ninja is graduating college this semester. he has lots of job interviews and can only make it sometimes, and has asked me to phase his character out until further notice.


so, the session then.

Hammerfist hold:
the first item on Wizard's to do list(he basically drives the rest of the party right now) was to visit Hammerfist Hold and see what he could do about their dragon. I had told him it was a white dragon named tymofarrar (yes, i stole the name from NWN, my PC's never played it). when asking the dwarves about their dragon problem, they universally replied by telling him he was in the wrong mountains and should hold off on the red-eye(a dwarven ale). upon learning this he became suspicious of everything stormcaller had said. the last thing he did was look up some mercenaries and ask if they could be hired in brindol's defense. they replied that they already had, and were waiting for payment.

fighter bought a new sword and shield there, and then they left for the small town of dauth, northeast of the hold.

Miha Serani:
dauth seemed like a perfect place to run the not so sick spy encounter. in order not to give only serani texture i bored them with heavy descriptions for about two full minutes of what was going on. she rolled up a bluff higher than any sense motive the party could make, but that didn't stop wizard from noticing that she was asking too many particulars of how they had done what they had done. this was an interesting contrast to fighter, who was happily spouting all the kind of information the red hand could possibly want in the assassination of the PCs.

fed up with the fact that he knew something was wrong with the situation but couldn't make the appropriate check, he finally just cast lightning bolt on miha. he then won intiative and did it again, killing her before anyone could possibly have stopped him. to the average person, of which there were plenty around, it looked like he had just killed some random beautiful lady, something that will follow him.

they spoke with dead to the corpse and clarified the lies, learned the real location of the fane, and reclarified who the remaining leaders were (kharn, kul, and koth are all alive).

Marked for death:
wizard was, for some reason, absolutely obsessed with making sure the dwarves got their gold and went to brindol. he patrolled the roads over and over on the owls, looking for any kind of caravan. after a couple days of this i finally gave him a caravan(not the hammerfist one), but i mixed it with the marked for death encounter. the encounter went mostly in the favor of the red hand, and it was only because wizard did his standard maneuver of: turn invisible-->fire'n'lightning for massive damage. of all 4 party members and pet, only wizard did not fall unconcious at some point. cleric and pet are dead, to be resurrected later.



my PCs really don't like hard encounters, and this one is very difficult indeed. most of the faces around the table were kinda glum when we ended, but i think they'll like it more when i start giving out treasure next week (we had to end it in a bit of a rush, cleric had other stuff to do) because i'm going to make up for missing the ghostlord's entire haul.

AslanCross
2010-08-29, 06:49 PM
Miha Serani:
dauth seemed like a perfect place to run the not so sick spy encounter. in order not to give only serani texture i bored them with heavy descriptions for about two full minutes of what was going on. she rolled up a bluff higher than any sense motive the party could make, but that didn't stop wizard from noticing that she was asking too many particulars of how they had done what they had done. this was an interesting contrast to fighter, who was happily spouting all the kind of information the red hand could possibly want in the assassination of the PCs.

fed up with the fact that he knew something was wrong with the situation but couldn't make the appropriate check, he finally just cast lightning bolt on miha. he then won intiative and did it again, killing her before anyone could possibly have stopped him. to the average person, of which there were plenty around, it looked like he had just killed some random beautiful lady, something that will follow him.

they spoke with dead to the corpse and clarified the lies, learned the real location of the fane, and reclarified who the remaining leaders were (kharn, kul, and koth are all alive).[/quote

If I'm not mistaken, creatures that used change shape return to their natural form when they die.

In my run, Miha was a sleeper agent already inside Brindol, spreading a plague (I turned her into a Rakshasa since I expected the party to meet her later).

[quote]
Marked for death:
wizard was, for some reason, absolutely obsessed with making sure the dwarves got their gold and went to brindol. he patrolled the roads over and over on the owls, looking for any kind of caravan. after a couple days of this i finally gave him a caravan(not the hammerfist one), but i mixed it with the marked for death encounter. the encounter went mostly in the favor of the red hand, and it was only because wizard did his standard maneuver of: turn invisible-->fire'n'lightning for massive damage. of all 4 party members and pet, only wizard did not fall unconcious at some point. cleric and pet are dead, to be resurrected later.



my PCs really don't like hard encounters, and this one is very difficult indeed. most of the faces around the table were kinda glum when we ended, but i think they'll like it more when i start giving out treasure next week (we had to end it in a bit of a rush, cleric had other stuff to do) because i'm going to make up for missing the ghostlord's entire haul.

I loved Marked for Death, as it really put the fear of the DM in my party. They'd been walking all over the encounters previously and took out Regiarix and Saarvith without any problems. They'd just cleared out Rhest and made the alliance with the elves, so they were pretty cocky.

At first they thought it was "lol ogre and hobgoblins in the dark let's show him who's boss" and then it went "HOLY CRAP THE CRUSADER'S BEEN CHARMED AND HE'S DRAGGING THE PSION INTO THE WOODS AND IS THAT A GIANT DRAGONMAN WITH AN 8-FOOT LONG SWORD OH GODS THERE ARE FOUR OF THEM OH THE PAIN MAKE IT STOP".

It's a really brutal encounter especially if you prebuff the monsters with the Greater Barghests' Mass Bull's Strength and Mass Enlarge Person.

My point is: If Marked for Death smacks your party without TPKing them, you did your job well. I hope your party gets used to difficult encounters, though. In my game I had to work a lot to make all of the encounters much harder, and the party enjoyed all of it.

Also, don't worry about the Ghostlord's haul--frankly it's really difficult to get it without killing the Ghostlord himself. When my players met him, he was pretty much impossible to defeat (I'd raised him to EL 14 by giving him a couple more levels. Antilife shell+wall of fire = barbecued PCs). They were terrified of him and didn't bother fighting. They gave him his phylactery and ran screaming out of his stronghold (dragging that paralyzed dire lion with them for use as a mount). They never got his treasure. I don't think PCs are really meant to get it.

Provengreil
2010-08-29, 07:17 PM
If I'm not mistaken, creatures that used change shape return to their natural form when they die.


They do. When she died, however, fighter, who was next, just took it in stride and stuffed the body into a bag even as the transformation happened(i picture this process to be less than instantaneous; about 20 seconds or so). given that this happened in the equivalent of maybe ten seconds and sudden lightning bolts and violence tends to cause panic among civilians, i decided that no one noticed. the observant among you will notice Wizard's recent bend towards incredible and overwhelming violence as an earlier and earlier resort, and that is going to have consequences.

as for the ghostlord's haul, i typed that but it would be more accurate to say the treasure for the entire chapter of the book; they made off with nothing more or less than Varanthian's bracelet, which is less than intended. also there is no reason to believe that, assuming you got that far without alerting the ghostlord, you couldn't sneak out with a little of his treasure, maybe the amulet of health and some of the art.

Provengreil
2010-09-06, 10:07 PM
ok, here we go. yet again, we have a new character: cleric 2.

cleric 2 is a cleric of the xammux, from the book of vile darkness. His domains are knowledge and darkness. he plays his character as a chaser of knowledge, uncaring of what kind of acts he might commit in the pursuit of such. he intends to use more stealth than a normal cleric, and has a higher dex ass well as boots and a cloak of elvenkind. he also only uses leather armor. I know this isn't the best build for a cleric, but i'm willing to give him a break because he wants to play a certain way. it's not like the rest of the party is terribly optimized, anyway.

today's session was pretty boring. we had about 20 days until the red hand invasion of brindol. the party finally visited brindol, went to immerstals, looked at some of the town areas, and did the strategy discussion. the only combat encounter i ran was dirty rotten looters, and even though i made them a bit stronger they still didn't pose a threat to the party.

The strategy:
For those of you who haven't read the adventure, the party gets to plan some of the defense of brindol.

the first part of the plan is to decide where to meet the red hand first, out in the fields or on the walls. most of the party was all for hitting them in the fields, but wizard wanted them on the walls. fighter was the most vocal in this section of the adventure, which didn't surprise me at all; he loves everything military.

fighter's argument was that the enemy's air force, comprised of manticores, 6 dragons (he hadn't quite payed attention to the fact that 1 of those was a lie, 1 was in the fane, 2 were dead, and one was at an unknown location) and possibly other unknown stuff would be able to take down the nicely lined men stationed on a wall. wizard was more worried about the fact that any man left in the field would be unable to disengage and retreat, which was the core of his idea for the defense(fighting retreat). despite being outnumbered in the argument 2 or 3 to one (cleric 1 and ranger were apparently bored by this bit) wizard managed to convince his party members to put the troops on the wall.

the second decision was where to station the clerics. wizard was all for putting them in the temple, thinking that the consecrated ground would be hugely beneficial. fighter was steadfastly advocating using them as field medics. they ended up splitting this one, wanting a group of the more powerful clerics in the temple while the rest were dispersed.i'm not sure how many victory points to give for this one.

the final descision is about the telepathic communications network set up by immerstal. one link goes to immerstal, one to jarmaath, one to a PC (wizard in this case) and one is up in the air. there was like a 6 way tie for this: jarmaath wants it on tredora, lady kaal and captain ulverth want it on themselves, fighter wanted it on the elven defenders on owls (effectively the defenders air force), wizard wanted it with cleric 2, and celric 2 suggested it go to captain soranna from drellin's ferry. i had the PCs roll diplomacy checks each, and no one scored higher than 14, so it ended up going to lady kaal, probably the worst choice there by any standard.

anyway, that was basically the entire session. next week is, hopefully, the entirety of the battle of brindol.

AslanCross
2010-09-07, 06:11 PM
I also had a problem with the clerics thing, but mostly because the players wanted to get the best of both worlds, as if there are enough clerics to actually do what they wanted. I didn't give them any VP for that, as it was technically inconclusive.

It is true that if you don't have time, you'll end up having to take the entire session debating on that. In our case, the action was at the start of the session (we continued an encounter that had we hadn't finished; it was a second ambush I added after the PCs were sent out to quickly evacuate Talar and get the remaining people to Brindol ASAP; multiple goblin outriders and hobgoblins mounted on tigers plus an advanced Greater barghest made it a very difficult encounter).

Anyway, I wish you the best in the battle of Brindol. May it truly be epic.

Here's my version of it. I hope you find it helpful. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=7574139&postcount=203)

Provengreil
2010-09-07, 07:35 PM
we took so much time because i think we can pull brindol off in one session. it'll take the whole session, but there you go. this meant, of course, that the previous session was mostly spent burning down time until they arrive. to counteract the boredom, i kept the strategy discussion going by planting certain ideas from appropriate characters to prolong the argument, and gave them the feel of a well planned and thoroughly discussed defense.


I'm thinking brindol will be epic.

i have some modifications planned out:

1. after they fell the giants, probably the same round, koth's gonna show up with 4 bladebearers. that round they'll only buff/ move into formation. the next round will see 6 goblins, then 12, then i'll run out of figures and just start drawing X's on out mat behind a certain line. the point, of course, is to have the PCs retreat to the wall with the horde literally on their tails. it they retreat in the first one or two rounds, nothing will actually happen, but i'll make some "rolls" to make it feel different.

2. no changes, they are not terribly good at dealing with dragons.

3. if they can take it after the thunderlizards, regiarix is gonna show up here. he wont be at full power, maybe 80%, but i feel this will add to the tension.

4. no changes to 4 as written, but they will probably see one of the razorfiends afterwards and have to fight it off.

5. i doubt i'll change this; kharn is not the most powerful of opponents but the PCs will be drained at this point. if they've really steamrolled everything so far, i will throw in a cleric to give the group some extra healing power, but i really don't expect this.

what do you guys think?

oh, and on the clerics thing, No VPs is kinda what i was leaning towards as it sounds indecisive to me as well. but i just counted it up and learned it probably wont matter; unless they fail to kill kharn, abitharax, the giants, skather, stop the fires, and stop the flooding of the streets, they will push themselves over 40.

bridge =2
evacuation of drellin's ferry =3
elven alliance =5
hatchery =2
ghostlord =5
miha serani =2
defense council session total =5
stormcaller =6
saarvith =4
varanthian =3
ozzyrandion =1

total = 38, victory is reached at 40. none of the section 4 VPs are worth only one, so any of those things wins it.

Tyndmyr
2010-09-08, 12:38 AM
the observant among you will notice Wizard's recent bend towards incredible and overwhelming violence as an earlier and earlier resort,

I like him already.

Running this campaign myself atm(about two sessions behind on updating the campaign journal. Must fix that). It's a good one, but I have players that tend to negotiate. Some of them are remarkably bad at it. For instance, when the PC's were at the Massacre @ drellin's ferry, one of them told the retreating townsfolk to stay and fight, or he'd kill them himself. One bad roll later, they told him to die by himself. He responded with arrows. At the wizard. Whom he KNEW had fireball prepared from earlier discussion. The resulting "friendly" fire almost caused a TPK. Yup, firing on your teammates is definitely more important than dealing with the next wave.

I have to give them credit for recovering and killing the dragon, though.

Provengreil
2010-09-12, 07:03 PM
Well, shiat. i'd hoped to get through brindol in one day, i really had. but then 2 memers show up late, a third turns out to have forgotten her character sheet, and so we start out an hour and a half late. ah well, such is life, i suppose.

the first twenty minutes of our session was spent with everyone getting ready for the big battle. buying wands, checking the magic items, making sure nothing useful goes unused, you know.

Thus far i have been fairly indescriptive when discussing fighting. part of that is because most everyone's moves have been predictable, almost bland. with the exception of ninja, no one brough much inventive thought to the table. here i intend to describe the fighting much better, as that's all that happened in brindol.

The Beginning:
I gave a description of the setting: night was falling, the army was looking more rowdy than in the past couple days. this was it, it had to be the night. sure enough, an hour after the last man could see clearly, BOOM, BOOM. the boulders began to come, and the PCs were sent out.

they approached, and had to think about approaching for some reason. I said they were 500 feet away, and the entire party thought that despite the punctuated crashing of boulders into the walls, they should take a slow and steady approach. to get them moving, i said that they heard the some of the wall start to break, and that got them moving. when they arrived, wizard fireballed for 25 damage at the start, everyone else kept moving in. after a few rounds of concentrated hammering on the two on the left by fighter, ranger, and cleric 1, those two went down. wizard blinded the other two with glitterdust, so i had a few archers from the wall fire their arrows. cleric 1 went down again even though the giants were blind, but no worries: they had bought several wands of CLW.

when they finally finished, koth and several bladebearers appeared about 80 feet away. fighter, predicatbly, charged right in with little thought, but the rest of them hung back because the battery was killed, but the rest of the horde was out there. Fighter got the messagethe next round when lots of goblins followed the first few, and he party ran. i gave a description about how the enemy was nipping at their tails, had the roll some "speed checks" and, after a moment of suspense, archer and owl support began to harry the goblins and drive them back a bit.


Abitharax:
Ok, this was a good fight. it didn't help that the PCs could neither dispel nor use cold damage, however, so it was very tense right until the end.

they managed to doom abithirax, then hit him with an empowered darkbolt to start off the fight. he almost killed cleric 1 with a single breath attack the same round. this was followed by a lightning bolt. then...they cast deeper darkness centered on the dragon. the party spread out, trying to find light, and cleric 1 started healing. abithirax used blindsense to full attack fighter but rolled an impressive 5, 6, 2, 3, and 8 for five of his six attacks, passing fighter's AC of 28 only once. it really didn't matter, however, because for the first time ever fighter has been largely worthless, unable to consistently damage the dragon through its AC of 32. soon after, abitharax landed, trying to use an awesome blow to knock ranger aside. it hit, but she made the reflex save. wizard took the opportunity to grapple him with black tentacles, and cleric 1 healed fighter. unfortunately the breath weapon was now ready again, and dealt 50 damage, reducing cleric 1 to critical levels of HP yet again. cleric 2 ran to his aid, however, and healed him.

At this point they called in owl support, which came and promptly began trying to stick the beast with arrows from a distance, but with little success aside from a notable double 20. wizard gave up on spell conservation and began throwing every lightning bolt he had ready at Abitharax. at this point i threw in a couple of falling corpses, 2 manticores and an owl, just to add texture and remind them of the rest of the raging battle, particularly in the sky. cleric 2 continued to heal, burning his high level healing as much as possible to keep up with the damage from the dragon. then cleric 1 dumped 16 gallons of water on one of is wings. that's a lot of water(128 lbs on a single wing) so i had abitharax fall 20 feet to the ground. abitharax ran over and threw him into one of the burning buildings using awesome blow, sending him straight through the weakened wall. cleric 1 followed through with another create water, putting out the building he was in. wizard bound it again with more tentacles, and then cleric 2 finally killed it with an inflict critical wounds.


The Streets of Blood:
The party didn't even seem to get the clue that they might be intended to put out the fires, they just left it in the care of the nearest soldier and left to get some magic items from the stash. they opted for a wand of missiles and some scrolls to make sure wizard still had offensive capabilities.

when they got to the street, they had called in soranna and the four lions of brindol to the area. in addition, there were 6 tiri kitor hunters and some brindol soldiers, led by another lion. they put the soldiers in front, followed them with the lions, and had most of the party stay behind them inside some of the buildings. wizard and ranger got onto the roofs with the hunters to provide ranged support. when the first wave arrived, it was a huge crossbow fight while a couple of goblins futilely tried to get through the barrier. the manticores went up on the roofs and made fairly short work of the hunters, though they didn't hurt wizard or ranger significantly. the goblins ended up killing most of the guard before they were killed, but none of the lions.

Then the berserkers entered the picture a few rounds later. on their charge in, the killed all the remaining guards and one of the lions (they made some criticals) in a single round. the defenders fought back valiantly, though: wizard put down a wall of force and separated the defenders and attackers while the rage wore off, then dropped a fireball on them. most failed their saves, and they took a significant amount of damage. with their low AC and long range/ healing support from the party, the lions were able to cut them down, though it cost them another two of their number, reducing it to soranna and one lion, the lions were able to reduce them to nothing. fearing that the next wave could contain aerial enemies, Wizard and ranger climbed into the street for the third wave. i took the opportunity to demolish a building with a thrown boulder, giving a better sense of chaos and again reminding them of the larger battle of which they were only a part.

The PCs were very worried by the thunderlizards, and rightly so; 6d6 electricity per round in an alley situation is very dangerous. one fireball and an attack round by fighter and soranna left the enemy with four lizards to their name. Even so, it was all the clerics could do to keep the PCs healthy with all the lightning flying around. ranger and cleric 1 both fell unconscious but did not die during this bit, and wizard ran out of spells both memorized and on scrolls above the second level. however, through gratuitous use of healing wands and constant application of sharp objects, they finally beat the lizards with the whole party and soranna still standing.

if you read my previous post, you saw that i had planned to throw extra stuff at them if it wouldn't hurt their chances too much. i decided i wouldn't do it, i doubted they'd survive.


and that was as far as we got. when we pick up next week, we'll see if the PCs have the grit to take on skather and kharn with what little juice they've got left.

Provengreil
2010-09-14, 02:06 PM
I like him already.

Running this campaign myself atm(about two sessions behind on updating the campaign journal. Must fix that). It's a good one, but I have players that tend to negotiate. Some of them are remarkably bad at it. For instance, when the PC's were at the Massacre @ drellin's ferry, one of them told the retreating townsfolk to stay and fight, or he'd kill them himself. One bad roll later, they told him to die by himself. He responded with arrows. At the wizard. Whom he KNEW had fireball prepared from earlier discussion. The resulting "friendly" fire almost caused a TPK. Yup, firing on your teammates is definitely more important than dealing with the next wave.

I have to give them credit for recovering and killing the dragon, though.

what was the purpose of this? i mean, if you're going to follow though with a threat, shouldn't you do so to the person(s) at whom the threat was directed?

Draz74
2010-09-14, 03:07 PM
at this point i threw in a couple of falling corpses, 2 manticores and an owl, just to add texture and remind them of the rest of the raging battle, particularly in the sky.

This, I applaud and will have to copy someday.

Sipex
2010-09-14, 03:11 PM
This doesn't read very well, it seems to assume that I know the Red Hand of Doom campaign already.

I know OF it but I've not read through it or played it.

Provengreil
2010-09-16, 03:06 PM
This doesn't read very well, it seems to assume that I know the Red Hand of Doom campaign already.

I know OF it but I've not read through it or played it.

it does make that assumption, yes. my apologies if this made things difficult for you.

and now for some sad panda news: this red hand campaign is being cut short. cleric 1, fighter, and ranger have grown tired with the plotline, and wizard feels it's beginning to drag on a bit as well. they'd prefer i cut it short even if it doesn't quite end cleanly. so, i guess that i'll end it with them chasing off the red hand from brindol. I'd prefer to keep going until the end, but it wont be fun for any of us if I force the group to keep pursuing a path they find boring. the next session, therefore, is going to be our last.

Provengreil
2010-09-19, 09:29 PM
Well, here we are: The last session that wasn't supposed to be the last. no sense beating around the bush, so here we go:

Skather:
Having slowed the Red Hand's push into the city and forced a stagnation of their forces, the PCs were called to the temple to meet with Jaarmath when the connection was shut down. Wizard Immediately figured on a sniper attack, took one look at the map, and figured out it was the coffin shop, no spot checks needed. Skather still put a couple arrows into the party as they crossed the lawn, poisoning wizard in the process, but they largely made it there unharmed. fighter didn't even try the door, he just rammed it with a ten foot running start. wizard thew a fireball into the upper floor, lighting the place on fire and forcing skather to come down. the sorcerers downstair's both used their lightning bolts on fighter, who was then promptly healed by bith clerics. ranger came in shooting and fighter began the stabbing and the sorcs went down in 2 rounds. by this point skather was at the foot of the stairs, but none of the party suspected he would be invisible. this led to skather taking his time and sneaking around to the outside, then putting a surprise round of sneak attacks into cleric 1, bringing him to his knees. at this point the PCs took defensive positions/readied healing or counterattack options, but to little avail. Skather used his invisibility and great stealth checks to put on a great show, totally playing the party for a bunch of fools, but in the end was unable to keep up with the healing power of 2 clercs who had largely conserved their healing up to this point. when his ki abilities ran out he simply ran away, driven off by being unable to sustain stealth rather than any actions by the party. Fighter and wizard both wanted to give chase, but soon gave up when they saw skather was jumping across the rooftops like Altair.


The Final Battle:
Whoo boy. here we go. Aside from Kharn, there are 4 ogres, 2 hill giants, and the ghostlord(if applicable, which he wasnt here) + any wyrmlords the PCs have not killed thus far. In our case, that meant Koth, who I gave an extra couple hit dice to so he could still be a threat. Seeing as this was now the final battle of the campaign, i also gave Kharn the Blindsense ability so that wizard's greater invis would not win the match by default, and i ran him in with all buffs greater than 1 round/level already cast.
The PCs decided to make a fight of it out in the field in front of the cathedral rather than on the steps,alled in soranna, and decided to spread out wide. This turned out to be a mistake.

As the fight began, Koth and Wizard both dropped a fireball on the other team. Wizards hit everyone, reducing the ogres to critically low HP levels and dealing significant damage to the giants. the giants and ogres took a double move forward while the PCs took healing or defensive actions, except for ranger who let loose with her bow on an ogre to finish it off. For his turn, kharn simply moved in and healed.

In the second round, Koth used ray of enfeeblement on fighter to reduce his attack/damage, wizard turned invisible, and the ogres charged fighter. The giants went in to take on cleric 1 and ranger, actions which had dire consequences. ranger took a hit, and the risked an attack of opportunity to shoot her bow, which reduced her to -6 and bleeding. cleric 1 got hammered as well, but not as hard. For his part, Kharn walked right up to Sorannah and Scored a crit followed up by almost max damage with his pick, which felled her in a single blow. 2 rounds, 2 of the defenders down.

Third round. koth drops another fireball, catching ranger, both clerics, and one of the giants in the flame. ranger is dead, the cerics take a turn to heal themselves, but fighter begins to wail on the enemy. one normal attack and three great cleaves later, the ogres lay at his feet and he's ready for some giants. koth and Kharn take the chance to buff themselves with shield and divine power, respectively. Wizard begins to fry the giants with scorching rays.

Fourth round. the giants move in on cleric 1. he takes a beating, being reduced to critically low levels of HP yet again. cleric 2 gives him a cure critical wounds, greatly helping him, but both clerics are now down to just their second level spells. Kharn moves in to finish cleric 1 but missed. fighter moved in and, with a massive critical hit, reduced one of the giants to less than ten HP. wizard took that one down with another scorching ray, and koth answered with an area dispel magic on wizard, but it failed to overcome his invisbility.

Fifth round. the final giant decides to grapple cleric 2 and stop the healing, which is successful. Kharn moves in and takes cleric 1 into the negatives with his pick. fighter and wizard both turn their attention to Koth for a moment, who takes some real pain and is forced to drink a potion intead of casting this round.

Sixth round. the grapple continues, and cleric 2, who hasn't been healed this battle, really strts to suffer. Kharn decides it's time to kill fighter. fighter and Wizard ignore him, focusing on getting Koth to fall over, which he does after unsuccessfully trying to blind fighter.

Seventh round. The giant knocks cleric 2 uncounscious, taking him out of this fight. fighter finally turns and faces Kharn, going at him mano a mano while wizard uses the last of his spells(another scorching ray) to hit the remaining giant. in the following rounds, this sequence pretty much repeats, punctuated by healing from Kharn, until Fighter's 29 AC finally wins it: fighter full rounds Kharn, giant and Kharn full round fighter, wizard uses his wand to attack the giant with some magic missiles. when Kharn finally fell over, his entire guard was dead, and so was half the party.

And, after abut 5 minutes of description of the retreat and a quick review of the party's accomplishments, we concluded the campaign. true, they never visited the Fane and didn't fight the Aspect of Tiamat, but my PCs honestly didn't care: it seems they were just done with this story.

Well, that concludes this Red Hand of Doom campaign journal. I'll recheck the thread for a while if anyone wants to continue a discussion.