The 3.5 Red Hand Of Doom Handbook for DMs [Major spoilers!] - WIP, PEACH! [Archive]

Saintheart

2010-10-09, 09:29 AM

Overview of the campaign, who to run it for, and common considerations and issues that arise

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Always a good idea to be prepared.

How many players can be run in RHOD?
Kjones, who wrote one of the campaign journals referenced below and did a lot of thinking and reviewing of RHoD while doing so, says “the Red Hand of Doom is balanced for a party of four core-only PCs - specifically, a meatshield, skillmonkey, healbot, and blaster. With more than four, action advantage against single foes becomes a problem, though these kinds of battles are relatively uncommon. The solution to this is relatively simple; you can toss in an extra couple of monsters into most battles without too much trouble.”

On the other hand, if you start going above 6 players, you’re going to have to seriously rework of encounters simply because of the sheer weight of numbers. A couple of extra monsters at the same level doesn't really cut it.

It is possible to run RHoD for a party of eight – on the author’s personal experience -- but on the author’s personal experience again, I don’t recommend it if you want to portray the party as being under serious threat much of the time. For the 8-man party, all NPCs intended as allies can be relegated to noncombatant guides. The party’s collective firepower is going to stand up to most challenges that the adventure throws at it (and then some). Even upgraded each encounter will probably become a balancing act between cakewalk and total party kills because of the party's aggregate abilities.

One of the quickest and dirtiest alterations you can make to redress the balance with 8 players is to double the saving throws and hitpoints of every "default" opponent, which notionally makes every encounter an overwhelming one for a party of 4 and therefore presumably able to be handled by a party of 8.

Alternatively, with this number of players consider starting them off at level 4 rather than level 5, although again you need to just keep an eye on the fights to see that you're not edging into TPK territory. One of our contributors who ran an 8-player RHOD campaign did an XP calculation and concluded they're not likely to fall well behind the notional level progression of the campaign.

Note, however, that the same rule doesn't apply in the other direction -- i.e. I don't recommend trying to run RHOD with 3 or less players. Levelling the party up to 6 isn't going to cut it because action economy works against them at 3 characters or less. Gestalting may help the problem somewhat.

In any event the first couple of hostile encounters in the game should be used as a gauge for the party's capabilities. If they get heavily rolled in "Marauder Attack" it's probably going to be tough going for them in the remainder of the campaign.

Kjones goes on to say “The second issue is more problematic. Any group deviating from this "default" configuration [of the ‘four pillars’ of D&D parties] will find many of the encounters to be unchallenging and unfun if run as written. This, too, can be rectified without too much trouble. NPC spell selections should be completely reworked, in light of the fact that many NPC casters have save DCs that are too low to be considered threatening.”

What levels of party can RHOD be run for?
RHOD itself recommends starting players at level 5 with an expected topping out at level 10. (One of the most amusing sidebars in the book is the one where James and Rich contemplate a party that is able to defeat the entire Hand – giants, multiple dragons, Kharn, mages and all included -- by itself. In such a scenario, they soberly suggest that “you might not be running the adventure for the right character levels.” Understatement FTW!)

You'd be pretty silly to run the unaltered adventure for a party starting higher than level 6. At level 7 and above most of the fights are going to be cakewalks, or at least won’t seriously threaten the characters. Even at level 5, hobgoblin squaddies (which the party’s likely to face regularly for 75% of the adventure) are credible threats only in large numbers and backed by spellcasting support. A level 6 start means it's highly likely 5th level spells will be online at or before the Battle of Brindol -- see more about this in later sections.

Disclaimer: yes, you can run RHOD for higher-levelled characters than starting at level 5 or 6, but it's going to be a vastly different experience to RHOD as written.

After all, the most powerful spellcaster opponent in the entire adventure (if you exclude the Ghostlord, over whom the party should be seeing a big blinking sign reading "CURBSTOMPER HERE, DO NOT FIGHT") is meant to be Azarr Khul at level 11. The Vale isn’t terribly well-resourced: the highest-level spellcaster in Elsir Vale is Aragathos (the sorcerer 10/dragon disciple 2 in Dennovar) and who is meant to be Sir-Not-Appearing-In-This-Film. The PCs are eventually going to wind up equal to or greater than most of the Vale’s spellslingers and warriors assuming a level 5 start. (In particular if you’re running a bunch of immature folk evils, chaotics or neutrals who like to smash the town guard of every settlement they come across, this … may become a problem, to take a leaf out of James and Rich’s book.)

How much reworking does RHOD need?
RHOD as written is built for a very inexperienced group of four players whose character choices don't deviate away from the classic four. If you keep that in mind, changing the campaign becomes a much simpler exercise since RHOD's problems aren't that hard to fix, they just need a bit more oomph.

Kjones says to regard RHOD as a framework to be built upon or expanded, though it can be run “out of the box” reasonably well. You can get by without changing things if your party lacks tactical or optimisation experience.

But ... he also says: “NPC spell selections should be completely reworked, in light of the fact that many NPC casters have save DCs that are too low to be considered threatening. I did not re-stat the rank-and-file horde members, but given the opportunity to re-run this module, I probably would have done so. The Wyrmlords should be re-statted. Kharn is the most in need of this treatment, but Saarvith and Koth benefit greatly as well. (Ulwai is mostly OK.) The dragons can also be improved by re-working feat selections - Awaken Spell Resistance from Draconomicon is a good choice. Change in age categories are possible, but I'd only recommend it in the case of Regiarax, and possibly Ozyrrandion.

... all major NPCs should be given items, spells, and abilities to prevent an anti-climactic demise. Potions of lesser restoration are a good place to start, as are luck feats from Complete Scoundrel. … even if the NPCs in the module were more usable, I'd still recommend tweaking them to meet the specific nature of your party.

Finally, note that these recommendations are not based merely on the relatively low power of the builds presented in the module. Even if your party is unoptimized, many of the NPCs in the module are fairly uninteresting, and can be made more so without making them strictly more "powerful". For example, some of the rank-and-file have Alertness as a feat. This will probably never be useful in any significant way. Of course, you could swap it out for Power Attack or Martial Study... but depending on what you want them to do, you could also give them Improved Initiative, and watch as they get the drop on the PCs again and again. (Or something like that. The details are up to you. Framework, remember?)”

After a long PbP campaign (5-odd years) I think the alteration required hinges on three things:
(1) the number of PCs;
(2) the players' tactical experience;
(3) the optimisation strategies they use.

Item (1) is best addressed by reworking to meet a large number of actions and damage output per round.
Item (2) is best addressed by reworking to meet the raping of the action economy and PC coordination.
Item (3) requires a little on both of (1) and (2).

There's also PbP vs. FtF to factor in. PbP is primed for tactical thought since the "decision time" is theoretically unlimited -- a guy could go away for a day thinking about the current round and come up with a brilliant strategem, while the same player at the table might not be able to think of it on the hop.

A big element to turn your mind to is the tactics the Red Hand uses from one encounter to the next. You can tune up Hand troops' reaction times and their grasp of tactics which, unaltered, make little sense in a world populated by wandering adventurers and very potent casters. For example, most Hand patrols don't have instructions to target casters or focus their fire. Even allowing for most of the Red Hand being cannon fodder, this is inexcusable for an army whose threat to the Vale is principally because it hasn't been brought together as one force before.

It might sound like a lot of messing around, but it isn’t really -- particularly if you’re running things in PbP, where you’ve got a lot of time to get prepared and rewrite encounters.

In summary, tune the adventure to suit the party, not the party to suit the adventure. Even being targeted at a very 'classical' D&D party run by inexperienced players, it's also very flexible for accommodating alternatives - but will need some work to do so.

Timing in the campaign
One issue that seems to crop up again and again is that the Hand's army moves too slowly for adventuring parties given the notional timeline in the book. The ‘countdown to destruction’ is one of RHOD’s best selling points, but the Red Hand's itinerary is pretty generous to players in practice; most savvy parties will meet the deadlines and then some. Particularly in the first parts of the campaign a conscientious party can earn itself literally weeks of downtime ahead of the Battle of Brindol. The party never needs to cross more than about 150 miles at maximum to get to its next major encounter location.

This is especially so if they secure giant owls from the Tiri Kitor in the Blackfens. RHOD suggests giant owls can make 56 miles per day, which assumes 8 hours of travel per day at 7 miles per hour. This is a lot faster than having to hoof it. On top of that, RHOD takes place in the summer, which increases the hours of daylight out to 10 or so (or so savvy players will note) thereby granting more travel time. Also bear in mind that if the party’s scooting around the countryside on owlback it makes suspension of disbelief tougher when assassination squads start jumping out of nowhere to ambush the party. (On the upside, though, hey, no wandering monsters!) It's even more significant once the party wizard hits level 9 and picks "Teleport" as one of his spells: even if he's not boosting his caster level, that's 900 miles of travel per spell.

Based on the campaign journals and experiences in the various threads we've seen, you’re more likely than not to have your party back at Brindol well ahead of the Hand, and RHOD's contemplated race against the clock ahead of the battle is less likely to happen.

Your options to deal with a party who gets back to Brindol ‘early’ are basically: sidequests from Brindol; have the Red Hand move faster right from the get-go; allow the party to just rest up and prep for battle; or have the Hand move at the speed of plot. Of these, options 1, 2, and 3 are going to suspend disbelief a lot easier than option 4. In particular there isn't a lot of time to craft items across the rest of the campaign, so depending on how much time they've got this may be a convenient moment for them to get ready. There are also some good options for parties to help prepare for the battle by boosting defenders’ capabilities, which we’ll discuss later on. I don’t recommend suddenly having the Hand pick up speed because at the end of the day it is an army on foot, and armies on foot do move a lot slower than small adventuring parties – logistics still plays a part.

Parties who are ‘late’ on the timeline are comprehensively dealt with in the RHOD book, so nothing more need be said on that topic.

Notes on Victory Points
The Victory Points system RHOD uses to see if you've done "enough" to destroy the Hand is from Heroes of Battle. At first glance it looks pretty formidable for the players to meet.

Do you have to railroad the paty if it does something off the wall and misses an entire encounter area? Probably not. The players have to hit 40 VP, and the campaign makes a total of 74 VP available. The points they pull from various tasks are atomised such that if you lose them in one area you can usually make them up again elsewhere. And they get two chances at some VPs since Red Hand leaders missed earlier in the campaign show up again at the Battle of Brindol. The biggest single possible loss of VP which isn't recoverable without DM railroading is if the players decide to skip Rhest entirely. They don't have a backup plot marker to get them out to the Ghostlord section of the adventure, leading to them missing 18 VP (14 really since Saarvith and Ulwai will both show up at Brindol regardless). But even then it's nowhere near a fatal blow. You would be looking at a real Fail Party to have to start massaging the adventure to save the PCs from themselves.

The players earn a guaranteed 20 VP from the combat encounters in the Battle (including Kharn and Abithriax), and any Wyrmlords they missed raise that guaranteed number to 32 VP. PCs could withdraw from these encounters thus losing them and thus depriving themselves of the VP, but since they're defending a city under siege, in practice PCs seem to prefer death or glory, which obviates the count: if they lose they're generally all dead, in which case the VP count is the least of their worries.)

Two issues that a lot of DMs seem to get confused on with VPs:

(a) Does getting more than 40 VP = automatic victory in the Battle of Brindol?
(b) Do you tell the players about the VP or give them a running count of how many they have?

The answer is No to the first; Sort of to the second.

On the first question: you tally up Victory Points if (and only if) Kharn is killed during the Battle of Brindol. Kharn is the linchpin of the Hand army, but if he dies and the Hand hasn't been dealt enough 'deaths by a thousand cuts' from the party's earlier victories, someone else will rise to take his place. If Kharn dies and you don't have a total of 40 VPs within the next 1d4 hours, the Red Hand regroups, appoints a new leader, and launches a second, more determined attack which smashes what's left of Brindol; even if Kharn dies, Brindol has basically 'shot its bolt' defending the first assault and won't have the strength to hold back a second - the remainder of Brindol's forces withdraws to Dennovar.

On the second question: don't give them the full story. You can suggest that a certain event or events gave an extra X number of VP, but don't tell them the number they're trying to hit. Since the players can't win the campaign before the Battle of Brindol, it makes no pragmatic sense to give them a running total of the VP count ahead of that event, and it's destructive of suspension of disbelief. If you're playing with a seasoned group of D&D players you're already going to have to contend with an attitude of "Adventuring! See strange new places! Meet strange new people! Then kill them, take their stuff, and find out what you next have to do to acquire the Macguffin." Don't shoot yourself in the foot by telling the players what number they have to meet -- just give the impression that their actions count in some way they are not permitted to know.

Any particular gamebreakers to watch for?
Optimised parties are always going to be harder to challenge than unoptimised ones. Most DMs already know this. Here we’re only looking at particular character options which cause serious headaches for RHOD itself - options which reliably turn a lot of fights into annoying timewasters because of what the option does, together with explanations for why the option sucks for RHOD in particular.

So, in no particular order, I give you the RHOD DM's list of headaches:

Fifth-level spells start to come online around the highpoint of the campaign - the Battle of Brindol. It's inevitable since the campaign is designed for levels 5-10, but fifth level spells bring a quantum leap in damage, debuff, and information-gathering: Teleport, Mind Fog, Cloudkill, Dismissal, Overland Flight, Polymorph, Scrying, Flame Strike, Commune, Contact Other Plane, Raise Dead, Righteous Might ... and that's just picking from the SRD. This can be problematic because the opposition during the battle is in essence melee-focused and heavy with opponents that don't have the greatest saving throws in the world; there's no dedicated spellcaster that the party faces as an encounter; even the dragon is a bruiser and burner, not a caster. Be warned, then, that there's a risk of PCs turning the Battle into a rather practical demonstration of the potency of Tier One classes. Of course, this will depend on how seasoned the players are, and how much time they've got to think - if you've got only one spellcaster PC it's going to be harder for him/her to clown every encounter, but this should be borne in mind nonetheless. Don't think that running under Pathfinder is going to solve these issues, either; on our experience it's actually worse.

Mindsight from Lords of Madness. It’s potentially a gamebreaker in general, but moreso in RHOD because the virtually all the dungeons in the game are less than 100 feet across. A Mindsight-endowed character thus can give complete intel on virtually all monsters’ locations – particularly in the Ghostlord part of the campaign – just by standing near the entrance to a dungeon for a round or so. IMHO it also makes an underwater assault on Rhest very easy, makes ambushes on the party non-ambushes, and makes the sniper attack at Brindol almost a nonevent. I suppose if you were really pressed for it you could start dishing out Mind Blank scrolls to some enemies, but it’s easier just to disallow it altogether.

The monsters' Will saves could count as a gamebreaker -- many are very average. Confusion, Ray of Stupidity, and, Gygax help us, Mind Fog are all serious encounter-breakers against the majority of the Hand forces. Conviction or Mass Conviction spells help with these issues. Halfway optimised beguilers tend to have perhaps inappropriate levels of godmode with RHOD, particularly when by the time you reach the Blackfens a beguiler can attain enough spells, Bluff and Disguise to fool Regiarix that he's a hobgoblin (personal experience on that.)

The spell Downdraft from the Spell Compendium is a potential headache for the first couple of dragons in the campaign. It's one of the few 'save or be screwed, save and potentially be screwed anyway' spells I've seen which actually works well against a dragon. (Well, it worked against Ozzy, anyway...) Also watch for Ray of Dizziness, which imposes basically the effects of Slow and has no saving throw. Spell Resistance does apply ... but unfortunately for your dragons, none of them have Spell Resistance due to their youth.

Look very, very carefully at the Dread Necromancer class before allowing it. There's a few locations (Rhest in particular) where dead bodies can be accessed with impunity, not to mention that the Battle of Brindol is going to give a DN an ever-increasing supply of fresh corpses to play with. And that's before we even get to the DMly nightmare of having to figure out how to effectively rebuild encounters to take account of a party with a zombie green/black/red dragon in tow.

Improving the Red Hand forces generally across the entire campaign
Rather than repeat the same advice through five different sections, let’s talk about general improvements that can be made to recurring opponents in the RHOD campaign.

A note of caution, though, related to our old friend “suspension of disbelief”. In my entirely personal and less-than-humble view, it isn’t wise to turn every soldier in the Hand into an elite trip-attacking fighter who can take several partymembers all by himself. These guys are meant to be a serious threat to the good folk of the Vale only because Kul's organised them, and they have dragons on their side. Even the piddling town guard of Drellin’s Ferry has had a history of successfully seeing off hobgoblins raiders all on its own. Rank and file Hand members – the regulars, that is, and possibly the veterans – therefore shouldn’t be given lots of extra levels. The Hand’s upper ranks are meant to be challenging, but it's still made up of a lot of cannon fodder.

It’s worth just stepping back for a moment and taking a fresh look at things if you find yourself getting caught up in what I call the RHOD Arms Race – turning your hobgoblin rank and file into seriously competent builds who can beat the hell out of party members, which then encourages players to seek out ever-stronger character optimisation strategies. This isn’t to say you can’t have the elite death squad that eventually comes after the party – indeed depending on how good your party is at using fifth level spells you might have to turn the Streets of Blood into an assault by a bunch of optimised crack hobgoblin troops -- just don’t make every member of the Hand a member of that death squad.

Onto the suggestions common across the campaign--

The Hobgoblin Regulars
Walking chunks of hitpoints, one and all. One feat each, which is Alertness. Boring, and also ineffective. As kjones noted, replacing that feat really depends on what you want your rank and file to do, but here’s some suggestions for replacements and other refinements:

- Power Attack, if you want them thumping ineffectively away at the party.
- Improved Initiative, if you want them to get the drop on the party a decent amount of the time.
- Shieldmate (Miniatures Handbook, p. 28) for a +1 AC to an adjacent opponent who wants to wield his weapon two-handed rather than use a shield.
- Phalanx Fighting (CW, p. 103) if you’re prepared to have the regulars wield shortspears or short swords rather than longswords.

PHB 2 Teamwork Benefits: if you get your patrol leader to put 5 ranks in Balance, and rework the skill selections to the regulars so they get one rank in Balance each, you could get the hobgoblin patrols to access Massed Charge, which gives you an attack bonus equal to the number of team members participating in the massed charge. On RAW this could be a brutal tactic to stomp a single member of the party if you get the right moment for it: although the Benefit’s training requires you charge together from one direction, the use of it doesn’t require that team members all come from one direction. They can converge on one point from multiple directions. You get, say, four hobgoblin regulars and their leader all charging at once, and their charge attacks each get a +5 on top of the +2 from a successful charge.
Not so cocky about mere mooks now, are we?
And that’s before we start incorporating ToB charge-helping maneuvers like Battle Leaders’ Charge, Leading the Attack, or Leading the Charge.

Even so, these suggestions are less useful against parties that have good Area of Effect options, since they depend on the hobgoblins bunching up and acting as one. On the other hand, it makes them, act more like their RHOD character hook which describes them as “conditioned to follow orders; accustomed to cruelty and harsh discipline”.

Hobgoblin veterans can be worked with a little more, obviously, because they've got more feats. Basically, rather than just one of the above options, take two or more. Veterans are harder troops, but they're not leaders, just a bit better than the regulars at hitting things. Tome of Battle fans suggest turning them into Warblades, too, but it isn't strictly necessary.

Hobgoblin Bladebearers and Hobgoblin Sergeants
In summary: for these guys, Tome of Battle is your friend.

The general consensus among most DMs is that the Bladebearers are more effective and interesting rebuilt as Warblades of the same or slightly higher level. Go and Do It! Do it Naow!

The main reason is because it gives them just a bit more oomph in combat and more interesting things to do with them. And once you've built one, creating another unique individual Warblade is as easy as switching maneuvers and weapons around. I've also heard good things about switching all hobgoblin sergeants to Crusader 3, too, which certainly makes them a bit more durable if not respectable.

As an example, here’s Uth-lar, who would otherwise be a hobgoblin bladebearer and leader during the Marauder Attack at the start of the adventure (hitpoints and skill point calculations will be out of whack due to the house rules I had in place, but aside from that, it should be kosher.)

Uth-lar, Hobgoblin Bladebearer
Hobgoblin Warblade 4
LE Medium humanoid (goblinoid)
Init: +3; Senses: darkvision 60 ft.; Perception +1
Languages: Common, Goblin
AC: 17, touch: 13, flat-footed: 14
HP: 75 (4 HD)
Fort +7, Ref +4, Will +2
Speed: 30 ft. (6 squares)
Melee: +1 shortsword +9 (1d6+4/19-20) or +1 shortsword +7 (1d6+4/19-20) and +1 shortsword+7 (1d6+2/19-20) with Two-Weapon Fighting
Base Atk: +4, Grp: +7
Abilities: Str 16, Dex 16, Con 15, Int 10, Wis 12, Cha 8
Feats: Two-Weapon Defense, Two-Weapon Fighting, Weapon Focus (short sword)
Skills: Acrobatics +10, Athletics +10, Intimidate +6, Stealth +7
Possessions: 2 +1 short swords, masterwork studded leather armor

Maneuvers: Battle Leaders Charge, Emerald Razor, Leading the Attack, Sudden Leap, Wolf Fang Strike
Stances: Blood in the Water, Leading the Charge

This template can be used for every other hobgoblin bladebearer in the campaign, since they’re all Warblade 4s. This isn’t a treatise on ToB, of course, but the maneuvers at least are solid enough choices for hobgoblin patrol leaders at the early stages. Especially Emerald Razor, Battle Leader’s Charge, Leading the Attack, and Leading the Charge.

Another nice option which takes the best of both worlds is Warblade 1/Fighter 2/Warblade +1, which utilizes RAW to get more feats and maneuvers for less martial adept levels, too.

If you don’t have ToB, you need your head examined but are entitled to your opinion still are well advised to make these guys’ builds a bit better. Alertness and Toughness are just wasted feats, and Weapon Focus + Weapon Specialisation = suckitude for fighters by comparison with other options out there, even at these low levels.

If you’re sticking to flat fighters, you could get away with an extra level at least on the bladebearers, and certainly another fighter level on the sergeants. In this scenario, the bladebearer should be redesigned to be other than a two-weapon fighter: unless you’re a rogue, it’s a trap at these low levels even with the surfeit of feats the fighter gets. Anyway, there’s plenty of good fighter handbooks out there to talk about what feats you put on vanilla fighters; I’m not going to go through them here. But if you’re going defensive, at least consider Phalanx Fighting and have the hobgoblins work as a team – and if you’re going aggressive, charging builds, then consider Dungeoncrasher if only in its 2nd level form.

Monster Manual V variant hobgoblin possibilities:
If you've got access to this book, some of the variants synergise rather well with the Hand's composition as an army of raving hobgoblins:

Consider Warcasters, even with an extra level of wizard or two, as replacements for the Hobgoblin War Adepts.

Spellscourges as replacements for Bladebearers, albeit they're 1 CR higher.

Hobgoblin Duskblades: AslanCross has only good things to say about these guys, possibly as replacements for Hobgoblin Veterans, and certainly as extra firepower for the assassination attempt on the PCs.

Hobgoblin Warsoul: given it's a CR 8, one possibility is to replace one of the hobgoblin clerics in the Ghostlord section of the adventure with one of these guys ... or even replace Koth with one of these, particularly given the Cult of Power extraordinary ability.

Hellhounds:
Generally these guys are agreed as underwhelming. Suggestions for replacements range from Dire Wolves (with trip) to Rage Drakes. One of the better suggestions comes from Greyfell, who proposes giving the hellhounds the draconic template and switching out feats so it gets Multiattack and Clinging Breath from the Draconomicon. Napalm hellhounds FTW! And it does make sense since most of the summoned creatures in the campaign are coming from Tiamat's home plane, so one would expect some draconic influence there.

Equipment loadouts: In what is probably a misprint, hobgoblin soldiers get given 3 potions of Cure Moderate Wounds. Leaving aside this is pret-ty generous and invites your squirrely players to store up healing potions left right and centre, it's also somewhat amusing given most hobgoblin soldiers probably aren't going to last more than a round or two to consume said 3 potions.

One solution for this -- and indeed across the campaign, not just for hobgoblin soldiers -- is to substitute or outright give Potions of Conviction, or have the Hand's clerics cast Mass versions of it. This at least gives the Hand forces some chance they can stand up to encounter-ending spells like Glitterdust or other such spells, since at least their saving throws are buttressed a little.

Improving the dragons across the campaign
We’ll talk more specifically about the various dragons as we go, but the overall consensus seems to be that Ozyrrandion and Regiarix definitely need an upgrade to the next size and age category, Abithriax only does if the party’s optimized, and Tyrgarun does not.

For all dragons, Alertness, Weapon Focus, and Improved Critical should be swapped out. Dragons are most effective when they’re making strafing runs using their breath weapons because they can hit multiple targets in one strike, or when they're making full attacks; you should be using their standard actions (when they get them) either to breathe or cast, not for single attacks.

In their places: your choice of Awaken Spell Resistance, Power Attack, Multiattack, Improved Multiattack, Practiced Spellcaster, Flyby Attack, and/or Ability Focus (breath weapon), depending on whether you think the dragon's going to mostly be in the air or on the ground.

I personally like Metabreath Feats with Enlarge Breath and Shape Breath which substantially improves Regiarix’s range in particular (assuming the PCs are more or less stranded on the town hall at Rhest).

Also, remember their speed (150 feet = 300 feet at double move or better at run) and give them some credit for their own hides. Regiarix has encountered adventuring parties before, so if he's hit with a serious fusillade he should be heading for the hills ASAP. Ozyrrandion likewise, maybe folding his wings and dropping like a rock into Skull Gorge to then level out and get lost. This at least preserves your dragons to fight another day.

In terms of magic choices: every dragon should know and be casting Mage Armor and Shield. Your players won't like it when you give the dragons Blood Wind and Scintillating Scales, but they'll be a lot more challenging as a result. And given the spell Wings of Cover is a, y'know, dragon spell, it might be worth considering taking it.

(Varanthian as the fifth Beatle “dragon” of the adventure is a bit of a poser. Her effectiveness depends entirely on the party facing her. She's either awesomely terrifying or hilariously simple to kill. See the spoilertag devoted to her for further discussion.)

We caught a Wyrmlord, damn it ...
Obviously the subject of prisoners is a well-worn one for D&D parties, but odds are on you’re going to capture at least one Wyrmlord during the course of the adventure, so it pays to be ready for it. Ulwai’s level of knowledge in particular has a capacity to derail your choo-choo campaign, since on the RHOD text she knows exactly where the Fane is, how to get in, and that Azarr Kul is right there, giving players a nigh-irresistible chance to cut off the snake at its head. Dealing with the capture of each Wyrmlord, some suggestions…

Koth: ride him back to Drellin’s Ferry, put him in the Old Toll House. If he isn’t rescued (see further on) he goes with a detachment of Soranna’s soldiers to Brindol, though I personally reckon you then give him a 50/50 chance of escaping somewhere along the way. With adventurers escorting him, no chance. At Brindol I’d presume he says nothing more than he already knows, and is locked away in a nice quiet dungeon beneath Brindol Keep to await a summary trial and execution by Captain Ulverth.

Saarvith: if he’s captured, he could point out to the party that he’s nothing without Regiarix, and that Kharn isn’t going to be very happy with him upon reporting back – in fact he might rightly conclude his time with the Hand is over as soon as Regiarix bites the dust. Releasing him at Rhest is an option, though I reckon there’s a 25% chance the Tiri Kitor hunt him down and take him out themselves. If he’s taken back to Starsong Hill, it’s more direct: whilst they’re neutral good, there’s every chance he’d be subject to summary execution by the elves for the misery his razorfiends have inflicted upon them. If the party really wants to cart him all the way back to civilization, there’s I suppose a chance he can be persuaded to help the Horde, but again it’ll take a unique party and unique set of circumstances to do that.

Ulwai: Really callous parties could leave her to the Ghostlord’s tender mercies, but again, it’s probably back to Brindol with her, where I’d say her knack of diplomacy at least convinces Jarmaath to let her go after the Hand’s destroyed. She can’t talk her way out of a jail cell, though.

Saintheart

2010-10-09, 09:30 AM

Fixing the fluff: adapting RHOD for various D&D settings.

http://a2goodesqegs.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/adaptation.jpg
This is not really the kind of adaptation we meant.

Running RHOD in the Forgotten Realms
James and Rich had Faerun clearly in mind as an alternative setting for the adventure – on the RHOD text that you can drop Elsir Vale in between the Forest of Amtar and the Misty Vale "seamlessly". It’s not a seamless fit, though. The locations of various landmarks are only liberally in keeping with the “big map” of the Realms, or indeed with the regional maps of Shining South (pp.155-158). You could work round this by suggesting the closer map from RHOD is a better fit to Elsir Vale from local surveys rather than try and explain why it doesn’t fit with the map.

A very generous player named Antariuk has produced a map of Elsir Vale converted to Forgotten Realms standards, which you can find at this link (http://fallschaden.blogspot.de/p/red-hand-of-doom.html). But under a full conversion of Elsir Vale to the Forgotten Realms:

Brindol becomes the city of Rethmar.
The Westdeep becomes the Misty Vale.
The Wyrmsmoke Mountains become the Wyrmbones.
The Witchwood becomes Shaareach Forest.
The Elsir River becomes the River Talar.
Lake Rhestin becomes Lake Lhespen, and Rhest itself becomes Lhesper.
The Stonewash becomes the River Shaar.
Mentions of Rhestilor should become Lhespenar (yes, I know it sounds like Cespenar from Baldur’s Gate. Give me a break.)
The Blackfens become the Lhespenbog.
The Giantshield becomes the Rathgaunt Hills.
The Endless Plains become the Shaar.
Marth Forest becomes the Channathwood.
Dennovar becomes Channathgate.
The Golden Plains become the Swagdar (the Outlaw Wastes).
The Wyvernwatch Mountains become the northernmost end of The (Halruaan) North Wall.
The Thornwaste becomes the northeastern end of the Bandit Wastes, and avoided by said bandits because of the Ghostlord’s presence.

You’ll have to erase the entire city of Kormul from existence or at least turn it into a treasureless ruin, since it’s placed right where the Dawn Way and the Old North Road intersect on the RHOD map of Elsir Vale. There’s also no sign of the Old Rhest Trail in any Realms source, so you’ll probably have to play that road as one that’s fallen into serious disuse.

Remember the party’s going to be well off the beaten track in Elsir Vale. You’re in southeastern Faerun; it ain’t the standard medieval setting, mostly because of the climate. You won’t have to fake it as being summer, because that’s pretty much what it’s like all year round in this part of the Realms. The Misty Vale, Shaareach Forest, and Channathwood are described in Shining South as stifling, steamy, jungles rather than temperate Northern European woods. If your PCs are wearing full plate armour without at least an enchantment of Easy Travel or Endure Elements they should be feeling it hard. Also bear in mind the ethnic differences: not many pale-faced Illuskans here, it’s predominantly Durpari or Arkaiun racial mixes, with a smattering of Halruuan as well. Merchant caravans from Calimshan are a possibility, too. Indeed you could perform a whole thematic conversion to something more like Arabian Nights or Central American.

The Tiri Kitor become long-time-gone exiles from the Misty Vale (most elves in this part of Faerun are insular and xenophobic). They can be easily said to be exiles because they wanted to reach out to the outside world, which gives them a reason to get kicked out of Misty Vale and to talk before shooting the party when it enters the Blackfens/Lhespenbog. It could be a religious difference: the Tiri Kitor honour Corellon Larethian rather than a more ‘primal' god like Rillifane or Fenmarel Mestarine. Otherwise, switches to other gods are pretty straightforward: Lathander for Pelor, Kelemvor for Wee Jas.

The Ghostlord becomes a former druid of Nobanion or Silvanus seduced by Malar, forming the lion cult that plagues the Vale until the coming of Lhespenar’s kings to displace him into the Bandit Wastes, then cursed by Malar to blighterdom when he kills a lion cub.

For bonus points, consider making Jarrett Nurth (the serial-killing shopkeeper of Drellin's Ferry) a Strifeleader of Cyric, or at least a cleric/rogue of Cyric - I was actually able to get tentacle horror with a Cyricite-only spell going for two nosy rogues in my campaign when they broke into Jarrett's store after dark. Another thought is to introduce a rebel element among the Red Hand ... that being covert clerics of Maglubiyet, the patron god of goblinoids, said god being none too pleased about Tiamat using a good slab of his people as arrow fodder.

The players get sent north on the (feeble) excuse that the blockade on the Old Rhest Trail has to be broken to get reinforcements from the north. Those reinforcements have to come from Shaarmid, several weeks away by road (being halfway across the Shaar with no other settlements in between). You might make a point of how utterly unprepared for war the Vale is that it has to basically start buying light cavalry from literally hundreds of miles away; indeed it would take a determined and swift messenger to get to Shaarmid and back with a small army in tow by the time the Red Hand reaches Brindol/Rethmar.

A genre savvy player might ask: how the hell does the Vale continue to exist, lodged as it is between a bunch of exiled Netheril mages to the south (Halruaa) and a half-drow neutral evil nation to the east (Dambrath)? In short: because both Halruaa and Dambrath are snobs. Halruaa is basically holed up behind three mountain ranges; Dambrath has “surprisingly nonaggressive” (Shining South's words) attitudes towards its neighbours. Or it might be the Vale is too small or doesn’t have any resources worth plundering. Or it might just be that it’s too damn hot to fight. Either way, there are plausible in-universe explanations to fall back on to explain why Brindol hasn’t been reduced to a smoking hole in the ground by more enlightened civilizations than the Red Hand in the past six hundred years or so.

Possibly the hardest question in all this: given Tiamat already has pretty well-established churches in Unther, why does she feel the need to go and start a war in a backwater on the doorstep of Halruaa, a country that has enough resident magical power to blast half the Vale off the face of the Realms if provoked? Might I suggest the answer you could give is that Tiamat’s got some precognitive gleam of the impending Spellplague. She has a good idea of what that disaster’s likely to do to Unther (and Halruaa, the phrase "smoking cinder" pretty much summing it up.) Tiamat is simply trying to diversify her holdings against this catastrophe. The war in Elsir Vale is her seed for the future.

Having said that, these are mostly flavor considerations. Setting RHOD in the Forgotten Realms is a homecoming for some beasties here -- Abishai and Spawn of Tiamat originate from the Realms or have specific notes in the Monster Manuals for how to adapt them for Faerun.

I’ve seen the odd campaign journal which attempts to set RHOD in more “conventional” parts of Faerun; this is just the most straightforward conversion the authors themselves put forward. Really it's more the narrative structure than the window dressing that is the selling point of RHOD.

Running RHOD in Eberron
Courtesy of the ever-helpful and devastatingly handsome AslanCross!
The Red Hand of Doom is written for a fairly generic D&D setting (and as such, is easy enough to incorporate into "vanilla" settings like Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk, which primarily use default fluff). However, this excellent module also works very well in Eberron, but adapting it will take slightly more work .

On the Nature of Tiamat
Black candles burning/Announce her comeback
The reign is awaiting/The Queen of the Dead
--Queen of the Dark Horizons, by Rhapsody of Fire

Tiamat in Eberron is significantly different from her incarnation in other settings in that she is not a goddess. The gods in Eberron are distant and have never walked the surface of the Material Plane in the flesh as far as mortals know. Tiamat, however, has.

Tiamat is a demon Overlord, the daughter of Khyber himself. She was born of the Dragon Below and had has the power to corrupt and enslave all dragons, metallic or chromatic (though chromatics are especially vulnerable).

During the Age of Demons, the dragons who fought against the Overlords feared her the most, for she could turn them against each other. It took the power of the Couatls to imprison Tiamat in the Pit of Five Sorrows in Argonnessen, but even then they feared her return. By tracing her symbol in the skies, the dragons gave Tiamat her own apotheosis, hoping to forever banish her from Eberron.

Now, the Pit of Five Sorrows is the most heavily-guarded fortification in all of Eberron, considering that it is guarded by the entire Light of Siberys (the dragon army of Argonnessen). Even a horde of ten thousand hobgoblins and a few, relatively young dragons cannot do much to bring down the a single Glorious Flame of the Light of Siberys, who would likely be a Great Wyrm with Prestige Class levels, let alone an entire crusading army of them.

This does not mean that her cult is inactive. Tiamat's clerics: twisted dragons (some of them fiendish, blessed with fell energy), rakshasas (some of them draconic, blessed with the might of the dragon), and others have attempted to bring her back, and continue to do so.

As such, the Red Hand Cult should be primarily concerned with setting Tiamat free. How they do so depends on how she is kept imprisoned, and this depends on the DM. For my purposes, I had the PCs discover that the Fane of Tiamat was not actually a temple, but one of the dimensional foci of the great planar seal that powered the Pit of Five Sorrows. The planar seal, a continent-sized pentagram, was drawn using epic magic across the land and sea, and anchored on five fanes. The Elsir Fane, which is where Azarr Kul hides out, is the easiest to access. The others are much more difficult to access (they are either deep underwater or hidden in dense jungle).

Most chilling here is that if the dragons perceive a threat (and Tiamat is indeed the most significant threat they have faced since), they have a tendency to mobilize en masse and destroy whatever is in the way. If they catch wind of Azarr Kul's plan, they might probably invade Khorvaire and unleash destruction on the already war-torn continent.

The Wyrmlords and the Talons of Tiamat
It is certainly well within the realm of possibility that none of the Wyrmlords are actually goblinoids. Since the high cult of Tiamat is often made up of Rakshasas, it is not a stretch to make the Wyrmlords themselves Rakshasas in disguise (or not in disguise at all).

I. Azarr Kul: Half-blue dragon Ak'Chazar Rakshasa. On the really high end of the optimization scale, but you could give him gishy spell picks. As an outsider, he has racial proficiency with martial weapons and will do well as a superpowered gish.
II. Kharn: Half-red dragon Zakya Rakshasa (no ToB) or draconic (red) Naityan Rakshasa with Swordsage levels (with ToB). Or you could do both and make him a Zakya Rakshasa with Warblade or Crusader levels.
III. Ulwai: Bog-standard Rakshasa. Although relatively weak as a full caster enemy (CL 7th for a CR 10 enemy), you could give her martial weaponry and make her a gish instead.
IV. Saarvith: As an archer build, he doesn't work too well as a rakshasa. Keeping him as written is fine.
V. Koth: Keeping him the same is fine. Warlock or Hexblade could make him a challenging boss if you play it right.

You could also go the way I went, which is to add extra rakshasa bosses. I introduced a large-sized, half-bronze dragon Naityan Rakshasa with Swordsage levels as Azarr Kul's true right hand man.

Remember that half-dragons are considered abominations in Eberron, but Rakshasas easily get around this by participating in a ritual that, if successful, gives them draconic might in addition to their existing powers.

The Mighty Ones
We goblinoids are just like you humans, except our empire lasted eleven thousand years.
--Lhesh Haruuc (Races of Eberron)

Another interesting piece of lore: Eberron's goblinoids, unlike the relatively lowly and reviled mook creatures in other settings, actually once ruled all of Khorvaire in an empire that lasted ten thousand years. They slowly crumbled after a catastrophic war with the Daelkyr and their aberrant hordes. Numerous ruins still dot the landscape of Khorvaire, testament to the fallen glory of the Dhakaani Empire. The goblins call themselves Golin'Dar, or "The quick and shrewd ones" (in fact, "goblin" is a human corruption of the term), the hobgoblins call themselves the Ghaal'Dar (the mighty ones; specifically connoting battle prowess), and the bugbears are the Guul'Dar or "the strong ones" (connoting physical strength). Collectively, the goblinoids call themselves "the Dar" or "the People." Most of them are not happy with their current lot in life, treated as "savages" by the "more civilized" human-dominated Five Nations. There is a lot of inherent racial pride.

Furthermore, while hobgoblins have a sovereign nation (Darguun), Darguul mercenaries were hired by many sides during the Last War (mostly Breland, however), so it's easy to explain why a large group of thousands of goblinoids is operating independently of the Lhesh Haruuc in Darguun.

The Giants
In Eberron, giants are not native to Khorvaire. They mostly inhabit the fallen empire of Xen'Drik, another continent to the southwest of Khorvaire. Since setting RHOD makes most sense in Khorvaire, it makes very little sense for a DM to have Warklegnaw's tribe of Forest Giants in the area.

Here are some ideas:
I personally used Lycanthropes. Purged to near extinction by the Church of the Silver Flame in the past, isolated enclaves could still be discovered by the PCs. If the PCs are working for the Silver Flame, this might even be a chance to offer reconciliation. For irony, I made Amery Vraath a former Silver Flame paladin who got turned into a lycanthrope himself.
Trolls: While the main issue with trolls is that they're not intelligent, it might make a lot of sense for them to not want to let the Red Hand Horde pass. They also live in forests.
Ogres: Most ogres in Khorvaire are mercenaries from Droaam. In the Last War, many of them were conscripted for various nations, but after the war ended there could be any number of them hiding out in forests and other secluded areas.

The Elsir Vale
"If you want to escape the Last War, move to the Elsir Vale."
--Beggar Dane

RHOD describes the Elsir Vale as a very isolated and backwater area.

One major issue here is that in Eberron, long-range transportation is relatively easy to come by (the Lightning Rail and Airships contribute a lot to this). As such, it is more difficult to isolate the Elsir Vale. Thankfully, there are still large stretches of land that are not accessible by lightning rail, and airships are relatively expensive to charter at the PCs' level.

Another is that the highly-charged political climate left by the Last War makes large massed military movements very sensitive events; this actually helps the DM explain why neither the formidable armies of the rich, technologically-advanced Breland, nor the zealous paladins and crusaders of Thrane, nor the arcane knights of Aundair, nor the undead legions of Karrnath can be bothered to deal with the Red Hand threat. They might be aware of it, but moving large armies close to any borders (three out of the four suggested locations are very close to international borders) might spark the Last War all over again.

Eberron is a very large setting, and even on the densely-populated continent of Khorvaire, there are many isolated and deserted areas that the game can be set in. The map shows an area about 320 x 240 miles, which can be easily wedged into the following suggested locations:

The Western Eldeen Reaches
This is probably the most isolated part of the Eldeen Reaches, being wedged in between the Shadowcrags and the Byeshk mountains.
Pros:
-Pretty much the middle of nowhere.
-This is the best place to explain the elves.
Cons:
-Too far from any populated hobgoblin areas.
-Mostly dense forest, although some rolling plains are available. The geography of the adventure assumes a very open vale with mountainous areas.

Karrnathi-Talenta Plains Border
Another isolated area.
Pros:
-There is nothing much here; the Giantshield Mountains can fit neatly into the map as part of the Ironroot range.
-There is enough space to fit in Brindol without overwriting or deleting any town.
-Irontown can replace Dennovar.
Cons:
-The Wyvernwatch and Wyrmsmoke Mountains don't seem to fit in well with the Talenta Plains.

The New Cyre Periphery in Breland
This is where I personally inserted the Elsir Vale, as the area is mostly featureless. It's also very close to the Mournland, which could explain why it's so isolated.
Pros:
-Isolation, distance from capital ensures difficulty in calling for military support. Close to traditional goblinoid land (Darguun).
-Vathirond can replace Dennovar.
Cons:
-It takes some map rotation to fit properly. I ended up having the compass slightly tilted to the right on the main Elsir Vale map.

Southwestern Thrane
Personally, this might be either the easiest or most difficult area to adapt.
Pros:
-Thrane's strong militant Church of the Silver Flame could be a good employer for the PCs
-It is possible to do away with the RHOD map entirely and simply use the map of Thrane; while Thrane is the smallest of the Five Nations, it is not really the weakest, and in this case the Red Hand horde could possibly threaten even Flamekeep, the capital, directly.
Cons:
-Southwestern Thrane borders Breland and Aundair. Any massed military movements to fortresses on the border (such as Fort Light) might be difficult to explain away politics-wise, as Aundair is closest to Fort Light, and relations between Aundair and Thrane are not at all pleasant. Breland might be more tolerant, but it also has large fortifications on the border (such as Sword Keep), making this an unpleasant political situation. Perhaps if this were the case, it would be good to insert a political angle, adding to the pressure of solving the Red Hand problem before all three nations fall right back into another war.
-If you want to keep the RHOD map, it might have to be completely inverted. However, this presents its own difficulties:

Lake Rhestin is replaced by the much large Lake Brey; Lake Brey is on the border between Breland and Thrane.
There are no mountains in this area; the closest are the rather distant Blackcaps in Breland.
There is simply no space for the Thornwaste or the Wyvernwatch mountains.
As such, if you want a Thrane campaign, I propose the following:
-The PCs could be dispatched to a small border town (Fort Light) to halt the hobgoblins raiding out of the
-Azarr Kul's objective is Flamekeep itself! He could plan to free the demon lord imprisoned within the Silver Flame. With the power of a Rakshasa Rajah (feel free to fluff the Rajah as a minion of Tiamat, it would be much easier for A.K. to free Tiamat as he prepares an assault on Argonnessen).

Conversion suggestions:

Instead of the Wyrmsmokes, the Fane of Tiamat could instead be in Khyber deep under the Greenhaunt across the border in Breland. (The border troubles will also make for a lot of political intrigue as the PCs try to deal with Brelish and Aundairian diplomatic/military pressure.)
Because of this, the Red Hand's movement will be in a northeasterly direction instead of south, then east, as in the module.
Skull Creek could run across the border between Breland and Thrane, and the bridge crosses the road between Sword Keep and Fort Light.
Replace Drellin's Ferry with Fort Light. This could make it a great deal more fortified and defensible, but in this case you could have an overwhelmingly large force of hobgoblins coming. The primary difficulty the PCs might have in the module by RAW is persuading an indecisive Norro Wiston--in this case it could be dissuading an overzealous Norro Wiston from making a stand.
Replace the Witchwood with the Imstil Forest. You will have to spread the Imstil Forest some more to cover the highway that leads into Breland.
Replace Terrelton with Rellekor.
Replace Talar with Tellyn.
Replace Brindol with Sigilstar. Of course, the Cathedral of Pelor will be a Cathedral of the Silver Flame instead.
The ultimate destination for Azarr Kul will actually be Flamekeep in Northern Thrane, but since Sigilstar is in the dead center of the nation, it is a great position to start spreading out.

Recommendations Per Chapter
I. The Witchwood

a. NPCs:

i. Change all references to Pelor to Dol Arrah. As the goddess of the sun and war, Dol Arrah's clerics will be a bit tougher, although they will be fewer. Most of the priests will be experts.

ii. Soranna can be a Deneith Dragonmarked heir, giving her a great deal more importance to the people.

iii. I had Delora Zann as a House Vadalis excoriate.

iv. Kellin Shadowbanks, as a inn owner, could very likely be a House Ghallanda representative.

v. Avarthel could be a reclusive Orc Gatekeeper druid, or perhaps a civilization-friendly Warden of the Wood.

vi. Jarret Nurth: As a "red herring" NPC, she could easily be a cleric of the Mockery.

b. Setting:

i. If you use Lycanthropes in place of Forest Giants, you could have Vraath Keep littered with the skeletons of wereboars and werebears instead.
II. The Ruins of Rhest

a. Setting:

i. Rhest will most likely be an ancient Dhakaani ruin. It could be sunk in the marshes on the edge of Lake Brey (if you chose the Thrane option) or any other large body of water.

ii. The Tiri Kitor encampment: Since elves aren't tree-loving hippies in Eberron, making this group an encampment of shifters instead works well. I still kept them elves (Wardens of the Wood), but shifters thematically fit this perfectly. They will be fierce, independent, and possibly difficult to recruit.

b. NPCs:

i. Miha Serani: A changeling with sorcerer (or psion!) levels works well, and so does a rakshasa (though this makes her stronger and possibly an encounter for much later in the game)

ii. Killiar Arrowswift: Being a shifter will explain his rather gruff initial attitude. Also, I recommend that their names be changed. Honestly, I found their naming conventions very WoW-ish. Look up Night Elf NPCs in Warcraft and you'll see what I mean.

iii. Sellyria Starsinger: A shifter Moonspeaker druid might work well here. Also, she has a pet croc, right? If she's a shifter, you could make her a longtooth/beasthide shifter---descended from a werecrocodile.

iv. Trellara Nightshadow: Not sure what to do with her. You could keep her as a shifter bard with an unusually high charisma, or simply perhaps make her an emotionally unstable Wilder (see Races of Eberron's Shifter Wilder substitution levels).

v. Illian Snowmantle: Balinor works well as a substitute for Corellon.

c. Encounters:

i. Dirty Rotten Looters: If you played up the "border troubles" angle, these guys could be an actual Silver Flame Inquisitor/Dark Lanterns/Royal Eyes of Aundair/Cyran Avenger/Order of the Emerald Claw hit squad instead of a pathetic bunch of amoral goons.

ii. The Lizardfolk: Considering that the MM3 Lizardfolk (Poison dusks and blackscales) figure well in Eberron's canon, a group of these guys could have been brought in by Saarvith and Regiarix and bred for war.
III. The Ghostlord's Lair

a. NPCs.

i. The Ghostlord: The heart and soul of this chapter. I wrote him up as an ancient Dhakaani (hobgoblin) Gatekeeper druid who was driven insane by the Daelkyr invasion. He invented the bonedrinkers, inspired by the Daelkyr's often tentacled aberrations.

ii. Wyrmlord Ulwai: No real suggestions here, apart from please use another depiction of her. I can't stand her "80s dominatrix catgirl" look in the book. She's [i]supposed to be hot.

b. Setting.

i. I fluffed the entire Thornwaste as a barren and blasted land stripped of natural life by the Daelkyr invasion, and it's still like that. Most of the animals that live here are aberrant at best and half-farspawn horrors at worst.
IV. Enemy at the Gates

a. NPCs

i. Jarmaath will definitely be a war hero from the Last War, although not quite as strong as he used to be. He could be a lot less noble (perhaps desiring a vainglorious end as he makes a final stand against the Red Hand), however, presenting the PCs with a complex moral dilemma: Do they support the rightful lord of the land and sacrifice the people, or subvert him and side with Lady Kaal, whose methods are reprehensible, yet truly wants to save Brindol?

ii. Lady Kaal could be a potential primary villain here: She could actually be a foreign sleeper agent, planted to undermine local sovereignty by spreading crime, or to simply be a spy. As such, she might work best as a member of the Royal Eyes of Aundair, or perhaps a Brelish Dark Lantern. Alternatively, she could be secretly a member of House Tarkanan and possess a hidden aberrant dragonmark.

iii. Tredora Goldenbrow: Aasimar are very rare in Eberron, but she is most likely going to be a cleric of either Dol Arrah or the Silver Flame.

iv. Lars Ulverth: He could easily be Soranna Anitah's House Deneith superior, or a war hero, or both.

v. Immerstal the Red: Artificer would work as well as Wizard.

b. The Siege of Brindol:

i. Bombardment: I used homebrewed Warforged Titan variants, since giants, as mentioned above, aren't native to Khorvaire. Skullcrusher ogres work well, though. Alternatively, traditional siege engines could work.

ii. Kharn's Retinue: Again, scrap the giants. Skullcrusher ogres with class levels work well, as do Spawn of Tiamat (Redspawn Berserkers [Dragon Magic], or Whitespawn Berserkers [MMIV] could work well).
V. The Fane of Tiamat

a. Setting:

i. The Wyrmsmokes: I went ahead and just plopped down the Wyrmsmokes in the middle of Eastern Breland, but this could be more difficult in more constrained areas (namely Southwestern Thrane). Regardless, as a volcanic area, it is quite likely that it could be a Fernia manifest zone and as such have a lot of diabolic interlopers.

ii. Khyber: The alternative is to bury the Fane deep underground. It could be rather eerie for the PCs to travel for days in pitch-dark tunnels, only to see an immense, yawning abyss beneath them, and the vast, dimly-lit Tiamat sculpture stretching from deep below.

iii. What the Fane of Tiamat Really Is: This is up to you, but I had the PCs discover that the Fane is actually a part of Tiamat's vast prison (or at least its support system). Since Tiamat isn't trapped in the Nine Hells (which don't exist in Eberron), she has no strong ties to devils and extraplanar enemies. Instead, I had Azarr Kul attempting to manipulate the Planes to slow or stop them, causing Tiamat's prison in Argonnessen to catastrophically fail.

iv. To this end, Azarr Kul was using a large eldritch engine---a planar orrery---to stop the planar orbits.

b. Encounters:

i. Tyrgarun: If he's fought in Khyber, this encounter is going to be a lot more interesting. He can see much farther than any of the PCs, and can potentially fight in complete darkness (thanks to Blindsight).

ii. Laryssa: If you're like me and absolutely hated the "lol Azarr Kul has a cannibalistic night hag cook" encounter, feel free to swap her out with another Rakshasa encounter. In this case I threw a Naztharune Rakshasa with one Swordsage level at them.

iii. The Fane is Ancient Dragontech: To play up this angle, I had some traps that were part of the original structure. Azarr Kul's forces have found fighting them not worth the trouble, and so have left them in place as barely-controllable guard systems. As such, I had the original dragon constructors leaving a dragon-like iron golem in the main corridor, as well as a Spell Turret.

iv. Devils: Devils have no true strong relationship with Tiamat, so I fluffed them as fiends who got through the portal as Azarr Kul weakened the planar boundaries.

v. The Barracks: Instead of having just one dragon, I had several young dragons hanging dismembered and disemboweled here. They were the children of the original guardian of the Fane, a great wyrm bronze dragon tasked to maintain the Inner Sanctum's power systems. The dragon has since died, and it was unable to pass on the true nature of the Fane to its children. The children were overwhelmed by Tyrgarun and thrown to the devil army as food.

vi. Azarr Kul: There are many suggestions to fix this encounter, but I think that if AK manages to get his buff spells up, the PCs have a full-power Clericzilla on their hands. Whatever the case, when AK dies, I made it so that he uses the last of his strength to shift the planar orrery to directly breach Tiamat's prison, with just enough energy for her to project an Aspect through.

vii. Aspect of Tiamat: If you really want the aspect to be tough, give her cleric casting equal to her HD.

c. Conclusion:

i. If the Aspect of Tiamat breaks free and the PCs don't kill it, she could prove to be a very devastating "optional boss" monster, ravaging the countryside.

ii. If the border troubles escalate into full-blown diplomatic hostility, you could easily have a reignited Last War.

iii. If Azarr Kul completes his objective, congratulations. You now have an Elder Evil campaign. The Dragons of Argonnessen mobilize to attack Azarr Kul, likely razing all of Khorvaire to the ground in the process. Thrane Paladins mounted on wyverns will dogfight with dragons in the skies over Flamekeep as the Fiend in the Flame awakens. Flights of great wyrm dragons will airdrop Seren Barbarians onto Sharn. The Fiend in the Flame strides across the ocean to Argonnessen, swatting aside Light of Siberys crusader dragons as he marches. When he reaches the Pit of Five Sorrows, the Current Age will end, and a new Age of Demons will begin.

As another Eberron-themed adaptation, consider making the module all about the Lord of Blades rather than Azarr Kul (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?424773-Adapting-Red-Hand-of-Doom-to-be-about-the-Lord-of-Blades).

Running RHOD in Greyhawk
Courtesy of the dedicated and possibly even more devastatingly handsome Elder Basilisk!
This is where I get to rant and rave about how the character limit of these posts is way too small for all the good resources we get from this thread. But because the character limit is too small, let me sum up instead.

Elder_Basilisk has done a very thorough rundown of how to run RHOD in Greyhawk, right down to converted maps. It's right here in this very thread, and can be found starting right here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?171284-The-3-5-Red-Hand-Of-Doom-Handbook-for-DMs-Major-spoilers!-WIP-PEACH!/page31).

For those of you who want single posts to work from, the following posts should be read: 923 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=18841635&postcount=923), 924 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=18841650&postcount=924), 927 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=18861820&postcount=927), 928 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=18861910&postcount=928), 929 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=18890953&postcount=929), 942 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=19081106&postcount=942), 945 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=19119551&postcount=945), and 947 (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=19121144&postcount=947).

My omitting the full text should not be regarded as me thinking it's unworthy of inclusion. The simple fact is there just isn't enough character space to put it in here, and the other conversions we have are not replicated in the thread.

Running RHOD in Rokugan/Oriental Adventures
This can be a bit of a controversial subject since Rokugan's setting is fundamentally different on so many levels it makes it tricky to set RHOD 'as is' within it. But one general rundown on how to do it is contained in this contribution from SleepyShadow:

I ran this in the Oriental Adventures setting of Rokugan with some pretty solid success. The hobgoblins were members of the Spider Clan, and Tiamat was replaced with Fu Leng the Shadow Dragon (essentially the evil dragon god of the setting). I turned the blade-bearers and sergeants into OA samurai, which went a long way toward solving their usual will save issues. The hobgoblin invasion largely took place in Crab clan territory, except for the part with the Tiri-Kitor who got turned into members of the neighboring Unicorn clan. The Ghostlord got reworked as an outcast Kuni shugenja, which fixed a lot of the flavor issue of an undead druid. At the very least, he was able to put up more of a fight than a blighter would have. The dragons, by and large, just got refluffed as their wingless Rokugan equivalents, and several of the more boring members of the Red Hand (ogres, lizardfolk, etc.) got replaced with Shadowlands oni of various types. Instead of the battle taking place at a Brindol replacement, I upped the scale of the invasion and had it take place along the entire Carpenter Wall to bring home the fact that if the party failed, it wasn't just one city that would be lost. It would be all of Rokugan. Wyrmlord Azarr Kul also got refluffed as a member of the Diagotsu family, and the Avatar of Tiamat/Fu Leng only needed some cosmetic changes to work out fine.

Running RHOD under the Legend Homebrew System (http://www.ruleofcool.com)
No space to go into detail on this, but if you're using this new system, Draz74 has been working on a conversion of RHOD into statblocks that can be used with Legend. You will find the thread on this topic here. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=228122&highlight=RHOD)

Running RHOD under Pathfinder
Glyphstone has been conducting a Pathfinder campaign using RHOD; you can find the journal here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=218881).

Without going through it, though, in summary, Glyphstone makes these observations:

Pathfinder base classes are roughly 0.5-1 ECL higher than their 3.5 equivalents, and a 6-person party is about the same. So, when the characters are level 6, they've got the damage output, and more importantly, the action economy, of a level 7-8 party.
Hobgoblin Veterans are horribly, horribly outclassed - they're fishing for 20's against the frontline warriors, and of the rest of the group, only the squishy types will have an AC lower than 20. Fights may do better with more emphasis on the monsters and 'special' creatures, with the troopers using Aid Another actions or forming Shield Walls with tower shields to cover archers.
On the other hand, Miha Serani becomes interesting. To start with, Pathfinder Araneas are 5th level casters instead of 3rd level, and with roughly 50% more innate HP. Slap 4 Sorcerer levels on her, she'll be CR 9, sporting 4th level spells - a good combat encounter, but not so much on the spy-and-infiltrate role she plays in the story. One possibility is to make her a Rogue 3/Arcane Trickster 3 - CR10 nominally, with the casting output of an 8th level Sorcerer instead and a bit more durability.

Antariuk has also been working on a Pathfinder conversion for RHOD: you can find his work-in-progress here (http://fallschaden.blogspot.de/p/red-hand-of-doom.html).

Running RHOD in Equestria (yes. Yes you can. And it is glorious.)
Full credit to MandibleBones on this one. Taking his notes verbatim from the thread...)

On Setting Adaptation:
1. Where is the Elsir Vale? I put it at the westernmost edge of Equestria, fiat-ed the plains of Zebrica to replace the Endless Plains, made everyting west of the Old North Road and south of The Endless Plains Zebrica “Dragon Lands” (including the Thornwaste), and made a note that the Wyvernwatch Mountains are home to the southern griffon tribes. The city of Brindle becomes Bridle, the city of Dennovar becomes Stalliongrad, and the rest of the towns keep their names.

2. The ponies of the vale are used to dragons existing, but they never seem to come down from the Wyrmsmokes (until the events of Red Hand of Doom). These “hobgoblins” are totally new to them, however: creatures out of myth and legend from pre-Discordian times.

3. My party was starting out from Bridle (Brindol), so they were a little more familiar with it to start with. Some of them lived in the city prior to the events of the Red Hand, so they know the basics of the citizenry. I use a wiki to keep track of things; it helps my players as well.

On Statistics
1. Initially made the mistake of taking the cover at face value; all my PCs start at 6, and there are 6 of them. Adaptation is obviously required.

2. I wanted to see how the PCs handled combat together before tweaking too much. Uth-Larr got boosted to be a Spellscourge (MMV), and the cleric remained a cleric, though I gave Zarr level 6 and the Law and Trickery. I took the advice from this thread, made the hell hounds draconic, and swapped out some feat to make them Napalm Hounds. The regulars got to be Fighter 1s instead of Warrior 2s; I gave them max HP. Two of them got Point-Blank Shot and Precise Shot and did some fairly decent damage with their longbow (one of them critted); the other four got Power Attack and Weapon Focus: Longsword.
- The melee hobs got killed / knocked out pretty quickly; the archers were further back and managed to retreat behind Uth-Larr once he came out. Napalm Hounds got to deal some damage before getting cut to ribbons by the barbarian. Zarr managed to hit the NG Magical Girl and the CG Barbarian with a scroll-based Word of Law from under Invisibility, which wasn't terribly fun for them.
- Turns out my party is also fairly optimized, and while it was a good fight, the party won it pretty handily despite it being EL8.
- Because the party has a Magical Girl, they took one of the regulars and Uth-Larr alive. I've been having a great deal of fun running Kerak (the name I gave the regular) and fanatic Uth-Larr as Shining Hope tries to make friends with them. It's not going so well, but at least they're locked up in Drellin's Ferry now.

3. On the Witchwood: I'ma give that hydra more heads. Hydras love heads. Action-economy being what it is, I figure aiming for a higher CR is better than a lower one, so an 8-10-headed cryohydra is headed the party's way. I actually think this is going to be a ridiculous challenge. Edit: Actually, a cryohydra would kill them outright. A 24d6 (reflex half) breath weapon as a CR9? Really? But an 8-headed hydra is... underwhelming without the scary breath weapon, even with Fast Healing and regenerating heads. A ten-headed is an attack for everybody and two for four of them, so this should go well.

For further details, watch the thread. Bones also notes that Equestria does materially change stuff because suddenly a good portion of your party ponies will be flying combatants from the get-go.

Running RHOD under E6
While I've yet to hear reports back from anyone running RHOD in E6, we've had the odd query about how this would pan out. Here's my thoughts on the subject:

Looking at the notes about how E6 functions (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?352719-necro-goodness-E6-The-Game-Inside-D-amp-D), it strikes me that what E6 would prrrrobably do to a vanilla, unaltered RHOD campaign is challenge the party on more or less even terms until late in the campaign, since E6 seems to contemplate that CR 7 - 10 can be handled by a level 6 party, and RHOD is meant to run from levels 5 - 11.

To be honest, my guess is that E6 probably renders a lot of what I say in this guide as unnecessary. The handbook's built envisioning a party of semi-to-decent competence at optimisation, and most of the advice is built around improving the monsters to meet the ever-more-powerful party as it slowly levels up. But if E6 proposes basically no new spells, no BAB increase, no save increases and only extra feats from the point of level 6, which the party hits around Vraath Keep or Skull Gorge on my experience, then there's practically no need to change much else about RHOD given its monsters assume a slowly-improving party as the campaign goes on.

I suspect the Battle of Brindol probably becomes a lot more brutal and possibly needing a bit more DM support since it takes out the last shelter of the 15-minute adventuring day that the party still has available to it under E6. And the Fane probably becomes a lot scarier given you're sending basically level 6 math at level 10, 11 encounters.

Running RHOD in other settings
...Taking suggestions, people! :smallbiggrin:

SPECIAL MENTION: Running Red Hand of Doom in 5e
If you're looking to convert RHOD for use in Fifth Edition, I recommend starting at Draz's guide to doing just that! (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?577848-Red-Hand-of-Doom-Conversion-Journal-in-one)

Saintheart

2010-10-09, 09:31 AM

Part One: Drellin's Ferry to Skull Gorge Bridge

http://www.greyhawk.org.uk/galaths2/img/051skullgorge.jpg

The Bridges of Madison County. Of Death.

How to play Jorr Natherson
I'll let ThiagoMartell's post speak for itself, because it is the first and last advice on this subject:

My players met Jorr today. I RPed him like Clint Eastwood's character in Gran Torino.
"Get off my lawn"
They loved it.

Restatting Koth
Koth is the first major spellcasting challenge the party faces. And even Koth, allegedly the weakest member of the Horde, can be made a lot more deadly than he appears. Unlike most of the Wyrmlords, he shouldn’t need a lot of alterations or increases in level simply because his potential is already there. Remember that unless your players are badly spamming roleplaying XP, they should still only be around level 5 when they first hit Vraath Keep. Having said that, some alternatives to the book build--

Leaving Koth as a Sorcerer: Saph notes one thing that a lot of DMs miss about Koth’s stats: although he’s a Sorcerer 6, he has 9 HD and therefore a lot more hitpoints than normal. But don’t worry about the hitpoints, think about the other part: 9 HD. Can you say Practiced Spellcaster, children? I knew you could! You can certainly lose the Persuasive feat for this, if you make no other changes to him. After that it’s a matter of switching around his spells if you’re inclined to do so, even if you do nothing more than switch his Lightning Bolt spell to Fireball. Although flinging around 9d6 damage spells is a good chance to toast even optimized fifth level parties, so you might even want to restrain yourself a bit.

If you need a couple of spare feats, the easiest route is to replace Lightning Reflexes and Iron Will. Replace them with one Potion of Conviction, which does the same thing or better depending on the potion's CL.

Some insightful people have also pointed out that Koth has an empty class feature: a familiar. Or lack thereof. Seeing as a familiar is only going to be laughable at level 6 (as with Saarvith), the better route is to trade it out for the ACF Spell Shield from Dungeonscape and switch out his Move Silently skill for Concentration. This ACF then gives you a chance at enhancing Koth's survivability.

In terms of spells, Detect Thoughts serves very little in-game purpose, but other than that his selection is actually all right. And bear in mind he’s not alone in fighting the PCs. If you’re determined to hand the PCs’ butts to them, change out his spell selections to debuffs that don’t directly damage the party and just have him go invisible as long as possible. Beyond that, don’t make the work for yourself. Maybe give him a couple of arcane scrolls like Haste, but that’s about it.

Monster Manual 4 rebuild: if you want to cotton the PCs onto the existence of the Spawn of Tiamat early in the adventure, consider replacing Koth with a Redspawn Arcaniss from the MM 4, who is notionally a CR 6 (and doesn’t even need class levels whacked onto him, so at least he’s less work.) Reading the statblock, it almost looks as if the Arcaniss was the original intended ‘level boss’ for this part, but was reworked to become Koth-drop. :) Me, personally I wouldn’t since it takes away from the novelty and creepiness of the greenspawn razorfiends later in the adventure -- which I would guess is why Koth isn't a redspawn arcaniss on the book -- but it’s up to you.

Koth as a Dragonfire Adept 6: Courtesy of Draz, who reckons from personal experience that this produces a nice, "close" fight for a four-man party. Less bookkeeping, harder to kill and with a nice battlefield controller feel:
LE Medium Humanoid (goblinoid)
Bugbear Dragonfire Adept 6
* * *
Str 16 (+3); Dex 16 (+3); Con 16 (+3); Int 8 (-1); Wis 10 (+0); Cha 14 (+2)
Init +5; Fort +9; Ref +8; Will +8
HP 68 (9d8+28); AC 19, touch 13, flat-footed 16; BAB +5; Speed 30
Languages: Goblin, Common
* * *
Features: darkvision 60 feet; natural armor +3; Move Silently +4; breath weapon; invocations; dragonkin (+4 Diplomacy; resist frightful presence); DR 2/magic; proficient with simple weapons.
* * *
Feats: Entangling Exhalation, Draconic Aura (senses), Iron Will, Ability Focus (breath weapon)
* * *
Skills (24 points)
5 Hide (+8), 1 Move Silently (+8), 6 Listen (+9), 1 Know(arcana)(+0), 1 Spellcraft (+0), 5 Bluff (+13), 5 Intimidate (+13), 0 Diplomacy (+10)
armor check penalty: 0
* * *
Combat
Melee morningstar +9 (1d8+3)
* * *
Equipment
Wand of Magic Missile (CL 5)[15], mwk morningstar with wand chamber, Type I Bag of Holding, Scroll (Mount, CL 6), Elixir of Truth [2], mwk studded leather armor, 2980 sp
* * *
Combat "Spells"
Fire blast: 3d6 fire damage (Ref DC 18 half); 15-ft cone or 30-ft line.
Lightning blast: 3d6 electricity damage (Ref DC 18 half); 30-ft line.
Weakening curse: -6 Strength penalty for 4 rounds (Fort DC 18 half duration); 15-ft cone.
* * *
Invocations
Caster Level 6; Arcane Spell Failure 15%
Least: Beguiling Influence, Deafening Roar (Fort DC 14 neg.)
Lesser: Draconic Flight
The operative tactic here is to use Koth as a true support character: he flies around, breathes fire, and entangles the partymembers so the other mooks can get some shots in at him. It also requires Koth to get out of the barracks and into the air above the Keep, although for most versions of the Vraath Keep fight this is probably an essential anyway. The only downside to it is originality: Koth thereby becomes a de facto dragon, and you've already got at least four of 'em in this campaign to begin with. On the other hand, it is dragon-themed, and the reasoning becomes stronger for why Koth, a mere bugbear sorcerer, is a Wyrmlord: because he's a dragonfire adept.

Other thoughts:As a serious challenge to a fifth level party, make Koth a Hobgoblin Warsoul (Monster Manual 5). No class levels needed for this one, it's fairly deadly at CR 9 or 10.

The Chimaera, the Raid, and PbP campaigns
I don’t know many people who’ve had a lot to say about the two other major Red Hand encounters in this part of the adventure, mostly because they’re the sort of encounter that doesn’t really inspire a lot of thought one way or the other. The Chimaera is an exercise in dragon-lite, and the Red Hand raid on the west bank of the Elsir is an exercise in dealing with mounted troops.

For PbP campaigns, bar one instance, I’d actually recommend either skipping both or omitting these encounters simply because of the length of the adventure. They don’t add a hell of a lot to the story; they’re more like plain old wandering monster encounters coming to your doorstep.

Glyphstone made one very simple and logical change to the encounter which makes it interesting: bring on the chimaera if the party chooses to escort the Ferryfolk back to Brindol!

Also, if the party manages to capture Koth, there is perhaps one use to be made of these two encounters. If Koth is captured, it stands to reason he’d be kept at the Old Toll House for further interrogation or to await transport back to Brindol. The night this takes place, perhaps the Hand forces figure out he’s been taken to Drellin’s Ferry and attempt a rescue, using the West Bank raid as a diversion (with 3 worg riders and the six hobgoblins and War Adept) while six hobgoblin regulars drift across the Elsir on fallen logs and the chimaera flies in as Koth's getaway car. The players get warned of a raid on the West Bank … but just as they’re about to board the Ferry, someone with a decent Spot check sees the hobgoblins floating in close to the Old Toll House. It’s a nice roleplaying dilemma: help the West Bank, or stop Koth from escaping? I even got my players to split the party on that one.

Restatting Red Hand operatives

Karkilan: At Vraath Keep, consider giving Karkilan (the minotaur, Koth’s ‘general’) a single level in Boar Totem Barbarian – which drops his speed by 10 feet (it’s fairly close quarters in Vraath Keep, remember) but gives him Diehard as feat. Add Extend Rage, Great Fortitude, et cetera, et cetera as the King of Siam says. Being a single melee type outgunned on action economy with large parties, the focus needs to be on him doing some major damage in the one or two rounds he'll probably live. Combined with Haste and maybe a potion of Bull’s Strength or Resist Energy this makes him dangerous to a fifth level party: a minotaur that goes on rage, charges, and then starts wailing into people with one massive axe and just won’t go down even as he hits 0 hitpoints.

Runestar and ka_bna respectively built and then tested an effective alternative: Wolf Totem Barbarian 2, armed with a guisarme, and taking Improved Trip. This gives him three AoOs. Rather than wailing in with a greataxe, he concentrates on simple trip tactics.

Everyone else: Otherwise, the manticore is fine; the hydra’s fine; the hobgoblin troops can be improved as per the general advice above; and the two worg riders are just sucky and aren't likely to get a hell of a lot better at their levels of competence.

For large (8 player) parties, there's been good reports that a couple of redspawn arcaniss added to Koth's entourage makes for a seriously challenging fight.

Skull Gorge troops: The troops can be restatted according to the general guides at the top of the thread, but I’d also consider adding in a low level hobgoblin bard into the mix who plays his music on a set of war drums inside one of the tents on the far side of the Gorge. The gorge itself allows an echo effect which gives the rest of the hobgoblins the capacity to draw off the morale-boosting effect, but it also forces the party to make Listen checks at substantial negatives to figure out where the “music” is coming from.

One thing that I did to make things interesting was to assume that because of the summer heat, the woods out of which the party has to come to reach the bridge are like dry tinder. First thing the hobgoblin archers on the towers did was to light up their arrows and then set the forest on fire behind the party. No retreat for you! I also gave each of the hobgoblin archers a potion of Feather Fall so they could jump off the towers and get to the bottom of the bridge a lot faster.

Ozyrrandion: Ozzie is the youngest and the least powerful of the dragons in RHOD, but he still has the capacity to be deadly, particularly if he’s beefed up using the general suggestions at the front of the thread. It all depends on the level of optimization of your party: accounts of the Skull Gorge battle range from one-round takedowns of Ozzie to multiple PC deaths at his talons. Using him effectively involves using the terrain: the RHOD book says the Skull Gorge battle really favours archers, but what it actually does favour is Ozzy – he doesn’t have to ascend to get to a good striking altitude, and the terrain favours strafing runs followed by quick flights back to the far side of the gorge to let his breath recharge.

I personally tended towards the metabreath feats Lingering Breath and Clinging Breath as battlefield control against my players, and Ozzie certainly lasted longer than Reggie did later on. :)

Moving the party on from Part One to Part Two
The only real hook that exists for characters to head in the direction of Rhest is Teyani Sura’s arrival and the indication that there’s a roadblock to the north which needs to be broken if reinforcements are due to come from "somewhere" in the north.

Many DMs find this hook unsatisfactory, and understandably so. It's the kind of thing you would expect a well-armed monarch's force to do themselves. And it doesn’t give the party a need to go into the Blackfens at all. The blockade is on the Old Rhest Trail, and on the maps as drawn the Old Rhest Trail actually isn’t in the swamp at all; it takes, shall we say, a considerable deal of choo-choo’ing for the party to encounter the razorfiend to begin with.

It also breaks suspension of disbelief in that Norro Wiston is able to speak for Lord Jarmaath (kind of out of his authority, one would have thought), or that Norro doesn’t simply leave it to Teyani Sura to inform Jarmaath there’s a problem and have him sort it out.

So how do you fix it? Some suggestions:

Get Jarmaath to send them out there himself. If you’ve got a proactive party who likes to try and see Jarmaath personally to get him to mobilise, Norro could suggest they go to Brindol to see Jarmaath and ask him what use they might be. Doing so consumes a few useful days on the timeline and allows Jarmaath to dispatch the Company out to break up the blockade himself. This then meshes nicely with Jarmaath being overly welcoming of the characters when they get back for the Battle of Brindol, since he’s dealt with them before.

Of course, this still presents railroading problems in that the razorfiend encounter happens in the Blackfens, not on the Rhest Trail. One way of dealing with that is to tell the players about the existence of another blockade via prisoners or information from the first blockade, because their most direct route to the other blockade is right through the swamp. Course, that doesn't help if the party decides to just divert right around the swamp altogether to get to the other blockade, even if it takes time.

One solution for that is to extend the swamp. When the party gets north of Witchcross, they find the Rhest Trail actually now passes through the Blackfens rather than along its eastern edge. When the players start giving you confused looks and pointing to the handout map of Elsir Vale they’ve probably acquired from you by then, you can shrewdly ask them if they know how old the map is. The map is, in fact, a good hundred years old or more and therefore out of date: the swamp has continued to spread over the years since anyone got out that way to survey it. This isn’t perhaps the most elegant of solutions, but it does give you swampy surrounds within which to launch the razorfiend attack.

Get Norro to suggest they go looking for a Macguffin in the swamp. For this approach, Teyani Sura describes how she and her people were attacked on the Rhest Trail by a party of hobgoblins and ogres, but doesn’t describe a blockade as such. This event should be triggered after the party realizes the Hand’s intent on smashing the hell out of the Vale and has told Norro of it. When Norro hears about the attack, he jumps to the (mistaken) conclusion that the Hand "must be looking for Cromar" (or any name you choose to dream up.)

Norro explains "Cromar" is a notable, powerful, but retired mage who chooses to live in solitude in the swamplands. Norro posits that the Hand must be looking for him because he’s a powerful spellcaster – “stronger than Immerstal the Red. He was very prominent when Witchcross saw off the last serious hobgoblin raiding about fifteen years ago. They’d remember that.”

Norro knows the rough location of Cromar’s home and can describe it to the party. Norro begs the company to go and find him and bring him back to safety in the Vale, or at least try – “He was like a father to me when I was a boy. He was strong fifteen years ago, but he’s getting old; I don’t know if he’s got enough power to hold off the type of forces you say you’ve been dealing with for long at all.”

This is largely moot. Cromar was a powerful spellcaster, but has been dead for several weeks now, having fallen victim to the razorfiend that the party encounters later in the swamp. Cromar’s (shabby, but not as ruined) home is indeed in the swamp – it’s the ruined wizard’s tower where the party finds its ‘reward’ treasure for killing the razorfiend, since the razorfiend has holed up there. These clues can all be discerned by an inspection of Cromar’s semi-ruined tower, which has nothing really to tell the party otherwise. The encounter with the razorfiend can either take place at this ruined tower or in the swamp nearby – it’s the razorfiend’s lair, and it therefore isn’t far from there in any event.

Under this hook, the party will probably need some other way of being told Cromar is dead and told about the roadblocks; the rest of the information will come from the Tiri Kitor instead.

Have Jarmaath send the party direct to the Blackfens specifically to recruit the Tiri Kitor. This obviously takes a lot of the surprise out of the first encounter with the Tiri Kitor, but it might be a stronger hook for the party than breaking up roadblocks. Or you could make it a straight request from Norro (or some noble like Lady Kaal) since he understands the threat all too well and knows they’ll need every bow they can get. Or perhaps the party can be asked to carry a message to Sellyria asking for her help.

Rejigging treasures
Around the time kjones was running RHOD, he and a few other folks noted that the treasure loadout in the first few chapters of RHOD was a bit wiggy if you had other than the default "fighter+cleric+rogue+mage" party ... which most DMs do. For reference you can find the full thread here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=132739), but I do propose to unmercifully repeat the guts of the discussion here and most (if not all) of kjones' thoughts simply because I like people to be lazy. :smallsmile:

Basically, the issue comes with the fact there's too little value for what the characters should be getting at their current level. The biggest treasure in this section of the game is a +1 frost bastard sword which is intended for the party tank, along with some other stuff, but it's the single biggest item and it puts the said tank well ahead on wealth by level (notionally at least).

The treasures of Chapter One also appear somewhat hampered by the fact that RHOD doesn't stray from core in terms of treasure unless it's shoehorning something slightly interesting onto an NPC. On the other hand, James and Rich explicitly tell us on the RHOD text that the heavy loading of treasure in the early chapters is intentional as they're trying to squeeze the party a little by the time they get to Brindol.

So: what are some suggestions for a somewhat fairer or more workable load of treasures, i.e. replacements or modifications to the treasures of Chapter one?

Marauder Attack: There's some gold in a burned-out farmhouse nearby. The party may be in need of hard coin to spend in town, so I'd leave this as is.

If your party knows what's what, they'll loot the bodies - this will be the first of many times in which they will end up with what is commonly referred to as "vendor trash". Sigh.

Blackwater Causeway: The infamous hydra. In the mud, there's a +1 mithral breastplate. 9th level (!) This is a really good item for a bard, along with a barbarian or any other front-liner who values movement or can't wear heavy armor - but it's a lot of treasure to give to one character this early on. You can swap it out for 2 7th-level items - consider an adamantine weapon (useful for destroying the bridge) or a lesser metamagic rod (useful for pretty much everything).

Vraath Keep: This is a biggie. The manticore has some gold and trade goods - leave it, it's what a manticore would have.

Koth has a bag of holding. You want the players to get this, if at all possible. Bags of holding enable all sorts of creative possibilities.

In the vault:
Staff of Life
Huge Spiked Gauntlet +1
Gauntlets of Ogre Power 8th level
+1 frost bastard sword 11th level
and the equivalent of 3,550 gp.

I would recommend leaving in the staff of life, as your players will not have access to resurrections for most of the campaign - this allows them the chance to make a mistake. Once.

Very important note: If you've got smart players and you don't want the Ghostlord section of the campaign to be a snickerworthy one rounder, restat the Staff of Life so it can't do Heal spells. The Ghostlord is a lich. In the right hands a Heal can one-shot him.

(Saintheart's note: in my own campaign with 8 players, we opted for a slight variant on the staff's composition: it can cast raise dead once, revivify about 3 times, and heal once or twice - can't remember the exact makeup. That was mostly because action advantage meant if a character bit the dust the odds were decent someone would be able to get over to him in time. I also went for a couple of lesser armor and/or weapon crystals to even the haul out for people, too.)

Similarly, the spiked gauntlet is important for plot reasons.

The problem with the sword is that it's a type of weapon that most characters can't use, and it's too powerful. You'll be giving the fighter-type a massive boost and leaving everyone else in the lurch. My suggestion is to break it down into two 7th-level items (approximately +1 weapons or +2 armor) and a 9th-level item (an immovable rod is great for this). To keep the +1 weapons from being boring, throw in some weapon crystals - least truedeath will come in very useful, a sort of Chekov's Gun if you will.

Alternately, if you're interested in using legacy weapon rules (I know - but there are some real masochists out there) this is an excellent place to introduce such a weapon.

Turn the 8th-level item into a wand with 10 charges of some 3rd-level spell that your party lacks, and put the rest of the treasure towards whoever still doesn't have anything.

When choosing treasure here, try to figure out items that will make the battle for Skull Gorge Bridge more interesting. I gave out a ring of feather falling, with excellent results.

Skull Gorge Bridge: All the notable treasure here is equipment of either Ozyrrandion or the hobgoblins. Leave it as it is, but if you feel like you sold the players short in the vault at Vraath's Keep, you can put a "mini-horde" on the far side of the bridge. If they take out the bridge before searching the tower, they'll have fun finding this stash...

Saintheart Note: if you feel you're still short on arcane caster items, consider leaving some treasures with Jarrett Nurth, the serial killer in Drellin's Ferry - make her a cleric/rogue of some random death god who has no connection with the Horde at all. You could easily pass over a Lesser Rod of Metamagic Extend here and/or a Pearl of Power (1st), mostly because that's what we did. :smallsmile:

Saintheart

2010-10-09, 09:32 AM

Part Two: The Blackfens and Rhest

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/64/217578846_43c5efea8f.jpg?v=0

"That one burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp!"

The Roadblock/s
For PbP campaigns I’d recommend just having the one roadblock on the Rhest Trail rather than dragging the characters through the second one as well. Tabletop campaigns might also warrant the omission of the second roadblock unless you really want to slow the characters down by a day or so. The biggest issue with the roadblock is that there's no plot-based event that really triggers the party to trudge west from the first roadblock to the second. The plot crumb that brings the party to Rhest only speaks of a single roadblock on the Rhest Trail, not a second roadblock over on the far side of the lake. Indeed the second roadblock itself a bit illogical: it's placed on the Old North Road, but any reinforcements coming from that direction are going to have to follow the Dawn Way anyway and fight the entire Red Hand to get to Brindol to start with. It's unfortunate, since it seems the authors thought the only way they could get a party to trigger off the Tiri Kitor was to push the party through the Blackfens to the second roadblock, since that's the most logical route there. As said, an easier method is to rely on the party's map of Elsir Vale being out of date and allowing the Rhest Trail to now go through the Blackfens rather than skirt its eastern border. Just remember to give them 2 VP for breaking the one blockade so they aren't disadvantaged by the omission. Alternatively, you might stick a plot crumb in the roadblock in the way of a convenient map showing the location of the second roadblock and a dodgy trail through the swamps to reach it (thus setting off the greenspawn razorfiends somewhere down that road), but you'd still have to come up with an answer for the second roadblock's need.

Some campaign journals recommend substituting Skullcrusher Ogres from the MM 3 for the regular ogres at the blockade to turn it into a more challenging match, and I heartily agree. Only thing you then (might) have to explain is why a pair of the most elite ogres in the Horde were assigned to a backwater duty, not to mention the lack of Skullcrusher Ogres later on in the adventure (that said - Skullcrusher Ogre replacements across the board in RHOD might well be to your liking (and not the party's :smallamused: ).

The Razorfiend Encounter
For my PbP campaign I upgraded this to two razorfiends and then upgunned the monsters themselves. I also had the encounter happen in the ruined manor where the small group of treasures is found. (I was running my campaign for 8 people with some house rules that favoured the PCs.) I upped the horror aspect of the encounter by having the PCs stay in the ruined manor to camp for the night, and allowed them to discover the encounter’s treasures ahead of the actual fight. Night attacks, of course, adding illumination issues to everything else.

I managed to get the drop on the PCs, but my upgraded razorfiends were very dangerous: critical hits meant I killed one PC outright and sent the other within 1 hitpoint of death. Even with those advantages, the ugly little buggers didn’t last more than two rounds; Glitterdust appears to be their weak spot, unfortunately.

Greenspawn razorfiends out of the box against unoptimised or weakly optimised parties are dangerous at least until the party gets its bearings and organises a defence. Having said that, the threat they pose should then drive it home to the party (or you can): if one greenspawn razorfiend can maul a party of level 6 adventurers, how much damage is a full platoon of the little buggers going to do to the city of Brindol?

For the laughs, here’s the upgunned razorfiend (the feat count, hitpoints and stats will be off because of our house rules on how those things behaved):

Greenspawn Razorfiend

LE Large magical beast (dragonblood)
Init +7;
Senses darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision; Listen +15, Spot +15
Languages Common, Draconic, Infernal
AC 19, touch 12, flat-footed 16
If move 40 feet or more in a round, AC improves by 2 (Expeditious Dodge)
hp 104 (12 HD); DR 5/magic
Immune acid, paralysis
Fort +11, Ref +11, Will +6
Speed 50 ft. (10 squares), swim 50 ft.
Melee 2 wingblades each +17 (3d6+6/15–20/×3) and bite +12 (1d8+3)
Base Atk +12; Grp +22
Atk Options Spring Attack
Special Actions breath weapon
Abilities Str 22, Dex 17, Con 16, Int 12, Wis 15, Cha 12
SQ water breathing
Feats Expeditious Dodge, Improved Initiative, Improved Critical, Improved Natural Attack, Spring Attack
Skills Athletics +21 (+29 to Jump, Swim), Perception +17, Stealth +18
Breath Weapon (Su)
20-ft. cone, once every 1d4 rounds, damage 6d6 acid, Reflex DC 19 half
Water Breathing (Ex)
A greenspawn razorfiend can breathe underwater indefinitely and can freely use its breath weapon and other abilities while underwater.

Elusive Target and Bounding Assault are also feats worth consideration, I'm told.

And for awesome, here's a lovely Wizard's Mansion that someone built for their party...

Well, I designed the Wizard's Mansion to not only be an interesting and lively encounter, but also to be a didactic encounter; I wanted to force my PC's to start responding to threats. Because every single time they find something they don't understand the capabilities of, they end up running around like headless chickens and get wiped.

So, I'm endeavouring to make them do a few things; I want them to, once they realise they're under attack by the Razorfiend, fight it; but not just fight it, fight it smart.

When they, walking through the Marsh, encounter the Wizard's Mansion (they are aware of it, since they'd been sent into the Marsh to try to gain the Wizard's aid against the Red Hand), I described it as being very eccentric; it was painted bright blue and it looked, for lack of a better word, like it had melted slightly. The dimensions of the House didn't look right, and bits were bulging out; it didn't seem like the structure should be able to support itself. It was all twisted up and was covered in protrusions. When they walked up to the door, the doorknob opened its eyes and talked to them, telling them that "The Master is out, but he will surely be back soon". It was a pre-recorded message, as was all that the doorknob was able to say.

The inside of the house was likewise peculiar and esoteric. Unseen Servants, marked with blue bow-ties, floated through the air cleaning things. Two comfortable couches sat across the room from each other, one next to a Bookcase and the other next to a sea-chest. The bookcase couch also had two wooden stools next to it. Across one wall was a long table, with a stack of clean plates on one end, a box of cutlery in the middle and three empty tureens where food would be placed on the end. There was a glass with two flowers in it, also on the table. Finally, on the floor was a clearly visible Trapdoor. When opened, it was revealed that it opened to... floor.

Inside the sea-chest was an Assassin Vine. Its the sort of thing I'd expect a Wizard to keep in his chest of drawers.

The room was 10ft from floor to ceiling.

The second floor was a long corridor. You could enter a room to the left of the corridor which contained a very deep swimming pool. At the far end of the corridor was a ladder, leading upwards.

If you were to jump into the pool and swim down, you would realise that the dimensions of the pool were impossible compared to the dimensions of this floor; it goes down 30ft. You can easily push through the bottom of the pool... which allows you to pop up where the Trapdoor is on the first floor. There is also a highly visible hole in the floor of the corridor, which would allow someone to jump down to a spot in front of the wooden stools back on floor one.

This floor was 30ft from floor to ceiling.

The third floor was where the Wizard's bedroom was, and a separate area contained a Gelatinous Cube held captive in a glass container (it had a few hamster skeletons floating inside of it). Next to it was a black space that would magically remove any material tossed into it.

Like the previous floor, there was a hole that a character could jump down, which would allow them to get into the pool.

This floor was 60ft from floor to ceiling.

Finally, there was an open-topped study at the top of the tower that could only be accessed by creatures with the capacity to fly, since the house-side entrance required a character to get up 60ft with no handholds, and the outside side entrance is 120ft up. The effects of the weather were staved off by a magical barrier which covered the top of the tower.

I designed the House with these four levels to set up a fairly simple principle; each level you go up, makes the fight against the Razorfiend easier.

The Ground Floor was fairly boxy, and the whole place is really clumped and covered in furniture, obscuring charge vectors. It also has two entrances that weren't easily guarded against; a hole in the roof that the Razorfiend can attack down from (which it did to open the combat, insta-gibbing a friendly NPC) and the one-way trapdoor that you can magically get to from the pool. Furthermore, The Razorfiend is fast enough and can jump well enough to dart down from the stairs, hit someone close by, and the retreat back up the stairs.

Staying down there puts the party in a killing box. They can't get out through the door; it has locked itself, telling the party that all doors are locked past sundown. Bashing the door down is all but impossible, it being Magically Treated Reinforced Iron Walls (Break DC60, HP360, Hardness 20, Energy Resistance (All) 30), so they're forced to stay in the Wizard's pad and deal with their problem.

If they go up a floor, they suddenly can't be attacked unaware as easily. It can't get at them from the roof (too far away) and it can't attack from the trapdoor.

They go up to floor three? The Razorfiend is going to get ruined. It can't attack from the walls or ceiling, it doesn't have the AC to engage in a protracted fight. They get it up there, and keep it up there, and the players win.

Rainbow Six approaches to Rhest
The monsters in Rhest aren’t anything to sniff at if the party wants to try a direct assault, particularly if you remember there’s still another 6 hobgoblins in the belltower. (If you really want to be a bastard, have the hobgoblins let out the caged razorfiend when things get desperate).

However, the authors don’t comprehensively brief the DM about handling the underwater approach to Rhest -- curiously, since it's the "minimum damage" way to complete this section of the campaign. I’d have thought most savvy parties will consider it: Water Breathing lasts about ten times as long as Water Walking and the RHOD text all but says it’s a guaranteed quiet approach. Pathfinding underwater probably comes down to Survival checks; it's hard to say whether random checks to see if a partymember trips on a fish add much to the experience.

Either way, Water Breathing combined with casting Silence on someone allows the PCs to get the drop on the occupants of the bell tower at the very least, thus preventing an alarm from being raised at the town hall. If you're into TPKs, obviously you'll need a way of circumventing this. :smallwink:

Incidentally, since it was something we ruminated on pretty hard in my campaign: the ruined town hall at the centre of the lake does have an entrance into the waterlogged bottom level that's open. Regiarix hasn't sealed it up; it's basically what was the main entrance to the town hall, only it's completely submerged, with its wooden doors rotted away. The rationale we had for why Reggie hadn't fixed this detail up: dragons that only have one way into their lairs are usually dead dragons, and Reggie does have a swim speed and prior experience with adventuring parties. (Also provides a potential moment to cue up the "Jaws" theme on the media player if the party decides to get brash and enter the town hall via underwater before checking if Reggie's gone out hunting for the day).

Similar thoughts can be had about the bell tower: while the bell tower has wooden platforms running around it, its submerged floor very likely has a doorway whose wood has rotted away, although getting the characters out of the water and up to the tower's second floor (i.e. at water level) might be an interesting exercise since any wooden (or indeed metal) stairwells would have decayed into nothingness in the previous few hundred years as well.

Restatting Saarvith
Saarvith in his original Ranger 7 form is rather unexciting, like most ranged attackers, especially given he’s presumably going to be fighting from dragonback.

So, a couple of suggested builds--

Scout 6/Ranger 2. Nicknamed the "Swift Hunter" build by most people. This build adds one level to Saarvith and basically abandons the route of Saarvith being mounted on a dragon, making him an independently-fighting ranged attacker. To make this work, apply the feats Swift Hunter, Shot on the Run, Improved Skirmish, and Expeditious Dodge (you’ll probably need a flaw or trait to make this work, obviously, though you get Rapid Shot for free from the second level of Ranger.) In terms of equipment, give him a couple of potions of Fly and a Ring of Entropic Deflection. Saarvith under this build starts off on dragonback, but then jumps off and starts standard skirmishing tactics from the air, diving in, shooting, and then retreating so melee types can’t hit him and ranged types have immense difficulty doing so. Dispel Magic is obviously the Achilles Heel here, which is why he’s got more than one Fly potion on him. This build focuses on damage on one attack per round more than spamming attacks as such. Just to give you a sense of what his AC and damage will be like--

AC: 10 + 6 [Mithral Chain Shirt+2] + 5 [Dex bonus] = 21
(NB: When skirmishing and moved at least 10 feet, AC 23 and 20% concealment chance from Ring of Entropic Deflection)
(NBB: When skirmishing and moved at least 20 feet, AC 25 and 20% concealment chance from Ring of Entropic Deflection)
(NBBB: When skirmishing and moved at least 40 feet, AC 27 and 20% concealment chance from Ring of Entropic Deflection)
Touch AC: 15
Flat-Footed AC: 20 (Uncanny Dodge)

Damage: Longbow +1: 1d6+1/19-20
If shot taken at less than 30 feet of range: 1d6+2/19-20
If moved at least 10 feet during the round: 1d6+1/19-20 +2d6 (Skirmish damage).
If moved at least 10 feet during the round and shot at less than 30 feet: 1d6+2/19-20 +2d6 (Skirmish damage)
If moved at least 20 feet during the round and shot at less than 30 feet: 1d6+2/19-20 +4d6 (Skirmish damage)
NB: 10 Elf bane arrows: Versus elves, add +2 to attack rolls and a further +2d6 to damage.
NBB: If elf is the target, add a further +4 to damage (favored enemy 1)
NBBB: If human is the target, add a further +2 to damage (favored enemy 2)

If Saarvith gets the opportunity to get into the air and keeps moving, he actually makes ranged attacks look credible, especially against elves in the party with a maximum (noncritical) damage of 1d6+2 +4d6 skirmish +4 +2d6 (Elf bane arrows) = 7d6+6 per shot if he gets into his sweet spot at less than 30 feet and then swoops back out on the same round. Against humans, his maximum shot is 5d6+2, which again is still respectable. On top of that, if he’s taken that shot and kept moving, you’re unlikely to hit him in melee with an AC of 27 and 20% concealment chance as well to get over.

Ranger 6/Fighter 2. This build focuses on the mounted-on-a-dragon aspect of Saarvith’s character, and assumes Regiarix can actually get into the air for strafing runs. (i.e. if the party gets complete surprise on Saarvith on the ground, he’s screwed.) The basic mechanic is to make full attacks as Regiarix does the moving for him. By eighth level Saarvith has Mounted Combat, Mounted Archery, and Improved Mounted Archery from character feats, Rapid Shot and Manyshot from the ranger’s Combat Style, and Point Blank Shot via trading off his (nonexistent) spellcasting ability through the ACF Champion of the Wild from Complete Champion. His two fighter bonus feats should be spent on any two of the following three feats: Underfoot Combat, Woodland Archer, or Improved Rapid Shot.

Underfoot Combat is made useful via low-fat cheese: Saarvith is Small, and while riding Regiarix is “occupying the same space” as a “creature” two size categories larger than him (assuming, of course, you take the general advice and upgrade Reggie from Medium to Large). Therefore by RAW Saarvith gets the bonus of soft cover which is an untyped +4 to AC – unlike Confound the Big Folk, Underfoot Combat does not on RAW require you to move into an opponent’s space first. If that doesn’t appeal, Expeditious Dodge gives you +2 AC while Regiarix is still moving. Of Improved Rapid Shot and Woodland Archer I tend to prefer the former since it basically gives you more attacks for no penalty, which given you’ll be full attacking is strictly superior to a feat that only improves your chances of hitting following a miss against an opponent.

Lastly, max out your Ride skill and trade off Saarvith’s entirely silly eagle companion for the ACF Distracting Shot, which allows your allies to treat the struck opponent as flanked – an indirect buff for the ogres on the ground, and gold given how tight the quarters are around the town hall’s perimeter. This is the reverse to the ‘Swift Hunter’ build above: it spams attacks in the hope of multiple hits via full attacks.

Mystic Ranger 8. (Dragon #336, p. 105) -- Because caster levels are king and Saarvith shouldn't really be engaging in melee anyway, this changes his focus to a support caster and sometime archer. This build has access to fourth-level ranger spells, which includes Summon Nature's Ally IV (Giant crocodile, Huge Shark, anybody, given this might be in the water?), Swamp Stride, along with other cool stuff like Shadow Arrow or indeed Arrowsplit.

Other builds and suggestions:

Give Saarvith his own mount, so he's not being a liability to the dragon.
Make Saarvith a Druid, mainly so his animal companion can be a mount.
Houserule Ranger to give a full Druid animal companion, same reason.
Have Saarvith take Wild Cohort, same reason.
Open up Dragon magazines and options, which tend to make archers better in D&D than core and the splatbooks put together.

Restatting Red Hand operatives

Nurklenak: Nurklenak doesn’t need a lot of messing with other than minor tweaking of his feats. Playing in the Forgotten Realms and under house rules, I gave him Greater Spell Focus (enchantment), Shadow Weave Magic (FRCS), and Sounds of Silence (Complete Scoundrel) to make him a bit more interesting, but he’s basically a very weak character combination and should be running support in any event. If you wanted to do a total reboot of the character, playing him as a Beguiler with one level in Mindbender is a very strong combination.

Korkulan: As with most hobgoblin patrol leaders, he works better restatted into a martial adept from Tome of Battle. I rebuilt him into a Warblade 5, going for a hobgoblin samurai feel with EWP in katana and the following feats and maneuvers:

Feats: Exotic Weapon Proficiency (Katana - bastard sword), Adaptive Style, Weapon Focus (Katana), Blade Meditation (Diamond Mind): +1 to damage with katana (If using Diamond Mind maneuver)

Maneuvers:
Iron Heart Surge (Iron Heart 3) -- as a standard action, shrug off any effect with a duration of 1 round or more. Get a +2 morale bonus to attack rolls until end of next turn
Emerald Razor (Diamond Mind 1) – melee attack becomes touch attack
Wall of Blades (Iron Heart 2) – substitute attack roll for AC
Steel Wind (Iron Heart 1) – attack two opponents you threaten.
Moment of Perfect Mind (Diamond Mind 1) - use Concentration check in place of single Will save.
Sapphire Nightmare Blade (Diamond Mind 1) - Make a Concentration check vs. a creature's AC. If succeeds, creature is flatfooted vs. attack, and you deal +1d6 damage.

Stances:
Absolute Steel Stance (Iron Heart 2): get +10 enhancement bonus to speed. If move 10 feet in a round, get a +2 dodge bonus to AC until start of next turn.
Punishing Stance (Iron Heart 1) -- +1d6 to damage, but at -2 to AC.

Restatting Regiarix
Reggie presents a poser since it’s not really clear exactly what his role in battle is meant to be. He’s not fantastic on the ground, but his breath attack isn’t great either. He’s a fairly weak specimen of a dragon, as most people have noted; something as mundane as a Tanglefoot Bag is enough to bring him down even at Large size. If you’re facing a party with any experience, optimisation, or more than four players, you should have no hesitation in upgrading him by one age category so he is then a Large creature.

Alertness, Weapon Focus, and Improved Critical need to go, as with all dragons. As for what they get replaced with, though, some consideration of the tactics is warranted.

Reggie's only really got a fighting chance if he's out in the open sky. His underwater lair provides some interesting tactical challenges for the players -- and a swimming dragon might well be fun if the party isn't pimped up with Freedom of Movement -- but the town hall itself is a killing jar and invites the melee types in the party to wail away with a series of charges and full attacks. Your approach with him is going to depend on whether he's on the ground or in the air when the fight happens (and if he's on the ground, he shouldn't be there.)

For an air-based fight, Shape Breath and Enlarge Breath are useful in that they vastly improve his range. A 90 foot line when the party's out on the walkways is a nice asset to have. Like Ozyrrandion he's vulnerable to Downdraft, so Awaken Spell Resistance at least gives him a chance against getting pancaked into the water. Regiarix is also a good candidate for Blood Wind, albeit he'll have to get close in to make the full attack that the spell is most effective with.

If you need a close-in combat option at least, there’s also Shock Wave from the same book which, at Reggie’s +8 bullrush bonus, has a decent chance of knocking down half the party, does damage to the town hall itself, and gives Reggie the breathing space of a move action at least to get into the air.

The Reactory Phylactery*
The phylactery, believe it or not, is a potential problem for a DM.

The reason it's so is a combination of a lack of rules from the module and the fact the phylactery is basically the Ghostlord's gonads. A party with anybody with a lawful or good (or, Gygax help us, both) disposition is going to be seriously tempted to destroy the phylactery on discovering it, if not any time before they confront the Ghostlord. Alternatively, the party might simply decide to hang onto the phylactery without either returning it or destroying it. Also: while the rules are specific that a lich can't be permanently killed without destroying its phylactery, nothing by RAW says a lich knows its phylactery has been destroyed or that the lich gets to automatically know anything about who destroyed it. RHOD's assurances that the destroyer of the phylactery will "earn the Ghostlord's undying enmity" ignore that identifying said destroyer relies, by RAW, entirely on the Red Hand -- since blighters don't get scrying as a spell.

At the very least, it's worth shoehorning in the following:
(1) The box containing the Ghostlord's phylactery (or indeed the phylactery itself) is affected by a permanent spell of Obscure Object. The Obscure Object spell, being a bard and/or cleric spell, fits rather nicely with this if first cast by Ulwai upon its initial theft for a few hours and then made persisted or permanent by Azarr Kul sometime afterwards.
(2) The Ghostlord has access to scrying, whether by refitting him as a druid or giving some sort of custom magic item - the Pool of Rebirth could double as a limited-use scrying pool for this purpose, perhaps.
(3) The Ghostlord can sense when his phylactery is destroyed (it being, ultimately, a part of him). This last point probably should be mentioned as general knowledge to the PCs if they roll or identify the necklace as, indeed, a phylactery, so they're aware in some way of the consequences upfront of destroying it then and there.

That said, some thoughts ahead of time on possible developments:

If the party just keeps the phylactery:
In this scenario, the Ghostlord is fanatical about scrying on "the individual who has my phylactery." (This is possible since scrying allows for no knowledge of the subject.) Most of the time these attempts fail since Saarvith, Ulwai, or Regiarix don't "have" his phylactery on them, or alternatively Obscure Object makes the attempt autofail since the spell can't detect the phylactery that creates the connection. But as soon as the party takes the phylactery out, the spell allows him to discover the party has it even though he can't see it himself. From there he starts scrying extensively on the party. (Hopefully if your party isn't a bunch of paranoids who religiously cast Detect Scrying every morning.)

Let's say the party decides not to return the phylactery at all. In this scenario, one possibility is to have him call them via messenger, Sending, unsettling dream or whatever. He tells them where he is. He offers the location of Azarr Khul, the leader of the Red Hand, in return for his phylactery (having discovered this from scrying on Ulwai relentlessly). The players should take this up since they then have a chance to cut off the head of the snake. The Ghostlord ending his involvement with the Red Hand is a given since the only hold Ulwai had on him was the phylactery ... once he's orchestrated the phylactery's return.

In this scenario, it's the three things the Ghostlord doesn't say that are important: first, he doesn't tell the players that Ulwai and friends are at the stone lion. Second, he doesn't tell Ulwai and friends that the party's on its way. Third, he doesn't ever tell the party the password to get into the Fane of Tiamat.

This sets up the party nicely to prep for battle against the undead, run into hobgoblins, and then spend some of its strength smashing Ulwai and Varanthian. You then come out with the Ghostlord and all his undead allies, and demand the phylactery's return whilst still keeping his bargain. If the party fights and beats you at that point, well, as the writers say, "You might not be running the adventure for the right levels". From the Ghostlord's point of view, this is a win-win: best case scenario, he gets his phylactery back and the party moves on to futilely fight Azarr Khul. Worst case scenario, he has to fight a weakened party of PCs that he knows will have his phylactery, and who have already removed the Red Hand's presence from his home.

If your players are a bit reluctant to even respond to this, Plan C: the Red Hand comes looking for the phylactery, ideally with Ulwai and/or Varanthian leading the effort to recover it. This is a nice tie-in with the "Marked for Death" encounter since it gives the Red Hand a plot-driven motivation to go after the PCs other than "Those Damn Kids Are Ruining Our Plans" -- the Red Hand has to recover the phylactery because the Ghostlord is threatening to withdraw his support. It also gives the players the chance to earn a little VP from killing or neutralising Ulwai and/or Varanthian if they don't go after them at the stone lion.

If the party just destroys the phylactery:
Here, one of two options.

Option one, the party gets scryed on pretty quickly since the Ghostlord feels the pain of his phylactery being destroyed and focuses on "the individual who destroyed my phylactery". Eventually he figures out who the party is. If this happens, he becomes a voluntary participant with the Red Hand and adds his troops to the assault on Brindol. From the mechanical point of view, this will mean the party loses 5 VP, faces a fourth wave in the "Streets of Blood" encounter, and faces the Ghostlord as well as Kharn in the final encounter. However, it also means Ulwai is in that battle as well, and Varanthian is available to the Red Hand -- possibly even met during the Battle of Brindol.

Option two, the Ghostlord doesn't feel the pain of the phylactery's destruction and the Red Hand eventually figures out that the hatchery at Rhest has been destroyed and the phylactery is gone. In this scenario, Ulwai switches to more lies and bluffs the Ghostlord that they've still got the phylactery. The result, again, is the presence of more troops at Brindol as set out in option one, with the chance that if the party somehow figures out that Ulwai is bluffing the Ghostlord, the Ghostlord might turn into an engine of death against everyone at Brindol -- characters and the Red Hand both, which might make for an interesting encounter.

* This is a terrible pun, and I am always taking requests for a better tag description :smallbiggrin: :smallbiggrin:

Saintheart

2010-10-09, 09:33 AM

Part Three: The Thornwaste and the Ghostlord's Lair

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/rhod_gallery/95664.jpg

First one to say "Thundercats Ho" gets a critical hit to the face.

Overall map and terrain fixes
On mapping, I recommend working with the Ghostlord's Lair map from RHOD on a different scale to that presented. Basically, rather than every square representing a 5 x 5 foot area, rejig it so each square represents a 10 x 10 area (4 squares to every one drawn on the map.) If you're working with MapTools or any other virtual mapper that allows you to change the size of your grids, this is a piece of cake. :smallsmile:

There are two reasons for doing this:
1. Detail. Varanthian can't actually fit through her own doorways into her own lair; she's a Huge combatant and takes up a 3x3 space, when the doorway into her den is only 10 feet across. Maybe she needs to stop eating all those Cheerios and watching Oprah.

2. Tactics, especially for large parties. A group of players 6+ in size will look faintly hilarious trying to squeeze into the small-sized rooms. More space also mitigates some of the Ghostlord's close-quarters problems if it comes to a fight. It also allows you to be a real swine if you're inclined to and have Varanthian come to Ulwai's rescue up the secret passageway when the party thinks it's got Ulwai's fight won.

I also recommend recasting the stone lion from being a statue on a ridge to being masterfully carved from the ridge. Doing so makes it more plausibly able to be the location of an evil node (see the spoiler'd section on rebuilding the Ghostlord to be truly effective for more details on this.)

It's notable that the stone lion is subject to the 15-minute adventuring day like almost no other lair in the adventure. A retreat from Vraath Keep might draw a hobgoblin patrol. A retreat from Rhest will draw a visit from Regiarix. But here, the characters can comfortably retreat to their camp a good half mile away from the statue without consequence. There are no defined patrols from the Ghostlord, and not enough Hand troops to plausibly send out patrols. There's only the wandering monster chance.

The lair's structure also allows the party to control the flow of opponents. At Rhest the players at least have to figure out how to cast Water Breathing and Silence to avoid taking on the whole place at once. Here, the designers stick Varanthian in a killing jar with no meaningful support, and set up Ulwai and the other hobgoblins to passively defend their positions. As designed, Varanthian's purpose is to basically be a burglar alarm, which is faintly ridiculous given she's meant to be the "fifth dragon" of the adventure.

Bear in mind even at the "scaled up" version of the stone lion with every square on the map representing a 10 x 10 area, a Haste-affected party can easily sprint from the guardroom in the lion's mouth down to Ulwai's area without sufficient time for the hobgoblins to prepare for them coming. There's not a trap in the place. In hindsight, I'd either make reconnaissance a lot harder (Hide from Undead is cleric 1; it has a decent chance of succeeding against the ghost dire lions) or I'd drop caltrops at least just inside the first door into the lion's mouth (the hobgoblin monks' purpose being to tell legit visitors that they're there.)

With a well-optimised party, consider sending Varanthian and Ulwai's forces at the party at once, albeit delaying one group or the other by a round or two. This will either mean having the fight outside the stone lion, or bringing Varanthian up the secret passage to support Ulwai inside.

Rescuing the Ghostlord from Orcus On His Throne (and having to fight at all)
The obvious question genre savvy players will be asking is: if the Ghostlord’s that powerful and hates Elsir Vale so much, why hasn’t he trashed the place himself by now? Why hasn’t he sought revenge? (This is particularly so if the party takes him on and loses -- some people will reason that he has to have so many levels on him that he makes Azarr Kul look like a rank amateur.)

The other question they’ll be asking is: what are his stats, and can we kick his butt from here to next Tuesday? By the time the party hits the Ghostlord’s lair, most things not human will have been trying to kill them, which doesn't predispose them towards talking rather than fighting. And that's before you take into account the obvious in-character response of any cleric or (worse) paladin in the party with the word "Good" in his alignment to the idea of allowing a scion of Ultimate Undead Evil keep on existing when you've got him by the phylacteries (so to speak).

The Ghostlord’s not meant to be a combat encounter; how do you get the players to understand that?

The nutcase: One answer is to use a different archetype to the standard Dark Lord. Play him as a sort of (evil) Dr. Jekyll/(eviller) Mr Hyde. He's solitary, tends to speak to spirits, and doesn’t like to take risks; like Jekyll, he's become enamoured of his own powers and works in secret to master them.

This archetype fits the Ghostlord's activities, i.e. staying cooped up in his stone lion lair and not advancing his interests in the outside world. He's a mildly crazy evil hermit, not a Type-A villain in the Darth Vader mode. Don’t run the bold, imperious aggressor the RHOD book describes – have him enter the room talking to himself, mumbling threats, but all the while his eyes blazing with anger. Have him talk to himself, or even to lion spirits that aren’t even there. In short: play the Ghostlord stealing lines from Gollum rather than Sauron, and he’ll seem a lot more plausible. And hopefully a lot more deadly.

As Saph puts it: “For roleplaying him, I went for a combination of Emperor Palpatine and Gollum. Ancient, very powerful, psychotically obsessed with his phylactery, and insane (but note that insane doesn't mean stupid). I had him talk a lot, but he'd only respond to the PCs when they said something that matched up with his skewed worldview - otherwise he'd just ramble to himself about revenge and torture and killing, before snapping suddenly back into focus and demanding why the PCs were there.

I also told the PCs at the beginning of the encounter with him that everything they said would be assumed to be in character unless specified otherwise. The idea is to keep it short and tense. Don't have the Ghostlord stick around and chat while the players talk OOC: it ruins the mood. The PCs should feel that they need to make a deal fast before the Ghostlord decides to kill first and ask questions later.”

The good guy: Another option is to add a twist on the RHOD "book" plot by making the Ghostlord a reformed lich with a Lawful Neutral alignment.

Zarl in this scenario has truly suffered: he did enjoy being a lich at first, even creating some of the undead that now inhabit the stone lion -- but came to regret it as he realised what he'd lost, and what he'd done. Rather than the stone lion being his home of ultimate evil, it is a fortress to secure and defend one thing: the Heart of the Lion, which Zarl knows will be used for great evil if it's removed.

Zarl therefore has become the Heart of the Lion's guardian; it is his self-imposed atonement for his dark deeds. The undead he commands exist to protect the artifact, not himself as such. He's become fairly addled: he will not allow evil clerics near the artifact, but neither will he allow a good or neutral cleric to try and destroy the artifact, because he is still serving his penitence. The party offering to destroy him also doesn't appeal since it would end his watch over the artifact prematurely. This might prevent a good-aligned party fighting him, since his purposes are noble and he is, in fact, a slave to the Red Hand by creating undead for them, not even a semi-willing participant.

Running the Ghostlord "as-is"
Pretty well everything in this section assumes you've got a party of players who aren't very experienced or have at least one caster who's very experienced at dealing with, well, other casters.

Blighters are a crap prestige class, appropriately described as being to druids what blackguards are to paladins (i.e. nowhere near strong enough to justify taking the PrC even for the evulz.) The PrC takes some of the druid's best battle strategies (chiefly, wading into melee as a frickin' dinosaur with a dinosaur buddy as you spam Greenbound dinosaurs) and gives you nothing back in return (seriously, an undead-themed druid who can't even control undead until he can cast 6th level spells? What the hell?)

To top it off, James and Rich in their wisdom then impose the lich template on this crappy PrC and thereby render it seriously vulnerable to clerics or indeed anyone with the Use Magic Device skill.

Let's repeat the optimal solution: your best way of resolving the Ghostlord encounter, as with Bruce Lee, is to win widdout fighting. Play mind games and build Ghostie up as a lot bigger than he actually is to scare the characters out of attacking him.

Even so, prudence demands you assume the worst. A party comprised of halfway optimised characters (or halfway experienced players) is likely to trash the hell out of the "book" Ghostlord by force of the action economy and the closed quarters of the lair. Indeed on a straw poll of campaigns I've seen here or read, most parties seem to wind up fighting the Ghostlord. So. How to fight?

The most obvious solution is to rebuild the Ghostlord so he’s a thoroughly optimized (and therefore deadly) opponent. See the next spoiler'd section on that. On the other hand, if you replace his levels or add levels to him, there's an argument that he wouldn’t be the Ghostlord, and his monastic existence requires even more suspension of disbelief.

So let's look at our obstacles. He’s outnumbered; he's at close quarters; he’ll be facing a buffed party; and he's vulnerable to positive energy. We need some options to mitigate those weaknesses.

Very important note: The most crucial thing to remember about the Ghostlord is that the authors of RHOD (unwittingly?) hand the party on a silver platter the one weapon that can just about kill him. Full credit to Malevolence for pointing this out, since before then as far as I can tell nobody's ever picked this up. In short: the Staff of Life.

Oh, yes it can. It casts Heal, remember? And the Ghostlord is undead. Go and read your SRD again if you don't get this. If you're going in with a "minimal changes" approach to this battle, you have to find a way to remove the Staff from the equation. Either you do this via removing its Heal functions when giving it to the party, having an NPC hold onto it, putting the Ghostlord in a situation where he can't be touched with it, or just crossing your fingers and praying nobody in the party remembers positive energy damages undead.

Prepare the ground. One option is an Unhallow spell, keyed to a Dispel Magic effect targeting any nonevil characters. This allows the Horde agents to still be hanging around inside the stone lion. The spell covers all the rooms of the Ghostlord’s quarters if cast at the foot of the undead lion statue in the central hall (though if you change the scale of the dungeon, the spell's area of effect will be halved, too). Blighters have access to this spell at the Ghostlord’s "book" level. It even gives the Ghostlord a couple of mild buffs since it counts as a Protection from Good, too. Players can’t dispel the Unhallow effect, and probably won't have their own Hallow spell to neutralize it, either.

On the other hand, an Unhallow'ed Dispel Magic only affects a character once when they enter the Unhallow field, and once again when they leave and re-enter. Thus it'll hopefully take one buff off per character, but that's it. A solution is to have adjacent Unhallow fields all over the complex -- i.e. the characters leave one Unhallow field and then hit another, triggering another Dispel Magic effect.

A more brutal tactic is to layer the Ghostlord's intended battleground -- or indeed his entire complex -- with Forbiddance spells (this is a Blighter 5 spell). Odds are on the party's going to have a different alignment to him, which means a minimum of 3d6 damage on entry to the spell's area. You can't have overlapping Forbiddance effects, but that doesn't stop you casting new Forbiddance effects five feet forward of the previous one, since the new Forbiddance effect stops at the boundary of the old one. You thereby stand back behind three or four Forbiddance fields and watch as the party's melee'ers get 12-36d6 of untyped damage blasted off them as they charge in to engage. Oh, and since Forbiddance prevents teleportation effects, scry-and-die and some Batman mage tactics like abrupt jaunt are prevented as well.

As to getting overwhelmed by melee'ers: for all their suckitude, blighters get Antilife Shell as a 5th level spell. This does mean giving Ghostie his daily 5th level spell rather than RHOD’s text which deems it already cast, but there are simple enough reasons to do that (i.e. the Ghostlord's been screwed over by the Red Hand once already and will take a round to cast before finding out who's messing with his lair again). Cast this spell before the Ghostlord contacts the PCs and their melee fighters can’t touch him. More importantly, cast this and the Staff of Life can't touch him, either.

Choose the best battleground. Don't fight the party in the chamber expressed as the Ghostlord's last redoubt. A 15 x 15 room with no features, no cover and no allies is a killing jar. In this case, it's also a bit anticlimactic. Fight the party in the main central chamber -- the one that contains the six bonedrinkers. These little buggers get Pounce, remember, even if they're most likely to be one-shot kills. And they're undead, so they're not affected by the Ghostlord's Antilife Shell.

Don't fight alone. Put one or more ghost dire lions in the same room as the Ghostlord. He's a sort-of-wacky druid, he deserves an animal companion by his side. And this animal companion, if you read the text, reappears at its "old haunt" after it's been destroyed on a successful level check. That "old haunt", for a freshly-created ghost dire lion, would be right above the yellow pool in that chamber.

Next, substitute three of his feats: Dodge, Mobility, and Natural Spell. (Mobility in particular is a necessary fix, since it requires Dex 13 and the Ghostlord as written only has Dex 12.) You lose 1 AC with Dodge, but given he’ll be fighting under Antilife Shell (fingers crossed) it’s a minimal loss. Natural Spell is replaced even though it's 90% of a druid's tricks because, well, if the Ghostlord has to go to Undead Wild Shape he's screwed anyway. We're changing the Ghostlord's focus from melee to blasting.

Replace them with Fell Drain, Spell Focus (Evocation), and Metamagic School Focus (Evocation). Three of your prepared evocation spells -- Produce Flame in particular, but also Flame Strike if you get a second 5th level spell slot by pumping the WIS score -- now can drain levels off your opponents at half the metamagic cost. Fell Drain turns save-or-lose-more-hitpoints into save-and-suck-anyway. Your party's going to be around level 9 or so; a negative level here has proportionately more impact at lower levels than higher up. And they can be done at range, which means the Ghostlord does not have to go to melee and break the Antilife Shell. And, to top it all off, it's thematically appropriate given all the fluff on how the Ghostlord makes undead.

Important note: You may want to seriously consider the Node Magic options contained in the next spoiler'd section, even on a minimal rebuild of the Ghostlord. These will change the feat selections above to Fell Drain, Node Spellcasting, and Metanode Spell.

The first step in combat, and the only unknown element, will be neutralising anyone who’s got Dispel Magic memorized. The rest of the fight becomes a beating down by your undead allies, followed by touch, paralyse, rinse, repeat when the Antilife Shell finally collapses. (Of course, if someone in the party’s got Iron Heart Surge from Tome of Battle, you could have some problems, but then, that’s another issue entirely.)

Blighters also have access to Stinking Cloud as a spell, which is your primary denial-of-service on spellcasters. These are very effective in close quarters like the Ghostlord's lair and tend to hobble spellcasters and melee types alike with equal effectiveness. They also don't work on undead, which means your bonedrinkers and ghost lion can still get busy.

Rebuilding the Ghostlord to be truly effective

Making the Ghostlord effective in combat necessarily means fixing the blighter PrC altogether or finding some workaround for the fact the PrC sucks badly. Some suggestions for doing so:

(1) Druid build and tactics: Rebuild from a lich blighter to Evolved Undead, Lich Druid 12. Ditch Dodge, Mobility, Natural Spell, Craft Magic Arms and Armor.

By RAW nothing prevents an evil druid being undead -- but the druid fluff proclaims that druids of all stripes despise undead, so this can get PHBs thrown at you. So: change how the Ghostlord came to be undead. Rather than him wanting that result, run him as cursed by the nature gods with undeath because he killed a lion cub. Possibly this is why James and Rich had the Ghostlord as undead to start with: it's never made explicit, but the carving of the dead lion cub in his lair is about as big a clue by four as you're going to get. And if you're in the Forgotten Realms this is directly justifiable as Malar's dogma forbids killing the young.

The Evolved Undead template provides an excellent no-cost investment that can be applied at least once without being unbelievably cheesy. It's also one of the few templates that is explicitly said to stack with itself, and the "chance" comes up every hundred years or so -- Zarl is roughly four hundred years old or more. Confusion and Cloudkill (and indeed Haste for the summoning druid) as 1/day spell-like abilities projected from behind an Antilife Shell are likely to be devastating to an 8th or 9th level party, and remember, this encounter is meant to be a curbstomper for the party if they decide to fight.

From here, it's a matter of which course you choose: blasting, summoning, or melee (in that order of practicality).

Blasting:
This approach works best with node (ab)use as described in the next section down. Otherwise, a lot of the damage comes from permanent spells already in place. In terms of feat selections, Fell Drain for a start, Spell Focus (Evocation), Metamagic School Focus (Evocation), and anything that boosts ECL or flat CL.
Spells specifically:
- Overlapping Forbiddance spells as indicated in the "as-is" section above, Fell Drained.
- Fire Seeds in the 'acorn bomb' variant placed around the battlefield, again, Fell Drained so you can quick-blast a level or two off the party before combat begins.
- Antilife Shell.
- Friendly Fire to defeat ranged attacks.
- Flame Strike, and indeed a selection of elemental damage spells, again, Fell Drained.
- Wall of Sand.
- Life Ward. Nooo positive energy damage for you!

Here, your undead allies are more for distraction or holding the opposition back so you can just blast, blast, and blast again, draining levels as you go and keeping both melee and ranged attacks out. Freedom of Movement and Blindsight spells will mess with interdiction efforts like Wall of Sand, so have a couple of Dispel Magic iterations up and ready to go as well.

Summoning:
One crucial preface: summoning is rendered pointless by one first level spell -- Protection from Evil, (and its big brother Magic Circle Against Evil.) The Ghostlord, being evil, gives summoned creatures the [evil] descriptor, and Protection from Evil keeps out evil summoned beings without a save. If you think the party's going to use this sort of tactic, you should dispense entirely with summoning and rebuild for flat-out blasting and debuffing since your only combat allies will be the undead.

Take Greenbound Summoning, Rapid Spell, and Ashbound Summoning if you can fit it in somehow. Augment Summoning would be nice, but Ashbound Summoning largely supersedes it for attack purposes -- and greenbound at these levels are already fairly tough.

Basic strategy is: Antilife Shell, Greenbound summon, Wall of Sand (it's Druid 5) or spam Stinking Cloud (via Wand), Friendly Fire from Exemplars of Evil to keep out the ranged attacks, and away you go. Adding in a Lesser Metamagic Rod (Quicken) and then memorising a Summon Nature's Ally III makes for a very nice opening round: you can't metamagic spontaneously-cast spells, and summoned creatures act on the same round as you. Thus: use the Rod to Quicken a Greenbound Summoned lion, or whatever. Since it's Greenbound, it can cast Wall of Thorns 1/day as a spell-like ability, at CL 5 (i.e. 5 x 10 foot cubes of thornwall). Your own spell (Wall of Sand) then hits the party at about the same time as the Greenbound's Wall of Thorns spell.
Ouch.
The party is now blinded, deafened, taking damage from thorns, and can't get loose of either wall without a full round action of trying and making checks against both spells. That's more than enough time to then buff, get your undead buddies into position, and summon more greenbound.

Remember quickening past Summon Nature's Ally III won't work because of the lesser nature of the metamagic rod. Also bear in mind that Summon Nature's Ally VI, which is spontaneously available at Druid 12, is hobbled: you can summon a Huge Elemental, but it's 32 feet tall and thus won't fit into the Ghostlord's chambers. You're stuck with 1d4+1-odd lesser creatures, although if they're all Greenbound it's probably just as good. Also consider Pearls of Power.

While the Druid Handbook recommends the dire wolf as the ideal Greenbound animal at these levels, in this instance it's more effective (and thematically appropriate) to summon greenbound lions instead. Why? More attacks. Lions get Pounce, which includes two rakes. They also get Improved Grab and a rake on the same round -- and the Greenbound template raises Grapple modifiers by +4, before you add in STR increases which cumulate on that. The greenbound template raises all damage dice for natural attacks to 1d8 (lions are Large) and also adds a slam attack. Your Greenbound lion can charge, bite, 2 x claw, 2 x rake, and slam in the one round; more strikes means more crit chances. And that's all before you add in a Haste from the Evolved Undead template...

Lastly, you've also got free use of Entangle from the Greenbound. By RAW it makes "surrounding plants" grow to entangle the opposition, and greenbound changes the creature type to plant.

Melee:
If you're really determined to go to melee combat with the Ghostlord as a druid, well, it's going to get more complicated. We are still assuming an Evolved Undead Lich Druid 12 chassis. But take the Druidic Avenger variant. The Ghostlord doesn't have an animal companion anyway, and his whole "rage against the heavens" thing fits nicely with the Rage feature of the class.

Natural Spell stays in this build. You're definitely going to want Rapid Spell and Greenbound Summoning. You'll be memorising several Summon Nature's Ally spells since Avengers can't cast spontaneously. (Not much of a loss: when raging you can't cast spells and can't use metamagic anyway.) You'll also need to add a Wilding Clasp to the Ghostlord's gear, too.

Your basic strategy will be to spam allies at the start of the fight with greenbound summoning to block the party from hitting you in the first round, Wild Shape to something puissant (I've always wanted to use that word) then buff and debuff using the Evolved Undead's spell-like abilities before switching on Rage and moving in to attack. When the party moves in to try and swarm you, you back off, come out of Rage and start blasting with direct damage spells.

As discussed, this build is badly vulnerable to touch attacks or cure spells, so your chosen Wild Shape when on the defensive needs Life Ward, high DEX, or at least a high touch AC. On the offensive, it needs Spring Attack and a good melee attack roll; as a lich, your paralysis attack is the most effective weapon you've got, but it only operates once per round, so unless you've got a Wild Shape that can smash a player into the ground in one pass, there is no point hanging around to make full attacks.

I don't propose to go through an analysis of the best Wild Shape to take for any given situation; the Druid Handbook (http://http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=1354.0) does a sterling job at that. For defensive purposes, the Legendary Eagle with a touch AC of 21 jumps out at me since it's available at level 12. For offensive purposes, the Ironthorn doubles your paralysis attempts per round though it's not fast. Or indeed the Legendary Eagle itself since on offense your primary intent is to hit, paralyse and get the hell out of dodge.

(2) Nodezilla: If you have access to Champions of Ruin, Node Magic (and in particular, Node Magic feats) seriously augment the Ghostlord's casting capacity and effectiveness for less feats than the routes described above.

You can easily fiat the stone lion (or the chamber in which the fight's going to happen) as occupying the innermost layer of a Class 2 node or higher. If you have Node Spellcasting and Metanode Spell, your Fell Drain spells can be cast out of their normal, unaltered spell slots, as the node takes the increased spell level load that metamagic otherwise requires. That is, you cast metamagic'd spells and don't have to use up your higher level slots. This is free metamagic.

(There's also Node Store -- it allows you to chuck two spells of any level you can store inside the node itself and draw on it in combat. Very useful stuff since a Druid 12 is short on Level 6 spells in particular.)

As if that weren't cool enough, nodes themselves also grant a number of spells equal to its class of that class's level or less. (e.g. a Class 4 node grants 4 spells of fourth level or lower.) The granted spells are "usually" tied by "theme", which in practice means you can chuck any spell of the node's class level or lower in there -- divine, arcane, you name it. These spells are added to the Ghostlord's spell list. Think about it, just with a class 2 node. Any two extra spells to the druid list of second level or lower: Glitterdust. Grease. Magic Missile. Blood Wind. Shield. Improvisation.
The possibilities get better as the node's class level increases.

If the overall design of this section of the adventure was basically "Wow, that's unusual", then a caster who can effectively draw on the node should achieve that against even optimised parties (who won't even have taken Node Spellcasting).

Taking this route obviously means changing from the feat combinations mentioned above for blasting/summoning, but being able to Fell Drain any of your damage-dealing spells at zero metamagic cost all day long is gold when you're fighting from a fixed position as the Ghostlord is. And again, these benefits scale exponentially the higher the class of the node.

The only drawback is that this will burn up 2 feats (Node Spellcasting and Metanode Spell). Odds are on you'll have to go to flaws to make this all work.

Some choices and thoughts on metamagic feats:

Fell Drain. Thematic and effective. Best used on save-for-less-damage spells rather than save-for-no-damage.
Silent Spell. Silence effects are very pesky since you won't have much room to maneuver and the radius of the effect is big enough for a melee type to stand off outside your Antilife Shell and still deny you spellcasting.
Rapid Spell, if you haven't already got it, is extremely useful for summoning spells.
Sanctum Spell is a +1 DC to all spells. At the Ghostlord's character level the sanctum will be about 120 feet wide and high, which covers most of the stone lion's interior.
Heighten Spell might be handy, Empower Spell is not. Node Magic allows you to boost the ECL of a spell by up to the class of the node on a successful Spellcraft check, which obviates the need for Empower Spell.
Maximise Spell. +3 to spell level, in effect. Now consider putting the Ghostlord in the centre of a class 3 node, and making the Spellcraft check required to take a Flame Strike to its absolute maximum damage of 15d6. 90 damage against a level 8-9 party ought to impress someone. If nothing else, it's one hell of a way to end the encounter via self-immolation.
Chain Spell. Another +3 to spell level in effect. Now consider having the node grant you Shivering Touch.

(3) Fixing the blighter: Change Blighter casting to add levels of existing casting, re-open the original Druid casting, and add Blighter spells to the list. This at least preserves a blighter feel, although mechanically you could do much the same thing with a couple of extra levels of Druid. Under this variant, build as druid, again skipping melee options due to the fact that although the Ghostlord is no longer a purist blighter, he's still a purist undead.

(4) Evolved Undead Druid 5/Ur-Priest 7: Arguably the quickest and deadliest build for a straight out blasting cleric type, mostly because an Ur-Priest 7 has access to seventh level spells (albeit few unless you pump WIS). Under this build, the Ghostlord abandons nature entirely when he kills the lion cub, and from there takes the path of the Ur-Priest, denying all the gods. Obviously he's not even druidic anymore, but his effectiveness as a curbstomper increases and arguably Ur-Priest fits the Ghostlord's "abandon nature, become undead, go insane" shtick better than a blighter does. Note that Practiced Spellcaster is required for this build so the Ghostlord can build a phylactery at all, or Magic Knack if you're playing in Pathfinder.

Restatting Ulwai
The quick and dirty way to make Ulwai better is to give her another level in bard, change a couple of her spells, and don't use her unique bardic abilities. Why in the name of Gygax is any bard wandering around the landscape without Glitterdust, for crying out loud? (For that matter, how the hell is an effective 9th level bard still putting out only a +1 to Inspire Courage?) A single level of bard and picking Confusion makes her a dangerous spellcaster.

Fixing her more thoroughly requires turning her into a straight class bard and optimising with Dragonfire Inspiration or Inspire Courage in mind. The Stormsinger thing is flavourful, but at these levels it comes down to a very modest caster level boost and a single-target Lightning Bolt, neither of which are terribly inspiring to a level 9 party.

Discussing the module, James and Rich mentioned they built Ulwai like that for the coolness factor of "Wow, I didn't know a bard could do that" ... which is admirable, but if you're playing with a seasoned party, probably won't impress quite as much in combat. Fair enough, this "fix" will attract the argument that "she's not Ulwai anymore" -- but the Stormsinger PrC still alllows you to optimise IC and have the Thunderstrike. Alternatively, you could preserve the lightning theme by taking the right feats to make her Dragonfire Inspiration electricity themed, which would still be more effective than Thunderstrike.

If you're determined to preserve the Stormsinger flavour and you're against an optimised, seasoned, or large party, I recommend shoehorning in the Doomspeak feat from Champions of Ruin, fiated as a swift action (the action required is generally presumed as a standard action since it consumes a bardic music use, but the feat is silent on it by RAW.) Ulwai thereby becomes a lot more effective at least against melee types who try to punch her in the face because Doomspeak reduces their ability to hit her and resist her spells.

That said, Tiercel has an alternative take on rebuilding her which is a solid counterargument to the above:
I'm looking at Ulwai Stormcaller and I can't help but think that instead of "fixing" her by going more "traditional bard," that one could take the "this bard is different" thing up a little closer to 11. Mistress of Shock and Awe, if you will:

1) Dump Inspire Courage. (I can hear the outrage already.) Instead, go with Dragon Magic's Inspire Awe (gosh, is this a draconic campaign? I think it is); while PrCing out of bard will keep the higher-level improvements to the ability from kicking in, the DC still keys off her Perform check, just like her Stormsinger Thunderstrike ability does.

2) Give her Intimidate; I'd probably just fiat it in by swapping out Diplomacy (as per PHB customization guidelines). No more Little Miss Nice Ulwai. Never Outnumbered skill trick, Fearsome armor and Imperious Command from Drow of the Underdark: if Ulwai ever gets surrounded, she fear-novas: maxed Intimidate against everyone within 10' as a move action and then makes everyone save vs DC: her Perform check; as per Rules Compendium fear-stacking, this could keep anyone who fails both saves cowering as long as she keeps singing. (Or if she hands off her Awesome song to a Harmonizing weapon, whichever.) If she needs to be even more... metal... shall we say, give her a Pandemonic Silver weapon (Complete Warrior) with a Least Crystal of Return (MIC) to force even more fear checks (given that Ulwai can create wind effects due to her PrC; consider Quicken Spell Like Ability: gust of wind).

3) Forget one extra level of Bard, give Ulwai one extra level of Stormsinger. Stormsinger 5 lets her bust out control winds at CL 13 (CL 15 if it's cold or there's a storm), which she can increase winds from zero to hurricane strength if you keep it chilly inside the stone lion, or if there ARE stormy conditions, hello tornado strength winds http://www.d20srd.org/srd/weather.htm#winds , all in a 520' (or 600') radius. Abitrhiax's rampage in Brindol could be seriously upstaged by a flying Ulwai if she winds up there and goes into Living Tornado mode, tearing up the city and scattering defenders like tenpins.

Also taking Ulwai to Bard caster level 10 means that 4th-level Bard spells come online, like fear (if you want to play her fear-stacking to the hilt) or dimension door (what BBEG wouldn't want it?).

4) Torque more bardic options. Is having bardic knowledge +6 really helping Ulwai? No? How about Loresong (Dungeonscape) instead: +4 insight to saves as an immediate action 3/day. Yes please. (It's usable for more than just saves, but that's the obvious survivability play.) Also, it's both thematic and more survival for Ulwai if she is a Savage Bard (UA, SRD), giving her good Fort saves her first 5 levels.

After that, yes, fix up her spells (glitterdust is too useful, charm monster means Ulwai always has bruiser minions—bonus points if they can Intimidate as well for more fear-stacking, improvisation is all-around good and can be used to crank up her Perform checks to boot) and her equipment (MIC's mithralmist shirt is handy and thematically appropriate, any self respecting bard should have some kind of cloak of charisma—especially with offensive bardsong uses—plus a circlet of persuasion, and any BBEG should have a vest of resistance in order to, you know, not die - not to mention Ulwai should be packing a Bat-Utility-Belt of scrolls and wands for her souped-up UMD checks).

In combat, Ulwai tosses down fear and/or hammers the battlefield with windstorms while her charmed minions clean house. Those resistant to these ploys get glittered, get confused, UMD-Bat-Utility-Belted, or simply thunderstruck.

Oh, and you know that whole "Ulwai is a masterful liar, especially with Glibness cast" thing on the RHOD text? Well, considering she doesn't actually have any ranks in Bluff, you can presume this as another fine example of a WOTC statblock that matches neither the fluff nor the rules. Trade out Knowledge (Nature) for this skill.

Lastly, if you go with Node Magic as set out regarding the Ghostlord above, don't forget that Ulwai, as an evil spellcaster within the radius of the outermost layer of the node, can access higher caster levels for her spells as per the rules set out in Champions of Ruin. (i.e. she has to make an INT check.)

Restatting Varanthian

Leaving Varanthian as a (half) behir
Let's face it: overriding the dragon/behir hatred by having Varanthian as half-fiend is cheesy. That aside, she has the same drawback that all big solo D&D monsters do: a crippling deficit in the action economy. Opinions do vary wildly: many campaigns I've seen have Varanthian responsible for at least one PC death or serious injury, but in my own PbP she got one grapple in and then got royally clowned in a fusillade of melee. So this is one that does depend heavily on the experience of your players, and the size of your party.

Varanthian's spellcasting is weak, as is her breath attack: 7d6 line is a maximum of 42, assuming you've got one schmuck who stands right behind another one within 20 feet of her face. Her spellcasting comes down to a few random cleric debuffs, but nothing that affects more than one target at a time. Her flight speed is a joke at 20 feet per round. Adding spellcasting classes to her is a waste of time even with Practiced Spellcaster added in to take advantage of her 10 HD. But even then it's trying to put an airfoil on a bulldozer.

Her best attack combination seems to be "bite, grapple, swallow whole, cleave to bite and grapple again". To be fair, at levels 8-9 people generally aren't optimising towards ubergrappler builds and few characters will have built up a grapple modifier to beat her +27 check. Most of the time if she hits, she'll get a grapple going. The problem with this combination is that it takes more than one round. Varanthian can't start a grapple and then swallow or rake in the same round. And while she's grappling, she doesn't threaten squares and therefore can't make AoOs, thus making her ten-foot reach functionally useless as the rest of the party runs into strike range (or even charge) while she sits there with her face stuffed full of adventurer hot dog. Because she's Huge size, most people will realise she's got a ten foot reach, too, so you're unlikely to snag a caster this way. And that's before you consider the fact that while chomping on the party's cleric she has no DEX bonus to AC and therefore is open to sneak attack damage.

Some changes are therefore required for her not to be entirely hilarious:

Improved Spell Resistance
Improved Natural Attack (bite)
Increases to her natural armor via item, spell or feat.
Get her Freedom of Movement somehow. Slowing her even makes her single best attack combination functionally useless.
Give her Quicken Breath from the Draconomicon -- it makes breathing a free action, which might have some potential even in spite of the fact she only breathes once every 10 rounds and with the feat applied would breath once in every 14. This gives you a fear-inducing round of strike, grapple, and breathe lightning on the grappled target, since the breath weapon is coming from her mouth and either doesn't get a Reflex save or has a seriously nerfed one. This way at least you might imperil at least one character and force some respect from the party.
Houserule that she can rake a couple of times on the same round as she grapples - stock standard lions from the SRD can do this, so it's ludicrous that she can't.

Changing Varanthian to a dragon
It's a popular choice. The omission of a white dragon (or a fifth dragon of any kind) is a rather glaring omission on RHOD, and it's not exactly clear why the designers did it. A dragon makes the encounter far more interesting. Some options:

Abyssal drake (Draco, CR: 9), and change the Alertness feat. I find the combo: Flyby attack + Powerfull Charge + Power Dive nice: 1d6+9+poison+3d6+2d6+9. The poison has a DC of 20, with 2d6 Con damage. Adding Power Attack gives you a bit of extra damage (max +10). Using this combo: attacking every other round with 6d6+28 damage +poison. I like this option because of the background of the beast (wyvern, demon & red dragon), and it also refers to otherworldly help the RHoD gets, which hits at the portal.
Draconic Creature/Half Dragon/etc. (Draco; CR varies). Take a creature and slap a template or something like that on it.
Another Dragon (various books; CR varies). As said. White Dragon, perhaps, or Fang Dragons, Blue Dragons, etc. One option: Young Adult Half-White Fang Dragon.
Velroc (DM, CR 12), a bit tougher, but the 'Magic Distortion Aura' gives a nice twist on the encounter. Also, the dragon is CN, so not really in line with Tiamat.

One small note either way: if the players miss Varanthian for some reason, don't forget about her. She could make for a rather nice 'end of encounter' boss during the Streets of Blood encounter in the Battle of Brindol itself; RHOD suggests that she goes to rejoin the Red Hand proper rather than head back to the Fane, so it's a fair call that she'd be at the Battle of Brindol.

Restatting Red Hand operatives
What follows is chiefly commentary based on an experience with a party of eight who had solid scouting done ahead of time but no scouting of the room in which the Hand forces are present.

The Monks: If you've got Tome of Battle, you should change these guys to the unarmed swordsage variant. (Let's leave aside this is a general comment which can be made about monks in general.)

If you don't have Tome of Battle, the builds could still stand improvement as per the various guides around here for improving monks. Frankly, the three monks in the lion's mouth chamber could stand being turned into more straight melee classes like fighters, since their primary purpose is merely to survive for more than one round while one of them sounds the alarm to Ulwai in the halls below. In hindsight I'd have probably focused a little more on tactics or items that would've slowed the party down: tanglefoot bags, thunderstones to deafen and tell Ulwai that something's wrong, and so on.

To make any of the monks serious challengers to the party they will need several levels on them. Monk 4 (or Unarmed Swordsage 4) ain't impressing roughly level 8 or 9 players, no matter how many uber moves you pick up for them. Personally, I had Unarmed Swordsage 6 against a party of eight and they had singularly unimpressive experiences against the PCs.

Bear in mind also that you can build unique individuals within the unarmed swordsage concept. Consider the monks who are in the stone lion's "mouth" part of the cave: wouldn't it be nice to build them towards mastering out throws from the Setting Sun discipline, and then start chucking partymembers clean off the the stone lion (albeit this isn't likely to happen without serious upgrades on class levels and a relocation of the opposition to the lion's mouth itself.)

The Clerics: You would think, being tier one classes, the clerics in theory don't need major restatting. Clerics are nice right out of the box in D&D for a reason.

The problem is comparative levels. Level 3 hobgoblin clerics are mindblowingly overmatched to meaningfully debuff or engage a level 8-9 party of PCs. They can't cast Mass versions of any spells; they're down to a couple of level one spells and maybe a second level spell before they're out of action. If your party sets off some sort of alarm and allows the Hand forces here time to prepare, they'd probably be more useful, but with kick in the door parties on Haste there's no time for that.

They have scrolls ... of Summon Monster III which on the text they're required to use to bring hellhounds in against the party. These creatures are entirely underwhelming on the first encounter of the whole campaign, there is no reason to think they would be less so here. The clerics are also are useless in melee, comparatively speaking; their smite good feature merely gives them a slightly more spectacular means of failure (particularly against the neutrals of the party).

If you use the Blasphemous Incantation ACF from Exemplars of Evil, it gets a bit more interesting. 30 foot range supernatural ability in place of a Rebuke Undead ability in this case is an acceptable change: these guys aren't meant to last past this fight anyway.

If you're broadminded enough to recast their spell selection (i.e. to one that clerics on guard duty shouldn't really be memorising since they aren't expecting full-powered combat) then Incite and Inhibit from the Spell Compendium mess with the party's capacity to coordinate and manipulate the action economy. Close Wounds might give your NPCs one more round. Resurgence gives another chance at beating a save-or-suck. Hand of Divinity and Faith Healing both work on any of the hobgoblins here since they're all worshipers of Tiamat.

Having said that, two is probably pointless. They just don't cast anything strong enough to warrant both of them being there. If your party isn't pulling out one-shot kill strikes against Monk 4s by this stage, they're doing something wrong.

Replacing one cleric:
A Hobgoblin Warsoul (MM 5) with two out-of-the-SRD hobgoblin warriors to power up his Soul Tyrant ability makes for a much, much more interesting option: it decreases the (weak) divine casting capacity of the Hand forces, but gives the arcane casting capacity one hell of a boost -- the party at least has to target two arcanists rather than one. If you're not minded to add a couple of hobgoblin warriors into the mix, the Warsoul at least gives the useless monks a reason to live for a round or two (i.e. powering him up via Soul Tyrant.)

In terms of the Warsoul's spell selection and tactics: switch out one of his feats for Practiced Spellcaster; that raises him to a 10th level caster. Then go to town with debuffs -- Web-and-Fireball is a sniggerworthy scare for your players, and the Warsoul's Dimension Door will be handy if you had a mind to get Ulwai out of there and make an escape. If you want to add more bastardry to the equation, see the Nodezilla section of the Ghostlord sections above: give the Warsoul Node Spellcasting and your Warsoul can now potentially cast 13d6 Fireballs on a Spellcraft check.

Also bear in mind that if you've got a Warsoul who lasts more than a round, the entirely weird RHOD tactics of trying to keep the door shut and whatnot are utterly unnecessary. Have the Warsoul Web the door and the swordsages stooge around or charge up and then perform as much speedbump duty as possible.

Saintheart

2010-10-09, 09:34 AM

Part Four: The Battle of Brindol, sidequests, and other Elsir Vale encounters

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Se9d5Nle7s8/TVQpBmKf70I/AAAAAAAAAI4/PXzjS7NzX4o/s1600/The+Battle+of+Brindol.jpg

...No, we don't know why the giant's throwing rocks at the wall and not at the gate, either.

The Mercenary Gold and/or Marked for Death missions
Depending on how your party fares against the timeline, you might be better served setting these later in the piece rather than earlier.

For PbP campaigns, you might consider fusing these two encounters together, particularly where you have a party that needs to kill some time ahead of the Battle of Brindol. Escorting the gold to the Hammerfist Holds, even on the back of giant owls, is going to take about a week there and back. Better still if you have the party escort the gold via caravan, since this makes the party sitting ducks for the assassination squad that might originally be tasked with getting the gold rather than getting the party.

In either event AslanCross recommends replacing the regular hobgoblins with Hobgoblin Duskblades (MM 5). The Barghests usually don't need a big upgrade, with teleportation and greater bull's strength they at least can partially keep up with the party at this stage.

Training the garrison ahead of the battle
As indicated earlier, savvy parties will probably wind up back at Brindol well ahead of schedule. Sidequests from Brindol and the party's own crafting of course can take up part of the intervening time, but kjones found a novel way to try and avoid the whole "Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're out there raising the troops' morale, we're telling the kid with his dad's old sword how to swing it properly, but is there anything mathematically we're doing to help these morons?"

Yup. Under this option, when the players are in Brindol, awaiting the arrival of the Hand, they'll have the option to train the soldiers and militia, and prepare the defense of the city. They can do so in one of four ways - melee combat, ranged combat, defense and tactics, and first aid. These benefits then apply to any NPC allies you give to the characters as support during the Battle.

Here's how it works. For each day of training a character leads, they make a DC 25 check, with the following modifiers.

Melee combat: Base attack bonus + Strength modifier + Charisma modifier (and must have relevant proficiencies)
Ranged combat: Base attack bonus + Dex modifier + Charisma modifier (and must have relevant proficiencies)
Defense and Tactics: Base attack bonus + higher of Int or Wis modifier + Charisma modifier
First Aid: Heal skill + Charisma modifier
Magical Defense: Make a check with a bonus equal to caster level + relevant ability modifier.

A successful check means that they can put 1 point into that category. A failed roll means that they can retry in the same category at a cumulative +2 DC, or change categories (and someone else can take the bonus for that category if they want).

During the Battle of Brindol, they can spend their points on NPCs as follows:

Melee combat:

* 1 point: +1 to hit / +1 damage on a single attack roll

* 2 points: Grant the use of the Mobility feat for a single round

* 3 points: Automatically confirm a threat

Ranged combat:

* 1 point: +1 to hit / +1 damage on a single attack roll

* 2 points: +1 to the damage of a standard volley per archer (volleys as per Heroes of Battle)

* 3 points: +1 to the damage of a concentrated volley per archer

Defense and Tactics:

* 1 point: Before a combat, mark a single square as filled with rubble (difficult terrain)

* 2 points: Delay the arrival of enemy reinforcements for 1 round

* 3 points: Before a combat, place a single 5-foot section of waist-high palisade

First Aid:

* 1 point: Automatically succeed on a single DC 15 heal check.

* 2 points: An NPC gains the effects of Diehard for one round.

* 3 points: A stabilized NPC is disabled instead of unconscious.

Magical defense:

* 1 point: Add +1 to any saving throw against a magical effect.

* 2 points: An NPC gains the effects of Evasion or Mettle for a round.

* 3 points: An NPC gains the effects of Improved Evasion or Improved Mettle for a round.

The DCs are chosen so that a person skilled in that area should have about a 25% chance of making the check in a given day. Thus, if they're in Brindol for 20 days, they'll have an average of 25 or so points spread around. There are 5 main encounters in the Battle of Brindol, 3 of which involve NPCs prominently, so we're talking about 8 points per battle - that's enough for 2 or 3 cool things per battle.

The Audience with the Lords
This is the meet-and-greet you do with Brindol's lords ahead of the battle, when you're deciding strategy. A preface: this is probably the big roleplaying opportunity of the adventure. You should be pulling your hardest to make the party care about your NPCs in this meeting. Also, this encounter is the one where the players are most likely to come up with wild (or terrifyingly well-considered) plans to defend Brindol. If the players do so, honour those plans by having them make an impact on the battle in some way. I can't emphasise that enough. If your players are making those sorts of plans, it means they are invested in your game's world and you're succeeding in your primary job as a DM. I'm not saying let them win the entire battle before it happens, but at least tell them something like "The Red Hand would have fielded chimaeras in the battle, but since you burned up the meat trucks in the Hand's baggage train, the chimaeras left the Red Hand, so you won't be facing any of them in the battle."

There are three big problems with the encounter as written:

(1) Mechanically it's largely insignificant. It comes down to a series of Diplomacy rolls and the party gets a maximum of 8 VP if they choose right. If your party has skipped big sections of the adventure to this point, that will make a difference, but it's entirely possible to pass the "victory" line in terms of VP before the party sets foot in the Great Hall.

(2) The choices here as written don't make any difference whether you have the given encounters in the Battle of Brindol or not. Kharn will still try to step on a church in your town whether you stage the clerics there or not. The course of the battle is basically set.

(3) Some of the tactical "decisions" to be made are so blindingly obvious you'd have to be a Blathering Idiot 20 to get them wrong. I'm talking here in particular about (a) whether or not to station Brindol's entire army outside the walls and engage the Red Hand in the field, and (b) whether the lords have any sort of plan for the wall being breached. By this stage the lords will know they're heavily outnumbered and that the Red Hand is fielding dragons. Jarmaath is an ex-adventurer and fought Regiarix himself once, so he would be aware of the destructive capacity a dragon can bring to a battle. Engaging outside the walls breaks all suspension of disbelief for those reasons, as does the failure to even contemplate the walls falling or make contingency plans given the force against them.

So what to do? It seems to me there's three approaches one could take:

(1) Make the consequences of the Audience more strategically significant. Commit that the course of the battle, including where and how the encounters take place, actually hinges upon the decisions the lords make in this meeting. For example, no clerics holed up in the Cathedral means Kharn doesn't push for the Cathedral, but instead pushes for Brindol Keep, which is where the final battle takes place. Not recommended unless you've got a lot of spare time, but the five encounters can be window-dressed to take place in different locations without a lot of fuss.

(2) Make the consequences of the Audience more personally significant to the party.At Brindol you've got several NPCs that hopefully the characters have come to know. Set up choices for the players where they have to weigh up putting favourite NPCs at risk against added risks to themselves. The key is to give the players a choice that benefits the party personally but overall detracts from the city strategically (or indeed vice versa).

For example, the cleric decision: if you station all the clerics at the Cathedral, then they can heal people better (+2 VP), and Tredora Goldenbrow survives because she's not exposed to enemy fire, but healing potions available to the party in battle may be cut or entirely lost. The reverse applies if you station out the clerics: the party has more healing potions available, but Tredora Goldenbrow's going to die. (-2 VP)

(3) Make some cosmetic changes to the Audience so the more obvious decisions aren't quite so, well, obvious. For example, the decision whether to fight a field battle against the Red Hand becomes a decision whether or not to send the cavalry out to get a quick punch in against the army before retiring to the city gates. Still gets a -2 to VP if chosen, but nowhere near as asinine as putting Brindol's entire army out in front of the walls.

Streamlining the battle
Glyphstone came up with a novel approach to avoiding having to go through every melee encounter in the Battle and bring home to the party the sense that their decisions count. You can find the full discussion here (http://http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=218881&page=3).

Assume your players have 'done the right thing', by breaking the blockades near Rhest, recruiting the Tiri Kitor and the Dwarven Mercenaries.

There are four 'crisis points' during the Red Hand's initial assault - key attempts to breach the city or cause havoc amongst the defenders. At each point, the party can assign one of the four groups of allies they'd collected to deal with the problem, or go deal with it themselves. Every ally is effective against two of the problems, and ineffective against two - if they picked the wrong matchup, the Streets of Blood encounter becomes a bit harder.

(For this, there's an assumption that the Red Hand first tries assaulting the walls of Brindol with ladders and a big dose of cannon fodder, simply to overwhelm Brindol's troops.)

The dwarven mercenaries are effective against ground-based targets, and useless against airborne enemies.
The northern reinforcements (light cavalry) are best used against big targets, since they have a limited supply of javelins.
The elves are most useful against large numbers of smaller enemies, coordination and formation making up for the smaller damage of their projectiles.
Immerstal the Red is best-used where his ability to fly and use magic would have the most effect.

Dwarven Mercenaries
Northern Reinforcements
Tiri Kitor Elves
Immerstal the Red
Loss Effect on Streets of Blood

Initial Wall Assault
Win
Loss
Win
Loss
Extra Wave of Cannon Fodder

Hill Giant Battery
Win
Win
Loss
Loss
Random boulders falling on defenders

Manticores
Loss
Loss
Win
Win
Fewer friendly mooks

Abithriax
Loss
Win
Loss
Win
No barricade

Saving (or not) the Walls
Since playing this encounter through, I've come to the view that it does need some alteration -- but not necessarily to the monsters. In this encounter, what generates the tension and drama is the following question: Is the wall going to break?

On the 'book' RHOD, it won't. 25 rounds of uninterrupted throwing by the giants is never going to happen in a real campaign unless you have a Fail Party. Brindol's own troops can sally from the walls and statistically beat that time limit with crossbows just fishing for critical hits.

Therefore: you have to inject a real time constraint to the encounter. Two possible ways to do this: make the walls shakier, or make the monsters a bit more capable. (Or both, depending on your party).

Simplest fix I'd suggest: let the wall fall after 15 hits from boulders, give the Hill Giants a single level in Hulking Hurler (Complete Warrior), use that book's rules on thrown objects, and have two of the giants chuck real boulders at the PCs while the other two concentrate on breaking the wall as you describe audible CRACK noises from the wall as the boulders rain on it. The Hill Giants probably won't last any longer, but the players should sweat more.

Other ideas--

Skullcrusher Ogres and proper catapults: MM4 Skullcrusher Ogres present a more credible threat against the party than the default ogres here. Combining them with an actual siege engine makes things a bit more interesting. Or consider a Siege Golem out of Heroes of Battle for a living catapult - albeit its challenge rating and immunities mean there'll really be only one or two ways to kill it, which can be unfun.

Spell turrets: From the DMG 2. By RAW, a turret has loads more hitpoints and has to either be destroyed entirely or disabled by a rogue to be stopped. However, also by RAW, spell turrets have a "radar" limited to 120 feet and don't target objects. And that's before you have to find four spells, each of a different school, all of the same level, that damage objects at Long range. It's like looking for a word that rhymes with "orange."

More troops: Another ten-odd hobgoblin squaddies might function as speedbumps against the big or well-optimised party.

The Batman Gambit: Play this encounter as the Red Hand's attempt to draw off high level adventurers from the West Gate, which is the Hand's real target -- or as a distraction to get Abithriax above the city unopposed. This makes Abithriax's role a bit bigger in the story and makes his use in the battle a bit less random.

Abithriax's Rampage
Leaving aside the fun and games of trying to build a whole section of a city to have combat over, the general dragon advice applies - you can and should switch out a lot of Abby's feats. He's Large, but given most experiences he can easily stand to be upgunned to Huge -- i.e. young adult or even adult if you're dealing with a big/optimised party.

Possibly the easiest way to make the fight a little more challenging is to have it take place over (or in) a section of town that's on fire -- not because of the fires as such, but because of the smoke that comes with a fire. Fort saves for all PCs, starting at DC 15, increasing in difficulty round by round, imposing no actual effect to be cured by a pesky cleric, makes things much more interesting. After all,you've fiated that smoky-nosed dragons are immune to smoke as well as fire, haven't you? And then there's the 20% concealment chance; you won't be making icky melee attacks, or if you do, you'll surely have cast Blindsight from a scroll first.

Tactically, your aim should be to skirmish and wear the party down by attrition. There's very little chance Abithriax will have the opportunity to get a full attack option off, so just breathe, then break contact with the party until you're ready to breathe again, or just hit with a single bite attack before moving on. You could take this fight all over the city and annoy the snot out of your players if you use double moves or better to best advantage. At least use your 150 foot movement allowance per round to make huge jumps around the battlefield, and remember you can hide behind buildings since the wall of Brindol is 30 feet high, buildings are between 10 and 25 feet therefore, and you are a 10 foot high dragon at best. No line of sight means no line of effect.

Awesome Blow, Flyby Attack, Wingover, and Power Attack can be dispensed with. (Abithriax doesn't have a two-handed weapon, so why bother?) By way of replacement, consider Knowledge Devotion and a couple of metabreath feats. Empower Supernatural Ability (Tome of Magic) will make your breath more potent without increasing its recharge time. Possibly Improved Initiative as well if you can fit it in there.

And if like most of us you're irritated by the "suicide by adventurer" that Abby is required to do on RHOD's text, provide a reason for it: Final Strike out of Savage Species for a post-death raised middle finger to the party. :smallbiggrin:

For magic: Wings of Cover, Nerveskitter, Conviction, Scintillating Scales, Blood Wind, and anything else that a red dragon with access to both the cleric and arcane lists should use.

The Streets of Blood encounter
Modifications to this encounter are going to vary substantially depending on party numbers, optimisation, and collective battle nous of your players. It doesn't necessarily require vastly upgrading monsters; as written this encounter is meant to contain a small crop of NPC allies including elves, owls, and Lions of Brindol, so one way to raise the difficulty level is to just cut NPCs and thus focus the monsters' firepower on fewer targets. Depending on how effective the party's been, they'll be facing between three and five waves of troops, though assuming the party doesn't metagame you could just throw five waves at the party even if they've foiled the Hand's efforts in Rhest and with the Ghostlord. The main thing to remember is this: like all the others prior to the final confrontation with Kharn, this encounter is only meant to wear down the party's resources, not TPK them.

A lot of DMs seem to instinctively realise that the third wave (or the last wave in any event) should reach some sort of crescendo with a pretty decent opponent thrown at the party. AslanCross in Eberron went for a Warforged Titan; another popular suggestion is to replace the Bluespawn Thunderlizards with a straight out Bluespawn Godslayer. This same suggestion is a bit controversial, since whilst a godslayer's certainly thematically appropriate, it's also a pretty powerful option -- perhaps even anticlimactic given the party still has to fight Kharn. Personally, I'd reserve any Godslayer for the Fane of Tiamat, where it has a more dramatic impact.

Another way to enhance the difficulty here is to widen the street a bit and just swarm the party. Raise the number of monsters who are just running to get to the far end of the street rather than engage. The party loses this encounter if 20 monsters get to the far end of the street, and if they have to move more than five feet, full attacks at least disappear.

The Sniper Attack
Fixing the Kulkor Zhul War Adepts:
Bearing in mind that the players still have two encounters to go, you might not greatly alter the adepts. Their main purpose is to inconvenience the party long enough for Skather to get his buff on, so they don't need to really be rebuilt as such. The only real change needed is to their spells. One possibility is to replace one of their Lightning Bolts with Shatterfloor -- difficult terrain all around makes thing a bit more interesting. But I suggest you substitute one of their first level spells for Sticky Floor from Races of the Dragon. It has a low-ish Reflex save to prevent being stuck in place ... but even if they save, party members are considered entangled while they're in the area of that spell: move at half speed, -2 to attack rolls, and -4 to DEX ... which affects Reflex saves, AC, and Initiative, synergising nicely with the casters' lightning bolts. Thematic and appropriate. Coating the open areas of floor with a few of these effects is logical stuff for an emplaced hit squad to do -- it slows down intruders until the hobgoblins have time to beat it.

Another possibility is to replace one of the adepts with a reasonably high level Swordsage for more martial protection. Or: backing up Skather with one or two Ghost-Faced Killer builds equipped with a couple of invisibility potions to get them into range. GFKs are generally overlooked for PCs because most opponents you face will have more HD than your GFK class level, which cuts down on their fear-blasting features. That may not be the case if you have a GFK 6 or so who has a CHA-boosting item and a couple of bloodline levels -- the PCs should have around 8-9 HD at this point, and generally no items granting fear immunity. Two GFKs overlapping their fear assaults could be devastating since fear attacks stack.

Fixing Skather:
As written, Skather is just plain old underwhelming: a cut and paste Blackspawn Exterminator from the MM IV, with an alleged CR of 10 and a suck value of A+ since he relies on 6 levels in ninja for most of his combat skills. (He also gets one more attack than seems possible by the rules, but hey, that's WOTC for ya.) He can poison, but it's subpar: at these levels, parties' saves are usually too high or too buffable for sassone leaf residue poison with a DC 16 to make an impact.

The solution to this problem is drawn from the Poisoner's Handbook (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=2714.0). Take a stock blackspawn raider from RHOD and add one of the following builds:

Rogue 2/Assassin 5. Feat selections (using 1 flaw): Weapon Finesse, Master of Poisons, Poison Expert, Poison Master, Venomous Strike, Staggering Strike, Terrifying Strike - swap out Power Attack, Track, and Improved Initiative. Replace his poisons with Black Lotus Extract, and an Assassination short sword (along with other refinements the Poisoner Handbook suggests to his weapon).

You now have a character who can reliably apply poisons to his weapons as a swift action. Increased Virulence, Poison Expert, Venomous Strike, and the Assassination properties of the weapon raise the DC by 8, on top of an indirect -4 to saves that Terrifying Strike and Staggering Strike impose. Even sassone leaf residue is looking a bit more impressive at DC 24 rather than DC 16. And Black Lotus starts at DC 20, does 3d6 Con damage primary which affects Fort saves...before the Assassin's Death Attack kicks in.

Of course, Death Attack is going to be tricky to arrange unless you can keep Skather hidden from the party for 3 rounds while they're in the same room as him. This can be fixed by giving a mostly-spent Wand of Deathsight (Complete Mage). And you've got +4d6 sneak attack damage; spellcasting which includes True Strike and Obscuring Mist; Evasion; Improved Uncanny Dodge; and all the rest. For one more HD than his RHOD counterpart.

Duskblade 7. This build is more "tank and spank" with a poisonous flavour. Feat selections (again, using 1 flaw): Master of Poisons, Improved Initiative, Power Attack, Draconic Aura (energy: acid) traded for Track, Poison Spell, Smiting Spell, Knowledge Devotion, and Combat Expertise.

Make his falchion a whirling weapon. Give him a few doses of Black Lotus or Darklight Brew. He can still poison his weapon as a swift action, but also channel stuff like Chill Touch with Poison Spell metamagic'd into it, resulting in multiple poisonings on one pass -- from the weapon and the spell. And then Smiting Spell, which gives you one more poisonous touch spell a round. And he also has a 7d4 breath weapon at DC 19 if you really needed it.

Did I also mention that Dimension Hop can be channelled and that Skather is operating on the second floor of a building? Or that he has Knowledge Devotion, and that Knowledge (Local) covers pretty well every PC in existence since most are humanoids? Or that a falchion's a two-handed weapon and thus synergises with Power Attack?

For a large party, it might actually be worth taking both the above builds: the Duskblade "Skather" engages the party while an "assassin" Skather hides and waits for his moment with the Death Attack.

Built like this, Skather becomes a very rich, in WBL terms, opponent. Poisons are expensive, as are custom magic items, so you might want to restrain yourself on equipment elsewhere.

Don't go an archer build. There's no point (and no pun intended, either.) You can achieve the fact of Skather being an archer sniper by throwing a plain old bow and arrows amongst his gear.

Restatting Wyrmlord Kharn
Kharn seems to need restatting on most people's experiences of the campaign. This is mostly because he gets most of his levels from a "meh" (technical term there) class, and then for an encore goes on to PrC into a similarly "meh" class.

Most specifically, with a hitpoint count of 68 points, he's well and truly within possibility of being one-shotted by even a half-optimised barbarian build. Not that rebuilding him is all about the hitpoints, but he needs to be a warrior befitting the leadership of a rampaging army. That is, controlling the action economy, decent attack accuracy, and credible damage to PCs.

Tome of Battle, once again, is your friend. The general consensus is that Kharn does well as a Ruby Knight WINVindicator: the PrC preserves most of your divine spellcasting levels and advances martial maneuvers.

The two shortest paths into RKV are via cleric or paladin. The difference fundamentally comes down to whether you want to keep full cleric versatility on spells, or go down the path of Battle Blessing from Complete Champion and rely on quick casting of Paladin spells and a somewhat higher baseline BAB.

Builds using Tome of Battle:

Crusader 1/Cleric 4/Ruby Knight Vindicator 5. (Needs a refluff because RKV is solely a Wee Jas PrC on the prerequisites, but other than that, this is one of the more popular builds. If you really want to make your players cry, give Kharn two more levels to reach RKV 7, which unlocks the PrC’s most powerful and possibly most abused class feature: Divine Impetus, allowing you to get additional swift actions per round by expending turn undead attempts.)
Crusader 1/Paladin of Tyranny 4/Ruby Knight Vindicator 5. (This one’s more devoted to getting a higher BAB at the expense of versatility with your spells. Has to be a Paladin of Tyranny because of the alignment issue. If you’re going down this line, as mentioned, I'd strongly recommend Battle Blessing from Complete Champion. The feat lets you cast most paladin spells as swift actions – that’s basically Divine Metamagic (Quicken) for paladins without spending turn undead attempts. The Spell Compendium is a must for this build, since it considerably expands the paladin’s selection.)
Cleric 3/Crusader 2/Ruby Knight Vindicator 5. Nice alternate if you want a different feel to Kharn. Domains: Trickery, Domination. Feats: Power Attack, Spell Focus (Enchantment)--Bonus from Domination Domain, Divine Defiance, Divine Vigor, Practiced Spellcaster. Here the maneuvers focus on high-damage blasters, like Divine Surge, which gives Kharn a different focus than just being the most uber fighter on the field.
Crusader 10 or Warblade 10. Don't make Kharn one of these. Even Kharn in his RHOD "book" form has spellcasting options, and he's the only one in the encounter who's got them.

(In passing, by way of refluffing the Ruby Knight Vindicator to the Eberron world, AslanCross came up with arguably one of the best-sounding alternative titles for an Tiamat-based RKV: the Knight of Five Sorrows, which just sings with High Fantasy and locks in with Tiamat's five ... well, you get it. I thoroughly recommend y'all steal that title for Kharn in your own campaigns. :smallwink:)

Builds not using Tome of Battle:

Cleric 4/Ordained Champion 5/X 1. (Ordained Champion functions like a Paladin … only better. "X", of course, standing for any class you feel like.)
Paladin of Tyranny 7/Blackguard 4. Extra two levels are in here because Paladin of Tyranny can't qualify for Blackguard until he's got enough Hide ranks on him. (Although a better name for this build is “Paladin of Heisenberg’s Cheese”. A Paladin of Tyranny has levels in “paladin” and thus qualifies to “fall” and become a blackguard. Thus on RAW he gets all the extra benefits ex-paladins get. But in doing so, a Paladin of Tyranny never commits a good act and does not contravene his code of conduct. Therefore he never “falls”, thus retaining all his Paladin of Tyranny class abilities and spells and adding in all the blackguard’s abilities, which effectively means double the normal spells per day, and several more Smite Goods than he should otherwise have. It is literally the RAW best of three worlds, since he keeps all his paladin abilities, gets bonuses for not being a paladin anymore, and gets blackguard levels.) Vorteld teamed one of these guys up with a Redspawn Firebelcher, and it apparently made for an interesting fight.
Favored Soul 10. (Nothing that fantastic to write home about, but it’s an improvement on splitting his levels up between Favored Soul and Talon of Tiamat.) For building better Favored Souls, consider these (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=152070) two (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=174133) GITP threads.
Cleric 10. (CoDzilla being the operative build here. And strictly speaking more powerful than at least two of the options above. It would maybe rate higher if only for the fact this doesn't make Kharn that much different to Azarr Kul, and it's important to keep the Wyrmlords distinct from one another.)

Here's a sample Kharn build, from kjones' campaign:

Wyrmlord Hravek Kharn, CR 9
Male hobgoblin Crusader 1 / Cleric 4 / Ruby Knight Vindicator 4
LE Medium Humanoid (goblinoid)
Init +4
Senses darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision; Listen +3, Spot +3
Languages Common, Draconic, Goblin, Infernal

AC 24, touch 10, flat-footed 24 (29)
HP 66 (9 HD)
Resist fire 5 (cold 10)
F/R/W +12/+6/+7
(+17/+11/+12)

Speed 20 ft.
Melee +1 wounding heavy pick +12/+7 (1d6 + 4 + 1 Con / x4)
(+16/+11 [1d6 + 7 + 1 Con / x4] )
Base Atk +8/+3 Grp +11 (+13)
Maneuvers
7 known 2 readied 2 stances

4th: White Raven Strike (+4d6 damage, target becomes flat-footed)
3rd: Revitalizing Strike (You or ally heals 3d6 + 7)
2nd: Shield Block (+8 to AC for adjacent ally)
Tactical Strike (+2d6 damage, adjacent allies move 5 feet)
1st: Vanguard Strike (allies gain +4 bonus on attacks against target)
Stone Bones (DR 5/adamantine)
Crusader's Strike (heal 1d6+5)

Stances
Leading the Charge (+7 damage to charges)
Martial Spirit (+2 HP / hit)

Spells (CL 7, domains Destruction, Evil)
4th (1 + 1, DC 17):
Unholy Blight*, Air Walk
3rd: (3+1, DC 16):
Magic Circle Against Good*, Wind Wall, Invisibility Purge, Dispel Magic
2nd: (4+1, DC 15):
Shatter*, Bull's Strength+, Resist Energy (cold)+, Bear's Endurance
1st (5+1, DC 14):
Protection from Good*+, Shield of Faith+, Conviction+, Remove Fear, Divine Favor+, Bless

*: Domain spell
+: Already cast, currently active

Other Special Attacks
Smite (+4 to hit, +4 to damage) 1/day
Divine Recovery (Recover a maneuver as a swift action 6/day)
Furious Counterstrike
Steely Resolve 5

Equipment 2 potions of cure serious wounds, potion of fly, potion of remove blindness/deafness, potion of lesser restoration

Abilities Str 16 (20), Dex 8, Con 14, Int 10, Wis 16, Cha 16

Skills Concentration +15, Intimidate +11, Knowledge (Religion) +8, Hide +3

Feats Power Attack, Survivor's Luck, Unbelievable Luck, Lucky Start (4 luck rerolls, apply to init, saves)

Possessions combat gear, +2 red dragoncraft full plate, +1 light fortification heavy steel shield, +1 wounding heavy pick, masterwork light crossbow with 20 bolts, gauntlets of ogre power, cloak of resistance +2, ring of protection +1

Bear in mind this "Kharn" template is down one level on the RHOD standard because he was resurrected from a PC-led assassination earlier in the campaign. Even so; you get CL 7 and maneuvers as a 7th level Crusader - that is, just access to level 4 maneuvers & spells (remember, classes other than martial adepts count for 1/2 an IL). Even though it gets him slightly fewer skills and HP, it'll give him ability to pick 2nd level maneuvers on level 1 of Crusader (as he only gets 2 new maneuvers out of Ruby Knight, bulk of his maneuvers are going to come from level 1 of Crusader so not being limited to level 1 on them is very good).

He needs some support!
Perhaps the biggest issue with this encounter is the lack of spellcasting allies. If the Battle's been going right, then hopefully your divine or arcane spellcasters will have largely shot their bolts on other challenges, bringing this fight down to a real grind of low-level spells. But generally parties are savvy enough to hold back at least one nuke in the backpack to mess with what seems to be the End-Of-Level boss, and Kharn is pretty much the definition of that. Having extra melee combatants helps a little -- I like Hill Giants with levels in Hulking Hurler and War Hulk -- but melee combatants are woefully underprepared for Will-blasting spells in particular. In my view, against a large party in particular and against an optimised party, Kharn does need some spellcasting backup to make up for a distinct disadvantage on the action economy, be it a couple of cleric casters or an arcanist or two -- someone who can at least intercept the party's Ray of Stupidity with a Dispel Magic or similar.

Saintheart

2010-10-09, 09:35 AM

Part Five: the Fane of Tiamat (and beyond)

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--l3UjEHwUPM/TVQxItTj0GI/AAAAAAAAAI8/XnJ_WnfHTZE/s1600/The+Fane+of+Tiamat.jpg
Ya think they got her best side?

Just why the hell did he do all this?
One question that might have occurred to your party over the adventure is: wouldn't you prefer to have demons from Avernus buttressing your army? Why wouldn't Azarr Kul delay his campaign against Elsir Vale until he had completed the month-long but otherwise almost-complete ritual?

The best answer DMs have come up with out here is to tell the players that the Battle of Brindol was part of the ritual.

The portal Kul is working on is not your Daddy's Gate. Kul isn't high level enough to cast the latter spell, and sure as hell isn't powerful enough to persist let alone make permanent a door to Avernus. Therefore: the ritual creating the portal requires a very, very large blood sacrifice in Tiamat's name. That sacrifice was made in the Red Hand's assault on Brindol: win or lose, many hobgoblins lost their lives on the city's wall, and every drop of blood shed was part payment of the price to open the doorway. This then partially explains the Hand's fanatical devotion to Tiamat: not because the Hand at large knows Kul's plan, but that only a sacrifice of enough followers will be sufficient for the ritual to be completed. (Also compare the Eberron adaptation, which raises the stakes of the conflict much, much higher by dint of the setting's lore.)

This solution is a nice if cruel twist on the characters' expectations of victory at Brindol. Whether they lost or triumphed, they still played into Azarr Khul's plans. It also plays into Azarr Kul's character as a priest of Tiamat, whose domains include Trickery -- as he deceived his entire people, who did not realise they were being thrown into battle for ulterior motives. As to how this information is revealed, it might be best to give Kul a monologue on the subject, or some helpful soul at the Fane who can be locked down to disclose this development. Ulwai shouldn't know this aspect of the plan, since it all but invites the players to run straight to the Fane and bust the door down there.

Rebuilding the Fane of Tiamat
The Fane is a bit of a weird postscript to the Battle of Brindol. Some DMs have been so underwhelmed with it that they've actually just slung Azarr Kul directly into the Battle of Brindol and leave the overall climax of the adventure right there. Others have literally run it back to front - allowed the players to rip up the Fane entirely and then run back to finish off the Red Hand's main force at Brindol.

There's any number of reasons why (the chief one being that the Battle of Brindol is a pretty powerful climax all on its own) but one of the campaign journalists put their finger on it: compared with the rest of the "dungeons" in the game, the Fane is very large and contains a number of encounters that don't really add anything to it. One example (and usually first up for DMly deletion) is Laryssa, the Night Hag the party encounters in the kitchen. Yeah, it shows the Fane is a "working environment"; yeah, it's a Night Hag; yeah, you might get a laugh if a dumb PC brews up a tea out of her nail clippings, but, well, so what?

Another element that makes the Fane a little cheesy is the dictum from the module that "monsters only trigger when you enter their room". It's like something out of Terry Pratchett, an echo of every bad videogame AI you've ever played. Whatever suspension of disbelief the writers were going for gets smashed. These are meant to be the most elite troops Azarr Kul's got, and they're all "Lugz only get paid to stare at doorway. Lugz don't care if dragon yelling 'intruders!'" Of course, there's a balance issue to be considered since swarming the PCs with every guard in the place is also most likely to be fatal to them. (On the other hand, if your party's optimised or ready to handle it, swarming them with every guard in the place, in an appropriate spot like the temple, might actually turn out moderately awesome.)

The solution is straightforward: cut down the size of the Fane and streamline it, and play up more forcefully the countdown to doom, accelerating the timetable before the portal opens and making it known to the players.

The entire dungeon then draws its strength from the urgency of the PCs' mission. As with the 'Saving the Walls' encounter back in the Battle, and as with RHOD as a whole, the countdown to the portal opening should be apparent and inexorable. This approach turns a "15 minute adventuring day" against the party, because the players won't have time to stop and fully recharge the batteries of their boots built for wading in blood.

The following things could be included:

* Tyrgarun, of course, and the trap on the front door
* The foyer, more heavily defended
* The torture chamber, more or less unchanged
* The barracks and the priest's chambers, merged into a single area somehow
* The temple, guarded by the dragonspawn from the cave (Or indeed if you're going to rush the party with a big bunch of guards, this seems a thematic place to do it)
* The treasury, guarded by the barbed devil, combined with the bedchamber - put the erinyes in the Inner Sanctum with Khul himself
* The inner sanctum, of course

This leaves out the kitchen, eliminates the altar beneath the Inner Sanctum, removes the cave (not thrilled about this, but I like the temple and wyverns are just lame at this level), and merges the barracks and the priest quarters. I think this would result in a much tighter, more satisfying Chapter V.

Here's some funky ideas that folks came up with for redesigning the Fane, too:

Make the Fane itself mostly deserted. Maybe every so often the PCs could encounter a band of hobbo guards, but they'd be terrified and probably just refuse to fight because: Azar Kul has, knowing that the PCs are coming, sped up the ritual. As a sideeffect, the portal has begun to spit out fiends at random points throughout the fane. Because of DM handwavium ("unpredictable magical energies, whatever), these fiends are mostly demons, which means they've pretty much been tearing the place apart.

Some parts of the Fane just lead straight into Hell. The PCs would have to navigate the infernal environments. Although I realize it's cliche as hell, I can see them having to pass through several gates, each of which requires defeating a guardian in a battle that revolves around some gimmick, be it mental environment manipulation, riddles, whatever. The guardians would be devils, hyped up superhobbos, teams of spawn of Tiamat assassins, hordes of raving goblin cultist, bugbear ninja, etc.

The final gate leads back to the Material Plane. Azar Kul and the actual portal exist in a sort of "eye of the storm" situation. The PCs can see crackling hellish energies within spitting distance as they fight Teh BossMonster.

If you keep the cavern, increase its size and throw a Bluespawn Godslayer at the party here.

One significant element to bear in mind is this: as written, the Fane and Azarr Kul are wide open to scry-and-die tactics. Even on the authors' own estimation, RHOD is meant to top out at level 10. By that stage Scry and Teleport have come online. There is no mechanical element that keeps the party from teleporting in and nova'ing Kul in a round or so. While this can be rather useful if you'd honestly rather cut past all of the Fane encounters and go direct to Kul himself, if you want to take the party through the Fane you're going to have to come up with some kind of funky handwavium to keep the casters out (and it'll need to be a more solid piece of handwavium than faezress, since that only causes teleport errors ... and the cure for a Teleport error is invariably just to cast another Teleport.)

And because they're just awesome and specific, AslanCross's changes made to the Fane:

I really dislike the Night Hag encounter. It seems to me like a half-hearted attempt at levity in the final leg of the adventure. I prefer to keep the Fane spooky and very intimidating. I took it out and replaced it with a Naztharune Rakshasa assassin (it fit the story of one of my party's characters: his wife was murdered back home by a Rakshasa that was working with Azarr Kul).

As for what to add, I had the battle with Tyrgarun happen along a bridge that crosses the canyon. Naturally, a narrow, rickety, hanging bridge.

I also threw out the Blackspawn and replaced them all with multiple devils: mostly legion devils and chain devils. Chain devils are FANTASTIC for the barracks room due to the large number of meat chains hanging from the ceiling.

I also dramatically increased the power of the Bone Devil by giving him class levels, though in my run he wasn't meant to be a combat encounter. He gave the PCs a deal, offering to step out of the way if they took out the Glabrezu at the other end of the complex (I put the Glabrezu's prison chamber beyond the priest cells).

I also added a very annoying spell turret in the center of the main hallway of the Upper Fane, along with an Iron Golem (had to challenge my party due to it being fairly optimized and having 5 members; I do not recommend this for weaker parties). The Iron Golem was draconic in design (shaped like a Large half-dragon humanoid) and dealt slashing damage instead of bludgeoning thanks to enormous claws. It was actually left there by the original creators of the Fane. Thanks to a couple of deadly run-ins with it, the Red Hand squatters decided to just leave the golem alone and chose paths that circumvent it instead (there are many).

I also disliked how empty the council room was. I piled up lots of books on the table and had a very large map of Eberron pinned onto it. The giant Pentagram depicting the planar seal was drawn on it, with the Fane of Tiamat as one of the star's points. The map meant that there were other Fanes, and thus more locations for Azarr Kul to raid and perform his rituals at.

To make this room more interesting, I added a very large throne in a corner. It was big enough for an ogre. What for? You'll see later.

To round off the council chamber, I added a fire summoning trap (DMG 2). It basically incinerated the entire room along with the documents, and dropped a Fire elemental on the PCs. The trap was in Azarr Kul's throne.

Instead of wyverns, I put in a single Abyssal Drake in the Great Temple of Tiamat, along with mezzoloths and canoloths. Cloudkill as a spell-like ability is AWESOME.

What's a final dungeon populated by Spawn of Tiamat without a Bluespawn Godslayer? I replaced the razorfiends with this single butt-kicker. I dramatically increased the size of the Cavern of the Guardian Spawn, putting the eastern half on a rock shelf 200 feet up. The PCs had to scale a rickety, dangerous ladder to get up to the tunnel to the Outer Sanctum.

This ladder had a Blackspawn Stalker's web all around it. The Stalker itself was waiting on top beside the Godslayer.

Remember that throne in the council chamber? The really big one? For the Outer Sanctum, I added one last Rakshasa in it along with the lesser clerics and a hobgoblin crusader of Tiamat. (In Eberron, Tiamat's cult is primarily run by Rakshasas; particularly favored ones undertake a ritual that turns them into powerful half-dragon rakshasas.) This one was one of them: A large, half bronze-dragon Naityan rakshasa with swordsage levels. (Dragons in Eberron aren't alignment-color coded.)

Restatting Tyrgarun
By this point, at least on most people's experiences thus far, you shouldn't need to upgrade this dragon. He's older and has more abilities than the youngsters encountered elsewhere, so the fight with Tyrgarun shouldn't need a lot of reworking to the dragon himself.

Even so, there's an intriguing opportunity for bastardry available here. Remember how the module says that if you haven't been diligent in killing dragons, they'll show up again here? Well, suppose the party has been killing dragons but hasn't been doing much damage to the corpses...

Consider, in other words, having zombie Ozyrrandion and zombie Regiarix showing up here to support Tyrgarun in battle.

Restatting Azarr Kul and/or the Aspect
Azarr KulSimilar considerations to Kharn and the Ghostlord really arise here. The final battle in the Fane is still one that hands a significant advantage in the action economy to the party: Kul gets two erinyes here but nobody else to defend himself. For a party that has access to fifth-level spells (given they'll be level 10 or 11 at this point) you can only raise an eyebrow at James and Rich's assertion that a single Antilife Shell is going to hold back a party for enough rounds to get his buff fully on. Simply put, it won't.

So again you're faced with a killing jar and no meaningful spellcaster support. How to deal with these?

One option -- which my DMing partner and I roughed out but never got down to figures or playtesting -- was to make the five dragon heads of the room have more functions than just supplying geysers of energy. We'd thought they themselves could have damage, buffs, or debuffs for Kul based on the colour of the head: the red head might supply [fire] immunity, and so on. The heads, though, could be dispelled or disabled, thus giving some party members something to do in the battle other than cast or kill things. As the heads came down, Kul's vulnerability increases.

Another option we came up with was to toss a bunch of Legion Devils (FF 2 I think) into the room every few rounds to keep up the melee pressure, and throw a Cornugon at the party as well. Khul himself I tried to change from an ordinary cleric into a wand wielder themed on elemental damage to get the whole "five heads of Tiamat" going, but for various reasons this was never tested in combat.

And one other choice is to fiat your way through it somewhat by giving Khul a 'super potion' of some kind that lets him put all his buffs on in one round, and support him with five lower-levelled copies of himself, each focusing on blasting and Dispel Magic with an elemental theme to each.

I think it's important to prepare for and take account of fifth-level magic and yet make Kul unique and memorable. That's may well take both spellcasting and melee support for him: even as a Cleric 11 (and realistically there aren't many better builds than this for him) there is no way he can face off on his own against four or more level 10 characters. I think this is one of the hardest tasks in D&D to make the fight close and interesting: fifth level magic whether arcane or divine has a fair amount of rocket tag to it, and you need to bear that in mind as you go.

The Aspect of TiamatOne thought here is rather than have the Aspect drop through the portal, to rather do the whole 'This isn't even my final form' thing with Azarr Khul and have him morph into the Aspect.

But again: for all its finery, it's still a big, solo monster. With all that entails. Some people have complaints about how weak the Aspect actually is, in which case upgrading or using Endarire's rebuild may well suit your recipe a lot better. Me, I skipped the Aspect altogether and instead stole a moment from the climax of the Dragonlance novel Dragons of Spring Dawning -- letting the heroes get a glimpse of Tiamat Herself as she desperately tries to claw her way onto the Prime Material Plane, letting them think they've failed -- and then the portal slams shut.

And The Adventure Continues
As something of a postscript, what are some thoughts for where characters can go after having killed Azarr Khul and/or the Aspect of Tiamat?

Some suggestions people have made based on a 10th to 11th level party by the end of the adventure:

Scales of War, being a 4e adventure path that follows on from RHOD, although obviously it would require back-conversion.
Expedition to Castle Ravenloft. Roughly level-appropriate, and if you wanted to pull some kind of "the planes themselves are put out of alignment as the Aspect dies and the portal to Avernus closes, and with a sudden darkness, you find yourself ... somewhere..." Ravenloft is a lovely place to wind up. :)
Someone with clearly a very sick sense of humour suggested the Tomb of Horrors. :smallbiggrin:
Expedition to the Demonweb Pits. Jair Barik had some good thoughts on the transition to this: go with an ending of "the players jump into a portal and end up in Sigil", which allows you to segue into EttDP with the motive of getting home rather than just being out to get evil -- or alternatively, just give the players some downtime after RHoD and let their climactic battles there fade back a bit, since EttDP just starts off with fairly deadly opposition to begin with. There are some nice thematic concordances with the two campaigns - notably, more Aspects, and the players dealing with Demons rather than Devils from the RHoD Fane and consequently some plot intrigue stemming out of the Blood War.
Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil.

Other plot hooks you could draw from:

Clean up. While Azarr Kul and Hravek Kharn may be dead, the Horde is far from gone: while scattered, hobgoblins and other monsters are still rampaging across the Elsir Vale, causing a great deal of havoc. If any Wyrmlords survived, they might reorganize the troops and prepare another assault; even if none did, a powerful Red Hand warpriest might seize control and begin their own invasion (or they might find a way to resurrect a fallen Wyrmlord).
The fifth Beatle dragon. Why were only four dragons present in the invasion? Simple. Azarr Kul had, in fact, made an alliance with a powerful white dragon from the frosty mountain peaks north of the Endless Plains, but he simply didn't have time to delay the invasion long enough for the dragon to arrive. Instead, the plan was that the white dragon would help him solidify his rule across the Elsir Vale, crushing any remaining resistance. So now, unaware that the Red Hand horde is in fact routed, this dragon arrives on its own...followed, of course, by a retinue of enslaved soldiers and monsters - and finds, while not perhaps the easy victory he had expected, a decimated land ripe for the picking.
The Fane of Tiamat. Azarr Kul didn't quite manage to complete his infernal gate, but his work and the arrival of the Aspect of Tiamat significantly injured the fabric of the Material Plane within the inner sanctum. If they can, remaining Red Hand warpriests might try to complete the ritual - or the hordes of Baator might break through themselves. Either way, Elsir Vale now finds itself under a new threat: ravening armies of Hell swarming out of the Wyrmsmokes, bent on destruction.
Vraath Keep. The PCs are heroes of the Elsir Vale, and as such Lord Jarmaath might see fit to grant them lordship over Vraath Keep and Drellin's Ferry. If they accept, the PCs will not only have to cope with rebuilding and repopulating the town and castle, but also clearing the shadow-filled eaves of the western Witchwood and driving back raids by remaining Red Hand warriors. To be sure, it will become a game that's quite different from the standard campaign, but nonetheless an interesting one. If you're prepared to do some work, it could even be a nice opportunity to segue into Pathfinder's Kingmaker adventure path, since the themes of "own a piece of the rock" are the same.
Lady Kaal and/or Rillor Paln, being the shifty powers in Elsir Vale. There's a wonderful account in this thread of one DM who teased out these two into causing a further major threat to the Vale themselves.

Saintheart

2010-10-09, 09:37 AM

Other Resources, Campaign Journals, etc.

Very much under construction.

Maps:

- Courtesy of the hardworking Antariuk, an absolutely gorgeous series of maps of:

Elsir Vale
Brindol
Vraath Keep
The Witchwood

They come in a number of different versions: GM version, player handout version (in particular check out the beautiful "old map" player handout of Elsir Vale), and relabelled for the Forgotten Realms. You can find this wonderful set of resources (as well as additions to DM screens and a partial conversion to Pathfinder) right here (http://fallschaden.blogspot.de/p/red-hand-of-doom.html). Kudos to Antariuk, this addition to the handbook has been very long in coming and it's entirely my fault it hasn't made it here until now.

- A well-done colour Dundjinni map of The Causeway (i.e. the hydra encounter) can be found here (http://www.dundjinni.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=6431&PN=5&TPN=3).

- A well-done colour Dundjinni map of Skull Gorge Bridge can be found here (http://www.dundjinni.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=6428&PN=0&TPN=1).

- A well-done colour Dundjinni map of The Roadblock can be found here (http://www.dundjinni.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=6431&PN=5&TPN=3).

- A very well-done Dundjinni colour map of the Bell Tower and Town Hall of Rhest can be found here (http://dundjinni.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=6656&PN=2)(scroll down the page a bit).

- An adequate map of the bell tower at Rhest: here. (http://dundjinni.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=7926&KW=red+hand+of+doom)

- An adequate map of the Rhest town hall: here. (http://www.dundjinni.com/forums/uploads/mercutio/BC9_rhest_town_hall.jpg)

On printing these out at 1" format: the easiest way is to use graphics software that can display measurements (often called "rulers") and then just scale the image to fit the 1" square measurements. Many programs, including Paint.Net (free and very powerful) do this. Remember to adjust your printer settings as well, very often people forget that standard settings use borders around images and then the final print doesn't fit.

Campaign Journals
Hosted here on GITP:
AslanCross's RHOD campaign journal, set in Eberron. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=110022)
Saph's RHOD campaign journal, set in the Forgotten Realms. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=94243)
kjones' RHOD campaign journal, set in a generic (?) campaign world. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=100257)
Jon_Dahl's campaign journal (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?417731-NO-SPOILERS!-The-doomest-and-red-handest-of-all-RHoD-Campaign-Journals!), which is one of those rare instances where Brindol is in fact destroyed.

The author's own RHOD campaign, played in PbP format:
http://boards.theforce.net/threads/a-tide-of-flames-a-d20-dungeons-dragons-adventure.28108372/
Many of the posts are truncated due to a board error transferring from IGN to Xenforo, but the last quarter or so of posts are normal and readable.

The Caligula journal:
http://community.wizards.com/forum/previous-editions-general/threads/1061626
This journal gets a lot of fond mentions in the wreckage of the old gleemax boards; it's a very, very long campaign thread and Caligula apparently put a lot of work into sidequests and making his players care about the campaign. You'll find a lot of familiar tactics here. Well worth the read if you're not already familiar with it.

Alternate builds for various NPCs or opponents in RHOD:

From Inkeyes, using Tome of Battle, in an Eberron setting - hobgoblin rank and file
Hobgoblin Regular (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=235976)
Hobgoblin Archer (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=241553)
Goblin Worg Rider (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=236032) (Uses Dragon #336 variant)
Warbeast Wolf (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=236101)
Hobgoblin Sergeant (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=235991) & Hobgoblin Veteran (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=236003)
Hobgoblin Chain-bearer (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=236010): Instead of being a blade-bearer Inkeyes thought it'd be funny to make him a spiked-chain tripper.
Super Cheerleader (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=244755): This build uses the Sublime Way Marshal (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20030906b) which seems to have disappeared from the web. Here's (http://www.mediafire.com/?kldie1cdha695xa) the full fix in a word doc. I also made a weaker version (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=241562) as an alternative to archers with the Regulars.
Doom Fist Monk (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=236014): He's an unarmed Swordsage.
Kulor Zul Mindbender (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=236129): I rebuilt him into a telepath Psion (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/classes/psion.htm). I went with this so the Ardent in my group would have the chance to find some nice psionic items.

From Inkeyes, again in Eberron - dragons and Wyrmlords

Dragons:

Ozyrrandion (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=231428) is a mercury dragon (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/mm/20040103a). He comes out to the same CR as before, but if anyone thinks he needs upgrading I'd love input. I figured that a glittering metallic dragon would throw the party off since most of them probably forgot dragons can be any alignment. It's also very likely they'll mistake him with a Silver dragon and attack him with fire spells (which he's immune to).

Regiarix (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=231470) is a Topaz Dragon from the Monster Manual 2. He's the same CR as well, according to the 3.5 update of the book.

Vaaranthian (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=233136) is a dragon now! My first party was confused and disappointed in the end when there was no fifth dragon to fight; facing the draconic servants of Tiamat meant five would show up, right? Feel free to ignore this one if you prefer the Fiendish Behir. I think Fang Dragons are pretty awesome, though. She comes out to the same CR, and gets a bunch of interesting goodies. Due to their nature, fang dragons get larger damage die, Con drain (instead of a breath weapon), and cool SLAs. The source I used was the Draconomicon, but they're in Monsters of Faerun too.

Abithriax (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=233704) is a half-white brass dragon. I picked a brass as a base creature because the idea of a Beige Dragon always amused me. According to the MM, he actually comes out to a CR 12 with the template on top, but all it really gives him is some stat boosts and a cone of cold 1/day. If anyone thinks he needs downsizing feel free to speak up.

With Tyragun I'm undecided. I statted up a CR 10 Ethereal Dragon (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=235805), but I'd only have half a chromatic dragon to fight the party with if I used that. They might also be completely baffled by a dragon that can go ethereal 3/day and hit them with a breath weapon on another plane. I'd also have to rework the five talking heads thing, but that's not hard.

Wyrmlords:

Wyrmlord Koth (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=213581) is a Wizard focused on debuffing. His strategy is to go invisible and cast as many non-direct damage spells as possible before he has to hit anyone. If cornered, he'd try to escape. Like any good batman wizard he has prepared for the possibility of being captured with several escape spells on his Spell Mastery feat.

Wryrmlord Saarvith (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=214196) is a Martial Ranger (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19519074/Sublime_Way_Variant_Ranger) with Fax's Falling Star Discipline (http://wiki.faxcelestis.net/index.php?title=Falling_Star_Discipline). He's meant to hop on Regiarix and rain arrows down on the party while airborne.

I should also note that the last three Wyrmlords each have one flaw. At that level I figured that unique NPCs deserved the extra feat to rival my party. I give PCs 1 flaw and 1 trait.

Ulwai Stormcaller (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=214294) is a sunscorched Hobgoblin Bard. Her strategy is to go invisible, pump her inspire courage, then belt out Dragonfire Inspriration so her allies hit enemies with +4d6 electrical damage.

Wyrmlord Hravek Kharn (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=214506) is a Cleric/Ordained Champion. There's not much to his strategy other than buff and smash.

High Wyrmlord Azarr Kul (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=215247) is a Cleric/Crusader/Ruby Knight Vindicator. He makes liberal use of Divine Meta Magic to pile big buffs on himself and rip and tear in combat. His build could also be adapted for Kharn and vice versa if you prefer. This version of Azarr Kul assumes that his father is an Ethereal Dragon (like above), but the only difference is what energy his cone uses and what he's immune to.

From Endarire, a, shall we say, more challenging Aspect of Tiamat :smalleek: :smalleek: :smalleek: Download It Here. (http://antioch.snow-fall.com/files/members/Endarire/DnD/Red%20Hand%20of%20Doom%20Final%20Fight%208%2016%20 9.doc)

Other miscellaneous but handy links, lists, etc

List of all Spawn of Tiamat (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?423959-Index-of-Spawn-of-Tiamat), to vary up those encountered in the campaign.
A Work-In-Progress attempting to turn Elsir Vale into a solid adventure path for 5e (http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?445106-Living-Elsir-Vale-Red-Hand-of-Doom-Feedback-Requested). May be of use to those who want to hang out in Elsir Vale ahead of or after their adventuring careers.

Couple of links I did manage to salvage from the WOTC Archive and which still work:

All maps in RHOD with secret doors removed: http://www.flickr.com/photos/36844791@N00/
Nice image of the Cathedral of Pelor in Brindol: Here. (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/images/Cityscape_Gallery/101102.jpg)

...And that's all, take it away guys!

Coidzor

2010-10-09, 09:40 AM

This should be interesting. :smallbiggrin:

Particularly the sentiments on adaptation.

That reminds me though, I need to find those three journals so I can finish them...x.x

ShriekingDrake

2010-10-09, 10:03 AM

Thanks so much for doing this. I am so disappointed that so much of the good RHoD work was lost on the WoTC site. I wish I'd preserved that stuff when I had the chance, because the material there made the adventure so much better. With luck, we can see the same kind of interest here and rekindle the lost fires that supported this work.

Have a cookie.

Saintheart

2010-10-09, 10:32 AM

Damn, you've discovered my Kryptonite... *munches down on the cookie* :smallcool:

IthilanorStPete

2010-10-09, 02:50 PM

I've played through RHoD once, talked about it extensively with my DM, and I was going to run a PbP game of it before it fell through due to unrelated stuff. My notes:
-The Wyrmlords, as stated, need reworking. Koth was incredibly underwhelming in our campaign, and our DM rebuilt Kharn as a Warblade, which made the fight very cool. My idea was to rework them into a sequence going from pure martial to pure caster - I had Koth statted out as a Barbarian 3/Frenzied Berserker 3, use Saarvith in a ranged build like the Swift Hunter build in the guide, Ulwai is decent as is, use Kharn as an arcanist specializing in summoning (probably Malconvoker), and Azarr Kul as a divine caster.
-One of the biggest issues is motivating the PCs near the end of Chapter 1 and getting them into Chapter 2; it can be difficult to motivate them to see the horde at Cinder Hill, then it can be hard to get them to Rhest. We used the blockades as our hook, and just kind of wandered up to Rhest, but there's got to be a better way.
-The dragons mainly need better feat selection, and can use a better spell selection based on how powerful/optimized you want them. Awaken Spell Resistance, as noted, is nice. If you want to make them very very strong, give them access to Blood Wind and Scintillating Scales from Spell Compendium.
-The Battle of Brindol was a fantastic session for us. A couple of changes our DM made - using Skullcrusher Ogres instead of the giants, (which he had used in several places previously) using 2 Bluespawn Godslayers as the third wave in Streets of Blood as much more dangerous and impressive opponents then the Razorfiends, and Kharn's bodyguard was 4 Wilders, who tanked up with Vigor and potions of Barkskin, then hammered us with some blasting powers and ego whip.
-After Brindol, the Fane of Tiamat was incredibly anticlimactic. It's a somewhat boring dungeoncrawl. The Aspect was...very powerful, and killed the other two members of our party (a Knight and a healbot Cleric) very quickly, but I was a Warlock and just kited it with Flyby Attack.
-One idea I had, to make Brindol the full climax of the adventure and to address issues we had of feeling like Azarr Kul was Orcus on His Throne, was to switch around the Fane and the Battle. The idea was to have the horde besiege Brindol, then wait for reinforcements from the interplanar portal. Azarr Kul would lead the horde himself, while Kharn would be in charge of opening the portal. (tying in with the Malconvoker-ness) The PCs would learn about the issues at the Fane from divinations by, say, Immerstal - teleport or travel by Owl there, take care of Kharn, (with no Aspect) then head back to Brindol for the climactic battle. Azarr Kul would summon the Aspect with some kind of contingency and/or desperate prayer.

CockroachTeaParty

2010-10-09, 03:38 PM

Here's a link (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=160770) to the RHoD game I'm currently running on these boards.

When I originally played through it in RL as a PC, my DM changed several things (which was good, since we were a powerful party of 4). He bumped up the dragon's age categories, reworked Kharn and Azarr Kul, doubled the razorfiends, and did various other things to up the ante. We were able to overcome all the challenges and emerge victorious.

In the game I'm currently running, I'm mostly running it 'out of the box,' just to see what happens. So far, the party has been routinely stomping the encounters, although the beguiler was killed by Ozyrrandion at Skull Gorge (they brought him back to life with the Staff of Life).

The only thing I've changed so far is that I've replaced all Hobgoblin Badebearers with warblade levels, and made the Hobgoblin Sergeants level 3 crusaders. I've also made the Doomfist Monks sword sages, but they've yet to encounter any of them.

These are pretty minor elite NPCs, though, and they've not even really had the chance yet to shine. The party's fighter/barbarian has been particularly devastating, especially when combined with the bard (who is currently AWOL, but his absence hasn't stopped the party's ability to own).

I've noticed that in general the enemies have poor Will saves, and spells like Glitterdust have been winning tickets.

Also, the outdoor, wide-open nature of several of the fights has proven to be somewhat detrimental to the party's dragonfire adept; the limit on their breath weapon's range is really hard on more open-area combats. Now that he can fly, he's coming a bit more into his own, though.

Also, despite their many successes, they've been unable to take down any of the Red Hand's leaders. Koth and Ozyrrandion managed to escape; I played them slightly more conservatively then the book suggests. Ozy's escape in particular will cost them victory points when the Battle of Brindol comes to a close, as they won't see him again until the Fane.

I'm intrigued to see how they'll handle the ruins of Rhest. When I played through it, it turned into a gigantic clusterf**k, and we barely managed to scrape by with our lives.

Gavinfoxx

2010-10-09, 03:42 PM

If anyone has the original link to the old guidebook, I SHOULD be able to find it on web achive... I'm surprisingly good at that i I have the original link!

Coidzor

2010-10-09, 05:12 PM

If anyone has the original link to the old guidebook, I SHOULD be able to find it on web achive... I'm surprisingly good at that i I have the original link!

You mean this? http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19558702/Index_of_RHoD_Threads_and_Resource_Links

That is to say, I found the old index of such threads, but when I went to look again I got that.

The links within that thread are in the old style, so could be checked in the web archive?

cZak

2010-10-09, 08:24 PM

CockroachTeaParty

2010-10-09, 08:56 PM

AslanCross

2010-10-10, 12:22 AM

You might want to add a section on dealing with Victory Points: For some DMs it isn't really clear with them whether the PCs should be aware of their running total, or even if the PCs should know about the VPs at all.

There's also the misconception about their effect on the campaign overall:
ie: "If we get enough VPs, no matter what Kharn does, the Red Hand runs screaming into the woods." The end of Chapter IV is pretty clear on this: The PCs HAVE to kill Kharn for the VP score to affect the campaign. Either the death of Kharn causes the horde to break up and go into full retreat, or the horde regroups and attacks once more, giving the PCs a chance to kill enough of the brass to scatter the rank-and-file, or Brindol is overrun.

Saintheart

2010-10-10, 02:38 AM

I will. In case anyone's wondering, I will be watching the thread even if I don't answer queries straight away. Most likely I'll post indicating what, if any, updates have been made to the front of the thread. The VP points inclusion is a good suggestion, and I'll put that in. Likewise the phylactery discussion, though there's one tangent I wanted to run off that:

When we played through the Ghostlord chapter in RL, we brought his phylactery to him, but tried to draw out a negotiation, to which he simply responded by attacking us, even though we still possessed his phylactery. Eventually we managed to trap him, and then decided to destroy his trinket right then and there. In the end, he did not support the Red Hand, and we left him trapped and screwed. Later on, he attempted to kill us out of revenge, until we eventually destroyed him once and for all, but that was after the events of RHoD were over.

On this one (again, it's a topic that could use a note above somewhere I guess) I've seen a couple of campaigns mentioned where the Ghostlord tends to really attack if not at the drop of a hat, then as if he's got a hair-trigger temper. Although it's armchair quarterbacking, I actually think this isn't the right way to go about playing him.

Reason being that he's not supposed to be a combat encounter, even on the RHOD text. The stats are there in case the party gets a bit silly, but I think the level of provocation it should take before the Ghostlord wades into combat should be considerably higher than it's perceived to be.

I mean, on RHOD:

He doesn't know where his phylactery is.
He's therefore extremely vulnerable.
He doesn't know what connection the party has to the Horde.
It's Ulwai he has cause to kill since she stole his phylactery - not the party.
If the party mentions his phylactery, then from the Ghostlord's point of view they have him by the undead proverbials.

That combination of factors, I would have thought, should keep him from attacking the party at all unless the provocation is extreme. The Ghostlord doesn't really care about material possessions anymore: that much is clear on the description of his 'treasure house'. What he does care about is his continued existence and his continuing ability to create undead.

Just because you're evil doesn't mean you've necessarily got a hair-trigger temper; quite the opposite, the most enduring villains know very well how to hold their anger in reserve until the right moment. And the Ghostlord isn't a paladin of evil -- he has no obligation to go out combating good wherever he finds it; insofar as he might consider the question, it's probably just as acceptable a victory over the forces of good to continue his survival and watch clerics of good deities go slinking away at his behest as it is to wade into battle and hand their rears to them.

I think also that while the possibility of the Ghostlord turning around and killing the party once he's got his phylactery back should be constant, the reality of his character should be much different. I've seen instances where the Ghostlord has turned and tried to kill the party immediately on return of the phylactery. I never really understood why: he's not chaotic evil. He's neutral evil, which means out for himself - not out to Destroy Good, and not out to Destroy Everything, either. The party might be scared of him, but he doesn't know the strengths of the party either, and he wouldn't have got to roughly 600 years of age without having some idea of discretion being the better part of survival unless you know exactly what you're dealing with.

Played as a more detached, reclusive villian who only cares about himself and his ghosts, I think most of these problems disappear.

ka_bna

2010-10-10, 04:15 AM

Great work! I'm running RHoD now (playing once a month), but this guide will be extremely helpful! (and it's nicely written too:smalltongue:)

Runestar

2010-10-10, 05:25 AM

If you have MM4 or MM5, I think Koth (act 1) can be replaced with either a redspawn arcaniss (MM4, cr6) or if you think your party is up to the challenge, a hobgoblin warsoul (mm5, cr8!).

As for the bladebearers, warblade1/fighter2/warblade+1 could work as well. There aren't that many of them, so they shouldn't complicate combat too much.

Duskblade is very tempting, but I can't think of a suitable npc to replace.

I thought of remaking Sarvith as a swift hunter as well, and going one step further by letting him mount the black dragon and engage in an aerial assault against the PCs, but my grasp of air combat wasn't very good, so I decided against it at the last moment.

AslanCross

2010-10-10, 09:01 AM

I added in Hobgoblin Duskblades as shock troops. I called them "Kulkor Zhul Arcknights." They work great with the Greater Barghests in ambushes.

Btw, IMO the most dangerous monsters in the early part of the game are the Greater Barghests. Their (Sp)s are incredibly powerful buffs, and they're probably the primary reason why the Marked for Death encounter is so dangerous out of the box.

Saintheart

2010-10-10, 09:59 AM

Some matters added in, including VPs, a brief word on ToB replacements, and other minor changes. :smallsmile:

EDIT: Also, as a general thought, I'm considering turning all the subheader sections of each of the posts into spoiler blocks for ease on the eye. Any problems, gang? For? Against? :smallwink:

CockroachTeaParty

2010-10-10, 10:11 AM

@Saintheart:

Oh, I agree that the Ghostlord should be a role playing encounter. I was not DMing that campaign, and it was his decision to have the Ghostlord attack us; I think he knew we were skilled enough to handle him. It was a close fight, and actually one of the more memorable ones for a variety of reasons. The only reason we won was the fact that the Ghostlord did not have Stone Shape prepared, and we trapped him in the stone of his own lair with no way to escape for at least 24 hours. That was when we broke his phylactery and left him to rot.

Still, it's difficult to convince players, especially in a campaign were almost everything fights you, to not fight something. Red Hand of Doom is pretty much a series of battles stringed together, and some groups may have trouble getting out of the battle mindset.

Saph

2010-10-10, 10:52 AM

Let's see, a few of the things I learned:

The Blackfens

Put Regiarix up an age category to Young Adult, making him Large. He's far too weak otherwise.

Adding a couple of Warrior levels to the Ogres and giving them the Brutal Throw feat makes them much more effective, but they're still mooks and they'll die pretty fast if the PCs know what they're doing.

Advanced razorfiends with Improved Critical are highly entertaining.

The Wyrmlords

Koth is actually quite dangerous on his own, due to the nonassociated class levels giving him the spells of an equivalent-level Sorcerer along with twice as many HP as a pure Sorcerer would have. If you want to be really cruel, give him Practiced Spellcaster, but 10d6 area-attack spells will probably toast even an optimised 5th-level party.

Saarvith is kind of a wuss, but pairing him up with Regiarix makes him a lot more dangerous. I found that the most effective thing he contributes is probably Mounted Combat.

I put Ulwai up a level to level 10 and gave her confusion as a spell known. Makes her pretty dangerous, and her thunderstrikes hurt too.

The Ghostlord

My solution for toughening the Ghostlord was to put him up a level (giving him access to 6th-level spells), giving him a couple of ghost dire lion bodyguards, and redoing his spell selection, most notably loading him up with a bunch of stinking clouds. The fight (if there is one) will take place in cramped conditions, so the Ghostlord can quite easily fill the entire combat area with stinking cloud. The Ghostlord doesn't care, the ghost lions don't care, but the PCs will care a lot; one failed Fort save and they're out of the combat, while the ghost dire lions Strength-drain them.

For roleplaying him, I went for a combination of Emperor Palpatine and Gollum. :smalltongue: Ancient, very powerful, psychotically obsessed with his phylactery, and insane (but note that insane doesn't mean stupid). I had him talk a lot, but he'd only respond to the PCs when they said something that matched up with his skewed worldview - otherwise he'd just ramble to himself about revenge and torture and killing, before snapping suddenly back into focus and demanding why the PCs were there.

I also told the PCs at the beginning of the encounter with him that everything they said would be assumed to be in character unless specified otherwise. The idea is to keep it short and tense. Don't have the Ghostlord stick around and chat while the players talk OOC: it ruins the mood. The PCs should feel that they need to make a deal fast before the Ghostlord decides to kill first and ask questions later.

General advice for running dragons

• Dragons are most effective when doing strafing runs with their breath weapon, or on the ground doing full attacks. There's little reason for them to take the attack action.
• All dragons should have mage armour as a spell known. There's just no reason not to. Shield as well if you want to really make them hard to hit.
• Good dragon feats: Power Attack, Multiattack, Improved Multiattack, Practiced Spellcaster, Flyby Attack, Ability Focus (breath weapon). Useless feats which should be swapped out: Alertness, Weapon Focus, Improved Critical.
• All the dragons in RHoD have a fly speed of 150 feet. That means 300 feet on a double move/withdraw, or 600 feet on a run. Take advantage of this. There's really no reason for a supposedly intelligent dragon to stand and fight to the death if it's obvious that it's not going to win, unless the encounter requires it. In my campaign, Ozyrrandion and Regiarix both survived 3-4 encounters with the PCs simply by fleeing whenever they needed to.

nihilism

2010-10-10, 11:34 AM

Dralnu

2010-10-10, 01:35 PM

If people already have revamped NPC stats on their computers, could they post them here? I'd love to see them. Making NPCs is always the most time-consuming thing for me, especially making ToB characters.

To contribute (sorta) to the thread, I'm following PId6's RHOD PbP (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=156757#post8734976) over here on the forums. I'm not fully caught up yet, but I've noticed that he's revamped Koth's spell selection at least -- Wings of Cover greatly helps with survivability when you're outmatched in action economy.

Tyndmyr

2010-10-10, 02:49 PM

i actually don't think the encounters need that much upgrading if played right.

i have just started the adventure and i intend to slow advancement a bit and maybe cut the treasure down but other than that i think its all about tactics. the only thing i intend to change is the save dcs

That entirely depends on optimization level. My party referred to Ozy as "hellen keller", due to in a single round inflicting a hexblade curse, blindness, deafness, and destroying the wings. So yeah, no retreat there. Some of the fights are pretty good, all in all. I liked the Koth fight.

However, you've got a few fights that end up being pretty much fodder if your party optimizes at all, including some that clearly aren't meant to be. It's ok for a random scout patrol to die horribly in a single round, but when you have significant encounters dying the same way, it's time to beef things up.

cZak

2010-10-10, 04:12 PM

Let's see, a few of the things I learned:

The Ghostlord

My solution for toughening the Ghostlord was to put him up a level (giving him access to 6th-level spells), giving him a couple of ghost dire lion bodyguards, and redoing his spell selection, most notably loading him up with a bunch of stinking clouds. The fight (if there is one) will take place in cramped conditions, so the Ghostlord can quite easily fill the entire combat area with stinking cloud. The Ghostlord doesn't care, the ghost lions don't care, but the PCs will care a lot; one failed Fort save and they're out of the combat, while the ghost dire lions Strength-drain them.

My party got gobsmaked by the ghost lions with Strength drain and no cleric of high enough level for restoration; bloody multi-class dip'n...
As such, I limited the ghost lions as guardians of the ramp entry.

It was REALLY hard, and ultimately failed, to convince the PC's they did not 'need' to kill the GhostLord.

Blighter is like a -2LA. I gave him the Evolved Undead & Swarm shifter (Libris Mortis) templates as a means of survivability. And they fit the background for him.

For roleplaying him, I went for a combination of Emperor Palpatine and Gollum. :smalltongue: Ancient, very powerful, psychotically obsessed with his phylactery, and insane (but note that insane doesn't mean stupid). I had him talk a lot, but he'd only respond to the PCs when they said something that matched up with his skewed worldview - otherwise he'd just ramble to himself about revenge and torture and killing, before snapping suddenly back into focus and demanding why the PCs were there.

I also told the PCs at the beginning of the encounter with him that everything they said would be assumed to be in character unless specified otherwise. The idea is to keep it short and tense. Don't have the Ghostlord stick around and chat while the players talk OOC: it ruins the mood. The PCs should feel that they need to make a deal fast before the Ghostlord decides to kill first and ask questions later.

This seems a very good mechanic for the scenario.

Saintheart

2010-10-11, 09:56 AM

@ CTP: Yeah, I wasn't directing criticism at you. :) And I do intend to talk about the phylactery more in the handbook.

More updates, including shifting some stuff around and incorporating some commentary into the handbook. I've also changed the overall structure of the handbook to a spoiler-centred document so people can better make their saves against Wall of Text (hyuk, hyuk...) :D

Biggest addition is probably the guide to adapting RHOD to Faerun. :smallcool:

Karsh

2010-10-11, 10:55 AM

One thing for the Ghostlord that came into play with my group when I ran RHoD, make the PCs aware that much of their OOC conversation is actually taking place IC. My players finished off the Bonedrinkers and then began arguing out loud over what to do with the phylactery. I rolled Listen checks for the Ghostlord and he heard what they said, so he came out and intimidated the hell out of them, demanding the phylactery back.

He's since become a recurring character who has bits of information for them with ulterior motives.

InkEyes

2010-10-11, 12:47 PM

This seems like a good place to get some critiques. I've been working my way through the book and remaking the enemies to provide some challenge for the party and I'd love some critique. The game is set in Eberron (I've been adjusting things for that too) and the 6-man party is a little over-leveled because the lead-in encounters pumped them up a bit. If this derails the tread too much I can make a separate one instead. Warning: the following has copious use of Tome of Battle.

Rank and File RHoD Guys:
Hobgoblin Regular (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=235976): I decided two levels of Warblade were fine since at that level all it really added were a few extra hitpoints, a couple strikes, and tumble ranks. They don't seem to bother the party too much since the group has powerful ranged attacks as well and two meaty tanks.

Hobgoblin Archer (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=241553): To make up for the lack of ranged options Warblades have, I thought about replacing one or two with Martial Rangers. They use the Sublime Way (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19519074/Sublime_Way_Variant_Ranger) variant with Fax's Falling Star Discipline (http://wiki.faxcelestis.net/index.php?title=Falling_Star_Discipline).

Goblin Worg Rider (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=236032): They use the Mystic Ranger variant from Dragon Magazine #336. It slows down favored enemy and combat style progressions for quick access to spells.

Warbeast Wolf (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=236101): Technically, they're not worgs, but a standard wolf with the Warbeast (MM2) template put on. The CR and size come out the same.

Hobgoblin Sergent (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=235991) & Hobgoblin Veteran (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=236003): More Warblades.

Hobgoblin Chain-bearer (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=236010): Instead of being a blade-bearer I thought it'd be funny to make him a spiked-chain tripper. Alternatively, I could put magic gear on a veteran or use a Super Cheerleader.

Super Cheerleader (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=244755): This build uses the Sublime Way Marshal (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20030906b) which seems to have disappeared from the web. Here's (http://www.mediafire.com/?kldie1cdha695xa) the full fix in a word doc. I also made a weaker version (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=241562) as an alternative to archers with the Regulars.

Doom Fist Monk (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=236014): He's an unarmed Swordsage.

Kulor Zul Mindbender (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=236129): I rebuilt him into a telepath Psion (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/classes/psion.htm). I went with this so the Ardent in my group would have the chance to find some nice psionic items.

I also have rebuilds of the dragons (they were more for fun than anything) and the Wyrmlords but I think I've flooded this thread enough for now.

IthilanorStPete

2010-10-11, 01:24 PM

Sublime Way Marshal, thanks to the Internet Archive (http://web.archive.org/web/20070221040553/http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=752414)

AslanCross

2010-10-11, 06:43 PM

i actually don't think the encounters need that much upgrading if played right.

i have just started the adventure and i intend to slow advancement a bit and maybe cut the treasure down but other than that i think its all about tactics. the only thing i intend to change is the save dcs

As has been mentioned, it may become necessary depending on the level of optimization of the party, and also depending on how many PCs you have. I was running the game for five semi-optimized PCs, and I had two ToB characters. I needed to make the Bladebearers Warblades so that they could actually use their offhand weapons.

Also, Kharn has about 68 HP. For a CR 10 monster, he's like wet paper. My build had him at 87 by default, and about 120 when buffed.

Akal Saris

2010-10-11, 08:34 PM

Thank you for doing this. I don't know when I'll get around to running RHoD (possibly Christmas, more likely never...), but this will be a terrific resource if I get the opportunity to do so!

I think a handbook to running the Tomb of Horrors would be another great resource, come to think of it.

InkEyes

2010-10-11, 10:08 PM

Qualifier: DM'd RHoD

Always bothered me; why would the party not just destroy the Ghostlords phylactery?

I mean, they have an evil, undead item holding the life force of a min 11th level caster. What party, that should be working against the Evil Horde, would want to converse with such a creature?

Even made of adamantium, players are creative enough to find some way to accomplish it.

Trapping the thing just slows the party down, even if it resets. At most you kill the person who hits it, then the wiz stands back throwing orbs o' Force at it.

The sticking point is how willing the party is to associate with evil characters. In the first RHoD game I DM'ed the small party saw no reason not to negotiate with the Ghostlord. They were more stealth and social-focused than frontline fighters so engaging in an open fight against a high-level caster + undead legions wasn't appealing to them.

I've just started a second campaign with different people and I'm considering replacing the Ghostlord with the Lord of Blades or something similar instead because I want negotiation to remain an option. The new party contains a CG Undead-hunting Paladin and I don't think it could end any way but a full brawl as it stands.

Here's my experience with the first run-through:

The Koth fight started in favor of the PCs thanks to two well-built diplomancers, a changeling, a hat of disguise, and two alter-self spells. A few fantastic dice rolls later and they were "delivering a report" to Koth himself and thereby bypassed several encounters. It wasn't a cakewalk, but I don't think any member of the party dropped to negatives.

The Ozzy fight was a full surprise in favor of the PCs. Entangle disabled the dragon enough to take out the archer hobs plus lay grease and caltrops on the bridge.

The Regiarax/Saarvith fight was much less successful by comparison. Beforehand, one party member went stupid in the head and decided to attack a contingent of scouts on his own; meanwhile, the other party member subdued and halfheartedly secured Miha Serani before going to negotiate with the Tiri Kitor. The party met stupid-player's new character (a Dread Necromancer) and returned to Drellin's Ferry where they met what appeared to be the old character (hint: it wasn't), then they went up to Rhest and the DN decided to cast Animate Dead on the first corpses he could find.

That's how he made a small army of 1 HD lizardfolk skeletons. Then they decided the best way to get to the center of the lake was a daytime expedition D-Day style using the lizardfolk's canoes. This alerted pretty much every enemy in the ruins thanks to the watchtower, and Miha took that chance sabotage the canoes the other party members were riding in. In the end they killed Saarvith and routed the spawn of Tiamut, but Regiarax escaped and showed up again in the fight with Tyragun.

The fights with Varantian and Ulwai were exciting but ultimately could've been more interesting. Ulwai wasn't well supported by the Monks because they couldn't get a stunning fist off to save their lives (literally). They did okay tripping, though.

The Karn fight was at the end of a very long game and I intentionally made it easier than it should have been. The party was very amused by how easily he went down, so that was a high note for them after a long, long day.

With two dragons, and frequent use of the wand of fireballs, the Tyragun fight was a fun challenge for the PCs.

Azarr Kul and the Aspect of Tiamut were also pretty intense.

Overall, it depends a lot on who gets the surprise round on whom. If the enemy installments were alerted, the fights became much, much harder; for a while I thought there would be a TPK from the Rhest fight. The party (and the DN) learned to be a lot more discrete after that.

While I'm at it, I should note that a Dread Necromancer is a great character to make for this game. All of the dragons can be made into skeletons, and both Varanthian and the hydra can be turned into zombies as well. It's also a huge pain in the ass to fight against, so it's a good target for banning.

Saintheart

2010-10-12, 12:49 AM

Hmmm. I'm actually contemplating being a nasty sod in my own campaign and, where the heroes don't completely gib the dragons, to have the corpses brought back to the Horde and used as zombie dragons defending the Fane. Hmmm.

Anyway, good heads-up on the Dread Necromancer; I'll put that in.

For further modification of the handbook, what I've basically got in mind for the various "level bosses" is to basically give three categories of information per entry: minor tweaks; medium tweaks; and major tweaks, to correspond against unoptimised, semi-powerful, and fully optimised parties, respectively.

If I can, I'd like to focus discussion on the Battle of Brindol in particular since it's the highlight of the campaign. If people'd like to contribute on that section, it'd be really good. If people are happy with it, I might continue to sort-of direct discussions to different parts of the campaign, too.

In particular: it again seems almost-universally acknowledged that Kharn in his vanilla form sucks. So, our first vox populi for the RHOD Playgrounders out there:

How did (or would) you rebuild General Kharn?

A refluffed Ruby Knight Windicator Vindicator seems to be a pretty common ToB suggestion, but
(a) would someone like to contribute a generic ToB build for handbook readers;
(b) what sorts of tactics did you use for this confrontation; and
(c) if you had no access to ToB, how would you build him instead?

Runestar

2010-10-12, 02:01 AM

I am actually contemplating replacing 3 of the wyrmlords with one of each of the elemental magi in MM5. Ideally, they would survive, and make for a (hopefully) climatic final encounter in Brindol. But at EL14, it may be too tough for the PCs, who have to fight several encounters before that. :smalltongue:

My rationale is that classed npcs just plain suck past a certain cr.

rasbadar

2010-10-12, 05:12 AM

I also have rebuilds of the dragons (they were more for fun than anything) and the Wyrmlords but I think I've flooded this thread enough for now.

No way, José!
Keep on flooding!!

I am DMing the campaign and we're *just* before the Streets of Blood in the Battle of Brindol. And I am *always* looking forward to get input :)

take care

P.S.... Concerning the phylactery: In my group, there is a very headstrong cleric of Clanggedin, and his *first* action after finding out what this item is, was to destroy it completely.

AslanCross

2010-10-12, 05:16 AM

Saintheart

2010-10-12, 08:08 AM

I actually found an old RHOD thread where the topic of Kharn was briefly discussed, as it turned out, but I'd still love to hear from people as to what their moves were. And yeah, overall discussions bearing in mind Kharn's got four giants with him during that last fight are handy, too! :smallcool:

InkEyes

2010-10-12, 02:07 PM

How did (or would) you rebuild General Kharn?

A refluffed Ruby Knight Windicator Vindicator seems to be a pretty common ToB suggestion, but
(a) would someone like to contribute a generic ToB build for handbook readers;
(b) what sorts of tactics did you use for this confrontation; and
(c) if you had no access to ToB, how would you build him instead?

(a) Ruby Knight Vindicator is definitely a good ToB route, but it's important to remember that the RKV has to be a worshiper of Wee Jas. If your group plays with religion requirement rules that'll end up being a small bump in the way of RHoD lore. Another good route could be Bloodstorm Blade, but that would require dropping spellcasting for a Master Thrower build.

(b) As I learned, he definitely needs some light support. The party should be worn down quite a bit from the battle beforehand, but a gang rush on a highly desirable target is something they're still perfectly capable of. If there are any Tome of Battle PCs there is a good chance they'll have time between phases to refresh their move list, and classes that don't run out of juice (like Incarnum characters) will still have more than enough melee power to take on Kharn.

(c) The funny thing is, he's one of the characters I haven't rebuilt with Tome of Battle; I used the Ordained Champion PrC from Complete Champion. If you're willing to deviate from a divine melee class, I think he'd also be an absolutely fantastic Gish.

Gish ramblings:
Going that route you have to consider if you want to use PrCs or not. At a high Optimization level you can get more bang for your bucks using prestige classes to build off of Wizard and a melee class, but that is a lot of work. Using out-of-the-box gishes is usually fine. The Duskblade is a personal favorite class of mine, but the Hexblade should do well against PCs if you fix the class a bit (token fix link (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19547530/Contacting_Wizards_of_the_Coast_about_Hex_Blades?p ost_id=332210466#332210466)). The only issue is arcane spell failure; both the base gish classes can cast their spells with no problems. However, using spells with the Wizard list requires a combination of armor spells (and Abjurant Champion levels), a prestige class that allows armored casting (like Knight Phantom or Spellsword), the Still Spell feat, or armor with a lot of ASF penalties removed through special materials and enchants like Mithral, Twilight, Fey/Gith craft, etc.

A psionic gish has a lot of potential, too. The Psychic Warrior is a great class to go that route on. Another option is Ranger 1/ Psion (Egoist) 2/ Ghostbreaker 1/ Slayer 10. Psionics aren't impeded by armor, so you don't have to go through all those stupid ASF hoops. Plus, you'll have a chance to better integrate Psionics into the game.

No way, José!
Keep on flooding!!

Alrighty, here go! (I still stand by my statement that anyone bothered by it can tell me to pack it up.)

Dragons:

My group is used to playing in Eberron; this means all the dragons are egotistical jerks who don't leave their own continent very often. Eberron also explicitly states that the alignment stuff in MM entries is worthless in the setting. RHoD seemed like a good excuse to have them get attacked by non-standard evil dragons, so I decided to go a bit wild.

Ozyrrandion (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=231428) is a mercury dragon (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/mm/20040103a). He comes out to the same CR as before, but if anyone thinks he needs upgrading I'd love input. I figured that a glittering metallic dragon would throw the party off since most of them probably forgot dragons can be any alignment. It's also very likely they'll mistake him with a Silver dragon and attack him with fire spells (which he's immune to).

Regiarix (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=231470) is a Topaz Dragon from the Monster Manual 2. He's the same CR as well, according to the 3.5 update of the book.

Vaaranthian (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=233136) is a dragon now! My first party was confused and disappointed in the end when there was no fifth dragon to fight; facing the draconic servants of Tiamat meant five would show up, right? Feel free to ignore this one if you prefer the Fiendish Behir. I think Fang Dragons are pretty awesome, though. She comes out to the same CR, and gets a bunch of interesting goodies. Due to their nature, fang dragons get larger damage die, Con drain (instead of a breath weapon), and cool SLAs. The source I used was the Draconomicon, but they're in Monsters of Faerun too.

Abithriax (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=233704) is a half-white brass dragon. I picked a brass as a base creature because the idea of a Beige Dragon always amused me. According to the MM, he actually comes out to a CR 12 with the template on top, but all it really gives him is some stat boosts and a cone of cold 1/day. If anyone thinks he needs downsizing feel free to speak up.

With Tyragun I'm undecided. I statted up a CR 10 Ethereal Dragon (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=235805), but I'd only have half a chromatic dragon to fight the party with if I used that. They might also be completely baffled by a dragon that can go ethereal 3/day and hit them with a breath weapon on another plane. I'd also have to rework the five talking heads thing, but that's not hard.

Wyrmlords:

Wyrmlord Koth (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=213581) is a Wizard focused on debuffing. His strategy is to go invisible and cast as many non-direct damage spells as possible before he has to hit anyone. If cornered, he'd try to escape. Like any good batman wizard he has prepared for the possibility of being captured with several escape spells on his Spell Mastery feat.

Wryrmlord Saarvith (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=214196) is a Martial Ranger (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/19519074/Sublime_Way_Variant_Ranger) with Fax's Falling Star Discipline (http://wiki.faxcelestis.net/index.php?title=Falling_Star_Discipline). He's meant to hop on Regiarix and rain arrows down on the party while airborne.

I should also note that the last three Wyrmlords each have one flaw. At that level I figured that unique NPCs deserved the extra feat to rival my party. I give PCs 1 flaw and 1 trait.

Ulwai Stormcaller (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=214294) is a sunscorched Hobgoblin Bard. Her strategy is to go invisible, pump her inspire courage, then belt out Dragonfire Inspriration so her allies hit enemies with +4d6 electrical damage.

Wyrmlord Hravek Kharn (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=214506) is a Cleric/Ordained Champion. There's not much to his strategy other than buff and smash.

High Wyrmlord Azarr Kul (http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.php?sheetid=215247) is a Cleric/Crusader/Ruby Knight Vindicator. He makes liberal use of Divine Meta Magic to pile big buffs on himself and rip and tear in combat. His build could also be adapted for Kharn and vice versa if you prefer. This version of Azarr Kul assumes that his father is an Ethereal Dragon (like above), but the only difference is what energy his cone uses and what he's immune to.

AslanCross

2010-10-12, 11:43 PM

(a) Ruby Knight Vindicator is definitely a good ToB route, but it's important to remember that the RKV has to be a worshiper of Wee Jas.

The very same class entry discusses adaptations for it. The book mentions St. Cuthbert, Vecna, or Hextor as possible deities who could have a similar order.

Tiamat has Trickery, Destruction and Domination in her portfolios. She would definitely be not above having a similar order. I called Kharn's prestige class "Knight of Five Sorrows."

Endarire

2010-10-13, 02:08 AM

AslanCross

2010-10-13, 04:36 AM

I redid the final fight and turned the easily-killable Aspect of Tiamat into something a lot harder. Azzar Kul is also optimized with surge of fortune. Expect someone to die.

Download It Here (http://antioch.snow-fall.com/files/members/Endarire/DnD/Red%20Hand%20of%20Doom%20Final%20Fight%208%2016%20 9.doc)

Wow, I wish I'd done that. I forgot to upgrade the Aspect in my campaign, and it was more than a little anticlimactic apart from exploding dramatically.

I did boost Azarr Kul to CR 15 and gave him fortunate fate (and thus a second life), and a scroll of death dragon. The second time he came back, he used the scroll. A 7' half-blue dragon hobgoblin high priest in full armor is bad enough, but when he dons a power suit of necrotic energy and fossilized dragon bone, you know it's going down and going down bad: inflict critical wounds is really lame if you prepare it, but if you have it as an At-Will and it calls for a save as a 7th-level spell, you're going to see a lot of injury very quickly.

Saintheart

2010-10-13, 08:46 AM

And hurrah, the first entries for the Drellin's Ferry - Skull Gorge section are in, complete with a brief section on restatting Koth.

Although the way things are going here I'm going to have to get back up to date on the links section of the thread, too. :smallsmile:

InkEyes

2010-10-13, 01:29 PM

The very same class entry discusses adaptations for it. The book mentions St. Cuthbert, Vecna, or Hextor as possible deities who could have a similar order.

Tiamat has Trickery, Destruction and Domination in her portfolios. She would definitely be not above having a similar order. I called Kharn's prestige class "Knight of Five Sorrows."

True enough, I have no problems adapting the class, but I know some DMs do.

I redid the final fight and turned the easily-killable Aspect of Tiamat into something a lot harder. Azzar Kul is also optimized with surge of fortune. Expect someone to die.

Download It Here (http://antioch.snow-fall.com/files/members/Endarire/DnD/Red%20Hand%20of%20Doom%20Final%20Fight%208%2016%20 9.doc)

That's pretty awesome and I might consider using it. Thanks a lot!

ShriekingDrake

2010-10-13, 03:23 PM

kjones

2010-10-13, 03:40 PM

This is pretty cool. Thanks for putting it all together! I had designs to do something similar at one point, but sort of lost interest.

It's a damn shame that the WotC archives are toast - I used them extensively, and only wish I had saved more of them.

I appreciate the shout-outs, but I want to personally thank Saph for posting his campaign journal that inspired me to run this, and AslanCross and Eldarial for their constant contributions.

I'll be back to comment in more detail later.

Tyndmyr

2010-10-13, 03:48 PM

For those who felt the encounters were too easy, I'd love to see what the parties looked like?

Well, Im not completely through it yet, but the party currently is Dread Necro 6, Cleric 4/Fighter 2, Hexblade 6, Ranger 5/DD 1, Rogue 5/Assassin 1, Warmage 6.

I should specify that this is E6, they started the campaign at level 4, and they're now up to about 5 bonus feats on the highest chars(only those who show up get xp). We average 4 players per session, as some don't show up all the time

There is significant optimization on the parts of...well, almost everyone. The warmage is kind of a noob at the game, but he had help building his character, and thus uses arcane thesised fireballs of doom, so he keeps up aright.

Frankly, the biggest problem is encounters ending in a single round if the party gets surprise, or wins init. Regular hobgoblins, bladebearers, etc quickly ceased to pose any real threat. Even adding more of those to an encounter just results in CR inflation, not significant threat or resource expenditure.

The encounter at Drellin's ferry was challenging out of the book. However, this includes downing the red dragon, and swearing to shoot any defenders that fell back. This escalated to a conflict as they tried to run, resulting in the party fighting the town and the oncoming army at once. They didn't leave till the final 20 barges were in the water.

The keep was also perfect on the challenge rating, as they managed to chain-pull the entire keep, and the boss had enough hp to actually put his casting to good use. Low hp is a frequent problem with the casters, who typically get one good round at best.

The last encounter in area 1 was also good, in part because Miho betrayed them midway through, and in part because the over-confident Dread Necro screwed up the party tactics. They ended up negotiating a surrender, thus allowing the use of the escape scenario.

So, we've literally hit every single printed scenario up through rhest, and those were the only ones that weren't too easy. Several of the others had significant boosting over book values, yet were still easy. I should note that party conflict is not uncommon, and without this, they would be performing even better. Fatalities have only occurred twice, once to pvp, and once to a character merrily deciding to wander through the woods on his own, and shoot everything in sight.

AslanCross

2010-10-13, 06:18 PM

Funny how our interpretations can all differ based on how optimized we allow our players to be. In my experience, both as a player and a DM, RHoD, needed no beefing up. The encounters were hard, and failing to prevail had huge consequences later on.

Even our reasonably optimized party had difficulties with many of the encounters. When I DM'd, I noticed that the acquisition of a new level seemed to lag slightly behind the pace at which it was needed, even where the party encountered an above average number of "wandering monsters".

The battle at Brindol, for instance, being wave upon wave of battle and no opportunity to replenish magic.

For those who felt the encounters were too easy, I'd love to see what the parties looked like?

I had a party of five, so automatically having an extra guy tilted the action economy balance.

-Dwarf Crusader: Maul, meet face.
-Longstride Shifter Barbarian/Warblade: Started out as a TWF build, but managed to do awesome with a greatsword even without Power Attack. Ended up killing the most stuff in the campaign even if she came a bit late (start of Chapter 2)
-Rogue (sniper build): Started out as a warforged scout who was badly built and not played very well. (Ironically his player was a firearms enthusiast, but he couldn't translate fieldcraft well into his character). He was replaced by a Rogue/Swordsage (who died against Abithriax), then finally another Rogue/Swordsage played by a new player who actually knew how to optimize sniping.
-Cloistered Cleric of Aureon: Magic and Force domains. Buffer, bookworm, and secondary blaster.
-Psion (Kineticist): Primary blaster.

Don't get me wrong: Brindol took a huge toll on the party, but I couldn't have done that if I had played it as written. I threw in four waves:
1. Hobgoblin archers in formation (instead of the scattered ones as written) plus hobgoblin dragoons mounted on advanced manticores

2. Bugbear Berserkers (advanced), a Hobgoblin Dervish and a Bugbear Bloodstorm Blade.

3. The Goblin heavy cavalry on stormlizards was run mostly as written.

4. A fourth wave I introduced had Kharn's concubines: a Kulkor Zhul War Adept and a Doom Hand Confessor (warpriests turned into Ordained Champions instead) riding a warforged titan.

All of the Lions of Brindol died, but the crusader got fragged by a critical orb of electricity by the War Adept. The Confessor fought just a bit, but the sniper guy was able to smoke her out of her bunker on the Titan's back and kill her.

EDIT: I just noticed now that I said the Lions died. I meant to say all of them survived. :P

Saintheart

2010-10-14, 06:28 AM

The analysis of parties vs. RHOD challenges is an interesting one. On the face of it, it seems that having greater than 4 in the party contributes significantly to making the encounters easier, and when you've got tier one characters added to that mix it again renders things just that bit easier.

In other news, I've added a couple of restats for Saarvith - one on the Swift Hunter style build, the other a Ranger/Fighter build that trades off a lot of Saarvith's useless stuff and gets you competently able to spam attacks on Full Attack.

Speaking for myself, here's the core 8-man party that I've got in mine. I'd describe 'em as medium-strength optimised.

Beguiler/Mindbender 1
Cleric (of war. No DMM. She's awesome.)
Cleric (healbot; vanilla.)
Avariel Fighter/Duskblade (probably the least effective build of the lot)
Barbarian (optimised ... hoo boy.)
Rogue/Swashbuckler.
Rogue (TWF; vanilla)
Bard (no DFS, and he opted out of Words of Creation, but this is the most unbalancing part against the campaign. +5 to attack and damage means you seriously have to optimise against it.)

Having said that, they've gone close to losing PCs in several battles, and did lose 1 sorcerer against a razorfiend.

More details later, busy...

ShriekingDrake

2010-10-14, 03:20 PM

Thanks, all, for the details on the parties; that's been quite illuminating.

I was wondering if we thought it might be prudent to create a storage place somewhere where we could store RHoD materials so they don't disappear again, as they did on the wotc site. Moreover, it could be a centralized place where those who did manage to rescue the wotc stuff could share it more readily.

I have no idea how we might do this, but thought it was worth raising.

Tyndmyr

2010-10-14, 04:16 PM

I have a ridiculous amount of web space and bandwidth available. If a place is needed to host or mirror stuff, I certainly don't mind tossing it up.

I've already got forum software running as well, should you find that desirable.

CockroachTeaParty

2010-10-14, 04:56 PM

Saintheart

2010-10-15, 07:45 PM

Saph

2010-10-15, 07:52 PM

Big yes to all of those options!

I'm going to get on with updating some links, but next vox populi for people:

How can you better get people heading towards the Blackfens?

The reason being that the RHOD hook is weak. I've tried a couple of suggestions in the handbook, but would anyone else have any good (or, even, better) suggestions to make about this subject?

In my game, the PCs didn't have any particular idea about what to do after the evacuation of Drellin's Ferry, so like true gamers, they found the nearest NPC who looked like he might have a quest marker over his head (in this case, the mayor) and asked him where they should go to kill stuff next. He told them the Blackfens, they went to the Blackfens.

Either that, or just have several people in Drellin's Ferry mention the elves around Rhest, and how they used to have an alliance with Elsir Vale. The PCs should get the hint.

Tyndmyr

2010-10-15, 09:20 PM

Big yes to all of those options!

I'm going to get on with updating some links, but next vox populi for people:

How can you better get people heading towards the Blackfens?

The reason being that the RHOD hook is weak. I've tried a couple of suggestions in the handbook, but would anyone else have any good (or, even, better) suggestions to make about this subject?

I would agree with this. My players saw nothing at all unusual about the roads north being blocked, despite it being mentioned a specific number of times.

Oddly enough, my solution involved giving them a quest to go investigate the elvish situation at rest. From one of the wyrmlords.

The campaign gets significantly more interesting when you have people on the deep end of the alignment pool, and a diplomancer who happens to follow Tiamet.

AslanCross

2010-10-16, 12:10 AM

I was looking over Kharn's statblock, and there's actually some mistakes in it. For one, he can't have a DEX score of 8. If he was using the elite array, and put the 8 in DEX, his hobgoblin racial bonus would bring it to at least 10.

There's other little things that don't quite add up with it, either. I went and restatted him 'correctly,' and also pre-cast some of his buff spells. With his buffs up, he's a better challenge than how he is presented vanilla, although he's still probably too much of a pansy to challenge properly played, let alone mildly optimized, characters.

I still support giving him new class levels (ToB or Duskblade are my personal favorites), but you can at least make sure his stats are correct before tossing him to the PC meatgrinder.

Yeah, there's definitely some errors. I also didn't like how he was supposed to be wielding a greatsword in the fluff text (as well as one in the illustration, albeit that one looked too small to be a greatsword), but his most powerful weapon was his heavy pick. I've always felt that someone copy/pasted Azarr Kul's statblock and forgot to make some changes.

Saintheart, on the subject of going to the Blackfens: My players spent a lot of time studying Koth's Map, and figured that anyone whose name worth writing down on a map is probably worth checking out. In fact, they seemed more interested about disrupting a possible alliance with the lizardfolk and getting the scalies on the side of the Elsir Vale people.

Ethdred

2010-10-16, 05:35 AM

Not read all of this, but it looks excellent - well done and thanks to all who've contributed. I just wanted to add my support to the warning about Downdraft - my party used that to drop Ozzy right in front of their main melee fighter, who simply took him apart (with the help of the warlock). Overall, I found the dragons weren't really impressive, though that may have been as much my way of running them as anything else. A real pain in my party is a very optimised ranger/arcane slayer archer, who can deal about 100 points of damage in a full attack - he took Kharn down in two rounds, though he did have to use up several thousand GPs of power ups pre-fight! The party also had a very good druid scout, who effectively negated any ambushes, which was a pain.

Having said that, I did just kill four out of the six PCs in the last session on their second foray into the Fane :)

Runestar

2010-10-16, 06:11 AM

GreyMantle

2010-10-16, 02:02 PM

Ozzy is only cr5? He is supposed to get slaughtered in a fair fight, which is probably why wotc made him into a flying skirmisher who spits acid ever so often. Especially since your party would be at least lv6 by the time it is encountered.

Remember two things, though:

1.) In 3.x, Wizards stated a design intention that dragons should be tougher than any other monster of the same CR. I've usually found a dragon could usually be considered 2 to 4 CRs lower than what most sane people would use. I gather that this derives from a M:TG thing where dragons cost less than other monsters?

2.) Ozzy is far from alone. He has all of the guards, fortuitous terrain, and other factors.

Elfin

2010-10-16, 03:52 PM

This is a really great handbook - and it's reminded me that I still have an un-played copy of RHoD lying around.
And since my group is intending to run RHoD's 4e sequel, Scales of War, at some point...I think I might just see if I can manage to finally run the original.

AslanCross

2010-10-16, 05:20 PM

Remember two things, though:

1.) In 3.x, Wizards stated a design intention that dragons should be tougher than any other monster of the same CR. I've usually found a dragon could usually be considered 2 to 4 CRs lower than what most sane people would use. I gather that this derives from a M:TG thing where dragons cost less than other monsters?

2.) Ozzy is far from alone. He has all of the guards, fortuitous terrain, and other factors.

All that considered, if I'd kept him at his printed stats, my party would've destroyed him far too easily. I actually ended up having to bump him up to Juvenile. That would bring his listed CR up to 8, but he was more of an even challenge for five semi-optimized characters.

Elfin

2010-10-16, 07:17 PM

InkEyes

2010-10-16, 07:41 PM

I gather that this derives from a M:TG thing where dragons cost less than other monsters?

Whoever you heard this from is dead wrong. Dragons are one of the most expensive creature types in Magic. I don't think there's a single one that costs less than 4 mana (so you won't see any dragons on the field until turn 4, barring some mana acceleration). Wizards probably did intend for D&D dragons to be boss monsters, however. Their enormous range of attacks, spells, defenses, and huge trove of treasure all imply dragons are "boss monsters."

For those who felt the encounters were too easy, I'd love to see what the parties looked like?

Party 1:
A human Dragonfire Adept, a human Druid (later an Elf Dread Necromancer), a changeling Rogue/Swashbuckler (with the Daring Outlaw feat), and a DMPC gish (replaced with a PC half-elf Duskblade at Rhest).

The DFA and changeling were both potent at bluff and diplomacy. The DFA's breath weapons never ran low, so enduring the Battle of Brindol was easier, and entangling breath was her weapon of choice against dragons. The druid's many summoned monsters acted as effective meat shields for the first half of the game, and his skeleton dragons and giants were more than adequate after that. I stopped playing the gish after Skullgorge Bridge and battles did become tougher for the party.

The changeling ended up dying to a razorfiend between the Druid's death and the discovery of the DN. He was revived in a ritual that felt like an ass-pull to me, but the party completely bought it and thought it was cool so it all worked out. The insane damage the changeling and Duskblade dumped on anything near them was highly effective late in the game.

Party 2:
It's shaping up to be a half-minotaur Crusader, a kalashtar Ardent/Ectopic Adept, a human Beguiler, a chaos gnome Savage Bard, and a Necropolitan elf Swashbuckler/Rogue (also using Daring Outlaw). The paladin I mentioned earlier will be dropping out due to work conflicts, but I may have another player to bring in instead.

The crusader is using White Raven Tactics, reach weapons, and gets tons of AoOs. The Ardent's been very effective at ranged damage and providing flankers. The Beguiler plays like you'd expect, with copious debuffs and battlefield control. The Bard has pulled out some insane buffs and is overall an effective support character. When the necropolitan shows up (not often enough :smallannoyed:) his skills and damage are highly valued.

How can you better get people heading towards the Blackfens?

Just mentioning the elves should be enough to encourage the party into the Blackfens. Hopefully, after Cinder Hill one of their top priorities will be finding people that will help them fight the goblinoids.

Or some NPC could easily imply the need for allies/wonder out loud if the swamp elves know about the oncoming danger (because a good party might be willing to head out and warn the elves).

Runestar

2010-10-16, 08:49 PM

Whoever you heard this from is dead wrong. Dragons are one of the most expensive creature types in Magic.

Not just expensive, arguably overcosted. 6 mana for a 4/4 or 9 mana for a 6/6 is just way too slow by competitive magic standards, IMO.

2.) Ozzy is far from alone. He has all of the guards, fortuitous terrain, and other factors.

Still doesn't change the fact that if the players get to surround him, they will massacre him. Flight is really the only thing keeping it alive since at this stage, persistent flight should not yet be readily accessible to the entire party.

I noticed the guards there don't really have much synergy with one another. The hobgoblin guards are also quite weak for their cr3. My party of 4 started at lv6, was lv7 by the time we reached the bridge, and none of them could touch us!

Ethdred

2010-10-17, 06:20 AM

Still doesn't change the fact that if the players get to surround him, they will massacre him. Flight is really the only thing keeping it alive since at this stage, persistent flight should not yet be readily accessible to the entire party.

I noticed the guards there don't really have much synergy with one another. The hobgoblin guards are also quite weak for their cr3. My party of 4 started at lv6, was lv7 by the time we reached the bridge, and none of them could touch us!

I'd agree with this - which is why Downdraft is such a killer spell. The other mooks are really fairly pointless - and I'd beefed them all up. My party did play things rather intelligently, separating Ozzy (and the two manticores I'd added) from the land based troops.

Saintheart

2010-10-18, 07:58 AM

Hm - if you'll allow me a brief moment of narcissism, during a game session today I got the go-ahead to begin running RHoD in a couple weeks. Now, there'll be eight players, and after a quick review of the campaign I'm worried about them trampling all over Vraath Keep and Skull Gorge Bridge.

So, besides buffing up the hobgoblins and Karkilan, bumping Ozyrrandion up an age category, and redoing Koth's spells and feats, I'm debating two further changes: first, giving Koth either one or two (haven't yet decided) redspawn arcaniss bodyguards, and second, having the PCs begin at fourth level rather than fifth or sixth.
How do those changes sound? Will starting at fourth level hamper the group too much?

I've been running RHOD with a party of eight, albeit they weren't particularly optimised as a group. They started at level 6. Having said that I strongly suspect it's inexperience with D&D that kept them from utterly rolling their opposition, and the party of eight didn't start with the terrifying optimised barbarian who's presently with them. I think an experienced, seasoned party of eight would tear new orifices in Koth as written, so you're right to upgrade if only to take account of party numbers.

I think with eight players you have to plan as if you're dealing with two adventuring parties at once.

Does a level 4 start hurt or help? I can't really comment on this since I didn't have XP as a mechanism in my campaign -- when we reached the end of a chapter we flipped everyone up one level. So I don't know how well they'll progress. However: the thing that does occur is that with 8 people in the party the XP pool is diluted per party member: rather than splitting 800 XP (say) 4 ways you're splitting it 8 ways instead. That's going to slow down level up.

I haven't done a full XP count to see if it's going to really retard levelling, but my first instinct is to say boost your encounters to meet a level 5 party rather than nerf the party to level 4 and expect them to cope. Otherwise you could very well wind up with the party two to three levels down on where they're "supposed" to be, since the campaign all but assumes the characters are certain levels (9-10) when they hit the Battle of Brindol.

But I don't think there's an easy solution to it. Party numbers intersect with classes chosen, levels of optimisation, and the experience of the players. It's unique to a given set of players with their chosen characters and difficult to isolate out.

If your characters are experienced players, I'd say you can risk level 4 all round if there's eight of them. They'll be able to utilise sheer weight of numbers if nothing else. If they're very optimised at level 4, they're probably cynical savvy enough to withstand heavy encounters thrown at them, especially with 8 of them playing.

Sorry if that doesn't make matters any clearer.

On whether to provide extra redspawn arcanissi :smallsmile: - whoo, at level 5 that'd be a potentially nasty fight if the party triggers off the whole keep. Minotaur + 5 hobgoblins + worgs + manticore + Koth + a CR 6 arcaniss is plenty of firepower. My instinct is to say adding two redspawn is escalating things to the point of risking TPK, because multiple sources of arcane spellcasting make things a lot different.

CockroachTeaParty

2010-10-18, 10:21 AM

Man, where do you guys find so many players? Would all of them regularly attend? I'd expect a certain level of attrition after a while... but I guess that's just the type of people I've had access to in the past...

One interesting way to do it would be for four of the PCs to be 6th level with the Leadership feat, and then four other players play their cohorts (of lower level). By RAW, the game is supposedly equipped to handle that as if they are a normal party of 6th level characters. :smalltongue:

Aldgar

2010-10-18, 10:29 AM

However, all those level 6 characters would be slightly weaker than other lvl 6 characters, because one of their feats is *lost*.

Elfin

2010-10-18, 11:21 AM

Thanks for all the advice, Saintheat.
Since my players are all pretty decent optimizers, I think I will start them at level 4; doing a total xp count, that sets their levels as something like:

After Vraath Keep - 4
After Skull Gorge Bridge - 5
After travel to the Blackfens - 5
After the ruins of Rhest - 6
After the Ghostlord's lair (and travel to it) - 7
After the battle of Brindol - 8
After the Fane of Tiamat - 9

So basically, they'll be 1-2 levels behind throughout the entire campaign. But honestly, with double the 'standard' number of players (and optimization to boot), I think they'll do okay.

And you make a good point about the redspawn arcanissi. Especially since Karkilan will be stronger than normal, I think I'll put just one in (and, if the party is having lots of trouble, possibly not include it at all).

Again, thanks. :smallsmile:

ShriekingDrake

2010-10-18, 12:08 PM

What types of characters will the eight of them be?

Elfin

2010-10-18, 04:26 PM

Well, each player in our group has a "modular" character - a character used expressly for published adventures and sometimes one-shots (each with sketched-out class progressions). Generally, we dislike disrupting our ongoing plots with unrelated adventures involving whatever our "main" heroes are at the time, so we've found that having separate characters for these is a good compromise.
Anyway, the characters (alphabetized by original class) are:

Warforged barbarian - Pretty basic, a good old Power Attack charger build. Starts with, of course, Lion Totem Barbarian, and goes into Warforged Juggernaut and Frenzied Berserker. He's one of the group's main frontliners.

Lesser Aasimar cleric of Raziel - This player is probably the group's biggest optimizer. While he usually keeps the cheese to the minimum, he nonetheless goes DMM with quite a few PrCs (if I recall correctly, Church Inquisitor, Prestige Paladin, Ordained Champion, and Sacred Exorcist).

Human druid - For fairness' sake, the druid uses the Shapeshift variant from PHB II. Nonetheless, she's quite a potent combatant, often summoning with Nature's Ally and then rushing into the thick of combat.

Dwarf Deepstone Sentinel - This guy is basically the party tank. He's likely the least optimized of the group, or nearly so, but is still a big roadblock for monsters. Before entering the Deepstone Sentinel PrC, he's a fighter/crusader.

Snow Elf Swift Hunter - A pretty basic build, mostly ranger with a few levels of scout, this guy is a ranged skirmisher. While not the most powerful party member, he's the group's primary source of ranged damage. A note: he's traded away his animal companion for an alternate feature.

Lesser Tiefling rogue - A TWFer, the rogue (well, like every rogue) is out to maximize Sneak Attack. He goes into Nightsong Enforcer, Avenger (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/prc/20070401a), and one more PrC - Shadow Thief of X or somesuch. (Note to self: get copies of character sheets ASAP).

Wood Elf warblade - Another charger build. This character's main weakness is that he, as a straight warblade, doesn't have Pounce as an innate feature until later on, instead relying on Lion's Charge spells from the divine casters - but this is mostly offset by the versatility of his maneuvers.

Human wizard - A Conjurer, he fancies himself a blaster-type wizard (using the Orb line of spells), but more for flavor than power. The player is a big optimizer, though, and while he restrains himself by gentlemen's agreement he's perfectly capable of making a Batman-esque demigod. He PrCs into Incantatrix and Archmage (might eventually have some Fatespinner in there, can't quite remember).

I've included way more information than you'll probably want or need, but you can feel free to skip the extra stuff.

Saintheart

2010-10-19, 07:59 AM

Yeah, there's a definite front and back line there. Warblade, Deepstone Sentinel, and Barbarian are more than enough on their own to keep the casters safe. And that's excluding the cleric, who can take the front line if he wants to. Then you've got a ranged attacker for fire support and a roguely type for stealthy stuff. And finally, one arcane caster and one druid. Two parties' worth of sheer firepower and melee damage sources. Yeah, I'd revise my earlier thoughts: given you've got three tier one characters in the party, even if they won't get to the STUPENDOUS COSMIC POWAAHHH of beyond level 10 or so they can still deal with the unaltered campaign without too many problems.

About the only editorial comment I'd make here is that given the game runs notionally from level 5 to level 10, it doesn't allow the strongest forms of optimisation. Maybe that's a good thing.

Anyway, random thoughts.

Onto our next vox populi, and hopefully this one's a bit more interesting:

Running the Fane of Tiamat, what would you remove? What would you add into it?

Looking forward to the thoughts ... and thanks to everyone who's contributed so far! :smallsmile:

Elfin

2010-10-19, 11:38 AM

I haven't actually run it yet; just from reading, though, it seems (at least in conception) pretty neat. On the other hand, it seems unlikely that a standard party would be able to do it in a single try, which is rather anticlimactic: I'd think about having less monsters in the main part of the Fane, and more in the boss fight.
Then again, out of combat healing isn't too hard to get...
Perhaps the biggest problem I can see, though, is that if the party didn't slay Varanthian and/or Abithriax, the gateway could well end up as a TPK (the other two shouldn't present too much of an issue).

CockroachTeaParty

2010-10-19, 01:24 PM

Abithriax is described as specifically fighting to the death at the battle of Brindol, though, so it's unlikely he'll show up. Also, for whatever reason, Varanthian has a tendency to bite the big one too. In my experience, Ozzy and Reggy are the two most likely to escape and show up again, and they'll be little more than a distraction compared to Big Blue.

When we played through the Fane, the hardest part was in all honesty the osyluth (or bone devil). Our DM played him very well. He spammed Wall of Ice and separated the party. Perhaps the best thing he did was use his illusion powers to make it seem like he had summoned a bunch of lemurs, which caused us to waste actions. Brilliant! He almost took us down, the diabolic bastard.

We also fought against a whole bunch of wyverns, which proved very tough, and our DM also tossed in some dread wraiths (not sure if those are in the book or not, but they were scary). The actual fight against Azar Kul and the Aspect of Tiamat went pretty smoothly, but we were buffed like you wouldn't believe.

I'd maybe give Azar Kul more support in the final fight, or maybe give him some kind of special shield that surrounds him and allows him to buff. Then, when the first wave of mooks is killed, the shield drops, Azar Kul joins the fight, and even more minions show up (more abishai, perhaps? Maybe add in more colors than just blue abishai, for laughs).

Also, I might add a white dragon to the fight with Azar Kul's daddy. There's something disappointing about not fighting a white when you face every other color of Tiamat's heads. Maybe the white dragon is a friend of the blue dragon?

Here's an idea: have a white dragon guarding the entrance to the Fane, then put the blue dragon in the final battle with Azar Kul! Maybe he could be the first 'mini boss' while his son is buffing in that magic shield?

Elfin

2010-10-19, 03:00 PM

As for the special shield, Azarr Kul has something pretty close - Antilife Shell. The module actually says that his tactics are to cast that spell and then buff.

And your idea about the dragons - I really like that! According to the module, the Fane was once home to a wyrm white dragon, so perhaps the white dragon at the entrance is the child of the one who used to inhabit the temple?

GreyMantle

2010-10-19, 05:40 PM

I'm planning on running RHoD later this year, and one thing I'm hoping to do with the Fane is to really emphasize that the portal thingy is a portal to the frickin Hells. It's beginning to warp reality and do random, unpredictable things. Because the last thing RHoD needs is another lengthy dungeon crawl in between what is s'posed to be the most intense battle of the campaign and the (theoretically) hardcore conclusion.

I haven't really thought it totally through yet, but here're some ideas:

1) Make the Fane itself be mostly deserted. Maybe every so often the PCs could encounter a band of hobbo guards, but they'd be terrified and probably just refuse to fight because:
Azar Kul has, knowing that the PCs are coming, sped up the ritual. As a sideeffect, the portal has begun to spit out fiends at random points throughout the fane. Because of DM handwavium ("unpredictable magical energies, whatever), these fiends are mostly demons, which means they've pretty much been tearing the place apart.

2) Some parts of the Fane just lead straight into Hell. The PCs would have to navigate the infernal environments. Although I realize it's cliche as hell, I can see them having to pass through several gates, each of which requires defeating a guardian in a battle that revolves around some gimmick, be it mental environment manipulation, riddles, whatever. The guardians would be devils, hyped up superhobbos, teams of spawn of Tiamat assassins, hordes of raving goblin cultist, bugbear ninja, etc.

3) The final gate leads back to the Material though. Azar Kul and the actual portal exist in a sort of "eye of the storm" situation. The PCs can see crackling hellish energies within spitting distance as they fight Teh BossMonster.

Runestar

2010-10-20, 08:19 AM

Has anyone thought of incorporating the hobgoblin variants in MM5?

For example, warcasters (cr4, cast as wiz4) seem like viable alternatives to war adepts, especially when backed up with extra wiz lvs. Are there any suitable prcs for them? Koth could be more threatening with 4th lv spells.

Spellscourges seem like interesting replacements for bladebearers (albeit at 1 cr higher).

I am also thinking of replacements for the mooks, which seem quite weak for their cr, but my fear is that making them more complex might bog down the game. For instance, replace the warrior4 npcs with the duskblade3 from MM5? Their purpose is just to get in one solid arcane channel with shocking grasp before going down.

Maybe replace the hellhounds with more spawn of tiamat?

AslanCross

2010-10-20, 09:16 AM

Saintheart:

In my story, the Fane was originally not held by Tiamat cultists, but it was actually part of a very large planar seal that powered Tiamat's prison on Argonnessen. Since Tiamat is a demon overlord in Eberron and the Dragons imprisoned her (her prison on Argonnessen is the single most heavily-guarded complex on the entire planet), they needed a very large magic circle to power the skyscraper-sized Khyber Dragonshard that holds her. The seal itself is powered by the orbits of the planes around Eberron (kind of like how magnets moving close to coils of wire generate current).

Azarr Kul was using a Planar Orrery, a machine designed to realign the energies of the planes, to stop the orbits of the planes the seal was keyed to, and thus cause the prison to "crash."

If the Planar Seal were to be disrupted, the prison in Argonnesen would fail and Tiamat would be free---not as a goddess who machinates on other planes, but as an overlord of hordes of devils---and all 50,000 dragons on Argonnesen.

As for actual changes to the dungeon:

I really dislike the Night Hag encounter. It seems to me like a half-hearted attempt at levity in the final leg of the adventure. I prefer to keep the Fane spooky and very intimidating. I took it out and replaced it with a Naztharune Rakshasa assassin (it fit the story of one of my party's characters: his wife was murdered back home by a Rakshasa that was working with Azarr Kul).

As for what to add, I had the battle with Tyrgarun happen along a bridge that crosses the canyon. Naturally, a narrow, rickety, hanging bridge.

I also threw out the Blackspawn and replaced them all with multiple devils: mostly legion devils and chain devils. Chain devils are FANTASTIC for the barracks room due to the large number of meat chains hanging from the ceiling.

I also dramatically increased the power of the Bone Devil by giving him class levels, though in my run he wasn't meant to be a combat encounter. He gave the PCs a deal, offering to step out of the way if they took out the Glabrezu at the other end of the complex (I put the Glabrezu's prison chamber beyond the priest cells).

I also added a very annoying spell turret in the center of the main hallway of the Upper Fane, along with an Iron Golem (had to challenge my party due to it being fairly optimized and having 5 members; I do not recommend this for weaker parties). The Iron Golem was draconic in design (shaped like a Large half-dragon humanoid) and dealt slashing damage instead of bludgeoning thanks to enormous claws. It was actually left there by the original creators of the Fane. Thanks to a couple of deadly run-ins with it, the Red Hand squatters decided to just leave the golem alone and chose paths that circumvent it instead (there are many).

I also disliked how empty the council room was. I piled up lots of books on the table and had a very large map of Eberron pinned onto it. The giant Pentagram depicting the planar seal was drawn on it, with the Fane of Tiamat as one of the star's points. The map meant that there were other Fanes, and thus more locations for Azarr Kul to raid and perform his rituals at.

To make this room more interesting, I added a very large throne in a corner. It was big enough for an ogre. What for? You'll see later.

To round off the council chamber, I added a fire summoning trap (DMG 2). It basically incinerated the entire room along with the documents, and dropped a Fire elemental on the PCs. The trap was in Azarr Kul's throne.

Instead of wyverns, I put in a single Abyssal Drake in the Great Temple of Tiamat, along with mezzoloths and canoloths. Cloudkill as a spell-like ability is AWESOME.

What's a final dungeon populated by Spawn of Tiamat without a Bluespawn Godslayer? I replaced the razorfiends with this single butt-kicker. I dramatically increased the size of the Cavern of the Guardian Spawn, putting the eastern half on a rock shelf 200 feet up. The PCs had to scale a rickety, dangerous ladder to get up to the tunnel to the Outer Sanctum.

This ladder had a Blackspawn Stalker's web all around it. The Stalker itself was waiting on top beside the Godslayer.

Remember that throne in the council chamber? The really big one? For the Outer Sanctum, I added one last Rakshasa in it along with the lesser clerics and a hobgoblin crusader of Tiamat. (In Eberron, Tiamat's cult is primarily run by Rakshasas; particularly favored ones undertake a ritual that turns them into powerful half-dragon rakshasas.) This one was one of them: A large, half bronze-dragon Naityan rakshasa with swordsage levels. (Dragons in Eberron aren't alignment-color coded.)

Has anyone thought of incorporating the hobgoblin variants in MM5?

For example, warcasters (cr4, cast as wiz4) seem like viable alternatives to war adepts, especially when backed up with extra wiz lvs. Are there any suitable prcs for them? Koth could be more threatening with 4th lv spells.

Spellscourges seem like interesting replacements for bladebearers (albeit at 1 cr higher).

I am also thinking of replacements for the mooks, which seem quite weak for their cr, but my fear is that making them more complex might bog down the game. For instance, replace the warrior4 npcs with the duskblade3 from MM5? Their purpose is just to get in one solid arcane channel with shocking grasp before going down.

Maybe replace the hellhounds with more spawn of tiamat?

I love those guys, and used them a lot. The first PC death was caused by a Warcaster, though I never got a chance to use a Warsoul. You're definitely right about them being glass cannons. I had the Greater Barghests use Mass Enlarge Person and Mass Bull's Strength on them and then had them drop shocking grasps on the PCs.

The Duskblades figured in the Goblin Raid, as well as several of the ambushes in the forest.

The hellhounds were useless. Though initially I just refluffed them as fiery "scorch drakes" (I had no appropriate minis except for those raptor-like drakes), later I ditched them for Dire Wolves.

Coidzor

2010-10-20, 09:44 AM

I don't think anyone is satisfied with the hellhounds, really.

I recall some musing about replacing them with rage drakes...

Elfin

2010-10-20, 01:22 PM

Or red abishai, maybe? The lack of red dragon-related creatures has always bothered me, and the red abishai keep with the hellhounds' red, infernal, and fiery themes.

ShriekingDrake

2010-10-20, 01:53 PM

I don't think anyone is satisfied with the hellhounds, really.

I recall some musing about replacing them with rage drakes...

All this seems so party dependent. With a hyper-optimized party, I this is right ton the numbers. But I have to say that I think RHoD is a tough adventure, even for seasoned players. There is often not a lot of time to replenish, there is a fast paced tempo, and there are lots of ways to role-play into disaster. A hyper-optimized party can make mush out of most adventures. For even a moderately optimized party of four, or even five, this adventure should be tough, just by the sheer number of encounters with an inability to rest before the next one, the low magic rewards, and many, many opportunities to be relegated to the harder road (i.e. killing instead of capturing information sources, dragons or wormlords escaping only to come back later, or not persuading NPC's to the best course of action.)

Tyndmyr

2010-10-20, 02:02 PM

All this seems so party dependent. With a hyper-optimized party, I this is right ton the numbers. But I have to say that I think RHoD is a tough adventure, even for seasoned players. There is often not a lot of time to replenish, there is a fast paced tempo, and there are lots of ways to role-play into disaster.

Feh. There are less encounters in the adventure than there are days. So, if you don't have time to replenish, it's because you're churning through encounters rapidly. Sure, there are specific events, like drellin's ferry and brindol with limited time, but most stuff gives you reasonable chance to recover between fights if players desire it.

A hyper-optimized party can make mush out of most adventures. For even a moderately optimized party of four, or even five, this adventure should be tough, just by the sheer number of encounters with an inability to rest before the next one, the low magic rewards, and many, many opportunities to be relegated to the harder road (i.e. killing instead of capturing information sources, dragons or wormlords escaping only to come back later, or not persuading NPC's to the best course of action.)

Eh, simply killing your way through, a common tactic, is still surprisingly viable. You may not have as much background information, or know the structure/composition of the opposing force, but things are dead. After all, does it REALLY matter if you delay the horde a coupla days by diplomacing the right guy? The general alternative is usually killing him, which leads to more xp, and the time it takes the horde to march is certainly adequate for players to hit all the major bases, even if they muck around in one spot for a bit.

Dralnu

2010-10-20, 02:08 PM

I DM'd RHoD up to the siege of Drellin's Ferry. The party was a dumb barbarian, smart support druid, and two blaster sorcerers. Not optimized.

In the module's first encounter, the party was smart enough to take cover in the forest and the druid used Entangle to lock this down in the center. The barbarian decided to be utterly stupid and waltz by himself into the open field and promptly died after 3 rounds of all the archers shooting at him. One of the sorcerers got KO'd by a hellhound. I had to cheat a little and get Soranna's guards to save the day.

On the flipside, the poor hydra in the swamp never had a chance. Back to back fireballs took it out before it could land a single hit.

So if the party is inexperienced gamers, the module is just fine IMO. You'll need to ramp it up according to how good your players are and how many are playing. Now that my players are wiser in the ways of D&D and using books like ToB I'll really have to ramp things up next time I try and run it.

Coidzor

2010-10-20, 02:23 PM

Hmm, might consider a section dealing with this question (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=172672) of things that segue well with RHOD.

Elfin

2010-10-20, 04:06 PM

Well, I can see RHOD leading directly into a few things:

- Clean up. While Azarr Kul and Hravek Kharn may be dead, the Horde is far from gone: while scattered, hobgoblins and other monsters are still rampaging across the Elsir Vale, causing a great deal of havoc. If any Wyrmlords survived, they might reorganize the troops and prepare another assault; even if none did, a powerful Red Hand warpriest might seize control and begin their own invasion (or they might find a way to resurrect a fallen Wyrmlord).

- The fifth dragon. Why were only four dragons present in the invasion? Simple. Azarr Kul had, in fact, made an alliance with a powerful white dragon from the frosty mountain peaks north of the Endless Plains, but he simply didn't have time to delay the invasion long enough for the dragon to arrive. Instead, the plan was that the white dragon would help him solidify his rule across the Elsir Vale, crushing any remaining resistance.
So now, unaware that the Red Hand horde is in fact routed, this dragon arrives on its own...followed, of course, by a retinue of enslaved soldiers and monsters - and finds, while not perhaps the easy victory he had expected, a decimated land ripe for the picking.

- The Fane of Tiamat. Azarr Kul didn't quite manage to complete his infernal gate, but his work and the arrival of the Aspect of Tiamat significantly injured the fabric of the Material Plane within the inner sanctum. If they can, remaining Red Hand warpriests might try to complete the ritual - or the hordes of Baator might break through themselves. Either way, Elsir Vale now finds itself under a new threat: ravening armies of Hell swarming out of the Wyrmsmokes, bent on destruction.

- Vraath Keep. The PCs are heroes of the Elsir Vale, and as such Lord Jarmaath might see fit to grant them lordship over Vraath Keep and Drellin's Ferry. If they accept, the PCs will not only have to cope with rebuilding and repopulating the town and castle, but also clearing the shadow-filled eaves of the western Witchwood and driving back raids by remaining Red Hand warriors.
To be sure, it will become a game that's quite different from the standard campaign, but nonetheless an interesting one.

- Scales of War. 4e's Adventure Path, Scales of War, is a saga following the events of RHOD (though I'm not familiar with it). While it's published for 4e, converting it to 3.5 should be doable.

AslanCross

2010-10-20, 06:22 PM

All this seems so party dependent. With a hyper-optimized party, I this is right ton the numbers. But I have to say that I think RHoD is a tough adventure, even for seasoned players. There is often not a lot of time to replenish, there is a fast paced tempo, and there are lots of ways to role-play into disaster. A hyper-optimized party can make mush out of most adventures. For even a moderately optimized party of four, or even five, this adventure should be tough, just by the sheer number of encounters with an inability to rest before the next one, the low magic rewards, and many, many opportunities to be relegated to the harder road (i.e. killing instead of capturing information sources, dragons or wormlords escaping only to come back later, or not persuading NPC's to the best course of action.)

I have to disagree. My party was just slightly optimized:
-Dwarf crusader two-handing a maul
-Shifter warblade TWFing, later used a greatsword without power attack.
-Sniper rogue
-Cloistered cleric
-Kineticist Psion.

When I ran encounters as written, they were too easy. The only difficult encounter as written was the Marked for Death ambush. Even the highly deadly Varanthian encounter didn't do much (okay, the cleric got eaten and almost died, but the dwarf was able to pop Varanthian with a critical divine surge.) I drastically had to boost the power of the encounters in the end.

Random NPC

2010-10-20, 07:05 PM

Questions:

In an Eberron RHoD, how would things changed if the Tiri Kitor elves are actually a band of Valenar Elves? Are the giant owls really important? Can they be changed to Valenar horses?

Coidzor

2010-10-20, 08:00 PM

Flight does make a world of difference in terms of getting the PCs around with a vastly reduced random encounter potential as well as allowing them to travel in straight lines rather than along paths/roads or trailblazing through rough country...

And horses don't make quite as much sense for a decisive bit of aid in a battle inside of a city in most cases, what with the layer of spears, longspears, awl pikes, and debris in the streets that could be set up to effectively deny them a cavalry charge, since horses are of limited mobility due to the buildings getting in the way of their ability to flank like cavalry likes to be able to do.

From what I recall though, could quite handily refluff their aid to skirmishing cuirassiers to cut up the horde's supply lines and other such harassment of the flanks.

Starbuck_II

2010-10-20, 08:31 PM

But the book makes much about horses and travel time.
Granted it admits teleporting effects are better. It doesn't say a thing about flying for the PCs I think.

After reading this and getting it, I almost want to DM it but never ran a module before. It really is a good read at minimum (maybe in December try PbP if find any players.)

AslanCross

2010-10-20, 10:02 PM

Questions:

In an Eberron RHoD, how would things changed if the Tiri Kitor elves are actually a band of Valenar Elves? Are the giant owls really important? Can they be changed to Valenar horses?

Valenar Elves would be a lot less nice, but since they have some serious ethnic hate for the hobgoblins, they might be more likely to fight for the PCs. Conversely, the Red Hand is likely to hit them first, since the goblinoids really hate the Valenar elves for carving a piece out of their empire.

Other issues are as follows:

1. Valenar elves prefer open steppes. Why are they in a swamp cut off from the plains by a large, haunted forest?

2. Why there are Valenar elves there in the first place? This is highly dependent on where you actually place the Elsir Vale. It wasn't feasible in my campaign since I set it in the eastern tip of Breland (Dennovar was replaced by Vathirond, the last city before the Mournland). It was on the other side of the Mournland from Valenar.

3. While the Valenar elves hate hobgoblins, they don't have good relations with many other nations. They regularly raid Karrnath, for one. If you set the Vale in other possible settings (out-of-the-way places like eastern Breland or the Eldeen Reacheers), you'll have to explain why there are humans there, or change the inhabitants of Brindol and the other towns.

4. The owls only matter if the PCs get them, since they have to really impress the elves to get them. Same thing with the Valenar horses, as those are custom bred and not so lightly given to outsiders.

Valenar horses, strictly speaking, are faster (covering 64 miles in a day while the owls would cover only 56 (7 mph x 8 hours). However, they can avoid most encounters by flying, and as mentioned, can travel in a straight line. That saves a lot of time.

Random NPC

2010-10-20, 10:24 PM

Valenar Elves would be a lot less nice, but since they have some serious ethnic hate for the hobgoblins, they might be more likely to fight for the PCs. Conversely, the Red Hand is likely to hit them first, since the goblinoids really hate the Valenar elves for carving a piece out of their empire.

Other issues are as follows:

1. Valenar elves prefer open steppes. Why are they in a swamp cut off from the plains by a large, haunted forest?

2. Why there are Valenar elves there in the first place? This is highly dependent on where you actually place the Elsir Vale. It wasn't feasible in my campaign since I set it in the eastern tip of Breland (Dennovar was replaced by Vathirond, the last city before the Mournland). It was on the other side of the Mournland from Valenar.

3. While the Valenar elves hate hobgoblins, they don't have good relations with many other nations. They regularly raid Karrnath, for one. If you set the Vale in other possible settings (out-of-the-way places like eastern Breland or the Eldeen Reacheers), you'll have to explain why there are humans there, or change the inhabitants of Brindol and the other towns.

4. The owls only matter if the PCs get them, since they have to really impress the elves to get them. Same thing with the Valenar horses, as those are custom bred and not so lightly given to outsiders.

Valenar horses, strictly speaking, are faster (covering 64 miles in a day while the owls would cover only 56 (7 mph x 8 hours). However, they can avoid most encounters by flying, and as mentioned, can travel in a straight line. That saves a lot of time.
I see.

You think Tiri Kitor Shifters (if Vale is on the westish part of Breland) would work? They are wild elves and thus shifters make more sense. Lol, maybe even Gatekeeper Orcs :smalltongue:

AslanCross

2010-10-20, 10:44 PM

I see.

You think Tiri Kitor Shifters (if Vale is on the westish part of Breland) would work? They are wild elves and thus shifters make more sense. Lol, maybe even Gatekeeper Orcs :smalltongue:

Either of those might actually work better than Valenar elves, IMO. They're likely to have isolated enclaves.

In hindsight, I should've used Shifters instead.

Runestar

2010-10-21, 07:22 AM

AslanCross

2010-10-21, 07:34 AM

So I take it we are all comfortable with leaving the hobgoblin regulars as warrior2? I suppose they could spend their feat on martial study, which nets them the use of 1 maneuver 1/encounter. Steel wind would be useful.

What about the veterans?

Bladebearer invests in balance to trigger massed charge (teamwork benefit from PHB2). Like that idea very much.

Hellhounds are cr3, all the suggested alternatives are much higher in cr. Should we leave them as they are or replace them with more hobgoblin npcs?

Since the regulars are just there to pretty much die, I thought they were fine as warriors. I preferred to use them as archers, actually.

The veterans I turned into warblades focused on White Raven and using halberds.

Bladebearers also got the ToB treatment, so that they could TWF properly.

As for the hellhound replacement: Dire Wolf is CR 3. Higher HP and far more dangerous due to Trip.

pffh

2010-10-21, 09:10 AM

What about running it for fewer then 4 players? I have 2 maybe 3 (damn RL stuff getting in the way) players that I'm thinking of running it for andwould letting them start at level 6 be enough?

CockroachTeaParty

2010-10-21, 10:35 AM

Speaking of what to do after RHoD comes to a conclusion...

In our RL game, we wound up as the owners of Vrath Keep (well, specifically, our party rogue did). What we didn't know, was that our rogue had made some shady deals with Lady Kaal, who had also made some dealings with a powerful Pit Fiend. Lady Kaal had our rogue steal a potent artifact from the Tiri Kitor, which she was able to use to call the Pit Fiend to the material plane. The Pit Fiend then began to make our lives a living hell.

We chased the pit fiend all across the vale as he led us into various traps. He even got the Ghost Lord to join in on the fun, who was all too eager to have his revenge (we destroyed his phylactery).

At one point, two of the party members were killed, so me and the spirit shaman traveled to the outer planes and retrieved them from their afterlives. We enlisted the help of a planetar, who helped resurrect our friends in exchange for passage to the material plane. Tragically, this came back to haunt us as the planetar took over the cathedral of Pelor in Brindol and began to make everyone miserable with his impossible standards of goodness.

To complicate matters further, the big powerful sorcerer from Dennovar challenged my character to a spell duel (he was an arrogant prick, but the Pit Fiend had also promised him power). My wizard/warmage/ultimate magus curb stomped him easily, though.

Finally, after defeating the Ghost Lord, convincing the planetar to help us fight the Pit Fiend and return to heaven, bringing Lady Kaal to justice, and hunting down the pit fiend, we had our climactic battle (on top of a volcano!). The fiend had hunted down the lost (insane) love of my character's life, and offered him a deal to restore her sanity in exchange for self-exile to Sigil. (he offered each party member a tempting deal as well, but we all refused and fought him! Grr!)

It was a tough fight. We were ECL 15-ish, and though we had prepared the best defenses we could, the Pit Fiend was still a CR 20 menace. Miraculously, he rolled a natural 1 on his save against a Banishment spell, and he was sent back to Hell where he belonged. Moved by our efforts, the planetar restored my character's lost love to sanity using a potent Miracle, then returned to the heavens.

Our party then went their separate ways, having finally made Elsir Vale safe again. Good times...

AslanCross

2010-10-21, 10:53 AM

What about running it for fewer then 4 players? I have 2 maybe 3 (damn RL stuff getting in the way) players that I'm thinking of running it for andwould letting them start at level 6 be enough?

You've still got action economy against them. What I did (originally I had 5 players, but they backed out until their schedules cleared up) was have each of them handle two characters. This may not work for everyone, though, since some players have difficulty handling one character, let alone two.

Saintheart

2010-10-22, 08:15 AM

Slowly adding bits and pieces to the handbook; RL has me in a bind. Continue your discussions, ladies and gents... :smallbiggrin:

Golbez57

2010-10-22, 08:35 AM

What about running it for fewer then 4 players? I have 2 maybe 3 (damn RL stuff getting in the way) players that I'm thinking of running it for andwould letting them start at level 6 be enough?

I'm considering 3 characters with gestalt rules. I was going to do that for Pathfinder's "Kingmaker" but the sheer size and scope of that one just wore me out before we even started.

"RHoD" was my favorite 3.5 player experience (though a certain fiendish behir did us in messily...) and we did 3 gestalt PCs for that. My monk-cleric was loads of fun.

Anyone else done gestalts for "RHoD"?

I've got a huge 3.5 library that's gone mostly unused, so if/when I GM it, I am going to try to dust off certain books , maybe focusing on one per chapter or so. "Heroes of Horror" for the Ghostlord, "Heroes of Battle" for Brindol, "Fiendish Codex" and "Book of Vile Darkness" for the Fane, etc. I've already reworked some of the goblin cavalry as Cavalier (PFRPG) 1/Dragonfire Adepts 5. Brutal, mobile little wolf-riders. Also toying with Kharn according to the suggestions made. I forgot how brutal Crusader could be.

Have really enjoyed the discussions here!

Elfin

2010-10-22, 09:37 PM

I think 3 Gestalt characters will do basically fine, I expect. They're only one less than the expected party size, and their double progression should more than make up for their lost member in most situations.
The place I see them having trouble in is combat against multiple strong foes (the giants in the Battle of Brindol, for example) but I don't think that will get too problematic.

As for my own campaign: it seems that our usual DM won't actually be available for our game tomorrow, so I'll have to start running RHOD tomorrow rather than in a week like I expected. Yikes. :smalleek:

Starbuck_II

2010-10-22, 09:42 PM

Don't forget PCs can hire hirelings if they really want extra strength. Yes, it gets cost over time, but they don't steal XP/treasure.

I wonder if Gestalt Hirelings cost more. :smallconfused:

Coidzor

2010-10-23, 09:07 AM

Don't forget PCs can hire hirelings if they really want extra strength. Yes, it gets cost over time, but they don't steal XP/treasure.

I wonder if Gestalt Hirelings cost more. :smallconfused:

Down that way lies madness.

With the way things are recommended to be run in a gestalt game, I get the feeling that hirelings probably shouldn't be gestalted.

Since hirelings don't gain XP, they'd need more of them, or at least some opportunities to get new ones as they become obsolete.

I'd probably just be lazy and let them have a cohort but no followers, which would have the added advantage of not having minions upon minions involved in the fights.

ka_bna

2010-10-23, 01:36 PM

I've read this thread and read about how the enemies may have to be upgraded.
Question: is this conclusion (and other conclusions in this tread) valid too for a game core-only (PHB, DMG, MM1)?

Starbuck_II

2010-10-23, 01:54 PM

No, in Core-only you don't need to make the enemy stronger (I guess), but many of enemy aren't core.

CockroachTeaParty

2010-10-23, 02:04 PM

No, in Core-only you don't need to make the enemy stronger (I guess), but many of enemy aren't core.

Yeah, there's stuff sprinkled throughout from several different splatbooks. MM II, MM IV, Draconomicon, Complete Divine, Fiendish Codex II (sort of), Frostburn, and maybe some others... granted, the things taken from these sources are primarily monsters and sub-par classes and prestige classes.

Dusk Eclipse

2010-10-29, 05:10 PM

This handbook (and the fact that I found AD&D players on my school that are willing to try 3.5) have re-kindled my interest in trying to run the RHoD, so I thank all of you for all this work that will my life far easier.

Now I've got some questions:

If I start the characters at level 6, increasing all enemies HD/class level by 1, be enough to compensate?

How far you think I should have everythng stated up? I was thinking on having all enemies, npc, etc from "The Witchwood" stated up prior to start the adventure.

What would be easier to DM in, generic fantasy setting #45724234 or in Eberron?

Coidzor

2010-10-29, 05:45 PM

No idea on the level six and upping everything a HD idea, sorry.

Having the Witchwood all figured out initially is the minimum I'd recommend, since it's unlikely but possible they'd blow past Koth and make it to the bridge in a session. The most important things are the primary antagonists in the form of the dragons and the wyrmlords.

A generic world would require less work to set up because you can just go "welp, here's the vale" whereas with a more rigid (at least in regards to hordes and armies prowling about), established setting like Eberron you've got to figure out where to put it and have some level of pressure to take into account setting fluff/mechanics. So, it depends on whether having to do less work in making the adventure fit with the world or having some established canon/fluff to flesh out the world is preferable for you.

Dusk Eclipse

2010-10-29, 05:54 PM

hmmm well I think I'll try to stat up, at least half-way through the second part.... that should give me enough for the first session at least.

And it is really a toss up for me about generic vs. Eberron, I love Eberron's flavour and I would really like to set up the adventure there... but I really don't have the time to check all the logistic and geographical implications if I set it there.

Runestar

2010-10-29, 06:05 PM

If I start the characters at level 6, increasing all enemies HD/class level by 1, be enough to compensate?

Class lvs don't really improve npcs' cr at a 1:1 rate. You may find yourself having to add at lest 2-3 class lvs to justify a +1cr increase.

Coidzor

2010-10-29, 06:05 PM

And it is really a toss up for me about generic vs. Eberron, I love Eberron's flavour and I would really like to set up the adventure there... but I really don't have the time to check all the logistic and geographical implications if I set it there.

Well, Aslancross did some work with porting it to Eberron (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=110022), setting it on the outskirts of Breland, I believe. Might ask him a thing or two if you're curious, since I believe he mentioned having had several places he considered plugging it in.

Dusk Eclipse

2010-10-29, 06:09 PM

Class lvs don't really improve npcs' cr at a 1:1 rate. You may find yourself having to add at lest 2-3 class lvs to justify a +1cr increase.

I was considereing rebuilding all enemies (including mooks) with PC classes, for example the hob regulars, being built as fighters instead of warriors, IIRC in that case there was 1:1 CR increase.

Well, Aslancross did some work with porting it to Eberron (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=110022), setting it on the outskirts of Breland, I believe. Might ask him a thing or two if you're curious, since I believe he mentioned having had several places he considered plugging it in.

I think I might ask... I'll have to check an Eberron Map to make sure anyway

Coidzor

2010-10-29, 06:15 PM

Dusk Eclipse

2010-10-29, 06:17 PM

in my group Hobs, get their not-deserved LA nixed.

Thanks for the link, dusk is a happy panda now.

Runestar

2010-10-29, 07:04 PM

I was considereing rebuilding all enemies (including mooks) with PC classes, for example the hob regulars, being built as fighters instead of warriors, IIRC in that case there was 1:1 CR increase.

My point was that classed npcs tend to be weaker than their cr lets on, so simply adding classes at a 1:1 rate may not achieve the desired result in actual gameplay.

For example, a hobgoblin fighter4 is a cr4 on paper, but for that same cr, you could also have a young white dragon or very young blue dragon. :smallannoyed:

Coidzor

2010-10-29, 07:20 PM

That reminds me. Kinda strikes me as odd that Mr. Blue was the kind that would make half-dragons but that there weren't more half-dragon sprog of his sent after the party.

Golbez57

2010-10-29, 07:56 PM

Coidzor

2010-10-29, 08:59 PM

Speaking of blue baddies, has anyone used the Bluespawn Godslayers from MM IV? I would love to get some action out of my Huge miniatures. I think a pair of them in the Battle of Brindol would be epic... maybe too much so.

We had a mini-boss fight in the main temple auditorium against one when I played through it the first time. It hit us right after we had been in a running battle with a couple of clerics, so despite the lack of support it was still a challenge. Main problem that limited its effectiveness in that place in particular was our ability to duck out of the way into the secret side corridor(s).

Dusk Eclipse

2010-10-29, 10:49 PM

My point was that classed npcs tend to be weaker than their cr lets on, so simply adding classes at a 1:1 rate may not achieve the desired result in actual gameplay.

For example, a hobgoblin fighter4 is a cr4 on paper, but for that same cr, you could also have a young white dragon or very young blue dragon. :smallannoyed:

Easy, I was just making a question, that is the point of this thread isn't it? asking question about how to run better run RHoD, and to me that would be challenge my players.

Hence why I asked that.

Runestar

2010-10-29, 11:48 PM

Easy, I was just making a question, that is the point of this thread isn't it? asking question about how to run better run RHoD, and to me that would be challenge my players.

Hence why I asked that.

I wasn't trying to be rude, apologies if I came across as being too pushy. :smalltongue:

Dusk Eclipse

2010-10-29, 11:50 PM

The :smallannoyed: was what caused this missunderstanding, now I have to go and start stating....

Runestar

2010-10-30, 12:23 AM

The :smallannoyed: was what caused this missunderstanding, now I have to go and start stating....

To clarify, the :smallannoyed: was actually meant to express my incredulity at how the designers felt a human fighter4 with npc gear was ever equal to a young white dragon when challenging the party. However I look at it, the white dragon wins in every aspect - more attacks/damage, better hp/saves/skills and misc abilities like flight, breath weapon and movement modes.

So yeah, I think adding 2 more class lvs to every npc might be a good way to start. :smallsmile:

IthilanorStPete

2010-10-30, 12:39 AM

Speaking of blue baddies, has anyone used the Bluespawn Godslayers from MM IV? I would love to get some action out of my Huge miniatures. I think a pair of them in the Battle of Brindol would be epic... maybe too much so.

Our DM threw a pair of us as the 3rd and last part of the Streets of Blood encounter - was probably the most memorable non-dragon fight of the campaign. We were a pretty powerful party, but we were only able to kill one - we took about half health off the second before it stomped off to massacre the town guard, with us completely unable to stop it.

Elfin

2010-10-30, 12:41 AM

Bluespawn godslayers at the Battle of Brindol? That is an awesome idea...I might just have to use it in my own campaign.

Greymane

2010-11-01, 07:28 AM

I certainly hope I can get away with asking this here... here goes...

In my IRL RHoD campaign, there's some interesting things going on with the PCs, and I was thinking of tossing a curveball into the ending and... see what chaos ensues among the players.

I need to point out in this new homebrew world of ours, that Bahamut is dead, and metallic dragons are very, very rare. Bahamut was betrayed by a mortal servant of his (he was offered power by another evil deity in exchange for helping slay him, so he did). Most metallic dragons at that point gave into despair and accepted Tiamat's gift of becoming one of her children. I should also note that Tiamat was unhappy that Bahamut was dead. They may have hated eachother, but they were the closest thing to kin there was and she despises humanoids now for their betrayal of him. Thinking the classy lady may have secretly loved him or something but I digress.

Now, onto the end I want.

After the Aspect is slain, I want to leave behind a spark of divinity. The players can choose what they do with it. It could be used to resurrect a dead god (such as Bahamut) or it could be used to add one more divine rank to an existing deity, OR it could turn a PC into a Divine Rank 0 entity.

The interesting part of this comes from the player make-up.

1: The Cleric is secretly a hobgoblin worshiper of Nomog-gea (sp?), the deity of Hobgoblins. He's evil, and wants to re-convert the Red Hand (and kill all the normal goblins since his god hates them). So far he's disguised himself and his underling as humans.

2: The Binder. This unusual fellow as begun a ritual to bring about the literal rebirth of a Vestige. His apprentice, a former prostitute he picked up in Drellin's Ferry, slept with a Tiri Kitor elf (charm magic was involved), and plans to have Lemartes reborn through this child. Considering Lemartes was once a deity in her own right, I could see the Binder wanting the spark for his little project.

Now, with what I intend, I could certainly see this ending with the party at odds with each other. Normally I'm wary of interparty conflict, as it's usually bad.

I ask you people here, would you find this acceptable in your campaign? If not, how could I change things around for the better?

Edit: Ahem. There's more players. Eight in total. However those are the players likely most interested in this ordeal.

GreyMantle

2010-11-01, 12:42 PM

That sounds like it could be a lot of fun. But, if any of those things happen, it'd probably be the end of the campaign. Now, that might not be a bad thing, since rhod is such a climactic and long adventure, and the new world could be a very exciting place to adventure in. But I'd probably make sure the players of the characters that aren't trying to to steal the spark won't be too annoyed if everything ends.

Greymane

2010-11-01, 06:03 PM

This whole campaign was merely to run this module. The game will end after it's completed, so I can monologue on the outcome of their actions. Whether one of them ascends, Nomog-gea (or another deity) gets more powerful, or if a previously dead deity returns.

Saintheart

2010-11-02, 07:51 AM

Then do whatever the heck you like! It's your campaign. :smallsmile:

Incidentally, Genn, how'd you find the experience of running 8 people in RHOD? Did it make it hard to challenge the party in battles -- were they cakewalks, or did you need a serious amount of reworking to 'fix' the adventure?

(Details on player experience and levels of optimisation would be handy, too... :smallwink: )

Greymane

2010-11-02, 08:42 AM

Incidentally, Genn, how'd you find the experience of running 8 people in RHOD? Did it make it hard to challenge the party in battles -- were they cakewalks, or did you need a serious amount of reworking to 'fix' the adventure?

(Details on player experience and levels of optimisation would be handy, too... :smallwink: )

Sorry, six players. It feels like eight with the bloody Cohort and Thrall, though. :smallredface:

Truly? I find it daunting, but enjoyable. It's been hard to find a balance between TPK and cakewalk.

All the players are very experienced in D&D, but most do not powergame. They like to find some sort of... unique trick a character can do and stick with it. Some optimize more than others, it shows and it makes it hard to balance encounters.

The Characters

The Cleric has the Leadership feat (Don't look at me like that, we're usually okay with this for RP), making matters a touch more complex. He's also gone into DMM, but I've restricted Nightsticks to not stacking. The cohort is a Spiked Chain-wielding Swordsage/Factotum. He's MAD but effect some of the time. The player knows how to play Clerics well enough, so a decent optimizer.

The Binder/Sorcerer is going into Anima Mage. He opted not to Precocious Apprentice in, so he's not as powerful as the Cleric and Druid. The player knows his stuff and can optimize, but I think feels optimizing for the sake of optimizing is evil. The player is also frothing mad irritated that all the dragons they keep fighting have Scintillating Scales up on them, but I'm not about to change smart tactics if he's not willing to find a method of dispelling.

The Druid is terrifying. He worked with the Binder's player to optimize and took Aberrant Wildshape alongside the feat that allows you to get some Su abilities that a form has when you become it. He enjoys using eye rays as a Gauth and has yet to become a Mindflayer. The player is pretty new to D&D, but is a quick learner and enjoys how powerful he is.

Phrenic Rogue/Dervish is very tame, and is a glass cannon. She likes her characters to have low Str and low Con, which is cause for concern for me, because she also likes the Quick Trait. At level 9 she has not quite 30 hp(!) and some of the monsters could have one-shotted her easily by now. Talented RPer who crafts wonderful backstories for me to work with, however. Mechanics in D&D also make her head hurt, so she avoids combat when she can, as it bores her as well.

Psion/Thrallherd (You're looking at me like that again...) The player was formerly a Half-Giant Half-Celestial Monk (houseruled to not suck), but fell for a ploy by Saarvith and had his throat ripped out in the marsh of Rhest by Reggi. The character is evil, but optimized decently for high save DCs. Since the character is keen on getting his Thralls and Believers killed willy nilly, and is unpleasant, I think that he will be abandoned by the party at some point, if not turned into the authorities (mind-control magic is regarded as evil throughout most of the world). He has yet to participate in a fight, so I'm unsure how he'll fair.

Bard. This player was formerly a Githzerai Soulknife (again, houseruled a bit to not suck), but was torn to ribbons by my modified Greenspawn Razorfiend in the same fight the Monk died. The character is based entirely on Captain Hammer from Dr. Horrible, and I have yet to see him in combat. He'll do a lot of manly singing, I wager. The player knows nothing about practical optimization, so I imagine the character will sing, and try to be a manly-save-the-girl-with-my-muscles kind of guy, but fail at that because Bards don't do the brute strength small brain thing very well.

The first part of the campaign was a cakewalk for them. So much so, that the Druid player wanted to sit back in Drellin's Ferry and take on the Horde himself. (He did, by the way, but the other players left long before then. He also failed miserably)

We're in the second part, and they just defeated Saarvith and Reggi, but they both got away. I ended up making ALL the ogres in Rhest the Ogre Barbarians from the MM which actually gave them pause when the Rogue and Factotum/Swordsage noticed they couldn't Sneak Attack them.

I ended up liking the outcome of the fight (two players dead, the others very winded) because when the Razorfiend showed up, they didn't bother with it (even after I scared the crap out of them with the first one earlier) until after it diced the Soulknife up. I suppose the black dragon with a Ranger/Scout mounted on him was a pressing issue though.

I'm having a blast so far, though, and so is everyone else.

Coidzor

2010-11-02, 09:31 AM

^: so you only have 3 characters, a cohort, and a thrall participating in battle?

What do the rest of the players do during that time? :smalleek:
Incidentally, Genn, how'd you find the experience of running 8 people in RHOD? Did it make it hard to challenge the party in battles -- were they cakewalks, or did you need a serious amount of reworking to 'fix' the adventure?

(Details on player experience and levels of optimisation would be handy, too... :smallwink: )

We had 10 players at one point during Rhest due to some family being in town, so they rolled up guest characters and basically made it such a cakewalk the DM plot deviced a way to get it down to 6 of us for the fight against Regiarix. More usually we had 8 from Koth to before entering the ghostlord's territory when we lost a player and went to 7 characters who lasted for the duration. (Though, occasionally, the wizard and dread necromancer wouldn't participate in the adventure due to player illness which bumped us down to 5 characters at various intervals.)

Between the extra time it takes to do anything and the action economy advantage, our DM quickly found that increasing the number of creatures per encounter wasn't the way to go about addressing the issue, even though we weren't very optimized (monk, gnome paladin, rogue/fighter, blaster druid, dread necromancer, wild elf barbarian, necromancer) and several of us were new players, with it being the 1st or 2nd campaign ever for 3 of us.

So, you'll be wanting to ramp up the encounters even if they don't really optimize simply because they have a bigger bulwark of HP and spells and power. Making the first couple of encounters a test out for the feel of the party would not be remiss, since they're generally fairly easy up until the bridge/hydra and using the data from that to modify your idea for the rest of the chapters.

Greymane

2010-11-03, 06:23 AM

^: so you only have 3 characters, a cohort, and a thrall participating in battle?

What do the rest of the players do during that time? :smalleek:

The Rogue doodles. But that's common for her. She likes story telling but hates seeing it bogged down in combat and mechanics. She knew what she was getting into, however, when I warned her that having THAT low of HP was a BAD idea. Her phrenic abilities hit like a mac truck, though, so she dishes out a lot of hurt with those.

I'm not sure what the Bard will do yet. I think he felt overshadowed even when he was a Soulknife. I recommended Snowflake Wardance to him but he ended up not taking it, so I just plain don't know what to do with him.

The Binder.... knows how to optimize, but doesn't. If it gets him killed he'll just have to deal with that.

Besides, if they fail, this setting will have a cool dragon-worshipping Hobgoblin Empire. :smallcool:

AslanCross

2010-11-04, 12:15 AM

Speaking of blue baddies, has anyone used the Bluespawn Godslayers from MM IV? I would love to get some action out of my Huge miniatures. I think a pair of them in the Battle of Brindol would be epic... maybe too much so.

I used one of them in the Fane of Tiamat in the Cavern of the Guardian Spawn instead of the Razorfiends, which by then are pathetic. I gave it a couple of levels of Hulking Hurler. I did see a blog campaign journal that used them in the Battle of Brindol, but IMO they're way too much at that level. They'll steal Kharn's thunder besides.

Coidzor

2010-11-04, 01:01 AM

Besides, if they fail, this setting will have a cool dragon-worshipping Hobgoblin Empire. :smallcool:

You mean a Hobgoblin Kharrrrrrnate. :smallamused:

...

...

Dangit, now I'm thinking about the mongols and how cool it would be to make some kind of artillery undead out of one of those pyramids of skulls...

Runestar

2010-11-04, 04:24 AM

I ended up making ALL the ogres in Rhest the Ogre Barbarians from the MM which actually gave them pause when the Rogue and Factotum/Swordsage noticed they couldn't Sneak Attack them.

Whoa...that's some major buffing of cr! :smalleek:

Greymane

2010-11-04, 11:20 AM

Whoa...that's some major buffing of cr! :smalleek:

I was tired of them destroying every Ogre left and right like they were nothing. The battle was actually perfectly challenging for them, as they put out some hurt, but still went down pretty fast. I was pleased with the result.

Runestar

2010-11-04, 05:40 PM

Figures. cr3 opponents just aren't challenging against a 7th lv party.

I am looking at Drossang Tachlash (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/fc/20070622a) here and wondering if he might make for an interesting recurring npc.

The idea is for him to first replace Koth at the keep as a normal redspawn arcaniss (similar effect - practiced spellcaster means 10d6 fireballs, spellcasting thematics for 3 rays from scorching ray). Naturally, he will be defeated.

Then have him return as a ghost (or is there a cheaper incorporeal template?) to harass the party. How can we optimize him further?

Coidzor

2010-11-04, 11:07 PM

Then have him return as a ghost (or is there a cheaper incorporeal template?) to harass the party. How can we optimize him further?
A single level of the ghost savage progression class (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/sp/20040117a)might be what you want, or just apply those benefits as an LA+1 template... 3 levels if you want it to be able to come back with a level check without fudging.

I am looking at Drossang Tachlash (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/fc/20070622a) here and wondering if he might make for an interesting recurring npc.

The idea is for him to first replace Koth at the keep as a normal redspawn arcaniss (similar effect - practiced spellcaster means 10d6 fireballs, spellcasting thematics for 3 rays from scorching ray). Naturally, he will be defeated.
Well, her madness could definitely be a downside to using her against them. Played intelligently though, the incorporeal spellcaster blasting the party with spells is pretty nasty, and it pretty much negates melee by being able to fly at all times and hide in objects/the ground.

It could make for a good alternative Marked for Death encounter though, and a fun little bit of fluff to customize the Fane further (since it just makes sense to have the body be there with the items it's going to be using)

Saintheart

2010-11-05, 08:40 AM

AslanCross

2010-11-05, 04:21 PM

Just logging that I added some more notes into the Battle of Brindol section at the front of the thread.

Onto another quick vox pop:

Did you expand the campaign to include a sidetrip to the Hammerfist Holds? What other sidequests can chew up some time in an interesting way?

I included the Hammerfist Holds, but at that time the PCs were sure they were running out of time, so they just passed by very quickly. It did not really warrant much of an expansion in my opinion.

I didn't really add much in the way of sidequests; I did play up the wilderness travel, though, especially in the Fifth Chapter. I depicted the Fane of Tiamat as the remotest part of the already remote region, and it was truly a hellish trip there.

Emy

2010-11-06, 01:02 PM

I've just started running RHoD.

My campaign:
Party: undead illumian cleric inquisitor, human warblade dragoon, halfling swift hunter crossbow sniper, and an elven generalist wizard.

All I've done so far was the marauder attack, to get a feel for the party. Since the cleric's player was stuck at work, I left out the second wave of hobgoblins. I regret that now because their entry would have given the wizard a chance to show off, but oh well--he's a wizard, I'm sure he'll have plenty of other chances to show off.

I have "played" a test group through the adventure up to about midway through the Fane of Tiamat to familiarize myself with everything, so hopefully that'll help me judge what would be a challenge to my party. The main concern for 'boss' monsters is that the wizard could SoL them (glitterdust) or that the dragoon will be able to kill just about anything in one round if she manages to drop down on it from above. For the wizard, Blind-Fight and an extra sense (blindsense, mindsight, tremorsense, something like that) would help them go down fighting while still taking some penalty from the blinding. Iron Heart Surge might be a good idea too, and I could use that (on a non-ToB enemy) to give the party an Iron Heart Vest. For the dragoon, terrain (or fighting flying enemies, like the dragons) could prevent her from charging. That can be overcome either with cleverness or good teamwork, which is a good thing, since both of those things make the game more fun for the players.

Generic NPC Improvements:
I'm definitely going to give most named NPCs an extra level or two, and make the elite fighter types into Tome of Battle classes. The hobgoblin bladebearer was supremely underwhelming as a fighter. It moved in to attack the warblade, and died to a critical AoO. I think that giving them reach and/or some way of avoiding AoOs would make them a much more interesting fight, without making them -too- deadly.

I may make the Red Hand have more clerics, which would use group buffs to make the hobgoblin regulars more of a credible threat. I'm reluctant to increase their level or give them better gear, because they're the most basic soldiers of the army. There are a ton of them, so their gear is mass produced, and there's nothing special about them, so they really -should- be quite weak compared to the PCs.

Unnaturalness:
Also, the mention of playing up the unnaturalness of the greenspawn got me thinking, and I'm considering using the proto-creature template (from Dragonlance) to help add to their unnaturalness. I think that in my campaign, instead of summoning demonic aid, it's going to be stuff from the Far Planes. So some of the later boss-type creatures, like the Aspect of Tiamat and possibly Abithriax will have the pseudonatural template.

Skather:
Additionally, I'm going to make Skather into a sneaky Dread Necromancer. The party are going to leave a good number of corpses behind them, so towards the end of the campaign, I'll replace one of the difficult fights with Skather and his minions: a few skeletal dragons (Ozyrrandion, Regiarix) and a zombie Hydra (awakened for fast healing). Skather can still easily be responsible for the sniper attack, by having made a Bone Creature, Corpse Creature, or Dread Warrior of a ninja. I'll post the stat block when he's done, of course.

Dusk Eclipse

2010-11-07, 02:14 PM

Ok... I am beggining to worry that I might overpower my encounters when running RHoD... I have just starting stating up the Maruder Attack Encounter (normally EL 8) and according to a EL calculator.. I have pushed it up to EL 10

Here are my changes

Instead of 6 Hbg warriors 2, 4 Hbg fgt 4
Intead of the Bladebearer as fgt 4... a Wbd 4
The doom cleric, is now level 4
and I am going to use a dire wolf instead of the hell hounds.

The second wave will be 2 of my hbg fighters.

Am I pushing this too much?

For the record I am expecting that my players will optimize to a degree.

Starbuck_II

2010-11-07, 02:20 PM

Dusk Eclipse

2010-11-07, 02:22 PM

Any reason for these changes?

I want to teach my players how to optimize (I will help them to do so, and I will probably link them to the Handbook section at BG) and I want to really challenge them.

Elfin

2010-11-07, 04:01 PM

Honestly, I think that is too much: the first fight is intended to be merely an easy introduction. I think the upgrades to the cleric, bladebearer, and hellhounds are fine, but honestly I'd just make all the other hobgoblins regulars or veterans.

Dusk Eclipse

2010-11-07, 10:07 PM

Really? maybe... just upgrading the regulars to fighters instead of warriors.

Runestar

2010-11-07, 11:30 PM

Maybe upgrade them to fighter2 with the elite array?

The current hob warriors won't be able to scratch your party at all, unless you really stack the attack modifiers (massed charge, buffs like bless etc).

Hellhounds have the same cr as dire wolves, so the change shouldn't make the encounter any more challenging by rights (though I do find the wolves tend to make for tougher opponents). :smallwink:

Dusk Eclipse

2010-11-08, 02:54 PM

Coidzor

2010-11-08, 04:40 PM

Hey does any one has suggestion on what should I use to replace the giants... I decided to set my game on Eberron and (inspired by Aslan's Cross) I decided to replace the giants because of the setting history. The problem is that I don't want to rip-off Aslan Cross by using Warforged Titan.... so suggestions?

I seem to recall Skullcrusher Ogres as having been received well/considered due to fitting in as elite versions of the regular ogres (so like their upper class/leaders) and doubling as artillery due to having the rock-throwing ability.

...I can't recall their source offhand though, unfortunately, but I recall someone used them, Saph, maybe?

Runestar

2010-11-08, 05:51 PM

What giants are used in the module? I recall ogres, hill giants...the odd ettin here, what else?

Coidzor

2010-11-08, 06:08 PM

What giants are used in the module? I recall ogres, hill giants...the odd ettin here, what else?

Forest Giants. More elfy than elves, or something, IIRC. First chapter.

They're not necessarily going to end up antagonistic to the PCs though.

I'm thinking he wanted to replace the hill giant artillery with something more interesting.

AslanCross

2010-11-08, 07:27 PM

I seem to recall Skullcrusher Ogres as having been received well/considered due to fitting in as elite versions of the regular ogres (so like their upper class/leaders) and doubling as artillery due to having the rock-throwing ability.

...I can't recall their source offhand though, unfortunately, but I recall someone used them, Saph, maybe?

Monster Manual III. I also used Skullcrusher Ogres, but yeah, they're a great replacement for the Hill giants due to having Rock Throwing.

Hey does any one has suggestion on what should I use to replace the giants... I decided to set my game on Eberron and (inspired by Aslan's Cross) I decided to replace the giants because of the setting history. The problem is that I don't want to rip-off Aslan Cross by using Warforged Titan.... so suggestions?

You could also just use traditional siege engines, such as trebuchets. These were also used a lot in the Last War, so the technology needed to construct them isn't so difficult to find. Arcane Ballistae from The Forge of War also work, though they're more direct-fire weapons and not really for wrecking walls.

For a completely different twist, you could use the Warforged Raptor (an aerial Warforged rock bomber) from the same book---it's clear why you can justify them attacking the wall instead off overflying it and bombing the interior---they want the army to break through.

Dusk Eclipse

2010-11-08, 07:31 PM

I think I saw them (Warforged raptors) on the website... I need to track them down, as for siege engines where are they found? Heroes of Battle, Forge of War or both?

AslanCross

2010-11-08, 08:20 PM

All of the siege engines are statted out in detail in Heroes of Battle. That book also contains a lot of premade fighting units that you might find useful.

EDIT: Warforged Raptor. (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/ex/20070618a&page=5)

Dusk Eclipse

2010-11-08, 08:26 PM

Ok.. this is going to be great...

Hawk7915

2010-11-14, 04:48 AM

I have a dilemma.

I have had Red Hand of Doom sitting on my shelf, waiting to be used, for almost a year now. I'm going to finally, maybe be embarking on launching a PbP Red Hand of Doom soon (probably on another forum). Here's the situation: I own Tome of Battle, and I want to make some of the encounters in it more interesting by using ToB. Since Hobgoblins are historically linked to the martial arts, it even fits as far as fluff goes why the Horde has Warblades and Swordsages running rampant. But...I'm pretty sure that no one in my potential party has similar access to Tome of Battle. Not wanting to be a lawbreaker, I can't give them much of it either. So that's my dilemma...do I use Tome of Battle, or not? And if so, how much do I use it? While it will partially depend on optimization level (even core only, a party of Rogue, Barbarian, Wizard, Druid is very different from Ranger, Fighter, Monk, Blaster Sorcerer). What should I do?

1: Don't use it. Just don't. Leave RHoD pretty much alone in terms of tweaking encounters at all.

2: Only give Kharn any Tome of Battle abilities, since he's sort of the climactic ending of the biggest part of the game.

3: Just continue as I want, player's complaints be darned!

4: Continue as planned, but leave around martial scrolls as part of the loot and institute a houserule that for classes without initiator progression, their initiator level = BAB, and they may take Martial Study as many times as they wish (They may even take the same maneuver multiple times, gaining an additional use per encounter). As the maneuver cards are online, I'd feel less bad messaging people maneuvers and stances they could take. This would help Fighters, Monks, Barbarians and Paladins keep up a bit.

What do you guys think?

Runestar

2010-11-14, 04:56 AM

What do you guys think?

Option 3.

Just use ToB. It should come as a pleasant (hopefully) surprise to the party and throw some uncertainty into a game which they think they may already know a lot about.

It can also help make encounters a lot more dynamic by giving the foes more options and making their normal attacks more exciting and varied.

Do note that in certain cases, using ToB may actually weakens the foe (most notably kharn and Azar, since a substantial part of their strength comes from clerical buffs).

For starters, you could give the hobgoblin regulars martial study to nab a maneuver usable 1/encounter. Make the bladebearer a warblade and maybe replace the cleric with a crusader? :smallsmile:

Elfin

2010-11-14, 11:10 AM

I'll second option three, for the reasons outlined above.
But yeah: Kharn and Azarr Kul gain a lot of benefit from buffs, so I think it's best to just go RKV with the former and stay cleric (probably with some PrCs) on the latter. And while in my own game I got some nice mileage out of making the bladebearers warblades, I'd personally keep the Doom Hand clerics as clerics.

Coidzor

2010-11-14, 02:42 PM

3: Just continue as I want, player's complaints be darned!

4: Continue as planned, but leave around martial scrolls as part of the loot and institute a houserule that for classes without initiator progression, their initiator level = BAB, and they may take Martial Study as many times as they wish (They may even take the same maneuver multiple times, gaining an additional use per encounter). As the maneuver cards are online, I'd feel less bad messaging people maneuvers and stances they could take. This would help Fighters, Monks, Barbarians and Paladins keep up a bit.

What do you guys think?

Thought their IL was half their character level if they didn't have any initiator class levels.

I'd say 3 or 4, though keeping with their reduced Initiator level from not being martial adepts. You might go on with TOBing it up, but not quite to the extent you would have later on if they show themselves to have major trouble dealing with it when you show it off to them the first couple of times. Depending upon how brutal you want the fights, of course.

Hawk7915

2010-11-14, 06:44 PM

Thanks for the advice guys. I was concerned (since core Monk is a popular choice for this playgroup :smalleek: ), but I think I'm just going to go for it. And Kharn would probably be the only Wyrmlord to become a Tome of Battler (either Warblade or RKV, depending on my mood); I much prefer Azar Khul as a straight cleric. The other major changes would be making all Monks into Swordsages, all Bladebearers into Warblades, and possibly making either the Sergeants or the Elites into Crusaders. Oh, and then obviously Veterans will have martial study, and Sergeants will have it as well even if they end up being Marshal/Fighters.

AslanCross

2010-11-14, 10:17 PM

Ask them first if they have access to it, but I'd really just go ahead, with or without players having ToB themselves.

Kharn can either be an RKV, as he is commonly built, or maybe an Iron Heart/White Raven warblade. Azarr Kul stayed Cleric, but instead got 2 more levels and a massive spell list revamp.

I made heavy use of ToB in my game as such:
1. Bladebearers were Fighter/Warblades
2. Doom Fist Monks: Monk 2/Swordsage 3
3. The Sergeants were White Raven warblades.

There was also at least one Swordsage/Dervish; the Blood Ghost Berserkers were Barbarian/Warblades, with one Bloodstorm Blade bugbear leading them.

Kharn had two Skullcrusher Ogre warblades with him, one specializing in Stone Dragon with a halberd, while the other was a TWF High Sword Low Axe Tiger Claw user.

Draz74

2010-12-03, 09:03 PM

When I ran the beginning of RHoD, I rebuilt Koth as a Dragonfire Adept, and I thought it worked well. A little less bookkeeping for the DM than a Sorcerer would present, he was very tough for the party to kill and had a nice controller feel to him. The encounter worked out well -- the players were all pretty sure they were in for a TPK for a few rounds, but they managed to come out on top, which is exactly how I wanted the climactic battle to play out.

My stats for Koth:
LE Medium Humanoid (goblinoid)
Bugbear Dragonfire Adept 6
* * *
Str 16 (+3); Dex 16 (+3); Con 16 (+3); Int 8 (-1); Wis 10 (+0); Cha 14 (+2)
Init +5; Fort +9; Ref +8; Will +8
HP 68 (9d8+28); AC 19, touch 13, flat-footed 16; BAB +5; Speed 30
Languages: Goblin, Common
* * *
Features: darkvision 60 feet; natural armor +3; Move Silently +4; breath weapon; invocations; dragonkin (+4 Diplomacy; resist frightful presence); DR 2/magic; proficient with simple weapons.
* * *
Feats: Entangling Exhalation, Draconic Aura (senses), Iron Will, Ability Focus (breath weapon)
* * *
Skills (24 points)
5 Hide (+8), 1 Move Silently (+8), 6 Listen (+9), 1 Know(arcana)(+0), 1 Spellcraft (+0), 5 Bluff (+13), 5 Intimidate (+13), 0 Diplomacy (+10)
armor check penalty: 0
* * *
Combat
Melee morningstar +9 (1d8+3)
* * *
Equipment
Wand of Magic Missile (CL 5)[15], mwk morningstar with wand chamber, Type I Bag of Holding, Scroll (Mount, CL 6), Elixir of Truth [2], mwk studded leather armor, 2980 sp
* * *
Combat "Spells"
Fire blast: 3d6 fire damage (Ref DC 18 half); 15-ft cone or 30-ft line.
Lightning blast: 3d6 electricity damage (Ref DC 18 half); 30-ft line.
Weakening curse: -6 Strength penalty for 4 rounds (Fort DC 18 half duration); 15-ft cone.
* * *
Invocations
Caster Level 6; Arcane Spell Failure 15%
Least: Beguiling Influence, Deafening Roar (Fort DC 14 neg.)
Lesser: Draconic Flight

Runestar

2010-12-04, 12:58 AM

Saintheart

2010-12-04, 09:28 AM

Also, whilst the effectiveness of an NPC is always going to be somewhat random according to the rolls, what was the party this form of Koth was facing, just for a sense of context?

Cool contribution, though!

Dralnu

2010-12-04, 03:30 PM

So how does the dragonfire adept'ed Koth work? Entangle the PCs with entangling breath, then? What else does he do while the rest of the mooks are attacking the PCs? I don't really see much offensive capabilities save for his breath weapon.

I assume he followed it up with more fire breathing.

Sounds like a really good idea I think. Fly around, breath fire, keep them entangled. That greatly helps the mooks set up better positions and hit the party easier. You'll need to change Koth's tactic and have him meet the party outside for this strategy to work and it probably makes the encounter more difficult than the module's version, but still manageable.

My only worry is that it basically turns Koth into another dragon with the exact same tactic, which makes the following dragon fights less unique.

Saintheart

2010-12-05, 12:34 AM

I'll stick those caveats into the appropriate section, but I reckon that one deserves pumping into the "Restatting Koth" section if only because it's a nice, viable build. Going off to do that now. :smallsmile:

Draz74

2010-12-05, 01:44 AM

So how does the dragonfire adept'ed Koth work? Entangle the PCs with entangling breath, then? What else does he do while the rest of the mooks are attacking the PCs? I don't really see much offensive capabilities save for his breath weapon.
Debuff them. Weakening Breath is a nasty, nasty debuff for a melee-heavy party. And if they're all entangled and weakened already, just breathing normal fire and lightning to do damage works. Or he can pull out the Wand of Magic Missile.

Also, whilst the effectiveness of an NPC is always going to be somewhat random according to the rolls, what was the party this form of Koth was facing, just for a sense of context?

Human Egoist 4 / Sangehirn 1 (I houseruled early entrance to Sangehirn for the sake of her acting as a party healer)
Human Variant Druid, using the Avenger and the other variant (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/variantCharacterClasses.htm#druid) from UA
Elf Rogue 4 / Swordsage 1
Human Barbarian 4 / Bard 1

Individual optimization notes probably aren't as relevant as the simple fact that the Barbarian charged right through the front door of Vraath Keep screaming as loud as he could, so the party ended up facing all of the Keep's critters at the same time.

Sounds like a really good idea I think. Fly around, breath fire, keep them entangled. That greatly helps the mooks set up better positions and hit the party easier. You'll need to change Koth's tactic and have him meet the party outside for this strategy to work and it probably makes the encounter more difficult than the module's version, but still manageable.
Nah, even if you are using this tactic, the Keep courtyard doesn't have a ceiling, so the encounter doesn't have to happen outside the Keep.

Actually, I had Koth use his copious amounts of HP to be a sort of meat shield for the other baddies, and didn't let the party know that Koth could fly until necessary. He just walked around on the ground like everyone else until he was hurting and decided he needed to flee the scene ... which he did by going straight upwards, which shocked the party quite a bit. (Would have gotten away, too, if the Psion hadn't gotten off a lucky shot with her last full load of PP. Ah well, considering how poorly she rolled most of the time, I can't begrudge her one good roll ...)

My only worry is that it basically turns Koth into another dragon with the exact same tactic, which makes the following dragon fights less unique.
Well, it does kind of make sense thematically. A Sorcerer boss in a cult of Tiamat? :smallcool:

But also, I refluffed his blasts of fire and lightning and weakening curses to be just spells, not anything being breathed out of his mouth. That made him a little more separate from the dragons from the players' point of view.

I'll stick those caveats into the appropriate section, but I reckon that one deserves pumping into the "Restatting Koth" section if only because it's a nice, viable build. Going off to do that now. :smallsmile:

Cool. :smallsmile: Again, I think the biggest advantage of this version of Koth is just that he's less complicated for the DM to keep track of than a Vancian caster.

EDIT: Btw, I've seen a number of suggestions to rebuild Kharn as either a RKV or a Warblade. Is there anything wrong with just making him a straight Crusader?

Saintheart

2010-12-05, 07:58 AM

EDIT: Btw, I've seen a number of suggestions to rebuild Kharn as either a RKV or a Warblade. Is there anything wrong with just making him a straight Crusader?

I can't say I've ever seen him recast as a Warblade, but I'd guess the main reason most people go for RKV for Kharn is because it continues to advance divine spellcasting as well as providing more martial maneuvers and stances. 4/5 divine spellcasting levels gives you damn near full 5th level spells at a notional level of 10.

It also allows faster recovery of maneuvers because of the Divine Recovery class feature which allows you to burn turning attempts for recovering maneuvers, which is gold for a Crusader.

This combination keeps him competitive given his notional allies in the fight are basically a bunch of (big) mooks - the giants (or Skullcrusher Ogres if you prefer).

Straight Crusader 10 is formidable, I grant you, but it ultimately doesn't have any spellcasting, which is the only means by which Kharn is going to even approach keeping up with the action economy. Admittedly the RKV build does kinda look like a Lego behemoth, but even taking ToB's superior mechanics for melee types into account RKV scales exponentially next to a straight Crusader 10 given the sorts of stuff you can pull as an RKV who has cleric spellcasting (and that's before we look down the dark path of Divine Metamagic options.)

TL;DR version of the above: there's nothing wrong with running him as a straight Crusader 10, but it basically removes any spellcasting options for the Horde in that final encounter bar the Ghostlord and/or Ulwai showing up. Against a party that's around 8th or 9th level and probably sporting at least one arcane/divine spellcaster, that's gonna be a curbstomper even taking ToB awesomeness into account.

Runestar

2010-12-05, 08:24 AM

Straight Crusader 10 is formidable, I grant you, but it ultimately doesn't have any spellcasting, which is the only means by which Kharn is going to even approach keeping up with the action economy.

Actually, I recall reading in another writeup that Kharn fell extremely fast when he was rebuilt as a warblade (and by extension, I expect crusader to face a similar fate). The conclusion was that favoured soul could be potent, provided he had ample opportunity to buff himself up to the gills prior to combat, and another issue was being too similar to Azzar.

So Kharn likely still needs the cleric-part of RKV.

Saintheart

2010-12-05, 08:37 AM

Which does mean he has to go Crusader X/Cleric Y/RKV, since IIRC you can't qualify for RKV without the ability to turn undead or cast cleric spells (AFB...) :smallcool:

EDIT: As an afterthought, he can of course go via Crusader X/Paladin Y/RKV, but I actually think that build doesn't really achieve much unless you've gotten to RKV 7 and you've got Battle Blessing -- at that stage things get a lot more funky since the Paladin starts blowing turn undead attempts for additional swift actions per round, which is, well, his entire spell selection based off Battle Blessing and SpC. Two or three paladin spells per round, and then go in with all your BAB intact would be kind of hilarious. On the other hand, the whole Paladin route still suffers from the old "Why not just cast Divine Power using DMM abuse and just make yourself a paladin and retain full cleric versatility?".

Saintheart

2010-12-06, 08:24 AM

Anyway, moving onto another vox pop:

Did you mess with the "giants throwing big rocks at the walls of Brindol" encounter? If so, how much? Y' think it worked better? Why?

:smallsmile:

Runestar

2010-12-06, 09:59 AM

Anyway, moving onto another vox pop:

Did you mess with the "giants throwing big rocks at the walls of Brindol" encounter? If so, how much? Y' think it worked better? Why?

:smallsmile:

Why? What was wrong with that encounter?

Saintheart

2010-12-07, 01:54 AM

Mostly because it strikes me as just a little uninteresting, or in the case of Eberron, from memory it presents some credibility issues IIRC... :smallsmile:

Borgut

2010-12-08, 09:57 AM

Saintheart

2010-12-16, 12:14 AM

I've read sometimes flying players hunting the dragons. How did they do that? The Fly-Spell gives them~60ft movement, Ozy had 150ft. movement.

Charging could be a way, but provoking AOO after being blasted isn't that good for survival. And that's just for 1 Round after a dragons flyby-Attack...

I'm mastering the first time mid to high level D&D, so maybe i am missing the obvious. Ozy was killed by the sorcerer going almost solo, all other PCs couldn't do anything efficient...

I didn't see this had been posted until now! :smalleek:

As far as flying players hunting dragons is concerned: I think it's because most of the dragons are 'programmed' on the RHOD text to attack unless they get to a certain hitpoint count, at which point they (well, most of them) flee.

Two reasons I suspect attacking dragons in the air is thought of as viable are (1) maneuverability and (2) breath range.

Consider: the dragon's 150 feet of movement is, in practice, considerably less since a flying creature (IIRC, AFB) has to hold half of its movement in reserve to maintain altitude unless it has the Hover feat. So in effect the 150-foot dragon is down to 75 feet of forward flight in combat -- before you start to factor in climbing to higher altitude or turning in the air.

This "hobbling" is aggravated by the fact that whilst a dragon breath's does a lot of theoretical damage, it can be saved against and in the case of rogue-ish types, can often do no damage at all. Dragon's breath (unless you start using Metabreath Feats) also tends to have pretty short range for the junior dragons of this campaign -- 30 foot cones or so IIRC, and 60 foot lines.

This means the dragon's "superior" flight allowance is less useful since it can't stand off from a great distance and blast party members; it has to close to a range where potentially a character with 60 feet of movement might at least close to under 30 foot range or even spitting distance, do some damage, and then clear the dragon's cone of effect again if they choose their moment right.

Added to that is that dragons have inferior maneuverability compared with a fly spell, and in all air combat whether it's D&D or otherwise, maneuverability is key.

Skull Gorge is a straight out of the Draconomicon example of where a dragon should be able to get into a rhythm of "fly in, breathe, turn, fly out, turn, recover breath, and move in again." But that rhythm depends on the dragon being able to survive the action economy balance, which most "big" monsters in D&D have a problem with since more characters = more potential actions, if not attacks, against them.

ka_bna

2010-12-18, 04:09 PM

GreyMantle

2010-12-18, 08:19 PM

Your decision should probably depend on a variety of factors.

The easiest option is just to restart the timeline when they reach Drellin's Ferry. As far as I can tell, they haven't really done anything related to the plot yet, and it seems like they have no idea what's about to go down. Since the timeline is already kind of arbitrary, there's little to stop you from delaying it.

However, if your players are quick/skilled, or if you really want to emphasize how desperate this struggle is going to be, you could just leave it as is. That's more of a judgment call on your part if they'd be able to handle it, though.

If you do want to give them some sort of negative factor for their ******* about, you also could delay the timeline only a couple of days. Or you could avoid making a decision until you see how quickly they're capable of handling the Keep and other starting areas.

AslanCross

2010-12-19, 01:18 AM

Mostly because it strikes me as just a little uninteresting, or in the case of Eberron, from memory it presents some credibility issues IIRC... :smallsmile:

I thought it was interesting to begin with, but since we were running Eberron on a continent that true giants aren't native to, I had to replace them. (Running Red Hand of Doom on the continent giants are from doesn't make sense, because almost all of Xen'Drik is dangerous and hostile terrain full of drow, renegade giants, and secrets of a shattered age)

I homebrewed a version of Warforged Titans with sonic cannons. The cannons ("Dragonshard Resonators") were a spell-like ability pretty much identical to a CL 6 fireball except they dealt sonic damage and counted as 4th level spells. I also removed the Warforged titan's default melee attacks and just gave it weaker slam attacks and smaller ballista attacks for ranged point defense.

I had two of those 'Siege Titans' and three Skullcrusher ogres with 2 warrior levels.

Oh yeah, to make the siege more interesting, messing with the terrain (putting them on a cliff or behind a barricade) could be more challenging, as well as adding driving rain or mud. During a downpour, it might be possible that a flying spotter could be telepathically relaying targeting data to the throwers, or maybe dropping flares.

Saintheart

2010-12-19, 08:14 AM

So, thanks to my players I ran into an issue again.

Case:
They were sent by some guild to find the treasure in Vraath Keep. They were teleported somewhere between Terrelton and Drellin's Ferry, where they were ambushed by the hobgoblins. (Funny thing: they had a bad time, but the druid's horse killed about 7 out of 11 hobgoblins. 2 Hobgoblins survived, so next time the hobbo's will be more scared of the horse than of the PC's:smalltongue:)

After the fight, they decided they wanted to verify the treasure map they have been given and sell their loot. They took a glance at the map the guild has given then and they said: look! What better place to sell loot and verify the map than at Brindol, the capital (their interpretation) of this area! I didn't want to railroad them (but did drop hints they had to go to Drellin's Ferry), so I didn't prohibit the trip to Brindol.

So, with the session almost over due to players still having to go home through a snowstorm, I didn´t run any fights after this fight and the PC´s arrived soundly in Brindol (btw, it is a 2 days ride from Drellin's Ferry/Terrelton to Brindol, right?).

In Brindol, they sold their loot and I had Teyani Sura approach them. Teyani received word from the guild of the PC's and ordered to search out the hobgoblin threat near the Witchwood. We stopped the game after some history exposition by an anonymous historian in Brindol.

Issue:
The PC's arrived at day 3 in Brindol. They will ride to Drellin's Ferry and probably arrive there on day 5, even before checking out the Witchwood.

If I keep to the timeline of the adventure (which I'm inclined to do), the PC's will be quite behind schedule. On day 7, the Horde marches from Cinder Hill. In the conclusion of part 1, it is stated the Horde will be delayed 1 day because Kharn waits in vain for Koth. This probably means Koth leaves Vraath Keep on day 6. Furthermore, the Horde arrives at day 8 at Skull Gorge, and at day 12 at Drellin's Ferry. This means that the PC's have unknowingly but 3 days to delay the Horde and have 7 days to witness the destruction of Drellin's Ferry.

Question:
The PC's didn't know there was a Horde coming, nor should they know (and I couldn't tell them without plot exposition). Should I just run the timeline given, so the players are 5 days behind, should I adjust the timeline so it starts on the day the PC's arrive in Drellin's Ferry, making up for an awkward decision of the PC's, or should I choose it somewhere in between?
If I run the timeline as given, how hard is it for the PC's to make up for lost time at the start of the adventure?

It's been quite a story, but thanks in advance for reading!

If the key thing's to hurry the party up and hopefully get to Vraath Keep before the Horde does, and you need to buy yourself a couple of days, you could retrofit it that Warklegnaw and his clansmen (er, clansgiants) decide to defend the Witchwood (badly) against the Horde after Jorr Natherson approaches them independently. Stands to reason that Jorr's the ultimate survivor and has his finger on the pulse of the woods he's been in for several years if not decades at least. From memory this delays the Horde by a few days while they try and deal with unanticipated guerrilla tactics from a group of forest giants who know the Witchwood like the back of their sizeable hands.

The penalty, if you're inclined to have one, is that you just don't give the party the VP for initiating Warklegnaw's little resistance effort.

I also didn't gather that Koth leaves Vraath Keep at all -- the delay is merely that Kharn waits in vain for Koth to provide his report. Koth doesn't have to go in person to Kharn, he's got messengers for that -- he's clearly working with coded documents from what the characters are meant to find at Vraath Keep, which clearly suggests dispatches. I always had the impression Koth's effort was a sort of an advance base or scouting mission from the Horde, and that his brief was to wait at Vraath Keep until Kharn joins up his forces there. Why would Koth need to be back with the Horde just for a pleasant week's walk down the Dawn Way anyhow? He's more valuable where he is at Vraath Keep.

If you needed to hurry the party up, two thoughts: either have someone riding in from Drellin's Ferry asking for urgent advice on the raiding they're undergoing, or alternatively run either the Chimaera Attack or the raid on the West Bank of the Elsir when the party first arrives at Drellin's Ferry. Hopefully that'll speed things up. If it really looks like they're not going to make it to Drellin's Ferry, consider having the attack plans with the leader of the assault on the West Bank for some strange reason just so the party knows what it's up against at least, although I think you'd have to compensate them with treasure in some other way since Vraath Keep is pretty much "the" treasure award of this part of the campaign.

Greyfell

2011-01-01, 01:28 PM

I'd just like to chip in: I love that you guys are taking so much time to get together such a useful resource!

+1 for the normal favored soul/talon of tiamat as a cleric/ordained champion.. it makes him a LOT tougher and much more memorable of a fight.

Saintheart

2011-01-06, 07:53 AM

Thanks for the kind words, Greyfell! I'm going to have to get back to this and update it some more when I've got a bit of free time. :smallwink:

GreyMantle

2011-01-22, 01:37 AM

So I just had my group's charactercreationsession, and, hopefully, we'll be starting to actually play tomorrow.

My question: I'm using entirely questbased XP, so I'm hoping to have the "expected" levelup times all be at relatively important moments in the story. This can obviously change if they do any sidetracks, but whatever.

(I'll still give out XP for completing goals, so they'll know when levelups are coming, but I'll just adjust the amounts.)

Does anyone have any advice for when good points to levelup are? Points in the adventure where having a higherlevel ability/spell is rather integral? I'm also starting at 4th level because I'm doing a Tome game, where all the PCs will be more powerful than normal.

The way I'm looking at it is:

5th: Clearing out Vraath Keep
6th: Destroying the bridge/stabbing the people there in the face
7th: Maybe arriving at Rhest/dealing with the elves?
8th: Beating Rhest
9th: Dealing with the Ghostlord
10th: Winning the siege

They could theoretically be at 11thish if anyone gets a lot of roleplaying XP or they do a lot off sidetracks.

Saph

2011-01-22, 08:08 AM

Sounds a little on the high side . . . my party's level up points when I ran the game were:

5th: Start
6th: After completing the bridge battle
7th: In between the first and second battles with Regiarix
8th: After finishing the Ghostlord chapter
9th: After finishing the Siege of Brindol
10th: Somewhere between halfway and three-quarters through the Fane of Tiamat

If you're using Tome of Battle stuff, your party should be able to handle most of the fights even if a bit under-leveled.

Saintheart

2011-01-22, 10:12 AM

The way we did it was basically "level up when you confront and/or kill a dragon or a goddamned half-fiend behir built that way specifically because behirs don't associate with dragons, why James and Rich couldn't figure out how to shoehorn a white dragon in there I never will know..."

Seemed to work okay for us. :smallcool:

AslanCross

2011-01-22, 10:27 AM

Hi Saintheart. I just wanted to drop by to say that I am still working on the Eberron adaptation guide. It's a lot longer than I thought I would make it, but don't worry. It's on its way.

GreyMantle

2011-01-22, 11:57 AM

Thanks to you both. Now I'm looking at ditching the levelup for arriving at Rhest. And maybe I'll try to sneak in one somewhere in the Fane (which I'll probably be heavily rewriting, so I can add in some semiclimactic moment).

Saintheart

2011-01-23, 07:16 AM

Hi Saintheart. I just wanted to drop by to say that I am still working on the Eberron adaptation guide. It's a lot longer than I thought I would make it, but don't worry. It's on its way.

Sweet! Thanks for the update, Az -- you did mention you had some other RL commitments to cover first, so I'm not fussed in the slightest.

That gives me a thought: (here's a challenge!) anyone have thoughts on how you'd adapt RHOD to Rokugan, or the OA world at least? That would have Kurosawa and Seven Samurai written all over it. :smallcool:

Elfin

2011-01-23, 11:35 AM

Ooh, an oriental Elsir Vale...obviously, the ogres and stuff would have to become oni; with samurai flavor, though, hobgoblins would work pretty well.

ka_bna

2011-01-23, 12:05 PM

Still had to say thanks to Saintheart for the extensive on the question in my game about the days delays.

A week a go I ran another session. Had some headaches about the hydra - figuring out the hp's of the heads, the quantity of heads... In the end, as no PC jumped into the water, and as the PC's were even with the hydra's heads (a couple of heads burned down, but there were some regrowing ones too), I finished it with "The hydra's retreating. You win.":smalltongue:

Preparing the next session, I wanted to chip in an idea for the minotaur, Karkilan, in Vraath Keep. I'm going to give him a level of fighter, other feats (imp. initiative, comb. reflexes, comb. exp. and imp. trip. and a large guisarme. This gives it:
- A bit better survivability (AC from breastplate, hp),
- Most importantly, a trip-attack at 20' or 15' range. So he can stand in the middle of the room and guard every entrance inside room 8, or 10. With imp. trip, he has a +10 trip modifier and he has 2 attacks in a full attack to try to trip a pc. For closer ranges he can still gore. This makes it a good battlefield controller, especially with combat reflexes: the elite array upgraded his dex to 14, so 3 AoO, at max. 20 reach:smallcool:
- CR 5 (4+1)

I'll let you know how this turns out!

AslanCross

2011-02-03, 09:04 PM

I've sent the Eberron adaptation guide to Saintheart. I had a lot of fun writing it, and I got several new ideas that I wasn't able to include in my own campaign.

Runestar

2011-02-03, 09:32 PM

Preparing the next session, I wanted to chip in an idea for the minotaur, Karkilan, in Vraath Keep. I'm going to give him a level of fighter, other feats (imp. initiative, comb. reflexes, comb. exp. and imp. trip. and a large guisarme. This gives it:
- A bit better survivability (AC from breastplate, hp),
- Most importantly, a trip-attack at 20' or 15' range. So he can stand in the middle of the room and guard every entrance inside room 8, or 10. With imp. trip, he has a +10 trip modifier and he has 2 attacks in a full attack to try to trip a pc. For closer ranges he can still gore. This makes it a good battlefield controller, especially with combat reflexes: the elite array upgraded his dex to 14, so 3 AoO, at max. 20 reach
- CR 5 (4+1)

You need 13int for expertise, so how are you affording improved trip with its -4int? 2 lvs in barb is better. Wolf totem (UA) grants improved trip in place of uncanny dodge, and you get whirling rage (extra attack, str to help with trip checks). Since mobility isn't so important, maybe swap out fast movement for pounce (complete champion)? :smallamused:

Coidzor

2011-02-03, 09:42 PM

I've sent the Eberron adaptation guide to Saintheart. I had a lot of fun writing it, and I got several new ideas that I wasn't able to include in my own campaign.

yay! :smallbiggrin: I am looking forward to seeing that, especially with new ideas...

Hawk7915

2011-02-04, 01:47 AM

My RHoD play-by-post is going along. The party survived the ambush but it was a surprising beating. As expected, the druid ruled everything, but I think the other party members felt like they contributed. Wizard buffed people and melted faces, rogue got some big sneak attack damage in on Uth'lar (which was fudged; Uth'lar is immune as a Warblade), and the Monk/Swordsage beat the snot of some mooks and hellhounds.

They're interrogating Uth'lar now (the bashed him to negatives then healed him and bound him). I fear I'm giving away too much information, although part of it is for a player who has Azar Kul written into his backstory. So far he's told them...

- "The Son of the Dragon", a hobgoblin with blue scales, has united several goblin tribes and has dragons and monsters at his disposal.
- General Kharn is the leader of the army. Koth is a powerful gnoll sorcerer who will kill them all and is leading this initial expedition.
- The "day of destruction" will fall upon the "river town" soon.

That may seem like a lot. It's the result of Charm Person plus a few really respectable Diplomacy rolls. I don't intend for him to give much more except for maybe "they're in an old fortress in the woods" since none of the party has the Vraath Keep plot-hook. What do you folks think?

Also, looking forward, most people say to toss the minotaur in Vraath Keep a Barbarian level. Would making him Feral (Savage Species) instead be way too much? What about Spell-warped (MM III)? I don't intend to change Koth at all.

Saintheart

2011-02-04, 02:41 AM

They're interrogating Uth'lar now (the bashed him to negatives then healed him and bound him). I fear I'm giving away too much information, although part of it is for a player who has Azar Kul written into his backstory. So far he's told them...

- "The Son of the Dragon", a hobgoblin with blue scales, has united several goblin tribes and has dragons and monsters at his disposal.
- General Kharn is the leader of the army. Koth is a powerful gnoll sorcerer who will kill them all and is leading this initial expedition.
- The "day of destruction" will fall upon the "river town" soon.

That may seem like a lot. It's the result of Charm Person plus a few really respectable Diplomacy rolls. I don't intend for him to give much more except for maybe "they're in an old fortress in the woods" since none of the party has the Vraath Keep plot-hook. What do you folks think?

Also, looking forward, most people say to toss the minotaur in Vraath Keep a Barbarian level. Would making him Feral (Savage Species) instead be way too much? What about Spell-warped (MM III)? I don't intend to change Koth at all.

(1) On the info coming from Uth-lar, I think that's probably enough. The way RHOD's meant to play out is that the team gets into Koth's notes at Vraath Keep and realises "Holy crap, this isn't a raid of a hundred goblins or so, it's thousands of them." You've probably given them well and truly enough for that. I'd play up that Azarr Kul's a semi-godlike figure from Uth-lar's perspective, who he's never met.

About the only issue you'll have is that Uth-lar surely should know the fortress's location since he's probably come down the Dawn Way with Koth to begin with -- which then sidelines inquiries via Drellin's Ferry about where Vraath Keep is. It might also sideline Jorr Natherson since unless Uth-lar gets killed or detained by the Valesfolk, he theoretically can guide the party direct to Vraath Keep himself. Hence no need to hire random tinkers to get you through the woods.

One thought is to tell lies improvise a point that Koth somehow kept Uth-lar from knowing the Keep's location, but I've no idea how. Or you could just roll with it and have the party itself approaching Drellin's Ferry to say "You're about to be screwed."

(2) On levels in barbarian, etc, for the minotaur: much of this depends on how the party plays Vraath Keep. If they're the kick-in-the-front-gate kind of guys, then throwing the whole keep's forces at them is going to be a decent challenge. With the stealthy approach, the players have enough time based on the RHOD text notes to deal with one group of opponents at a time. Koth being unchanged is probably a good balancer, since he's sort-of underwhelming in his present form, with several precious sorcerer spell slots wasted on stuff like Detect Thoughts.

I confess I'm not familiar with the Feral or Spellwarped templates; someone might have to offer some thoughts on that, though alternatives to "add a level in barbarian" for Karkilan would make nice additions to that part of the handbook.

One thing to remember about Karkilan is that if you've got a party that takes a stealthy approach and has time to set up, his effectiveness is lower. Ultimately he's still a low level fighter in terms of sheer effectiveness. The level in barbarian is basically to make him just a bit stronger and scarier on barbarian rage and last maybe more than one round in combat. He is still a big, visible target and therefore vulnerable to the joys of the action economy.

Runestar

2011-02-04, 03:03 AM

Saintheart

2011-02-04, 07:21 AM

The feral minotaur is statted in savage species. Cr6, basically, it gets boosts to str and con, claws, pounce, improved grab and fast healing. Though with its int of 3, I have no idea why the hobgoblins bother keeping him around. He would barely be able to follow orders! :smalltongue:

Another reason not to engage in the RHOD Arms Race. Similarly, turning the Ghostlord into Sauron inspires Fridge Logic.

Anyway, in other news, for those of you eagerly awaiting the update -- AslanCross's full notebook on converting RHOD into Eberron terms is now part of the first page of the thread! And many, many thanks once again for taking all the time to do those extensive notes up.

Runestar

2011-02-04, 07:36 AM

Another reason not to engage in the RHOD Arms Race. Similarly, turning the Ghostlord into Sauron inspires Fridge Logic.

Care to elaborate on the sauron bit? :smallconfused:

Coidzor

2011-02-04, 07:44 AM

Care to elaborate on the sauron bit? :smallconfused:

If the Ghost Lord is too evil geniusy and successful and threatening, the question can be raised in the PC's minds of why he hasn't made a serious move on his own. Or how they got ahold of his phylactery in the first place.

Runestar

2011-02-04, 07:48 AM

Another reason not to engage in the RHOD Arms Race. Similarly, turning the Ghostlord into Sauron inspires Fridge Logic.

I think the arms race bit was because people were complaining about the encounters not being challenging enough. They are mostly made up of lower level foes which individually wouldn't be very threantening unless adequately supported.

Indeed, by the time they reach the keep, a cr4 and a bunch of cr3 mooks aren't going to be very dangerous. If you have them all swarm the PCs simultaneously, it would be more dangerous (especially with the manticore and koth sniping from the sides).

ka_bna

2011-02-04, 08:49 AM

You need 13int for expertise, so how are you affording improved trip with its -4int? 2 lvs in barb is better. Wolf totem (UA) grants improved trip in place of uncanny dodge, and you get whirling rage (extra attack, str to help with trip checks). Since mobility isn't so important, maybe swap out fast movement for pounce (complete champion)? :smallamused:
About the int: if you give a monster a class level, it gets elite array for free CR-wise. So I gave him the Int 15, plus 2 statpoints from 8 hd, making 15+2-4=13.
Now that I think about it, you first get expertise, and then imp. trip.:smallredface: To correct it, it will have to be a Minotaur/Warrior1/Ftr2 (CR 6 1/2), then it all makes sense:smalltongue:
As for your suggestions, my game is core only, both for players and DM. So I won't the barb suggestion, though thanks for thinking along:smallsmile: (my game will run februari 18th, still a while though...)

Runestar

2011-02-04, 10:13 AM

About the int: if you give a monster a class level, it gets elite array for free CR-wise. So I gave him the Int 15, plus 2 statpoints from 8 hd, making 15+2-4=13.

You don't get the stat boost from the minotaur's racial 4th HD, that's already factored into its stat modifiers, so you only get +1 from the 2nd lv of fighter (for its 8th HD). Though you can always just give it higher stats, but the tinkerer in me just won't let it go. :smalltongue:

Hence, the suggestion to go barb2 (which offers more benefits than fighter2) for the free improved trip instead. :smallsmile:

Your Nemesis

2011-02-04, 10:33 AM

Person_Man

2011-02-04, 11:43 AM

Look very, very carefully at the Dread Necromancer class before allowing it. There's a few locations (Rhest in particular) where dead bodies can be accessed with impunity, not to mention that the Battle of Brindol is going to give a DN an ever-increasing supply of fresh corpses to play with. And that's before we even get to the DMly nightmare of having to figure out how to effectively rebuild encounters to take account of a party with a zombie green/black/red dragon in tow.[/list]

If dead bodies are prevalent, you should take a serious look at the Necrocarnum Circlet soulmeld and the Necracarnate prestige class (Magic of Incarnum) before allowing them into your game.

First, the Necrocarnum Circlet soulmeld (an Incarnate soulmeld, which the Necrocarnate can augment) allows you to turn a corpse into a Necrocarnum Zombie (much stronger then normal Zombie). You can do this an infinite number of times per day, with the limit being that you can only have 1 per Necrocarnum Zombie at a time and it's hit dice can be more then your meldshaper level. If your players are going to have piles of powerful corpses to choose from, this soulmeld essentially adds an additional party member to the group.

Second, the Necrocarnate can consume the energy of a dead body to gain points of essentia for 24 hours. Played "dishonestly" a Necrocarnate can pour hot water on an ant hill and gain a ton of essentia, basically maxing out every soulmeld and incarnum feat they have. (No one actually allows this though). Played "honestly" (ie, you only gain essentia after you kill something or come across dead bodies) it tends to be a far more balanced class - weak early in the game day when it has little essentia, but stronger late in the game day when it has more. But if you know for a fact that players are just going to walk across recently dead bodies fairly often, then it's an issue.

Neither issue is game breaking. But either would give the party a major advantage in RHOD.

Your Nemesis

2011-02-04, 11:56 AM

We don't use Incarnum, so that shouldn't be a problem. I agree that the Dread Necromancer could be a problem, but he (a) can't actually make dragon zombies for 2 levels and (b) I was going to have the zombies be more of a roleplay thing; maybe giving them some more victory points for the Battle of Brindol. As for when they can get dragon Zombies, well, perhaps the horde has a larger airborne component to control the skies?

AslanCross

2011-02-04, 04:55 PM

I am planning to run RHOD in Eberron, but with a twist; I think that the Elsir Vale will be somewhere in Q'barra, with the main foes being lizardfolk. Azarr Kull's main objective will be to free Tiamat from her prison under Haka'torvhak. What other changes should I make? My party consists of:

One dread Necromancer
One Psiforged Psion
One Half-elf beastmaster

They will be starting at level 6. Thoughts?

For starters, that's a bit off-canon, as Tiamat's prison is all the way in Argonnessen. Considering what Tiamat did the last time she was free, the dragons won't and haven't been taking any second chances with her. Her prison is guarded by dragons in shifts, and when their shifts are over, they're actually executed to make sure that none of them were corrupted by Tiamat. Haka'torvhak's only guardian, Rhashaak, has been corrupted ages ago, and it's as if the Eyes of Chronepsis don't care.

If you want to go ahead with this, you will have to edit Rhashaak out of the picture (he's way too powerful), although I definitely won't say it won't be awesome.

A major shift from the book would be having innocent people in the way of the advancing horde---Q'Barra is mostly jungle, with most of the cities close to the coast. That allows them to escape more easily should they come under siege. (Unless you plan on removing this altogether)

You will also have to re-engineer the Red Hand Horde for it to work in a forest. As written, it's more or less a traditional fantasy medieval army meant to attack over open plains and besiege walled cities. That same army wasn't meant to attack through miles of dense jungle.

In the book, the Red Hand was taking a path more or less along the Dawn Way, which is the primary highway in the story. That allows them to move relatively quickly and start smashing towns once they get through. This is not the case in Q'Barra---there are no roads, and thus no real route for the army to take.

You've got your work cut out for you if you do this. I think it's a much bigger change than I'd be willing to work with if I were DMing.

EDIT: Saintheart: I will try to write up an Oriental Adventures version of this adventure. Again I cannot promise when it will be done (I'd say around late April), but it sounds like a good summer project. I won't base it in Rokugan/L5R, though. I'm going to try to take more inspiration from traditional epics such as The Tale of the Heike and classical Japanese myths. The idea of Tiamat = Orochi makes my inner nerd squee with joy.

Dusk Eclipse

2011-02-04, 08:27 PM

:smalleek: Yamata no Orochi as Tiamat..... my head asplode.

Pure Awesomeness.

Saintheart

2011-02-05, 08:52 AM

I'm not deeply familiar with the legends, but I'm a big OA fan, even if it isn't Rokugan specifically.

And many thanks again for taking that on, Aslan-san. I was toying with doing it myself, but kids, wife, job ... ergh. :smallfrown: You get 16 Internets in advance. :smallbiggrin:

Saintheart

2011-02-07, 09:57 AM

Double post, but just to advise I've finally got round to adding a "rebuilding the Fane" section to the last part of the handbook, along with some gold I found on training NPCs ahead of the Battle of Brindol. Carry on! :smallsmile:

Coidzor

2011-02-09, 09:32 PM

You know how people occasionally love going off on tangents about what characters are actually qualified/able to lead armies and such?

I was wondering if anyone has ever gone about rebuilding Kharn in that way (though I know both crusader and cleric are quite capable of leading under the frameworks for examining it that I've seen so far). Just sorta occurred to me from seeing a thread about leadership in D&D and heroes of battle come up in my history while looking through old threads for info on the ghostlord that's more than adding some more Blighter to him.

I know, arms race and all, but it looks like we're going to end up with a confrontation inevitably...

Saintheart

2011-02-09, 09:54 PM

Quick thought or two before I head off to start painting bedrooms, but first thing that occurs to me is: how do you make a satisfying contest between the party and Kharn if he's primarily a leader and strategist? I would have thought with only 10 levels to spend someone who focuses towards Leadership and controlling others is going to be somewhat squishy in combat compared with the PCs who have only been specialising in building bigger and better boots for wading through blood. :smallbiggrin:

Maybe there's some sort of mechanic for actually making a "contest of tactics" out of the Battle of Brindol, but that might well be rebuilding the entire scenario.

Jair Barik

2011-02-18, 12:55 PM

ka_bna

2011-02-19, 05:20 AM

You don't get the stat boost from the minotaur's racial 4th HD, that's already factored into its stat modifiers, so you only get +1 from the 2nd lv of fighter (for its 8th HD). Though you can always just give it higher stats, but the tinkerer in me just won't let it go. :smalltongue:

Hence, the suggestion to go barb2 (which offers more benefits than fighter2) for the free improved trip instead. :smallsmile:
Yesterday I ran my game with your suggestions. This is how the assault on Vraath Keep turned out:
PC's climbed in, making some noise and alerting everybody (through one of the guards shouting). Cleaned the Worg riders, scared the manticore, even disposed of the Hob-veterans. They were at half strength when the minotaur came out of the barracks. PC's put up a fight, but were quickly tripped down and surrendered (but one, which organised a prison-break later).

Thoughts: Karkilan with 2 barbarian levels (wolf totem) makes him a fun and tough encounter (also giving him a big hp-boost: elite array+2d12+Con), maybe making him the boss of Vraath Keep combat wise. Rather than just smashing everything with his greataxe, he focuses on tripping everybody with his guisarme (with a free attack afterwards because of imp. trip). It gives him great battlefield control with 3 Attacks of opportunity. Also, all the tripping allows the PC's to surrender if they are losing by just lie still on the ground.

Advise: Karkilan Wolf totem Brb 2 is a though encounter, but it is capable of challenging both martial and magical PC's. It adds an other element of combat (trip) and encourages tactical thinking (how do we take him down/how do I avoid AoE's). However, I would not recommend this upgrade to "weak" parties, as this minotaur is really a step up from hobgoblin regulars.

Saintheart

2011-02-19, 07:25 AM

Very good read. Very useful.

A question though.
Do you intend to do some notes on how to connect the end of this campaign to the start of another. You mention DemonWeb pits is a good next stage (currenty running it, its a good module) but I'm not sure how you would go about doing that. The players would be higher level than intended for the module and you would need to strike a careful balance between making the first encounter highlight the threat of the drow but at the same time not overshadowing the epic fights that conclude RHoD. Any ideas?

Fair point. I'll add it onto the to-do list. Best thought I can come up with off the cuff is to point out that the Red Hand were basically terrestrial in origin; if they had summoned creatures they were mostly towards the end and mostly high level.

You could highlight the threat of the drow as a people for whom summoned creatures and really evil summoned monsters are an everyday occurrence...?

Jair Barik

2011-02-19, 07:41 AM

With Saph's ending (players escaping Tiamat by jumping into the portal) I imagine you could skip the first few encounters all together, having the portal warp them straight to Sigil and the motivation being that they need to find a way home, as opposed to the 'defeat the drow for all that is good' motivation the module suggests. Would skip a few encounters and if you missed out on some of the optional ones/ones in the Demonweb that would sort out the xp difference (though the party wouldn't get Spidersilk unless you gave it to another drow later on).

Perhaps for a regular game it would be better to simply give the PC's some down time after the events of RHoD (regardless of what campaign you intend to run next) and have a one shot of something with the campaign then picking up a week later or so in game time, the climactic battles of RHoD neither overshadowing challenges yet to come nor making them seem to throw the events of RHoD out of perspective by suddenly throwing mooks at the players whose challenge is on par with Azaar Kul, Kharn or even the aspect thanks to the break in the game.
I do really like the idea of running Demonweb as a follow up to RHoD as it continues on some of the very nice themes of the module. RHoD introduces the characters to aspects with Demonweb then expanding upon this idea, RHoD is ultimately about a battle of the players versus Devils with Demonweb having them now fight demons for a change in theme... has some good plot potential.

RTGoodman

2011-02-19, 12:05 PM

I was wondering if anyone has ever gone about rebuilding Kharn in that way (though I know both crusader and cleric are quite capable of leading under the frameworks for examining it that I've seen so far).

I had actually thought about running him as a Paladin of Tyranny with my homebrew Warleader Paladin substitutions. (Gains the Marshal's abilities without haven't to, you know, be a Marshal.) Never got much further than Skull Gorge Bridge when I ran it three times in 3.5.

(I'm currently running a 4E conversion, where the PCs are defending Brindol. I've had to basically redo all the Wyrmlords anyway, but I've decided Kharn is gonna be an Elite Soldier with a LOT of Leader abilities. They've still got to get through fire-fighting, Abithriax-fighting, and the whole "Streets of Blood" thing first, so I've got a couple of weeks at least to get him squared away.)

EccentricOwl

2011-02-21, 12:55 AM

I had actually thought about running him as a Paladin of Tyranny with my homebrew Warleader Paladin substitutions. (Gains the Marshal's abilities without haven't to, you know, be a Marshal.) Never got much further than Skull Gorge Bridge when I ran it three times in 3.5.

(I'm currently running a 4E conversion, where the PCs are defending Brindol. I've had to basically redo all the Wyrmlords anyway, but I've decided Kharn is gonna be an Elite Soldier with a LOT of Leader abilities. They've still got to get through fire-fighting, Abithriax-fighting, and the whole "Streets of Blood" thing first, so I've got a couple of weeks at least to get him squared away.)

Hear hear. RHOD is fantastic for any D&D system, and it's great in 4th ed.

How's remaking all the Wyrmlords going for you? I've actually just remade Kharn as a Warlord. Though it's not visually appealing and it doesn't follow the normal rules (plenty of fudging ) his powers are very complementary - at least if you've got other Wyrmlords left for them to fight.

This should hopefully lead to a somewhat entertaining scenario whereupon the players fight mirror images of themselves - a Bard, a Warlord, a Ranger...

Saintheart

2011-02-21, 07:40 AM

Although this strictly speaking is a 3.5 RHOD thread, and I'm utterly ignorant of 4e, we've heard Scales of War supposedly works rather well as a follow-on from RHOD. Any thoughts, feedback on that? If so, is Scales of War worth a "backgrade" down to 3.5 rules? :smallsmile:

RTGoodman

2011-02-21, 11:29 AM

How's remaking all the Wyrmlords going for you?

It's getting better. Koth (Elite Artillery) ended up being kind of a glass cannon. He was a straight-up blasty guy (with a few control spells), but got ranged SA'd by the Rogue and taken down in a couple of rounds. Karkilan (Elite Soldier), his bodyguard, outlasted him by several rounds. Saarvith (Elite Skirmisher) was just a basic Goblin Ranger kinda guy, but with Regiarix (Solo Lurker) as his mount it made for an awesome encounter. Ulwai (Elite Controller [Leader]) made for really fun monster design, adding a lot of leader abilities to support her Doom Fist monks while also throwing out lightning bolts and stuff. For Kharn, I haven't statted him out yet, but I'm thinking he'll be a lot like a Warlord. Don't know about about the High Wyrmlord yet, either.

Although this strictly speaking is a 3.5 RHOD thread, and I'm utterly ignorant of 4e, we've heard Scales of War supposedly works rather well as a follow-on from RHOD. Any thoughts, feedback on that? If so, is Scales of War worth a "backgrade" down to 3.5 rules? :smallsmile:

Scales of War takes place a generation after Red Hand of Doom, IIRC. I never really looked at it much, but I think you could probably port it to 3.5 pretty easily. I know several people online who really enjoyed it, for what it's worth.

Jastermereel

2011-02-27, 04:58 PM

For those who've run through the campaign before, I've got a few of questions regarding Chapter 2. None are RAW rule-based questions, but more about the workings of the elven alliance and the climactic encounters. We're a session or two from making a first try

A. The first is more a "did this seem reasonable?" than a proper question, but I thought I'd ask anyway. There seems to be a treasure lump stuck onto the first fight with a Razorfiend. Unless my math is wrong, the campaign dumps +24K of treasure (2x 4K items and 2x 8K items and some gold coins) on the PCs with barely a sentence of explanation. When running through the encounter, I missed that note due to a rushed ending and so they didn't get that loot then. Since the next 1.5-2 sessions were likely to be strictly social, I gave them a simple side-mission to help the elves with a lesser threat so the players wouldn't get restless without combat. They succeeded, and so I had the elves reward them each with a significant magical item. The total worth of the reward was 7K less than it would have been had I remembered the Razorfiend wealth, but it was more customized for the party. Was the gift out of line, or am I overly worried about it?

B. More relevantly, would that assistance be reasonably worth a +2-4 bonus on a diplomacy check retroactively? While the Diplomacy check (for the alliance points) were based on initial interactions, they'll be staying with the elves for a while and so additional assistance to the Tiri Kitor could raise opinions. I ask because Killiar is Friendly, bordering on Helpful. While they aren't hurting for Alliance Points, it doesn't seem an unreasonable additional benefit considering Lanikar's belongings were worth +4.

C. Skull Gorge Bridge went badly for them. They stole some military papers, but the attack on the bridge was a complete failure (though didn't result in any PC deaths amazingly). In response to most opinions I'd read of the encounter, I'd buffed Ozzy a little by shuffling some feats around, which was likely the cause. As such, I'm leaving most of Rhest's climax as written regarding the foes. I'm fine with a PC (or even two) biting the dust, but there's no fun for them in a TPK. Most of the party is fairly squishy. The Barbarian has one-shotted ogres before, but the Bard, Rogue, and Sorceress are all justifiably more fearful for their hit points when around large foes. They're doing more planning than with the bridge, but I'm expecting trouble. What's a good way to provide assistance without making it easy or pushing them into a strategy?

Uh, and, if it's not too much trouble, this is more a board thing than a Rhest thing. I'd been posting my group's campaign journal (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=168749), but I took a break around the time two of my players brought a new little nerd into the world. We've started up again (sooner than I expected), but I worry that continuing to post about their adventures would seem like Thread Necromancy as the last post was the November 19th, 2010 and I've no idea if there was much interest in it as, of the 13 posts in the thread, 10 were mine. Should I pick up the thread again as they continue combating the forces of the Red Hand or would revisiting a +3 month old thread with little outside participation be ill-advised?

By the way, thank you all for your writings on the finer points of this epic module. It's been very handy thus far.

Saintheart

2011-02-27, 06:34 PM

Lots of stuff. :smallsmile:

A. I tend to think make it up to the party out the gear recovered when (if?) they finish up at Rhest. If it's 7K down on the RHOD standard I reckon that's still a substantial hit they take -- remember they're supposed to be basically acquiring wealth by level as they go. But it was a good idea to customise the treasure to them.

B. The RHOD text provides a prcedent for retroactive improvements to Diplomacy with the Tiri Kitor, so I see no reason why you couldn't do the same. The final decision on whether the elves will help the Vale isn't really going to happen until the situation in Rhest has been dealt with conclusively, so up until that point you've got time to shuffle the numbers a bit.

C. In terms of rendering assistance: the keys to turning Rhest into a cakewalk are waiting until the dragon and Saarvith leave, Water Breathing, and Silence. This allows the party to control the flow of opponents, moving underwater from the belltower to the town hall and handling opponents piece by piece rather than all at once. So the easiest way to help the party unobtrusively is have Saarvith and Regiarix away when the party reaches Rhest, or depart shortly after they arrive but before they make their attack.

Also remember they don't have to clean the place out on the first run. They can retreat and all that'll happen on the RHOD text is the hobgoblins celebrating into the night. It's only if they fail twice in a row that Saarvith and Reggie come out looking ofr them. This isn't a "stand or fall, death or glory" situation, particularly if they have Water Breathing.

Incidentally, looking very quickly at your party again I'm not surprised they take hammerings, and you're right to restrain yourself on rebuilding encounters. RHOD's balanced for the standard arcanist+cleric+meatshield+trapmonkey, but it begins to suffer against optimisation, stronger classes, or bigger parties. Yours, I think, isn't quite the bog-standard gang of four; assuming the bard's the only one with any cure spells, there's not a cleric among them, and the sorcerer will have set spells without versatility like a mage would.

Honestly, with a party like that, were it me I'd turn Trellara Nightshadow (the useless Tiri Kitor bard) into a low-level cleric and have her carry a Water Breathing scroll to cast. As to how you can nudge them towards going underwater -- perhaps the Tiri Kitor can mention how their best intel on the ruins comes from their mages casting it and the hunters taking a look around that way, though they're still too cowardly to try and attack the place themselves.

Uh: I don't think it'd really be thread necromancy, but it's not as if you lose Internet access if you up the thread with an explanation. I say go for it.

Reynard

2011-02-28, 02:56 AM

I'm running this game via maptools at the moment (first, bug-ridden session yesterday).

Now, my players are both numerous and inexperienced, so the only real changes I made to the first encounter was increasing the size of each wave of Regulars by 2 and raising the Bladebearer up a Warrior level.

Things went well right off of the bat, with two critical arrows on the Beguiler (only one confirmed) shaving off half his health. After that though, it went abruptly downhill for the Hobgobs, with the blaster Psion in particular carving a wave of destruction through the ranks.

Once the Cleric and the Bladebearer hand been alerted, i Had them both head towards the fight, untill they saw how badly things were going, whereupon the Cleric popped Invisibilty (Trickery doman) and ran for the second wave. By the time he had gotten to them, the rest of the Hobgobs were dead. So, rather than a suicidal charge, I had them flee to tell their superiors about the arrival of a band of heavily armed and aggressive mercs in the area.

How would you expect the Hobgob hierarchy to react?

Saintheart

2011-02-28, 06:51 AM

Aside from Koth maybe raising an eyebrow over it, I'd say there's no reaction at all. Remember, roving packs of adventurers are commonplace in a campaign world. If Uth-lar and Zarr go over with Koth that they just ambushed the party, no indication that the party was out hunting for them, I think Koth would be just as likely to assume that the party's nothing but a passing-through bunch of murderers who aren't going to be a problem. Given there's about 100 hobgoblins in the Witchwood (Soranna's estimate) area, I doubt the Horde would really think much of one patrol that finally met some stiff resistance and foundered.

I seem to remember off the RHOD text that there's some support for this. Kharn and the Horde don't take notice of the characters until they've done some serious damage -- Skull Gorge, certainly, but in particular Rhest because the players are due to wipe out the greenspawn razorfiend hatchery there. At that point they're a serious enough threat to warrant sending out assassination squads against the characters. Prior to that, Kharn's got the classic blindness consequent upon the Conservation of Ninjutsu -- he's got thousands of hobgoblins and a red dragon under his command, if he meets these clowns in battle they won't make the slightest bit of difference to the result.

There's also every possibility that Uth-lar or Zarr might have more regard for their own skin than to actually report anything went wrong. We don't know whether Koth's a You Have Failed Me (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/YouHaveFailedMe) kind of guy, but it's a distinct possibility that Kharn is.

Or indeed Koth might be sufficiently cowardly that he won't report the matter upstream -- RHOD seems to indicate he's low man on the pole and trying desperately to impress his way further up the chain of command.

ShadowFighter15

2011-03-06, 08:17 PM

I don't know if it'd work at all, but could RHoD be adapted for the Iron Kingdoms setting? The main obstacle I see is how the setting handles dragons (I'm not 100% sure on how they're handled, but what little I've read makes them seem like sources of corruption - I doubt half-dragons are even physically possible in Immoren).

But if it can work, then my dream of marching on the Fane of Tiamat at the head of a small army of warjacks is one step closer. :smallbiggrin:

Saintheart

2011-03-06, 08:42 PM

Not that I know the faintest thing about Iron Kingdoms, but I'm guessing from a brief look it can be done. It's obviously not a direct D20 setting, but RHOD's structure is beautifully portable IMHO. Anyone else want to chip in on this?

ShadowFighter15

2011-03-07, 02:47 AM

The main problem I see (again, I'm still looking at the fluff for the setting so I might be wrong on a few points) is that every dragon in the Iron Kingdoms setting emits this kind of corruption or blight. I don't know if hobgoblins and such would survive it or not. They'd be mutated in the least.

On Dragons:
On top of that, the other planes don't exist in Iron Kingdoms (or if they do, then the people of Caem are about as certain of it as we are of the existence of heaven and hell) and Tiamat isn't the mother of all dragons. In Caen, the father of all dragons is believed to be Lord Toruk, ruler of Cryx and worshipped as a god by its citizens.

He is the most powerful dragon in the world, called the Dragonfather largely because legend states that all other dragons on Caen were spawned when Toruk split his heartstone or Athanc into multiple pieces and each piece regenerated as a separate dragon.

One great goal of most worshipers of Lord Toruk is to continue service to him in undeath. Through the necromantic practices of his priests and other servants, Toruk keeps the souls of those who worship him from passing to Urcaen, the realm of gods and departed souls. Lord Toruk is believed to have the power of a god, though he has no presence in the Divine Realm.

You could make her an Infernal creature of some kind, but all of them look more like ultra-slender humanoids, having a big dragon would seem out of place.

A possible explanation is that Tiamat is an actual dragon, one of the first alongside Toruk. Toruk feared her because she was far more powerful than he was until he found a way of sealing her into whatever realm the Infernals are from (don't know how possible this is, but it should get someone thinking). Since then, Tiamat has found a way of contacting her children - the other dragons of Caen - and organised a way to open her prison and free her so she can take revenge on Toruk.

Of course, that sounds like a good thing at first - Cryx has been a serious threat for centuries, but no one country's strong enough to risk attacking Toruk and they're all too busy blowing each other up to work together (and even then they might not have enough firepower) so having Tiamat come along and turn Cryx from an undead-infested hellscape to a black and charred hellscape would be very helpful. Unless Tiamat decides that Toruk had the right idea with the country and now the rest of the Iron Kingdoms have an even stronger dragon to worry about. One who may not be as content as Toruk to sit on a mountain and wait for a chance to strike.

On top of that, I'm not sure how much the IK hobgoblins differ from the normal DnD kind, if they even exist at all.

Jair Barik

2011-03-07, 03:59 AM

Perhaps use hobgoblin stat lines for Nyss bladebearers etc?
Effectively it is a war of the 'drow' trying to raise up one of their dragons in that case. For the final encounter of course it could be that Azurr Kul doesn't summon a dragon but become a dragon.

Saintheart

2011-03-07, 07:47 AM

Here's a thought on the whole lack of planes and dragon gods:

Tiamat, as thought of, is one of the oldest dragons - a "prototype" dragon, predating or possibly the one and only sibling of Toruk. She was intended as Eve to Toruk's Adam, but dragon physiology is flexible enough that (as Toruk demonstrated) it doesn't require conventional sexual contact to spawn more of them. Rather than submit to the base and intended instinct, recognising Tiamat could only be a rival, Toruk put her into a deep magical slumber - one that was meant to be eternal. (He did so because he didn't have the power, at that early stage, to kill her.)

The site of Tiamat's physical slumber is the Fane of Tiamat, buried deep inside the mountain itself. Toruk of course didin't intend for anyone to find her, but various Tiamat cultists over the centuries have tried unsuccessfully to wake her (and dig her) up. Toruk's own activities have frustrated these attempts.

But the latest attempt has been somewhat more subtle. Azarr Kul's managed to reopen the Fane and disable the magical wards and alarms that otherwise would have warned Toruk another attempt is being made to wake Tiamat. Azarr has also managed to cobble together a recipe of spells that should awaken her. The main ingredient is the spilling of blood - on a large scale. Thus the invasion of Elsir Vale -- not to conquer as such, though Tiamat's going to need an army and a defensible position pretty damn quick since Cryx is likely to mobilise once Toruk learns Tiamat has returned. The spilling of so many lives will fuel the magic which will cause Tiamat to awaken, break free of her mountain prison, and escape.

The final confrontation with Azarr Kul then becomes Azarr getting killed by the party and then reanimating as a shard of Tiamat's own strength fuels him, turning him into what would otherwise be the Aspect of Tiamat the party faces at the end of the adventure.

No need for other planes, or Infernals. It's just straight-out sleeping dragon stuff.

I'd also borrow a lick from AslanCross's suggestions off the front of the thread about Eberron RHODs: if the heroes fail, you have an elder evil campaign. Cryx mobilises, Toruk probably appears openly, and he and Tiamat go to open outright war the likes of which haven't been seen since the elder days. Quite possibly massive swathes of the Iron Kingdoms will be devastated in this war, leaving the people having to figure out how to kill not one, but two elder dragons.

EDIT: On how one deals with the corruption element -- maybe Tiamat functions as something like a "positively charged" dragon, cancelling out Toruk's "negative charge" -- around Tiamat (as in, within Elsir Vale and surrounds) a dragon's corruption power is neutralised. Doesn't work at all?

(This is all in relative ignorance of how the setting works, I might add.)

ShadowFighter15

2011-03-08, 05:25 AM

That sounds bloody amazing, actually. I'm as in the dark as you about the corruption, but with that origin for the dragons, the corruption could just be because of Toruk being the father of all current dragons. Tiamat possibly having some aspect of her body to counteract it.

The main question is how to make Azarr Kul a half-dragon (and again, I'm not sure about how the goblin races have been changed - I know the normal gobbers are more civilised goblins who are meant to replace gnomes and halflings who don't exist in the setting), though some complex ritual to try and tap into Tiamat's power could've turned him from a bogger (more traditional goblin, might include hobgoblins, not sure) into a half-dragon bogger. Even if hobgoblin's don't exist, you could homebrew up a hob-bogger (or use the normal hobgoblins) that Kul was mutated into for his body to contain Tiamat's power.

The Battle for Brindol would certainly be more impressive if the owning country sends a warcaster or two to help in the defence. You wouldn't have to use warjacks for the enemy forces either - there's bound to be stuff in Hordes (a sister game for Warmachine, you can pit an army from one against the other without problems and they use the same setting) that can fling boulders that far and having Kul try to recruit these other factions to his cause would be a good way to use the setting to its fullest.

Warning whichever country the Vale is in about the danger to Brindol might be trickier - IK imposes a lot of restrictions on certain spells (even Dimension Door could unleash an Infernal) and I think Sending is one of them. But if the Vale is in Cygnar, then they'd probably be able to just use the telegraph to get the word to Cygnar's military. Do it soon enough and there could be a decent-sized force of men and warjacks ready to defend the city.

Is there anyone reading this more knowledgeable about the Iron Kingdoms setting? Namely how it handles dragons and their corruption?

Jair Barik

2011-03-08, 06:53 AM

Frist of all as I understand Cryx is not the dragon related faction.
The legion of everblight (http://battlecollege.wikispaces.com/mkiiLegion)are. I don't know what monsters are statted in Iron Kingdoms but here is how I see it.

Your basic goblinoid forces are probably either going to be restatted/refluffed as Nys and or Nephilims (respectively the settings drow and as I understand 'half dragons' though Nephilims are not of the smart variety of half dragon).
For the worg riders you may want some Raptors (Nyss archers who ride on the back of reindeer) and for the Lizardfolk near the Elf village you may want to use these guys (http://battlecollege.wikispaces.com/mkiiblindwater) who are effectively Gator men.
For your dragons you are actually in luck as the dragons in Iron Kingdoms are predominantly wingless so the normal problems that revolve around varanthian don't happen in this setting. For the other four you get flying dragons in various sizes ranging from about man sized to proper dragon sized.
For the Blackswawn raiders I'd say you may want Nephilims, for the Greenspawn razorfiends take your pick theres all sorts of dragonspawn in Everblight.
The Wyrmlords are up to you really but you'd probably want to refluff most of them as Nys in one sort or another (the goblin though could probably be refluffed as a corrupted gobber).

The big question on how to do Tiamat and Azurr Kul is a tough one but I have an idea. Thagrosh.

Thagrosh is no longer ogrun. He has become Everblight’s true avatar. It is as though the dragon lurks just behind the top layer of his thoughts, a vast alien presence looking through his eyes and speaking with his tongue. Similarly, the draconic temper increasingly dominates Thagrosh’s mood. This fury is a brand of searing iron that ignites the pure dragon blood pumping through his veins, pushing him to crush and humiliate each foe he faces.
One of the Everblight 'casters' he is effectively their messiah, the chosen of the dragons who will bring about the new age of dragons yadadada, sound familiar? I would avoid using Thagrosh himself but perhaps a similarly fluffed half dragon Ogrun/Nys would work well? A second Thagrosh (perhaps rival to him) who desires to bring about the return of the dragons.
And now for Tiamat. The only named character warbeast in Legion is called Typhon. Typhon is a three headed hydra beast (for this reason I would replace the hydra encounter for something else, the single official hydra in the setting being a nigh unkillable beast of legend). Perhaps the portal Azurr kul is attempting to open to signal the return/awakening of the dragons lets a beast Akin to Typhon through before it closes? Insteead of three heads it has five, and wings too but it lacks the regenerative capabilities of its brother.

Any of those ideas any good (not an expert of the setting but i know some bits).

Jastermereel

2011-03-09, 02:56 AM

Another question to those who've run it before (or those just really well read in it): Does the Red Hand, in the stretch of time where they march across the vale, occupy or simply destroy the various towns?

If my players do as I think they might (which likely guarantees it to be a false prediction) then they might cross back to towns they'd seen before. I figure this'll be a great time to show them the impact of the Red Hand and a reminder of the consequences should they fail, but I'm not sure what they should find there. The front line should have already passed, but I don't know what it leaves in its wake. Should the party waltz through the barren and blackened remains of a town set to the torch? Should there be a few hobgoblins or assorted monsters (manticores and the like) occupying the place, keeping watch behind the bulk of the forces and scavenging the ruins? Or should towns be used as a staging area for some of the nastier forces (bluespawn thunderlizards, assorted ghosts and such sent by the lichlord, etc) to show them what is to come, forcing the party to keep a low profile or face terrible danger?

Each seems to have some merit, but I don't know if there's a cannonical answer. My best guess is that the party might glimpse Drellin's Ferry sometime between the fall of Terrelton and the taking of Nimon's Gap.

Saintheart

2011-03-09, 07:13 AM

My impression on the RHOD text is that the Horde will devastate the towns it crosses until it reaches Brindol. Brindol's about the only strategic strongpoint in the whole Vale, and the Horde isn't anticipating any real resistance from any of the towns bar Brindol and Dennovar. I would have thought the Horde simply plunders and destroys everything in its path until it hits Brindol. From memory there's an IC contingency that Brindol gets sacked if the party loses there, which I would have thought is consistent with how they've been behaving along the way.

On the other hand, you could have a small supply outpost in one of the devastated towns if you really wanted a combat encounter. Maybe there's stuff that's being ported down from the Wyrmsmokes, or even communications between the Fane and Wyrmlord Kharn.

Dusk Eclipse

2011-03-17, 02:02 PM

Hey I need a little help re-stating Koth for my game of Red hand of Doom, the problems lies that due my houserules, everyone (including players and monsters alike) gets feats at 1 and even levels.

Thus Koth has 4 feats to burn, and there is where you guys enter I have just brainstormed a few ideas and I want to know what you think about my ideas

1 Draconic Heritage (Green)
2 Improved Initiative
4 Green Dragon Lineage
6 Practicided Spellcaster

Also some insight in the spell selection

0 level: Do they matter?
1st level : Grease, Mage armor, Ray of enfeeblement Shield
2nd level Wings of Cover Cloud of Knives
3rd level Slow

GreyMantle

2011-03-17, 10:32 PM

Those two draconic feats are basically useless. You should get rid of them. If you want some sort of draconic vibe for Koth, just describe him as having a dragon-y tinge to his features or whatever.

Like Saintheart sez, saveboosting feats are really not a bad option for Koth. You could also squeeze in Improved Toughness, possibly; Spell Focus feats are also rarely a bad investment.

Dusk Eclipse

2011-03-17, 10:34 PM

Ok point taken, how about the spell selection? I'll probably take Lighting Reflexes and Great fortitude.

Runestar

2011-03-18, 08:30 AM

I thing I realised that really helps to make sorcs more durable is to take the spellshield sorc variant in dungeonscape. As an immediate action, you can give up a slot to negate up to slot lvx5 worth of damage. So for a 2nd lv slot, that's 10 damage each round.

Save boosting feats are great because they are passive abilities which don't require tracking once you have factored them into the npc's statblock, so that is one load off your mind. Not all that great, but you could do worse, so take them only when you have run out of ideas on what feats to take.

I like the idea of arcane thesis: scorching ray, because with practiced spellcaster, you hit caster lv 11, just enough to squeeze out 3 rays. As a bonus, you can empower them using a 3rd lv slot.:smallamused:

For spells, I mean really, barring buffs, your highest spells are all that matter, you shouldn't ever need or get to cast your lower lv spells unless they are swift/immediate actions. So just assume mage armour and false life are always on, and shield when he gets alerted to combat.

Malevolence

2011-03-18, 05:07 PM

I've played through, and attempted to run this one a few times.

Here's some of the things that stood out that bugged me:

Enemy tactics: For a while at least, they're practically nonexistent. I mean, they're not even focusing fire. Sure, they aren't aware of the true power of the PCs. But when enemy 1's init comes up, and they shoot someone, but they don't go down when enemy 2's init comes up they should be shooting at the same person. Not a different one. They're portrayed as elite forces. They need to at least perform common sense tactics, or they can't be taken seriously.

Weak statblocks: This is always a problem in published modules, so it's not specific to this one. The more important the enemy is supposed to be, the more annoying it is when they are not well designed at all, both at whatever it is they are supposed to do and in general. Now I understand why this is so - both because the module writers were limited in the sources they can use and published modules are generally marketed to inexperienced players, whereas I and my gaming group are anything but. It still bugs me though. And by bugs me, I mean a small part of me dies when the boss's action is to cast a Lightning Bolt instead of a Slow or Stinking Cloud.

Vendor trash: There is a lot of it. A whole lot. And due to a combination of the time pressure and the rather limited selection of casters in towns there are few opportunities to convert it into things that the PCs are likely to use. Several people have hypothesized that the module is designed for a stereotypical party, but even in that context, for example the Fighter will happily keep the +2 Str item but that +1 Frost Bastard Sword is still going to a vendor. I'm not going to break down every single instance where this occurs, only leave this point by saying that even assuming a stereotypical party, a good deal of loot is just easily transported gold that you can't do a whole lot useful with due to limited shopping opportunities.

Slow reactions: There are several points in the campaign where you assault an enemy base of some kind. But they react slowly to your presence, or not at all. Any decent party can just zerg the place before anyone gets ready, since you have so much time to react. They're supposed to be elite forces. They need to be faster and more eager to swarm the party, so that Leeroy Jenkins only works if you're just that awesome.

The dragons: I'm sorry, but I'm not impressed with any of them. The statblocks are poor, the default strategies are poor... all of these problems are fixable, but by default, they are not nearly as impressive as they need to be.

The obviousness: Ok, I understand published modules are marketed to inexperienced players. One of my first gaming experiences was with this module, and even then I felt like the module was hitting me with a clue by four as to what the correct course of action is at any given time. It doesn't have to be that obvious. It'd be better if it didn't. Especially in regards to...

Telegraphing: If you have a green dragon attack the party suddenly, that's a very scary moment. If you have the party able to spy on a green dragon and friends in a situation where they're hiding well out of visual range, and the dragon and friends are out in the open the party is going to take advantage of the fact that dragons are color coded for your convenience, perfectly prepare, and cakewalk right through it. One of these situations occurs in the module, one is what should be happening. Can you guess which is which?

...The module telegraphs so much so as to be unmetagameable, simply because you'll know about any significant battles, and their capabilities in advance. And it doesn't even require divination use. It just gets dropped in your lap.

The whole mount thing: The module kind of assumes you'll be mounted, for travel if nothing else. Ignoring campaign specific stuff such as a part of Talentan halflings riding dinosaurs along, this means dragging around what is quite honestly a liability. I've seen groups struggle with their horses as much as they have the enemies they're fighting. The mount thing also ignores that for half the level range, the party is wherever they want to be, there they are. It's entirely possible to "sequence break" and skip most of the rest of the second half of the campaign simply because for all their supposed magical might, the final area has painfully few defenses against a Scry and Fry. And even though you're underleveled, you could probably still pull it off, too. But even with nice players, it's still a flawed assumption to be making.

The Ghostlord: He gets his own section, even though my problem here is an amalgam of the other problems I mention. He's played up, very obviously as something you don't want to fight. You're also told IC, that he's a Blighter (read: complete push over). One of these things is not like the other. Chances are, you also still have an item that does a number on undead. I haven't seen anyone mention it, but my first thought to "powerful undead" is "use this neat powerful anti undead spell I got, maybe that's what it's there for". The result of this, the first time I tried it was a 1 HP Lich who subsequently died to a pinprick (literally, a 1 damage attack after DR). Phylactery gets smashed, and that's that. I later found out this was a lucky break, but even without it he goes straight down to 24 HP. That's what, 1-2 hits? It's more bothersome than you might think, as there are a number of character archetypes who would find the prospect of giving up their advantage on, and treatying with an evil lich, and blighter abhorrent so even given the obvious Do Not Fight sign... there's still a lot of potential PCs that'd want to fight him. Which in turn means this could come up by accident. Just as it did for me. An actual spellcaster of those levels would have destroyed us, no contest.

Yes, that's a long list of complaints. The concept is interesting, it's just the execution falls short in a number of ways. Since most of these are based on the fact experienced players aren't the target audience here, I'm not complaining too loudly. It wasn't meant for me, and I'm quite capable of adjusting it so that it is.

Dusk Eclipse

2011-03-19, 07:49 PM

Saintheart

2011-03-19, 08:40 PM

Ok I redid Koth feats selection and spell list, how about this

Spells

0th (6/day) level: doesn't matter
1st (6/day) level Ray of Enfeeblement, Shield, Mage Armor, Grease (DC 14)
2nd:(8/day) Wings of Cover, Cloud of Knives ( 1d4 +3), Scorching Ray (extra spell)
3rd (4/day) Slow (DC 16)

Feats:
Improved Initiative, Practised Spellcaster, Extra Spell (Scorching Ray) Extra Slot (2nd level slot)

About the only other suggestion I'd have is to hand him a scroll of Haste. He doesn't have to have crafted it himself, remember, it could come from the Horde's own stores. One casting of Haste with its range and number of allies is enough to cover Karkilan and the hobgoblins, which is a nice buff partywide. Have you boosted Karkilan as well, or are you planning for Koth to be the major threat of Vraath Keep?

Dusk Eclipse

2011-03-19, 08:43 PM

About the only other suggestion I'd have is to hand him a scroll of Haste. He doesn't have to have crafted it himself, remember, it could come from the Horde's own stores. One casting of Haste with its range and number of allies is enough to cover Karkilan and the hobgoblins, which is a nice buff partywide. Have you boosted Karkilan as well, or are you planning for Koth to be the major threat of Vraath Keep?

Koth should be the major threat, considering it is a Wyrmlord, I might buff Karkilan with Warblade level (or two) but I am not sure. (perhaps shaving off a few racial HD)

Runestar

2011-03-19, 08:44 PM

Dusk Eclipse

2011-03-19, 08:48 PM

Take note that slow is really only effective if Koth is around to support the veterans. Depending on how stealthy the party is, they may be able to catch him alone, in which case, slow isn't that useful.

His spell selections seems okay. How exactly do you plan on playing him?

Not completely sure, I was thinking on starting the battle with Koth debuffing the party with a Slow, letting them with Karkilan for a round, then casting Cloud of knives and generally trying to avoid the meleers. I am considering changing the Extra slot for extra spell (invisibility) so he can get the drop on the PC's.

Saintheart

2011-03-19, 09:15 PM

Double post, but anyway. Let me say I'm not attempting to defend the module from beginning to end, these are just observations. :smallsmile:

I've played through, and attempted to run this one a few times.

Here's some of the things that stood out that bugged me:

Enemy tactics: For a while at least, they're practically nonexistent. I mean, they're not even focusing fire. Sure, they aren't aware of the true power of the PCs. But when enemy 1's init comes up, and they shoot someone, but they don't go down when enemy 2's init comes up they should be shooting at the same person. Not a different one. They're portrayed as elite forces. They need to at least perform common sense tactics, or they can't be taken seriously.

Hobgoblins aren't meant to be that smart anyway. The impression I got from RHOD is that the Vale's perfectly capable of handling small groups of hobgoblins on its' own -- its the fact pretty well all the tribes of the Wyrmsmokes have combined that makes them such a huge threat, together with the dragons and the fact they're fanatically obssessed. James and Rich themselves do put out there explicitly that much of the Horde is cannon fodder.

On the other hand, even the hobgoblin regulars on their statblocks are "conditioned to harsh discipline", so, any suggestions?

Weak statblocks: This is always a problem in published modules, so it's not specific to this one. The more important the enemy is supposed to be, the more annoying it is when they are not well designed at all, both at whatever it is they are supposed to do and in general. Now I understand why this is so - both because the module writers were limited in the sources they can use and published modules are generally marketed to inexperienced players, whereas I and my gaming group are anything but. It still bugs me though. And by bugs me, I mean a small part of me dies when the boss's action is to cast a Lightning Bolt instead of a Slow or Stinking Cloud.

It's an inherent weakness, because, as you say, the writers are generally restricted in the sources they can use whilst players are not - therefore Pun-Pun and any number of Lego-brick-behemoths we see trundling around optimised campaigns.

On the other hand, I think it's a valid criticism since it would appear the playtesters/authors/whoever of D&D 3.5 didn't drill down and see what the full consequences of playing towards dominating the action economy rather than dominating the damage count would be. But: that particular boss you're talking about is Koth, who's a sorcerer and doesn't have any other offensive spells at Lightning Bolt's level. So I think that one crosses into the "limited sourcebooks to work from" territory.

If you've got a smarter party you should be opting for smarter tactics. Personally I'd like to see some more commentary on that, since we've got good advice on better builds but not so much on better tactics at the start of the thread.

Vendor trash: There is a lot of it. A whole lot. And due to a combination of the time pressure and the rather limited selection of casters in towns there are few opportunities to convert it into things that the PCs are likely to use. Several people have hypothesized that the module is designed for a stereotypical party, but even in that context, for example the Fighter will happily keep the +2 Str item but that +1 Frost Bastard Sword is still going to a vendor. I'm not going to break down every single instance where this occurs, only leave this point by saying that even assuming a stereotypical party, a good deal of loot is just easily transported gold that you can't do a whole lot useful with due to limited shopping opportunities.

Yeah, the bastard sword out of Vraath Keep is a commonly-raised issue. There's a section in the Handbook at the front of the thread devoted to fix that particular problem. One of these days I (or someone a lot smarter than me) is going to sit down and restat the various treasures so it's a more balanced loadout throughout the adventure, but in general the approach should be to change the treasures to suit your party.

Slow reactions: There are several points in the campaign where you assault an enemy base of some kind. But they react slowly to your presence, or not at all. Any decent party can just zerg the place before anyone gets ready, since you have so much time to react. They're supposed to be elite forces. They need to be faster and more eager to swarm the party, so that Leeroy Jenkins only works if you're just that awesome.

This is particularly so in the Fane of Tiamat, where (as we mention at the front of the thread) enemy troops take a Terry Pratchett/bad AI approach and never leave their areas if somewhere nearby is attacked.

I think you can take this a bit too far, though. It also might impact on realism. For example, I did try the "one round reaction time" against my (PbP) party at Rhest after they'd performed an underwater incursion on the town hall, and I got a bit of PM grumbling and criticisms along the lines that "These ogres have been sitting around doing several weeks of precisely nothing in the middle of a swamp, they're not expecting trouble, how come the Cylon response time?" That does make sense when you consider they're analogous to humanoids -- who do you know that can stay completely physically and mentally alert for three straight months without getting lazy?

The dragons: I'm sorry, but I'm not impressed with any of them. The statblocks are poor, the default strategies are poor... all of these problems are fixable, but by default, they are not nearly as impressive as they need to be.

Thus the sections on improving and fixing the dragons in the handbook. ;)

The obviousness: Ok, I understand published modules are marketed to inexperienced players. One of my first gaming experiences was with this module, and even then I felt like the module was hitting me with a clue by four as to what the correct course of action is at any given time. It doesn't have to be that obvious. It'd be better if it didn't. Especially in regards to...

Telegraphing: If you have a green dragon attack the party suddenly, that's a very scary moment. If you have the party able to spy on a green dragon and friends in a situation where they're hiding well out of visual range, and the dragon and friends are out in the open the party is going to take advantage of the fact that dragons are color coded for your convenience, perfectly prepare, and cakewalk right through it. One of these situations occurs in the module, one is what should be happening. Can you guess which is which?

"Clue by four" is the most awesome statement of that meme I've ever heard. May I steal it? :smallsmile:

I think savvy parties and in particular PbP parties do tend to romp through the module's mysteries, mostly because the 'correct' course of action is pretty straightforward to anyone stopping to think about it. This is particularly so where the party captures Horde leaders rather than killing them and has a decent Diplomacy and/or Intimidate check, or one cleric with a Zone of Truth spell. Thus the section in the handbook about occupying parties who are back to Brindol early on the timeline. But I've seen and read threads where some parties don't do that at all, or do amazingly silly stuff in context. That's a matter of YMMV and how seasoned your players are.

The rest of it I can only really shrug over and suggest reworking to make it not so hard to practice 'scry and die' approaches. Skull Gorge Bridge is straightforward because you can get to spitting distance before engaging. Make it so that's not practical: cut down the vegetation close to the bridge so the Horde's agents can see the party coming.

The whole mount thing: The module kind of assumes you'll be mounted, for travel if nothing else. Ignoring campaign specific stuff such as a part of Talentan halflings riding dinosaurs along, this means dragging around what is quite honestly a liability. I've seen groups struggle with their horses as much as they have the enemies they're fighting. The mount thing also ignores that for half the level range, the party is wherever they want to be, there they are. It's entirely possible to "sequence break" and skip most of the rest of the second half of the campaign simply because for all their supposed magical might, the final area has painfully few defenses against a Scry and Fry. And even though you're underleveled, you could probably still pull it off, too. But even with nice players, it's still a flawed assumption to be making.

See the comments about parties arriving back early on the timeline and the section on improving the Fane in the handbook. Part of the answer is either not to give the party mounts, because it makes it harder for them to get around quite as quick. Although I do agree that if the party gets hold of giant owls from the Tiri Kitor, travel around the Vale hits Spaceball One's plaid speed. 70 miles per day means they can go from Brindol to the Ghostlord's area in two days, and it makes assassination squads springing out of nowhere a lot less plausible.

The Ghostlord: He gets his own section, even though my problem here is an amalgam of the other problems I mention. He's played up, very obviously as something you don't want to fight. You're also told IC, that he's a Blighter (read: complete push over). One of these things is not like the other. Chances are, you also still have an item that does a number on undead. I haven't seen anyone mention it, but my first thought to "powerful undead" is "use this neat powerful anti undead spell I got, maybe that's what it's there for". The result of this, the first time I tried it was a 1 HP Lich who subsequently died to a pinprick (literally, a 1 damage attack after DR). Phylactery gets smashed, and that's that. I later found out this was a lucky break, but even without it he goes straight down to 24 HP. That's what, 1-2 hits? It's more bothersome than you might think, as there are a number of character archetypes who would find the prospect of giving up their advantage on, and treatying with an evil lich, and blighter abhorrent so even given the obvious Do Not Fight sign... there's still a lot of potential PCs that'd want to fight him. Which in turn means this could come up by accident. Just as it did for me. An actual spellcaster of those levels would have destroyed us, no contest.

See the sections in the handbook on beating the party without fighting. Blighters suck, yes, but did you try Antilife Shell (5th level for blighters; Ghostie can access it) + Unhallow keyed to Dispel Magic vs. nonevil character (again, on his list at 5th level, good for one year) + Stinking Cloud + ??? + profit? :)

On "powerful anti-undead item" -- there's nothing on RHOD that has this effect, so presumably the party has this item at entry to the module, i.e. level 5 or 6. What item are they acquiring around 5 or 6 that can smash liches that also computes into wealth by level?

As to spells: I don't know the SpC backwards, but any suggestions for spells to watch for or avoid the party using?

In short: any suggestions for improvements on the book, to get rid of some of these problems?