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View Full Version : Red Hand of Doom Campaign Log- There's never enough RHoD!



Fizban
2011-01-22, 08:06 AM
Well, after realizing that no one else was going to hold a game together, I finally decided to DM one of my own. Having read several excellent RHoD campaign journals around here, I figure I know the thing well enough to run it fine even though this is my first time DMing, so there you go. I'm not sure how long I'll keep up the log/recap/whatever (I'm not calling it a journal cause it probably won't have squat for dialogue, so it won't be as entertaining as I expect the term journal to be), but since my mind is trying to make me recap things, I figured I might as well post it here.

The cast:
Were-dude: Sun Elf Rogue1/Were Leapord Panther (3HD +1LA). I can't remember the character's name, so I'll edit in later. I've let him buy off the first point of the afflicted lycanthrope's level adjustment, and additionally he'll be taking animal hit dice in order to upgrade his animal form to Dire Puma Panther. This is the guy I'm most worried about, as his crazy high AC and damage reduction combined with full attack DPS makes him a monster against the mooks common in RHoD.

Oscar: Dwarf Druid 5. Was originally thinking about the fast healing and shapeshifting variants, but decided against them. Has a wolf companion.

Elina: Rogue 3/Ranger 2. Can't remember her race. Was built by Oscar's player and will be played by him when her player is not available. Which looking at scheduling is going to be a lot of the game time. Standard TWF rogue using Ranger for the TWF bonus feat.

"Sith" Paladin: Paladin of Tyranny 5. This player used a temporary build for the first fight of the game, but should be customizing it for next week. His idea when he was thinking paladin was more "my rule for the better of mankind and smite anyone in my way," so there's the Tyranny variant. I'll be letting him smite the bad guys anyway, so he's not screwed out of one of his main features.

Ninja: Ninja 5. This player also used a temporary build. He was interested in a rogue build but was concerned about getting his sneak attacks based on past experience. I set him up with a custom build with ninja for independent sudden strikes, aiming for Deadeye Shot next level so he can work with the melee for sudden strikes every round, and then levels 8 and 9 will be Fighter levels to ninja his way into Greater Manyshot before the end of the campaign. He's also got Craven, so even single shots are extremely painful right now.

Illusionist: Sir Not-Appearing-In-This-Entry, wasn't able to work his schedule. Hopefully will be there next week.

Prologue:
We got most of the group together for character work last week, but Oscar and Elina's players had to leave right when I wanted to start the module proper (and it's a good thing too, no way we would have finished it), so instead I ran a quick practice fight for the Ninja and Were-Dude. The fought a pair of Gnolls and a Dire Wolf, beating them with a little hassle. The Dire Wolf proved an effective foil for the Were, tripping him easily, but the Were still tore it apart in a couple rounds. Here I make the first of what I expect may be many rulings I will later regret: I allow the Were to use his Anklet of Translocation to teleport himself upright. This lets him pop back up and finish the Dire Wolf after only taking two attacks. Still, if he'd had a few more bad rolls, he could have gone down hard, so it seems about right.

Marauder Attack:
Yesterday we finally got to run the first encounter. The characters start in a reasonable formation, with the Paladin in front and mounted. The players have tons of spot, so they see the attack coming, and the bad guys and Paladin all roll horribly on initiative so they have to wait for the rest of the party to go first. The Were starts by jumping over the slope into the woods to the right to take two of the mooks, while Oscar casts Call Lightning and the Oscar's Wolf and Elina grind into the woods on the left after the two closes mooks there. The Paladin rides forward, hops off his mount, attacks the third mook on the left, and his mount steps forward to cover his right. Half the mooks forget to attack, but the ones in melee close ranks and lock shields (with the Shield Wall feat), making them seriously hard to hit (AC 24 in the woods). Finallly the Bladebearer moves out of the shack, the Doom Cleric moves out invisibly, and the two Dire Wolves (replacing the Hell Hounds) advance. In between the Doom Cleric and the Bladebearer, the Ninja just kinda plinks a failshot. This first round takes forever, as I forget people and mix up orders, but eventually we get everything sorted out. None of the mooks take any hits thanks to the cover and concealment in the woods, but the paladin's mount gets a bite taken out of it by the closer Dire Wolf.

Round two. The Were starts full attacking, but between AC 24 and concealment he only dents the first of his two mooks. Elina and the Wolf Companion similarly whiff their attacks. The Druid drops two lightning bolts (one from finishing the spell, one from standard action), zapping mooks on both sides of the map. I don't know what to have the Doom Cleric do (since I really don't want to summon anything when I can barely handle the map as is), so he casts Resistance on the Bladebearer. The Ninja moves up, ghost steps, shoots past Dire Wolf A, and cuts the Bladebearer's hp in half with a sudden strike. The Bladebearer advances, but still isn't in attack range. The Paladin hits the third mook on the left for 12 points, dropping him to 1hp, where he will stay for quite a while. The Paladin's mount opens up on Dire Wolf A, dropping it's hp by about 1/4. The regulars (mooks) whiff basically every attack they make (a +4 bonus does not go far against AC 20). Then things get interesting: Dire Wolf A takes it's action and with no other particular targets in easy range due to all the difficult terrain, starts chewing on the Paladin's Mount, dropping it to about 2/3 hp and tripping it.

Rounds three-end: it gets a little fuzzy at this point (heck, I might already be a round ahead of the actual count), but the rest of the fight goes about like this: The Were wastes another round trying to kill mooks before the rest of us badger him into actually entering melee with the important foes. Elina's player and then the Ninja's player have to go to class, but that's okay since their characters hardly to anything for the rest of the fight- Elina is too far away to fight the real foes and the Ninja misses attacks until the first Dire Wolf falls, at which point he halves the hp of the remaining Dire Wolf. Elina's player comes back just in time to roll the attack of opportunity on the mook she was fighting when he tries to drink a potion, and critical hits him for trying to drink her loot. The Druid calls up a Flaming Sphere to go after the Dire Wolves and Bladebearer while simultaneously spending a couple rounds dropping bolts on mooks. Meanwhile, Dire Wolf A tears into the paladin's Mount, dropping it below half hp.

This is what finally prompts the Were to enter melee combat, as Dire Wolf B arrives on the scene and probably would have ate the horse: instead Wolf and Were trade blows, but thanks to my previous ruling on the Anklets letting him stand up, the Were is in no serious danger while tanking DWB. Seeing his mount getting wrecked, the Paladin remounts and attacks Dire Wolf A, and his mount finishes it off. At the same time, the Bladebearer crits his way into the Paladin and deals some serious damage. I'm not sure what else hit him, but the round after that the Bladebearer attacks again and suddenly the Paladin is in the negatives and his Mount has to retreat to keep him alive. The Bladebearer remains standing through the combined onslaught of the Paladin and his Mount thanks to the Doom Cleric chain-casting heals on him. This stops when the Druid finds him during a Flaming Sphere adjustment, and proceeds to drop all manner of fire and lightning on his square. The Doom Cleric drops unconcious without even breaking invisibility, someone finally brings down the Bladebearer, and the mooks are mopped up with the last couple bolts from Call Lightning. Players were straggling out for the last round or so, but luckily it was mop up at that point.

All told, the combat took somewhere between 2 and 3 hours. We "started" at 2 after waiting for the last players to arrive, but didn't start rolling until 2:30, right when Elina's player had to leave for class. She came back at 4:30, and the fight was in mop up by 4:50. The first couple rounds were excruciating, but the Were's player did a good job of reminding me when I missed things (concealment, players turns, bad guys turns, pretty much anything), and by the time the Dire Wolves entered combat things were going pretty quick. Most of the "wasted" time was on tactical considerations and me mis-remembering skills and spells that I thought I knew by heart. With a "battlemat" made out of 4 letter sized sheets of paper, the field kept sliding around, so I didn't bother marking the large sizes properly until the positioning really started mattering. It turns out that the cap of a standard dice tube/rectangular prism is also a 10'x10' creature. I also completely forgot about the second wave until the crew was entering clean-up duty, and since people were leaving I skipped them-the extra mooks really wouldn't have been challenging enough to be worth xp anyway. The last two players on scene (Were-Dude and Paladin) made sure to check the shack and grab the gold there. Next session we should be able to start with entering the town and do some of that "roleplaying" thing I keep hearing about in RPGs.

So, there you have it. I don't know if any of my players hang out around here actually, but there's nothing sensitive so if you guys are here feel free to read and comment. If the next session goes well then I suppose I'll just have to keep writing now that I've started. For anyone who stuck through and read the whole thing, I hope it was a good read!

ka_bna
2011-01-22, 12:03 PM
Yay, another RHoD log! Subscribed! :smallbiggrin:

true_shinken
2011-01-22, 12:25 PM
Were-dude sounds awesome. I was looking for a possible lycanthrope for my next campaign and leopard is just want I want.
Plus: Pumaman, he flies like a moron...

Greenish
2011-01-22, 12:36 PM
Here I make the first of what I expect may be many rulings I will later regret: I allow the Were to use his Anklet of Translocation to teleport himself upright.That's not too bad. The anklet is only 3/day, and Boots of Agile Leaping would allow him to stand up as a swift action as often as he wants (assuming he has 5 ranks in balance, but balance should be a class skill for a panther anyway) for mere 600 gp (or 900 gp when added to the anklets). And then there's the skill trick for it.

Fizban
2011-01-29, 01:27 AM
Sadly, no particular update this week. We had two players missing and the Illusionist is looking like he won't be able to change his schedule for quite a while, if at all. With only 2 players (the third who was there was also one who had to go to class about halfway through), we did some character work and started making a couple dummy characters for future situations when we don't have enough people for combat but still want to go forward (and so that there's an arcanist in the party).

Fizban
2011-02-12, 05:05 AM
Well, it has since become apparent that several players I'd been hoping would be more available will not be. The Illusionist is on hold indefinitely, the Ninja doesn't seem as interested as I'd thought, and the Rogue and Druid are dropping out since the Rogue wasn't really getting to play (which I made clear is perfectly fine). The game must go on however, so after skipping a couple weeks from lack of players, I decided we'd just forge on ahead with the two remaining. Last session we decided to put together some dummy guys for filler which look like they're going to end up main characters. The player roster is now:

Arnok, Were-Panther Sun Elf Rogue 1
Sha'ak'ti , Human Paladin of Tyranny 5
Sodamn Awesome, Human Cleric 5 (Pride and Luck)
Wizard 5, Wizard 5

Drellin's Ferry
Sha's player forgot his character sheets, so as we got set up I sent him to go print a new copy of the stat block I'd wrote up for the first session, while I reconstructed the wizard we'd built last session from memory. Sha ran the wizard while Arnok took the cleric, and we started where we left off, after the Marauder Attack. I decided the guards weren't particularly freaked out by Arnok's hybrid form (both because I forgot he was in it, and since his description isn't terribly bestial), and they get directions to the Old Gate and the blacksmith's shop. We have some decent roleplaying: Sha takes most of the lead and goes off to stable his horse while Arnok heads for the inn and orders a drink. After dropping off the horse, Sha also goes to the inn. At this point we remember there are supposed to be two more characters around, and they magically appear at the bar, and then Wiston and Soranna show up. I end up rather stymied for ad-libbing, as Sha immediately starts asking about how many fighters the town has and about their fortifications, which the module doesn't account for as much since it assumes the players will be gung ho for treasure. He was particularly interested in the holy symbol of Tiamat and is very interested in following that lead, which sadly turns up nothing as there is nothing to turn up. I have Wiston and Soranna suggest investigating the Witchwood while commenting OOC on how he's trying to go in a completely different direction than the module and all roads must lead to the same adventure site, so he asks about Vraath Keep and we get back on track. Arnok notices I forgot to give Sodamn a wand of Cure Light so they negotiate the magical support fund into a price break for the wand and get back underway. After they've accepted the mission Soranna suggests they look for Jorr and the players make a beeline for Jorr's house via the Witch Trail.

Jorr's Cabin
When the group shows up at Jorr's Cabin the dogs run out barking and snapping and the players are ready to start swinging. Not wanting them to kill Jorr without good reason I make a point of how the dogs aren't attacking and suggest that if they want to ask for this guys help, they probably shouldn't kill his dogs. After the quick reality check they abstain and wait for Jorr to come out and talk. I end up having another run for my money as Sha focuses on hiring him as a guide before mentioning the goblins, but they take the hint from my confusion once again and ask about Vraath Keep, followed by suggesting that the hobgoblins might be hiding there. I didn't have anything particularly interesting prepared for Jorr so he responds with "Killing goblins? I like any plan that kills goblins, let's go," and they're off. They get xp for a CR 5 encounter as written in the module, which I point out "is basically for mentioning goblins."

Blackwater Causeway
Arnok rolls poorly and for the first time fails to spot something, so the party is in the middle of the causeway before the fight starts. Unfortunately the dice are rather unkind to the monsters once again, and the Hydra ends up going last. At this point another person sits wanders by and Sha's player offers to let him run the wizard. Sha opens up with some bowshot that misses, then the wizard tosses off a Slow spell that fails, the cleric drops a Bless for something to do, and the Hydra double moves through the water ending one square out of it's attack range. Second round, the party takes a couple more plinks with bowshot and a magic missile spell. Halfway through I describe how the Hydra will be out of melee attack range in the water, although they could attack the heads, so Arnok decides that he and Sodamn are going to start moving north. Around this point I remember the wizard has a +4 int modifier, and the Hydra is retroactively slowed and moved back to his proper position. The rest of the party decides to head north as well, to draw the Hydra up into the bog where it will be slowed even farther and they can get their melee attack on. On the Hydra's turn is slowly struggles up onto the bank and fastheals most of it's damage, which I let the players know by telling them almost all the wounds they deal have closed over.

Now that the Hydra's on land, Sha tries to decide weather to close to attack range or not. He doesn't want to provoke the AoO, but since he's a melee build we eventually convince him to suck it up and take it. When I announce all 5 of the Hydra's head making their attacks he responds with something like "WHAT!? No way, you said there were only 2 heads, screw that I'm staying away!" (It's actually supposed to have 6 heads, but I messed up and ran it with 5). A little more cajoling and reminding him of his high AC gets him back into range. The Hydra hits with 3 attacks, critting with one (the dice really don't seem to like him), and deals some decent damage. Knowing that the body is going to heal as fast he he can damage it, Sha takes the option to attack a head, at which point I reveal the nasty bit: he takes another 5 AoO's from trying to sunder! Of course, with the 5 headed's low attack bonus of +6, only one or two get through for a little damage. Then we get to the crazy part: Sha's attack bonus with Law Devotion running is +12, and he get's another +4 from using a two handed weapon. This means his sunder modifier is +16, against the Hydra's +6. So he lops off a head. Arnok takes a move and attack to claw and take half the hp off a second head, and the wizard uses Firey Burst to sear the first stump. After this it's pretty much just a meat grinder on the Hydra. Sha'ak'ti severs a head every round with his ridiculous sunder modifier, Arnok performs an excellent double claw rip on the next head and bites the one after that for half it's hp, which the horse then finishes with it's own bite attack, and the wizard just keeps searing stumps like clockwork at no resource cost (yeah I know bursts don't work like that, whatever). The Hydra takes fewer and fewer attacks each round, missing with most of them and eventually running out of heads to make attacks with. The party doesn't think to search the wagon and just continues on to Vraath keep.

Vraath Keep, part 1
The party arrives and makes no special plans for investigation at the bottom of the hill, just heading straight on up. The don't seem to be interested in the shack, but take a look around the ruined gate and enter the courtyard. Arnok easily hears the goblins in the stable, but he decides to sneak left and peek around the corner of the broken wall to the barracks first. He succeeds and gets a good look at 4 Hobgoblins and a Minotaur, although he was much more interested in the Owlbear statue before I finished figuring out what creatures were in there. He sneaks his way back to the rest of the party and they start planning which room to clear first when I realize we only have about 40 minutes left, and as this is a rather dynamic battle area, we would have a good chance of ending in the middle of a crazy combat, so I suggest we stop early. Everyone seems fine with that logic so we scoop up and finish early.

Final thoughts:
Considering we hadn't actually rolled any dice for three weeks, that didn't go to bad at all. I'd had a hint of worry when Sha's player had said the other day that he was mostly interested in learning to play, thinking he was more focused on the mechanics, but he was actually more focused on the roleplaying than anything else. The Hydra battle was a lot of fun even though it was a total slaughter. Everyone was quite amused at the slowed lizard wading through the muck, the crazy sunder modifier Sha had going on, and the guy running the wizard seemed cool with just zapping every round. The group liked taking down a seemingly superior foe with machinelike efficiency. As for myself, I am now completely sure that the biggest problem I'm going to have in the near future is getting the bad guy's attack rolls to actually stick. With two primary melee's and a well armored Cleric, they have tons of AC, while the only thing I can really boost on the standard mooks is... AC. So we end up with two heavily armored groups missing over and over, not very awesome. Now that they have a proper wizard that won't be much of a problem on account of the save or lose, so I'll just have to try and make the wizard into a new weak point as well.

Fizban
2011-02-25, 10:05 PM
I didn't really feel like writing last week's session up, but after the wackiness continued this week I figured I should. Since things aren't fresh in my mind it's gonna be kinda bland, but I hope it's interesting for those reading.

Vraath Keep, part 2

The party decides to make a flanking attack against the stables, with Arnok (the Were-Panther) heading down to the gap in the wall while Sha'ak'ti (the Paladin of Tyranny) would go in the doors. A Warg smells Arnok as he approaches the gap and everyone rolls initiative. Once again the bad guys roll poorly, though the Worgs are at least closer to the top than the bottom. In summary, the Goblin Worg Riders get massacred by Sha while the Wargs run around trying to figure out what to do. The Worg on the right tries to meet up with his rider and gets killed for it. The Worg on the left runs to the right to meet up with his rider, sees the other Worg get slaughtered and the goblins pounded, takes a double move to run all the way back left and out the gap into the courtyard. When the Worg crosses past the north barracks door, the Wizard drops a grease to slow him down and cover the door. Meanwhile, the Hobgoblin Veterans in the barracks hear the Worg sounding the alarm and get their gear, with the Minotaur retreating to alert Koth. Arnok chases the Worg as it runs into the courtyard then pulls a standing jump over a rock to block it's way down towards the barracks. Sha tells the surrendering goblin in the stables to stay put and moves back out the door to the courtyard.

This is where the wacky happens: The Worg than ran into the courtyard has now been cut off from both the barracks and the main gate. With nowhere else to go, he turns around and runs back into the stables, where the "surrendered" golbin pulls off a fast mount ride check and gets ready to run. By this time, Koth is grabbing the map and casting his buff spells in the background. The 4 Veterans storm into the courtyard from the barracks while shouting for the Manticore to get out and fight, and are promptly hit by a readied Stinking Cloud from the Wizard. The armored pair makes their saves on the first round and it seems like they might stand a chance, but they fail on the next round and get nauseated too. While that's going on, the Worg that has now run full circle courtyard to stables is back out into courtyard with it's rider, but get's downed Sha and his horse (who had previously been guarding the entrance). Sha mercilessly executes the goblin that tried to run after surrendering.

Next chunk: the Veterans stumble out of the cloud, surprisingly able to maintain their Shield Wall despite being nauseated, and proceed to curl up and die over the next few round as Sha'ak'ti, his horse, and the Cleric all gang up on them. The Manticore perches up on the edge of the roof and despite my pointing out his lack of action, Arnok decides to go after it. Arnok climbs up the roof with his climb speed while the Wizard successfully blinds the Manticore with Glitterdust. They begin a dance with Arnok full attacking and luring the Manticore to the edge while the Manticore fumbles to find him and fails to hit between Arnok's AC and the fact that it's blind. This part of the fight is basically a mop up, taking several rounds to finish off crippled opponents. The timing ends up quite nice however: Sha drops the last Veteran to exactly zero causing it to surrender, and on the same turn Arnok finishes the Manticore with Mortal Kombat style overkill. This is all one round before Stinking Cloud ends and reveals Koth and Karkilan (the Minotaur who's name never came up). Sesson ends here.

Vraath Keep, part 3

We started pretty late this session, but this was somewhat fortunate as I didn't have the next sections well prepared. Regardless, the Koth fight ended up rather. . . extreme.

Koth did not emerge from behind the stinking cloud as I had liked, since initiative order meant it would have left him taking pot shots from the PCs, so less dramatic. In any case, the PCs (technically already knowing the next part of the fight was up) look to see if anything is revealed. The Wizard buffs Sha'ak'ti with Enlarge Person (after he got a Bull's Strength from the Cleric earlier), bringing his melee attack to a whopping +11 to hit for 3d6+10 damage. The cleric holds his action, Arnok drops off the roof, and finally, Karkiln and Koth emerge. The Minotaur makes a beeline straight for the nearest target, which turns out to be the Cleric (called Mr/Captain Awesome. Pride and Luck domains just because). Unfortunately, his whiff's his attack against the cleric's high AC, and this will be his last action. Koth opens up with a Fireball (instead of Lightning Bolt, honestly, who picked that?), hitting the entire party for 9d6 damage thanks to Practiced Spellcaster. Damage is 26 points, with the entire party except for the Cleric failing their saves. At this point I realize the party has a little less hp than I thought, but they react more than fast enough to win the day.

Sha steps forward and hits Karkilan's pathetic AC for more than half his hit points, while sending his horse all the way around the outside of the keep to squeeze in a hole on the far side of Koth and the Minotaur. The Wizard drops his last control spell over the south area, Web-ing both the bad guys, who make their saves. Of course they still take the massive penalties for being entangled and can barely move. The Cleric gives Arnok a Cure Serious with Augment Healing for an extra +6, restoring 22hp. While he has no multi-target heals, he has a Close Wounds ready to save one person, and with the Web forcing a concentration check to cast they aren't panicking yet. Arnok decides to go with style over effectiveness, opting to climb back up the side of the wall and drop into the web to hang down and attack the Minotaur with his longsword, rather than just stepping 10' along the ground and hitting him from the front without webbing himself. He also blows all 3 charges from his Brute Gauntlets, which does at least give him enough damage to drop Karkilan to -2 before his second action. Koth sees his second in command killed with two blows and evaluates his tactical situation as "run away", chugging his potion of fly and struggling up through the webs. He makes it to the top 5' but is unable to break fully through and ends there.

Here comes the rest of the wackyness: Sha squeezes past a rock and dives into the web below where Koth if hovering to get at attack at him. Arnok, who has now made several combat jumps, has become the player's de-facto plan for dealing with a flying foe. As such, he wants to climb back onto the roff and jump at Koth. Unfortunately, he can't do this without taking two move actions to get out of the web and then make the jump. While Arnok's player protests, Sha's player (controlling the Wizard) drops a 2d6 Firey Burst directly on top of Arnok, burning him out of the Web, which then deals him another 2d4. All agree that this is his punishment for getting fancy and putting himself in the Web. Note that this neatly avoids burning off any of the webs holding Koth or Sha'ak'ti, and the whole thing is happening over Karkilan, who is now bleeding out (in the south 3x3ish aread of the courtyard if you're following along). The cleric heals someone (I forget who) and then we get to the good stuff. Arnok flips back onto the roof, then makes a standing jump for an easy 10' and grapples the hovering, Web'd Koth out of the air. While directly above Sha. Arnok succeeds on all necessary rolls, and since his hybrid form, gear, and Koth's gear easily beat out Koth's maximum load, then squish to the ground in Sha's space, again, with everything covered in webs.

By this point I've already had to deal with a vague wording on how much action it takes to get out of a Web, and now we've piled encumbrance and grappling on top of that. At the same time :smalleek:

Turn order rolls back around to Koth, who manages to break free from Arnok and struggle back up to the same point he was at before, around 15' off the ground, in the edge of the Web. Sha decides he won't stand for this, so he reaches up with his Enlarged reaching grapple modifier and yanks the guy right back down, then even has his horse squeeze in for good measure before I notice that's too many creatures for one medium grappler. At this point Koth could still theoretically break free with a line of amazing rolls, but then he'd still have to get past the Wizard's last few spells and we're out of time, so I skip the rolls and Koth is captured. The PC's are now basically out of every resource they have except for Healing Touch and Wand of Cure Light to heal up after combat, with two prisoner's and full run of the Keep. End session.

Saintheart
2011-03-02, 06:57 AM
I've only just found this campaign log, but that Vraath Keep fight was awesome. Seriously. When your main plan for dealing with Koth is to reach up into the sky and yank him back down to the ground, it qualifies as awesome. :smallcool: