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!
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!