Sombrastewart's Red Hand of Doom Campaign Journal [Archive]

sombrastewart

2012-09-25, 02:56 PM

Sure, I don't post here much, but I want to do a campaign journal for this. Here's hoping you guys enjoy it.

I've had the Red Hand of Doom book for something like two years now, and never had the opportunity to run it. Well, given that my weekly game group just finished a 4e adventure and we were looking to swap GM's for a bit, I seized on the opportunity. I warned them in advance that they're looking at a game where characters will die and punches won't be pulled, y'know, the good stuff.

Regardless, we got our character creation down. We've got a breakdown that is as follows: two 3e vets, one guy that's very familiar with it but I don't think has played as much, one girl that's only played 4e and one fellow that played Chainmail way back in the day and played first, second and 4e D&D since. An interesting mix to say the least. I put down the rule of no LA races and a nonevil group starting at level 5, rolled for stats (4d6, drop lowest) and away character creation went.

Our cast of characters, so far:
One of the vets had his drawn up early on, and went with being our primary skillmonkey. He's a Scout 3/Ranger 2 with Swift Hunter, favored enemies are undead and goblinoids. He's planning on doing a lot of precision damage and looking to roll as the group's stealth.

Our other vet opted to go with a fun little concept. He took his first level in rogue, and then four levels of cleric of Olidammara. This means he's got our healing covered and has an interesting mix. Being a cleric of Olidammara, he's sporting a rapier and a breastplate for armor, a high Int and Wis and decent Cha. He admits the concept might get killed early on, but it's an idea he wants to try. More power to him.

Our familiar member opted to go with a Hexblade, with the PHB2 variant that has a dark companion instead of a familiar. He's wielding a greatsword and looks to be one of the groups two frontliners.

Our old school member is playing a Favored Soul of Fharlaghn, so he's wearing armor and wielding a quarterstaff. He's taken a fair number of healing spells and summoning spells, so I'm seeing plenty of additional animals being thrown into our combats. He's also going to be our other frontliner, so I honestly am curious to see how this group's fighting dynamic turns out.

Finally, our newer player opted to be an elven wizard. Crazy high Int with a rat familiar for higher fortitude saves. She was advised by the vets to take the debilitating spells instead of straight damage, but she opted for some of it anyway, namely lightning bolt over fireball. Her insistence of having a melee weapon makes me wonder how this is going to go, but that's fine. She took her character's death in the 4e game well, so we're going to see how this goes.

This week begins the adventure, using the setting of a pre-existing group finding information about Vraath Keep as their hook.

Feel free to drop any thoughts you might have.

Starbuck_II

2012-09-25, 04:29 PM

So, are you going by the book or are you changing anything (like feats of enemies, etc)?

Just curious.

Menteith

2012-09-25, 05:07 PM

I'm currently DMing the adventure for my group, and their just nearing the end of it. Can't wait to hear how this turns out for you, good luck and keep us posted!

sombrastewart

2012-09-25, 08:05 PM

So, are you going by the book or are you changing anything (like feats of enemies, etc)?

Just curious.

For the moment, I'm not changing anything up. Given the disparity between the group and that we don't have people going for crazy optimization, I'm going to let it ride and see how they do with the opening encounters. My plan, should they rip through everything, is to probably start by replacing spell choices and replacing fighter levels with something else, depending. I'm not using Tome of Battle (one of my favorite splatbooks) because I told them it'd only come up if they used it.

I admit, I'm a little curious how our wizard is going to react to things like Warklegnaw, given that she was ready to just attack everything last adventure...

I'm currently DMing the adventure for my group, and their just nearing the end of it. Can't wait to hear how this turns out for you, good luck and keep us posted!

Thanks! I'm really looking forward to this; I never run premade adventures, but this one looks so much fun. Plus, I'm also not a terribly bloodthirsty GM, but this one will be a change for the group.

How is your group doing?

ThiagoMartell

2012-09-25, 11:39 PM

Really like the concept on that Rogue/Cleric character.

Menteith

2012-09-25, 11:50 PM

Thanks! I'm really looking forward to this; I never run premade adventures, but this one looks so much fun. Plus, I'm also not a terribly bloodthirsty GM, but this one will be a change for the group.

How is your group doing?

Pretty well, though they've definitely managed to throw me for a loop. Spoilered for anyone who's not familiar with the adventure;

They managed to successfully get the Ghostlord to assist them during the Battle of Brindol. When they confronted the Ghostlord in his lair, the Necropolitian Dread Necromancer in the group (who was carrying the Ghostlord's Phylactery) bows down, offers back the phylactery, and promises to help smite down the fools who would dare to question the Ghostlord's power. Then he rolled a nat20 for his Diplomacy. Ah, players :smallsmile:.

Currently, they're just coming off the Streets of Blood encounter during the Battle of Brindol, very low on spells, and still have the Sniper Attack (Wyrmlord Saarvith as the sniper & a retooled Skather as muscle) and the final encounter left. Group is Factotum focused on poisons, Rogue focused on sniping, Dread Necromancer, Spirit Shaman that I allowed to go into War Weaver who focuses pretty much on AOE healing, Barbarian/Bard/Warchanter, and Wildshape Ranger. I've found that I needed to buff up most of the enemies to keep up with a pretty low power group.

sombrastewart

2012-09-27, 04:25 PM

First session kicks off tonight, and I'm definitely excited to start this.

The cleric player told me earlier, he had rolled such good stats, he was so close to playing a paladin of St. Cuthbert. I can't help but laugh about that idea.

sombrastewart

2012-09-28, 05:51 PM

Our cast of characters:
Scout 3/Ranger 2 with Swift Hunter
Rogue 1/Cleric 4 of Olidammara
Favored Soul of Fharlaghn 5
Hexblade 5
Wizard 5

Session one:

We got off to a rip roaring start when... neither the wizard of the cleric had picked their prepared spells. So, anyway, we have the full squad, we're ready to begin. They actually somewhat foiled the ambush, thanks to the Scout moving ahead and landing some crazy Hide/Move Silent rolls, so they ambushed the ambushers. This fight was... well, let's just say, I'll be buffing the encounters a bit. It's not that the builds are overpowered, but the players are cagey and work together well. The Scout's damage was killing hobgoblin regulars quite quickly, and the Hexblade pulling a charge, crit and then another crit off a cleave meant another dead hobgoblin and a dead hellhound before the fight even got going.

Zarr and Ul'rath entered the fray with the next wave, but it almost didn't matter. The wizard landed a Touch of Fatigue on Ul-rath, which limited his options. Truth be told, he tried to skewer the wizard, but alas, the dice were not with him. Poor cleric Zarr never really had a chance to do the invisible healer bit; hobgoblins were dying so quickly that he never could get there to heal them and a Glitterdust cut the invisibility (though he saved on the blindness). The Favored Soul beat the hellhound to death handily, given that he had chosen fire as his energy resistance, and the cleric moved in to duel Zarr with rapier in hand.

So yeah... I'll be buffing encounters, or perhaps increasing random encounters a bit. They did take damage, but not enough to really feel like they were in danger.

Regardless, the group spent a fair amount of time discussing how to proceed. In the end, they opted to take the weapons and armor from the dead enemies as well as Zarr's holy symbol. They almost missed the farmhouse, except the Scout took a sharp right and went in. He found the bodies and the gold and asked the holy men to perform rites over them. The Cleric poured wine in their honor and wished them well into the evermore, and may their journey be filled with laughter.

The Favored Soul, on the other hand, has no ranks of Knowledge: Religion, and so went with the following:

The Road goes ever on and on
Out from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
Let others follow it who can!
Let them a journey new begin,
But I at last with weary feet
Will turn towards the fabled end,
My final rest, Fharlaghn to meet.

With that, they headed on into Drellin's Ferry.

Once there, they met the sergeant. The wizard came an ace from getting them barred from town, until the Cleric and Favored Soul rolled some high Diplomacy and brought him around. They headed on to the Old Bridge Inn and met Capt. Soranna there, where they immediately donated all the (nonmagical) gear they'd gotten from the hobgoblins to the town guard. Soranna looked at the blood and scorch marks still on it, but accepted regardless. With Soranna came Speaker Wiston, and after his request, they agreed to help the town. With the session ending, they agreed to head out and meet Jorr.

Thoughts? Well, they RP well, and the combat took a while, as is expected with a new player asking all sorts of questions about spells. As stated, yeah, I'll be buffing encounters now, but I'm also actually intrigued by how they came together as quickly as they did. I'm especially interested to see how they handle the bridge encounter and Warklegnaw.

Starbuck_II

2012-09-28, 06:35 PM

Do you think they will wonder toward Warklegnaw before the Keep?

At the Keep:
You could buff encounters by buying Least Energy Assault crystals for some of the hobgoblins: pretty cheap (about 3-5 hundred gp) from Magic Item Compendruim. Useful treasure no matter who you are.

Give Mr. Manticore actual magic items like Ring of Protection or Amulet of Mighty Fist. He is pretty naked for his CR.
The Minotaur has a name but no magic gear as well. Even a few potions of Strength or Endurance would be better than nothing.

Seeing as there are numerous skeletons (giants, humans, etc) scattered at the place, you could rebuild Koth as a Necromancer (take command undead spell and have it assumed someone else created it would work) have a Hill Giant Skeleton there. It can just lie there till the party starts trouble then it attacks. Pretty hard to tell it is undead till it moves, it doesn't breath.

sombrastewart

2012-09-28, 09:28 PM

Do you think they will wonder toward Warklegnaw before the Keep?

Oh, I don't know. I can usually guess the direction they'll jump, but we've surprised each other in the past.

At the Keep:
You could buff encounters by buying Least Energy Assault crystals for some of the hobgoblins: pretty cheap (about 3-5 hundred gp) from Magic Item Compendruim. Useful treasure no matter who you are.

That's not bad treasure. I'll probably throw that in, thanks for the idea.

Give Mr. Manticore actual magic items like Ring of Protection or Amulet of Mighty Fist. He is pretty naked for his CR.
The Minotaur has a name but no magic gear as well. Even a few potions of Strength or Endurance would be better than nothing.

Also good ideas. I'm kind of thinking it odd that they're in there that way, but in the end, I do need to buff them.

Seeing as there are numerous skeletons (giants, humans, etc) scattered at the place, you could rebuild Koth as a Necromancer (take command undead spell and have it assumed someone else created it would work) have a Hill Giant Skeleton there. It can just lie there till the party starts trouble then it attacks. Pretty hard to tell it is undead till it moves, it doesn't breath.

I like that idea a lot. It will give the cleric something specific and make things more complicated. I might give Koth a scroll or something to that effect if I don't want to completely rebuild him (time constraints), but that's a great idea. Thank you.

Saintheart

2012-09-29, 06:49 AM

Just logging in here to say, as my sig might suggest, I'll be watching this with great interest. :smallbiggrin:

sombrastewart

2012-09-29, 10:16 AM

Just logging in here to say, as my sig might suggest, I'll be watching this with great interest. :smallbiggrin:

I'm glad you did, I started borrowing ideas straight away. :-)

I'm pondering on a few different combinations for the battle at the keep, I'll post them once I'm off work for some feedback.

sombrastewart

2012-09-29, 03:24 PM

Okay, I have a few notes about what I might do to change the battle at Vraath Keep.

I have four options, as I see it.

1. Restating Koth as a Dragonfire Adept or as a Warlock. These give him the opportunity to be in the battle in a different capacity and escape methods. DFA fits thematically and the breath weapon can be a cone for multiple target goodness. Warlock has the ability to use all kinds of scrolls and such, and put debuffs on his Eldritch Blast. Plus, I'm just a big fan of the warlock class.

2. Take the minotaur and throw on a level of barbarian. This would be rather rough, especially if I add any magical gear. This means that he will get an attack bonus of possibly up to +16 (if I remember right, I might not) and be able to just steamroll through the group.

3. Restating the hobgoblin veterans with the Phalanx Fighting as mentioned in Saintheart's guide. This means that a group attack with aiding one another can easily overwhelm some folk, barring a fireball, obviously.

4. Adding a stone giant skeleton to the fight can make things wild and wacky. Lots of hitpoints, high damage, all that good stuff. This would give the cleric a moment to shine offensively. Even if I don't use this one, I might add incidental undead to encounters to underscore how important it is to neutralize the Ghostlord and keep the cleric from thinking about what else he could do with turn attempts.

I could combine these, obviously. Warlock Koth and stone giant skeleton would go well together for the UMD on a scroll. Also, doing both the giant skeleton and the barbarian minotaur would probably be a bit much.

Thoughts?

Starbuck_II

2012-09-29, 07:24 PM

sombrastewart

2012-10-02, 12:42 PM

For the next session, the players are (assuming to be) moving on Vraath Keep, which served as the hook for this adventure. What I'm going to be doing is tweaking the encounter, because otherwise, it's really awful simple.

My first move will be to add an extra creature to the encounter and delay the involvement of the two leaders. The encounter starts with 4 hobgoblin veterans, two worg riders, one manticore and in reserve, a hill giant skeleton that's lying with several other large skeletons in the courtyard. This is if they botch up and get the whole group alerted, that means that the skeleton will get up and start in. I'll have the skeleton if the encounter is too easy, but if they're having a good fight of it, then I'll leave him lie. I want some undead presence to underscore a later threat, but I'll probably add them into random patrols.

Next step is to take the two leaders in the keep for this detachment of the Hand and change them up. The first is a minotaur, base stats, that's just meant to go charging into the party. I decided to change things and make the minotaur a field controller and replace his feats with Weapon Focus: Whip, Improved Disarm and Improved Trip. This will give him a reach of 35ft if I'm looking at it right, and make him a nuisance and make the fight more interesting without having to put damage on the players. If they close to melee, he's got a spiked gauntlet.

Second is the Wyrmlord Koth, originally a sorcerer. I'm going to change him into a Dragonfire Adept and do much of the same, inflicting status effects. The thing is, Koth doesn't want to get involved unless he needs to, so that means that as a DFA, he can fly and drop attacks from above. I think this will make for a tighter fight, but one that will be more fun for the players than just a straight up slugfest.

Thoughts?

Saintheart

2012-10-03, 01:02 AM

If your minotaur has a 35 foot reach, he's going to reliably be able to hit pretty much anything that steps inside Vraath Keep. Take a look at the map - it's relatively close quarters in there. Aside from that, nothing springs to mind. DFA is also a good option, too. This should be a pretty close fight I would think.

sombrastewart

2012-10-06, 08:41 AM

Yeah, I'm going for a close fight, but given the builds of the minotaur and Koth, they will get out distanced in action economy, but I can make the players sweat. I think orcs possible the manticore may kill someone before it's done, though.

I have a writeup for the last session, I'll post it this afternoon.

sombrastewart

2012-10-06, 12:29 PM

Update!

So, the group was... slightly different. Our wizard and hexblade couldn't make it, but our cleric's wife could, so I gave her a fighter I had already made and we were off into the wood's to find the home of Jorr, the local forest guide.

On the way there, I had them rolling their random encounter stuff, and... well... it was rather disappointing to say the least. I decided that a batch of stirges (low level bat mosquito things) was rather lackluster, but given when they rolled it, I decided to have it happen at Jorr's house for a little twist. So there was a swarm of eight stirges that they killed in Jorr's yard, which gave them a diplomacy bonus to get him to be their guide. Well, with their guide to show them where stuff was, they set out.

On the way was a causeway over the river where they spied a demolished wagon with a reptile head on top. Well, there it goes, and suddenly, they're engaged in a fight with a six-headed hydra that the dice have proclaimed they cannot kill. Jorr just ran himself across the causeway and got to safety. It took the group a while to decide to do the same. That's after a fair amount of damage to the new fighter and to the scout after he finally decided to cross the causeway, because he spent so much time dithering around, it got into position right next to the stupid bridge. So, yeah, he got a bit chewed up in that. However, no one died, so they made their way to Vraath Keep.

After Jorr told them about the story and said he'd wait for them a mile up the road, they set out. The Scout snuck on ahead and found that the front gate was busted in and a gap in the south wall. The rest of the group circled around the edge of the perimeter to approach the gate from the north. That went well, until the cleric decided to sneak up and screwed his move silently check and alerted the gate guards something was up. The scout, at the south entrance, took out one of the two worg riders that were loitering around, and the fight was on. The Favored Soul summoned up a bear, and between the bear and the fighter, one of the two gate guard hobgoblins was torn to bits. The other held his ground and fought back. The worg rider made it into the stable and, the other hobgoblins were roused, and that's when the manticore showed up, fire spikes and murdered the bear in one go. I ended the session when the minotaur with his whip and spiked gauntlet stepped through the doorway to enter the fight.

So, things are about to get crazy. We have, still fighting:
1 manticore, no damage taken
3 hobgoblins, still up in some fashion
1 worg rider, yet to enter the fight
1 minotaur lieutenant that just entered
1 Wyrmlord Koth that won't show up until the very end

sombrastewart

2012-10-12, 11:21 AM

Session update!

We had almost the full boat of folks last night, minus our favored soul and our drop-in fighter, so action economy didn't really change much. The fight was apparently pretty tight and had people worried, which is exactly what I was going for. It probably helped that my dice were running hot and cold, as I'd roll 5's and lower or criticals. Not quite that black and white, but not far off, either.

Our cast for the evening:
Rogue 1/Cleric 4, our healer
Ranger 2/Scout 3, primary damage output
Hexblade 5, the frontliner that's the other primary damage source
Wizard 5, the player that has never done 3.5 before, but loves the spell slinging

Let's start off with my restat'd minotaur, using a whip and a spiked gauntlet. Bear in mind, that through this, the manticore was still flying and firing spikes, but they honed right in on the minotaur. Some unfortunate trip attempts wherein I rolled 3's and was met with 15's or higher meant he never got a successful attempt. He took some damage as he moved around the field, and that's when the wizard landed a Daze Monster on him. That very next initiative pass, as it was about to wear off, the cleric landed a Hold Monster, and well, that's all she wrote. One gigantic coupe de grace later, there lay the minotaur.

In a fun twist, I had wanted to add some fun loot to this fight, since there's not really an opportunity for more later, and had made the whip and gauntlet combo a set of Legacy weapons. The group doesn't know it yet.

However, taking down the minotaur so quickly had a cost in blood, thanks to the manticore. He did a Flyby Attack and launched spikes, spreading them among the cleric, wizard and hexblade, who were pretty close together in the portcullis of the Keep. The spikes wounded the cleric pretty severely, dropping him to 5 HP and put the wizard down, hitting 0 HP on the nose. The hexblade soaked it with a laugh, then grumbled when he realized that the manticore was flying away. Bear in mind, that one spray of manticore spikes had two confirmed criticals. His next aerial pass had him firing the full six spikes at the scout, but all but one missed. The one that hit was a crit, which brought the scout to single digits and necessitated him firing up his healing belt.

In all this, the scout was moving around, tumbling like mad to try and avoid AoO's and getting locked into melee combat. Hobgoblin veterans closed in and by now, the worg rider had joined the fight. The rider actually confirmed a crit on the scout, but did jack squat in terms of damage. We actually ended up with the way to the south wall blocked, having the hexblade squaring off with the remaining two hobgoblin regulars and the worg rider. The manticore, being out of spikes, landed on the scout, who was isolated. My plan was to have him make a grapple check and then pull the scout to the top of the tower where there's no room to move, but the manticore whiffed his attack.

Mr. Manticore? Do you see that the cleric healed the wizard? The one that's casting Color Spray on you? Yeah. Stunned.

This is when Koth made his entrance. This is Dragonfire Adept Koth, who made his entrance by flying out, overhead and doing a cone of fire breath to start things off. The players groaned in seeing another combatant enter the fray, much less a flying, firebreathing bugbear. His next turn, he dove in and fired a weakening breath on the hexblade, who failed the save and took a -6 to Str for four rounds. Koth landed behind the line of hobgoblin veterans and the worg rider while others closed on the manticore. The cleric pulled his rapier, marched up and landed sneak attack damage and the scout unloaded on the stunned beast, scoring another critical that put it down hard. The hexblade was scrapping with the line of meatshields, doing damage but not putting any down yet. That's when Koth, being rock stupid and ambitious, saw an opportunity.

With his line attack lightning breath, I looked at the board and saw the hexblade, scout and wizard all lined up in the 30 feet, along with one of the veterans. Koth fired and killed the veteran, put the wizard to one hitpoint and hit the scout and hexblade. The scout made his save, so he didn't take much, and the hexblade had so much HP left, it didn't slow him down terribly much. The hexblade had actually opted to go defensive until the weakening wore off, which made him nigh on impossible for the hobgoblins to hit.

In the last rounds of initiative, Koth flew to atop the barracks, threatened the PCs and took flight, heading north. Well, he was going to.

The scout fired. Confirmed a critical. The group was complaining about MY luck all night. Koth took the hit, slammed into the side of the stables and lay on the ground at -5 and bleeding. A heal check later, and they had a wyrmlord hostage.

The other hobgoblin had died and the worg raider, seeing the gravity of the situation, actually turned tailed and ran and got away.

So, hostage Koth. With an intimidate check that landed in the mid 30's, and failing Koths' roll, he scowled and threatened, but answered questions. The group found his map and started asking questions about the horde, which, despite them keeping their bravado in front of the hostage, seemed to really hit home. Thousands of hobgoblins? Scores of giants? Trolls? The group scoffed, but when Koth dropped that they were lead by wyrmlords and dragons, well, that stopped them. So after they determined the horde would be heading into the Vale by way of Skull Gorge, they just flat killed Koth, not wanting to leave him a chance to escape.

Other stuff

Okay, they found the secret room, and now, after resting for the night, they've got to decide how they want to proceed. They know that the horde will be mobilizing in a few days and they need to do something. However, this group has legitimately slammed through everything up to this point in the first two days. They didn't take their foot off the gas until now.

They have a pile of stuff to identify, which hasn't happened yet. I rolled for what kind of sword that Amery had in his hands and ended up with a Falchion. I wouldn't be surprised to see the hexblade go with it, but I wouldn't be surprised to see him not, either.

Oh, right, the Legacy set. I have two weeks (there's a Here Come the Mummies concert we're going to next week, so no game) to hammer down the details, but my thought is that, as a set, they're aptitude weapons (no proficiency needed as long as you do the least ritual). The other abilities I haven't hashed out yet, and I'm happy to hear suggestions. I thought it would be a fun thing to throw in, I've never done it before.

Questions? Thoughts?

Draz74

2012-10-12, 12:55 PM

Just started reading this. AFAIK, I was the first to come up with the "Koth is a DFA" concept, so I'm glad to see it spreading. :smallbiggrin: (I assume you got it from the RHoD Handbook thread?) It worked great when I ran it -- similar to your fight, the players were sure they were doomed for a couple rounds, then they managed to shoot down Koth with a lucky parting attack while he was trying to fly away from the battle to protect his own hide. (Only in my campaign, the falling damage finished him off, so they didn't get to interrogate.) Unfortunately that playgroup had to disband after Skull Gorge Bridge, before they could progress to the rest of the adventure.

I'm surprised you kept the default treasure, more or less, in the vault. Consensus is usually that Amery's sword (even if you change it to a falchion) is too big a fraction of the treasure going to just one PC, and yet it's also stunningly nonoptimal. But it sounds like it might be just the thing for your Hexblade.

I'm not very familiar with weapons of legacy, so I won't be any help there. Sorry.

sombrastewart

2012-10-12, 01:12 PM

I'm surprised you kept the default treasure, more or less, in the vault. Consensus is usually that Amery's sword (even if you change it to a falchion) is too big a fraction of the treasure going to just one PC, and yet it's also stunningly nonoptimal. But it sounds like it might be just the thing for your Hexblade.

I'm not very familiar with weapons of legacy, so I won't be any help there. Sorry.

Oh, yeah, I just rolled for the base type of sword. I'm changing what it actually is, but they haven't identified it yet, so I have time to fiddle with the options. :)

And yes, I love the DFA idea. It makes sense for Koth's involvement, and really put a sense of dread into the players of what they were dealing with. They weren't actually sure, and were thinking he was actually a half dragon or maybe even a dragon disciple of some sort. The Sickening Breath was really the biggest turning point in the battle.

sombrastewart

2012-10-28, 09:35 PM

Not really a necro post, but no, the campaign isn't dead. We had to take some time off for a wedding and things of that nature, but it should be on this week.

I'm estimating the players will be heading to Skull Gorge this week, so this should be an interesting fight. I don't think I'll be upgrading Ozzy an age category; the fight at Vraath was a close run thing for the group, and Ozzy will have all kinds of room to move.

However, the other creatures there... what are your thoughts? I'm thinking about adding in the bard idea from the RHoD GM handbook, but beyond that, well, I'm not sure how much I want to change. I'm probably going to entirely replace hobgoblin troops with veterans from here on out (except maybe in Brindol for things like the Streets of Blood).

Eugenides

2012-10-28, 11:07 PM

Well, I for one am looking forward to reading this. I have no clue about anything contained in RHoD, but your commentary is quite entertaining.

Draz74

2012-10-29, 02:06 AM

Eh, Ozzy is really supposed to be the important part of the encounter at Skull Gorge. If anything, I guess I might beef up the archers on the towers a little bit, so that the party has some tactical pressure to actually figure out a way to get up the towers. But I wouldn't mess with the hobgobbos much in this encounter.

sombrastewart

2012-10-29, 06:45 PM

Well, I for one am looking forward to reading this. I have no clue about anything contained in RHoD, but your commentary is quite entertaining.

Well, thank you, I appreciate that. I'm glad you enjoy it.

Eh, Ozzy is really supposed to be the important part of the encounter at Skull Gorge. If anything, I guess I might beef up the archers on the towers a little bit, so that the party has some tactical pressure to actually figure out a way to get up the towers. But I wouldn't mess with the hobgobbos much in this encounter.

Fair enough. I'm less worried about Ozzy in this encounter since he's going to have room to move. Damage will be coming from the scout and the wizard, and a flyby and breath weapon on that will probably put a pretty bad damper on them.

sombrastewart

2012-11-02, 10:50 PM

Okay, we had a session last night. Things were interesting.

First off, we had someone drop in to join for a game with a pretty bare bones barbarian, but that's alright. So, what happened? Here we go.

Before leaving the Keep, they decided to go ahead and do some item identification. They figured out the Staff of Life and the legacy weapon combo. The rogue/cleric immediately bound them, given that really, he's rocking a masterwork rapier otherwise. Once they left the hidden room, they found Jorr waiting for them with the new player. The scout and Jorr had a discussion, and he made a copy of Koth's map for Jorr to take to Drellin's Ferry and try to do something with it. I'll be honest, what will happen is Speaker Wiston won't move the townfolk until the heroes get back because he can't believe it's true. Jorr didn't see it himself, so the Speaker is holding out hope it's untrue.

So, the group set off to the north. Given their travel time, they were going to be taking more than a day to get there, but they did find Warklegnaw first. They made some good Diplomacy checks, but they didn't bring the big guy around until they offered him something important. I thought they would go for the gauntlet, but instead, they offered him the deed to the Keep so his people could have their ancestral homelands back. And that did it, so they gained the VP for the aid of the forest giants and put a few more days on the clock for the Horde. Amusingly enough, they had to dive to keep the wizard from using the staff on Warklegnaw's disease in an OOC discussion. I admit, I was rather amused.

They did come up against a random encounter, though: worg riders. For an EL6 encounter, you'd think it might be a little tougher, but no, the riders are pushovers. The barbarian dropped a 20 on initiative and went first, and that was the last high roll for him for a while.

Ugh, okay, I gotta leave this for now, I'll be back to finish the rest.

Saintheart

2012-11-02, 11:31 PM

The scout and Jorr had a discussion, and he made a copy of Koth's map for Jorr to take to Drellin's Ferry and try to do something with it. I'll be honest, what will happen is Speaker Wiston won't move the townfolk until the heroes get back because he can't believe it's true. Jorr didn't see it himself, so the Speaker is holding out hope it's untrue.

On this point at least you've got this option on the book...

It doesn't have to be Wiston being a dimwit and refusing to believe the group. It can be the other members of the town's council -- Iormel in particular -- who won't be convinced without the heroes there, while Wiston is just undecided and paralysed with the scale of the threat. Just a thought...

Draz74

2012-11-03, 01:31 AM

On this point at least you've got this option on the book...

It doesn't have to be Wiston being a dimwit and refusing to believe the group. It can be the other members of the town's council -- Iormel in particular -- who won't be convinced without the heroes there, while Wiston is just undecided and paralysed with the scale of the threat. Just a thought...

Yeah, if it were my group, I'd probably use this as an opportunity to turn Iormel into a really annoying NPC that the party will therefore become passionate about. :smallsmile:

sombrastewart

2012-11-04, 10:53 PM

Okay, to pick up from where I left off.

Remember when I said the barbarian ran out to engage first and that was the last high roll the barbarian had? For four rounds, neither the barbarian or that worg or rider landed a hit. So we'll just leave them be for a while.

Elsewhere, the hexblade moved to engage and positioned his spirit companion to begin screwing with AC's. The scout danced his scout dance, firing arrows like mad, but his damage rolls weren't high and he didn't hit a whole lot. The fight was tipped by the two casters (surprise).

Start with the cleric, who's signature combat move has been to use the Spiritual Weapon spell to constantly harass enemies to death. Seriously, to death. One spirit weapon followed a worg rider all over the map as the rider attempted to attack others. Him moving, the hexblade engaging two of the others gave the wizard the chance she needed and, after counting squares, she smiled and cast Sleep.

So, two riders and a worg dropped to sleep. The riderless worg was finished by the spirit weapon. The hexblade grinned, looked at the unconscious worg and riders and proceeded to CDG one rider. Splatter ensues. The scout got automatic precision damage on a worg and the rogue/cleric got sneak attack on a worg and that pretty much did it.

Oh, right, the barbarian.

By this point, some hits had finally landed, but it took the scout to finish them both off. And left a frustrated barbarian.

So, random encounter done, they tromped north as far as they could, then crashed for the night before advancing on the bridge.

In the morning, they spent a lot of time, I mean a LOT of time, discussing their approach. The final decision was to cast invisibility on the barbarian and have him try to climb a tower while the hellhounds were on rotation. It sort of worked. See, early on, the hobgoblin archers heard something in the woods. They had an idea what was going on; remember, the worg rider escaped the keep. I had two pairs of archers on the front towers as a result and more hobgoblin vets in reserve from the camp. They thought they heard something in the treeline, drank some potions and nocked their bows.

So, when the barbarian beat everyone's Listen check and climbed a tower (seriously happened, I was honestly surprised), everyone shouted that it was bullrush time. Except the barb failed and became visible, so the hobgoblins drew their longswords and attacked. The two on the other tower started scanning for the rest of the adventurers. Ozzyrandion took wing and sailed off to the west. The purpose being that he can get into position to do a flyby attack with 150' movement but not be on the map, basically, once his movement is done.

The others appeared and the hellhound started baying, so that alerted the camp, so there are more veterans on the way. One of the archers was killed by the scout and fell, showing that they had drank potions of Feather Fall. I got exactly the reaction I was hoping for from the cleric: "Those clever bastards."

We had to call it there, but I took pictures of the board and we'll resume soon.

What are my thoughts?

The dragon has the group worried. He has me worried, too, in that by making it basically a tentpole encounter, a few lucky rolls and that's it. I'm hoping to make it an interesting encounter without resorting to GM fiat. More veterans will show as needed, if nothing else than to keep the PC's somewhat occupied, but my plan is that Ozzy, being smart, will drop his breath weapon on the wizard and either the cleric or scout, depending on who is close. The scout has a high AC and reflex save, so I'm thinking he's going to be the one the hurt the dragon.

Starbuck_II

2012-11-04, 11:52 PM

sombrastewart

2012-11-05, 10:21 AM

Worse:
the dragon's tactic says it is likely to bull rush anyone on the bridge so if the players go there, the dragon has a good chance of pushing them to their dooms (even though they might fall in water, the fall can still kill).

Granted, most groups won't move to the bridge before killling tower sentries I assume.

Oh, PC death isn't what worries me. It's Ozzy going down early. PC death we're all prepared for. It's been a close thing a few times already.

sombrastewart

2012-11-05, 06:07 PM

On this point at least you've got this option on the book...

It doesn't have to be Wiston being a dimwit and refusing to believe the group. It can be the other members of the town's council -- Iormel in particular -- who won't be convinced without the heroes there, while Wiston is just undecided and paralysed with the scale of the threat. Just a thought...

Yeah, you're right, that's definitely the better way to go.

Saintheart

2012-11-05, 08:47 PM

Oh, PC death isn't what worries me. It's Ozzy going down early. PC death we're all prepared for. It's been a close thing a few times already.

I think with Ozzy, if not the dragons generally, it comes down to how good the party's ranged magic options are. Ranged damage options outside magic are pretty poor. Like I said in the handbook, if a party cleric has Downdraft prepared, that has a pretty good chance of pancaking Ozzy onto the ground. Or indeed if anyone figures out how to hit him with a Tanglefoot Bag, since Ozzy is a Medium creature unaltered, which a bag works on.

To ensure Ozzy lasts at least a couple of rounds, mind your party's spells. Will is Ozzy's second-worst saving throw after Reflex, and Glitterdust, which hits Will, is arguably the best level one spell in D&D for this precise reason. I've also heard stories of Hexblades (not that I've any experience with them) bringing down Ozzy with a single curse. If you want to avoid a quick death for Ozzy, try not to get him hit with this sort of magic. Direct damage spells are less of an issue in that while they'll knock his HP down, they won't affect his abilities in the slightest.

EDIT:
Okay, having gone to take another look at your playing group, my thinking is that they've got a wizard and they know action economy damage is superior to direct damage per se, so you're going to have to be careful. From memory Downdraft is too high level for your clerics to cast at the moment, so that's sort of all right.

In messing around with Ozzy, and I'm AFB at the moment, but looking at breath enhancement feats out of the Draconomicon might be worth considering. In my own campaign I went with Clinging Breath for acid napalm, but in retrospect I'd probably have gone with something that allows me to stand off a little better -- Extend Breath might be available to Ozzy at these levels -- something to increase the range of his breath attack.

In terms of his stats and whatnot, I'd raise him by an age category to Juvenile at least. Shoehorn at least a potion of Conviction in there to buttress his saving throws. He has no SR, of course, but at Juvenile age he's a first level caster, so give him access to Mage Armor, Shield, maybe Nerveskitter. If you wanted to be a bastard you could give him a mostly-used-up wand of Wings of Cover; that would make your casters' ranged options more or less useless against him. Of course, if they manage to beat him and he doesn't wind up in several thousand small chunky pieces at the bottom of the gorge, it'll mean that wand then winds up in the hands of your party.

sombrastewart

2012-11-16, 01:51 PM

So, how did the fight end?

Well, let's bear in mind, our barbarian wasn't there, but our favored soul was back.

I've been sick, so this is going to be an abbreviated entry, but here we go.

The scout danced back and forth, taking shots at the archers, but the archers used their cure potions, which the players were unhappy about. We also had four more veterans charging across the bridge. This was met by the favored soul moving to block the path and throwing down a summoned celestial bombardier beetle. That helped bottleneck the bridge while everyone else tried to figure how to deal with Ozzyrandion.

Ozzyrandion did a flyover that caught the hexblade, cleric and wizard in one blast, dropping them all significantly and almost putting the wizard down. He flew off back to his perch and slugged back his potion of bull strength. So, what was the strategy the group decided on? Well, after the wizard fireballed the veterans on the bridge, they decided someone had to get Ozzy's attention and hold it. That ended up being the scout.

How? Well, he threw a particularly good insult: "Your mother had a train run on her by kobolds, that's why you don't know your father!" I decided, on the fly, to roll and see how much this irritated Ozzy, being young for a dragon and so on. 20 on the die. Ozzy was pissed. So how did that turn out? Well, Ozzy flew in, grappled the scout, and took over under the bridge. How did it turn out? Ozzy smiled, wished the scout a nice fall and pitched him into the gorge. The book says that it's a 50% chance of hitting the water and hitting the ground. We frantically looked up the falling damage rules. And when he hit, the scout went to -11. BAM. Dead. First PC death, huzzah.

Meanwhile, back on the bridge, the PC's had blocked off the mouth of the bridge and the hexblade and favored soul had moved up. Ozzy landed and made a tactical decision: he used his breath towards the cleric and wizard (who had since been healed). So what happened? Maybe I should've had Ozzy continue to fly over, grapple another target and so on, but in my mind, it looked awfully tempting to breath weapon the squishy pair and then grab either the hexblade for the Favored Soul.

Now, important note on our hexblade: he took the Dark Companion class feature. This has been a BIG DEAL this campaign. Combine that debuff with the following: hexblade curse, favored soul cast Doom and wizard landing a Daze Monster. All in one round. Holy crap. Next round? Color Spray and stun.

Do I need to say it? Dead dragon. Yeah, is that disappointing? Not really. Ozzy scared them to death, the rolls favored them and they managed to put him down. Plus, we had our first character death.

My thoughts?

First off, the scout, post-gravity induced death, was hilarious. He kept searching for things in his sheet that might have influenced what happened. And he KEPT looking. I was terrifically amused.

Second, Spirit Weapon has been the cleric's go-to. Floating rapiers have abounded, and made his presence quite known.

The wizard and hexblade (husband and wife, actually) have been clutch in this game. He's stood the line and held, while she has come up with clutch spells.

I think the game is going well, and I'm happy with it so far. They just leveled up, minus the scout. The retrieved the body rather expediently, and used the Staff of Life to bring him back. They also found the weak spot in the bridge and dropped it. So we have a level 6 party with a level 5 scout. I might have to kill him again. :)

Starbuck_II

2012-11-16, 02:01 PM

I'm the dragon put a little fear in them.

The stun locking was a good trick the PCS used.

Draz74

2012-11-16, 02:36 PM

I might have to kill him again. :)

Nah, spread the love around. :smallbiggrin:

sombrastewart

2012-11-17, 06:09 PM

The group was actually pretty dejected in this fight. The words "We're all going to die" and "Let's get the hell out of here" were uttered more than once.

This pleases me as a DM, because I think it makes them feel like they earned it.

Oh, I did forget. The Favored Soul ran down a fleeing veteran and caught sight of the horde before they took out the bridge.

They were not what you might call thrilled with the prospect. I smiled.

Saintheart

2012-11-17, 07:31 PM

argonite

2012-11-17, 08:32 PM

Isn't the dragon only medium sized? I don't think he could carry a medium character off the bridge...

I'm pretty sure you will have a TPK long before finishing the campaign. Good luck though :smallcool:

sombrastewart

2012-11-17, 10:28 PM

Technically you didn't have to give them the Scout back. The Staff of Life only casts Raise Dead, not Resurrection. You need an intact corpse for Raise Dead to work. That's ... kind of unlikely given what a body looks like after it comes to a sudden stop after 300 feet or so of falling. :smallwink:

While true... I didn't want to necessarily be that mean. But now that option is gone. Works for me.

Isn't the dragon only medium sized? I don't think he could carry a medium character off the bridge...

I'm pretty sure you will have a TPK long before finishing the campaign.

That was the one upgrade I did to Ozzy, kicked him up a size category. He's big for his age. But, strong as he is and with as high as his grapple check was, well, I just kinda went with it. Figured it was more cinematic than "He throws you down the gorge" which would have opened a whole 'but technically he's only falling down the slopes' thing. Best to avoid that.

And I'm not going for a full TPK. I just want healthy fear in the players. :smallbiggrin:

Saintheart

2012-11-18, 12:29 AM

I'm the dragon put a little fear in them.

The stun locking was a good trick the PCS used.

Come to think of it, this isn't the first time I've heard of a Hexblade basically saying "You lose" to Ozzy and the match being more or less over at that point. It's in one of the other campaign journals floating around, not that I remember it precisely. I've not had direct experience with HBs before, I'll have to go back and restudy the class. :smallcool:

sombrastewart

2012-12-22, 04:30 PM

Nope, this isn't dead, we just had a pretty long layover.

So, fun fact, our rogue/cleric's wife got a new shift so she joined in with us. In an opportunity to do something a little different, so now our group includes a dragonfire adept, built for social challenges and dragon breath damage. She has a Dragon Spirit Cincture, a +1 flaming morningstar for her breath weapon, but she opted for darkvision as opposed to flight for her lesser invocation

Our cast for the week:
Rogue 1/Cleric 5; support and having a major combat presence with Spirit Weapon
Wizard 6; all about rotating through prepared spells, but with a strong propensity for Fireballs and Color Spray
Hexblade 6; our frontliner that isn't afraid to go mix it up
Scout 3/Ranger 2; y'know, the skill monkey that Ozzyrandion threw down the gorge. Uses Swift Hunter for favored enemy (goblinoid humans and arcane casters)
Dragonfire Adept 6; as mentioned above

So, the group had to spend time leveling up and the DFA getting her build finalized.

So what happened? After the bridge was destroyed, the scout raised and people recovered, there came much discussion (perhaps an hour's worth) of how beneficial it would be to either stay and set up ambush points to harass the army or go charging into the mass. I was seriously perplexed by this discussion. No, there wasn't a singular choke point, given that they had just destroyed that very thing and they had at least one more dragon that one of them had seen; the army would be splitting up to use various paths to cross the gorge. The scout uttered the following: "I wanted to go at the army, but no, no you guys wanted to destroy the bridge. What happened here?"

They had sent Jorr back to carry word to town of the army. Eventually, they decided to go back to make sure things were moving. They were visibly pissed when the town looked just the same as it had in the past. Jorr caught up to them outside of town, told them he had made his report and no one had done a thing. The group, visibly irritated, made for the Speaker's house. It was there they encountered the Speaker, Captain Sorrana and the new player, who had come in from Brindol after hearing about the goblin troubles.

"Greetings random stranger. I have just met you and believe your skills will be useful in our quest. Will you join us?

"Certainly."

That being done, they started in on Speaker Wiston, demanding to know why there was no evacuation. Speaker Wiston was poleaxed by the resistance of part of the council and now knowing the threat that faced them. He kind of fell into a stammering mess, which immediately turned the group around. They went from hostile to helpful in seconds and agreed to gather up the townsfolk.

Delora and Kellin were gathered in short order, thanks to the fact that the group had established good relationships with them in their first visit to town. Iormel was convinced by a high diplomacy from the DFA, but accompanied by the shop keeper/serial killer who was egging him on in his stubborness. So, with the council assembled, they began arguing. One of the ways that the group made the severity of the threat known was to produce Ozzyrandion's head. That certainly shut things up. The shopkeeper turned to leave, but some high spot checks noticed a smile on her face.

I can't wait for them to investigate. I'm planning on her having bodies of people she's killed stuffed into barrels of salt in the basement of the store. And other various fun things. I went with the spot check thing because some were already suspicious of her, so I decided to pull that plot thread along.

Anyway, while the discussion went on, I decided it was time for a fight, and we pulled the goblin raid encounter. How did that go? Well, let's see. A fireball, a spirit weapon, high damage rolls from the scout, breath weapons and a pissed off hexblade ripped through the first wave. The second wave I buffed with more veterans and altered the adept's spell list.

The Spirit Weapon from the cleric was repeated to great effect. Being a cleric of Olidammara meant that he got a rapier for it and criticals were abound. The DFA obliterated a hell hound with lightning breath and the hexblade charged in and went ballistic, tearing into the worgs and riders. The wizard actually showed up to the fight late, trying to keep the council calm.

The adept almost got away. Almost. A mirror image gave him some survivability, but that's part of where the fireball came in. Oh, and an attempted Sleep spell, but the adept was above the HD cap. However, the extra damage from the scouts favored enemy: arcane casters is what did him in.

The fight only reinforced the party's opinion to the council about the severity of the threat. The hexblade, incidentally dripping with blood and ichor, dropped a nat 20 on his Intimidate to drive the point home to Iormel and the DFA made a crazy Diplomacy check, aided by EVERYONE else that put it to a 38. The council agreed and preparations began to evacuate Drellin's Ferry, netting bonus experience and Victory Points.

By this point it was late, so I held off on the Chimera attack. I'll have that in my back pocket for next time, and may make it two of them for this party. Combine that with the serial killer investigation and it should be a fun session.

My thoughts:

First off, the biggest concern was how well our new DFA would integrate into the group dynamic that had been going on. The answer was: very well. Great combat presence and her abilities made the tipping point for social interaction, which was the one thing the group did really need, especially without our Favored Soul.

Second, I was sorely confused by the discussion of attacking the army. It was all I could do to keep from going: "Wisdom check. Not a 1? You think this is a stupid idea. Go back to town." I kept my mouth shut and quit trying to figure that one out. They did abandon it without any aid from me, but I was sorely tempted to push the point.

Finally, the group is fired up about continuing forward. Early on, one of the halfling children thought the wizard was one of the Tiri Kitor, but didn't know where they lived, and gave them the wrong location. They are excited to find the Kitor, and to facilitate that, I'm going to work to figure out how I want to send them towards Rhest. I'm open to ideas. :)

Thanks for reading!

Draz74

2012-12-22, 06:25 PM

Good job letting them (barely) talk themselves into what you were considering railroading them away from. That will make the experience much more enjoyable for them.

Are you still planning to advance the serial killer subplot, even though they've convinced Drellin's Ferry to evacuate?

Also, you're probably on top of this already, but don't forget that the PCs aren't supposed to know how many Victory Points they've achieved, or what exactly earned them VPs.

sombrastewart

2012-12-23, 10:20 AM

Good job letting them (barely) talk themselves into what you were considering railroading them away from. That will make the experience much more enjoyable for them.

I was just so baffled and confused by this complete 180 in terms of attitude and direction. I think I was more stunned than anything else, but I also believe you are correct.

Are you still planning to advance the serial killer subplot, even though they've convinced Drellin's Ferry to evacuate?

Yeah, it says that she's looking forward to the opportunities that come out of the general chaos of what's coming. I figure the town being evacuated is probably one of the better opportunities she's had in a while.

Also, you're probably on top of this already, but don't forget that the PCs aren't supposed to know how many Victory Points they've achieved, or what exactly earned them VPs.

My angle on it is that they know they are earning the points, but I'm not telling them how many they need or what exactly they're getting them from. Some sessions, like this one, they can figure it out pretty easily, but others (killing Koth for example) they aren't sure of. They figured it was clearing out the keep instead of killing Koth.

sombrastewart

2013-01-14, 10:39 AM

I do believe it's time for an update. Bear in mind, this one will cover the last two sessions since I didn't get to write up the one for week before last.

Our cast
Human Rogue 1/Cleric of Olidammara 5
Human Dragonfire Adept 6
Human Hexblade 6
Elven wizard 6
Half elf Scout 3/Ranger 2

First session, we had our DFA, cleric, hexblade and wizard setting out to walk the first band of refugees from Drellin's Ferry to Terrelton. Scout wasn't here, so no follow up on the serial killer subplot. That trip went rather quickly, but when they arrived in Terrelton, there was a messenger from Lord Jamaarth. He stated that he was to find people who could procure the next task, to secure the help of the elves of the Tiri Kitor against the encroaching threat. Well, they jumped at this idea, and set out soon after.

Heading north through the witchwood, they came across their only random encounter, which ended up being a Will-O-Wisp. Basically, my decision was they were close to the north edge of the wood and heck, it's what was rolled up so we'll just go with it. It was an odd encounter, what with the discussions being back and forth about what to do. The DFA, speaking Auran, actually managed to communicate with it, even though it was mostly communicating in whistles. Following along, the DFA made the Reflex save against a soft, mushy patch of ground that tried to grab her foot. This was an ad hoc thing on my part since I couldn't find what I wanted, so it had the stats of a tanglefoot bag if you failed the Reflex save and there were vines throughout this that would make escaping harder and harder. No one ended up in it, though, so no big deal. The wizard was fairly upset about most of the spells she tried not working, even after some folks pointed out her knowledge check said they wouldn't. The fight ended when the hexblade landed a crit and knocked it out of the air.

Continuing north, they emerged from the wood along the trail they had been following to find a body. I had decided to alter this up a little, and first of all, it was Jorr's body. His satchel had a letter addressed to a wizard from Speaker Wiston, asking for help from an old friend. Following the trail, they discovered the stone structure on the edge of the Blackfens. The door was open and it was dark inside, so they went to investigate. They called out before entering and had a brief discussion with something speaking in draconic that wanted to be left alone. Not exactly speaking quietly, they opted to go in.

One marvelously high spot check later, they found bits of where the floor had been pitted with acid. The greenspawn razorfiend inside actually made it up to the second of three floors and hid out, waiting for them. The wizard cast Invisibility Sphere and so, up they went, and that's where that session ended. Not a high combat session, but good for the atmosphere.

Next session, the scout was back and we were off to the races. The group had moved up to the second floor, where no one had spotted the razorfiend, but the entire group had an Elan "I GOT A 4" on their Hide/MS checks. The scout was outside, having caught back up, and the razorfiend got a surprise round. He sprayed acid, hitting the cleric, DFA and hexblade, and then moved back to cover, where bookshelves were all over the room and prepared the next attack. The group moved in something of an arc, no one having enough movement through the battered furniture remains to get a clear line of sight on the razorfiend yet. They jockeyed for position and it let the razorfiend maneuver around, using Spring Attack to land solid hits and drop people to low hitpoints. That is, until they got into position and started unloading. The hexblade landed hits, the cleric went to his old standby, Spirit Weapon. The DFA landed a breath attack, but it being fire, managed to set bookshelves aflame. Once it got low enough, the razor fiend leapt over the group and landed on the area where it had done the acid spray. Turns out, the floor was weakened enough to give way and the fiend made for the front door.

Or would have. At almost no HP left, a magic missile found the mark, and down it went.

The group was reeling from the encounter, low hitpoints and happy to have won. They continued to the third floor, where they found the remains of the wizard, long dead. His spellbook was in tatters (our wizard spent most of her WBL to buy up the early level spells, so no loss). Also up here, and more freshly dead, was the body of an elf and the leg off a giant owl.

The scout had gutted the razorfiend and found the elf's ring. He came up to talk to the group when one high check heard something on the roof and elven hunters swung through the windows on ropes secured above. Killar Arrowswift began a gruff conversation with the group. They wasted no time turning over the jade band from the owl, confirming the dead elf's identity. The DFA, who has gone to great lengths to max out her Diplomacy, talked him around and got the group an invitation to Starsong Hill.

Once at the Hill, they met with Dellara and Sellyria (sic). The scout gave Dellara the ring he had found, earning them another Diplomacy bonus, and attended the funeral. The cleric made his own blessing after the funeral proper, the DFA spoke kind words, the elven wizard joined in the chant and the scout made an offering of hunting items to go with him to Corellon's hunting fields. All in all, a good showing for alliance points with the elves.

The elder told them they could not offer aid to the Vale without having someone deal with the occupants of Rhest. The group agreed, and that's where we ended.

sombrastewart

2013-01-17, 01:55 PM

Next session tonight. If we have a full crew (last session plus the favored soul), I'm going to need to beef up Rhest.

Saintheart

2013-01-17, 09:04 PM

Still loving this journal, sombra. That session with the razorfiend sounded like it was a lot of fun.

Couple of bits...

(1) If you want to easily beef up the Rhest battle, consider grabbing a bunch of the lizardfolk around the lake who worship Regiarix as a god. I ... actually completely forgot about them when I was doing my campaign, but a lot of campaigns I've seen have a nasty surprise for the party in that, once they smash Regiarix and Saarvith at the ruins, the DMs throw something like fifty-odd lizardmen on rafts at the party...that could be more tedious than fun, but if you need low-level cannon fodder and you don't want to stick more hobgoblins at Rhest, consider lizardmen.

EDIT: Poison Dusk Lizardmen (MM 3) in Eberron have been suggested as an alternative to standard lizardmen - the archery and poison use are interesting, at least.

(2) What sort of build do you have in mind for the serial killer/shopkeeper, out of interest? Or you just plan on waiting until the party finds her before you come up with something?

sombrastewart

2013-02-04, 10:04 AM

Ooof. This hasn't been updated in too long.

Okay, what's up? Had two sessions since last I posted. We had the full boat in those cases, so, as a refresher

Rogue 1/Cleric 5
Dragonfire Adept 6
Hexblade 6
Wizard 6
Scout 3/Ranger 5
Favored Soul 5

After the funereal for the deceased elf, the group made the deal with the Tiri Kitor to go deal with the threat at Rhest. Supplied with boats, they set out into the swamp.

Quick note: I had a set DC for paddling the boat during combat, which sometimes they opted to do. Hilariously, they had both high strength characters in one boat. For both instances of the fight. This lead to the question of "How is our boat keeping up with theirs?" The fights mainly took place out in the swamp with little islands dotting the map. The boat of the cleric, DFA and wizard would immediately (or as close to it as possible) put to shore on one. The hexblade had doffed his armor for this trip, but everything they've faced hasn't had much reason to engage.

Anyway, I stated that it would take them two days to get to Rhest with continuous travel through the swamp. They did so much to set the Horde proper back that they have plenty of time. Regardless, I was rolling off the random encounters chart. We have progressed through basically a day and a half's worth of travel time, and they came up with encounters every single time.

The first encounter had four manticores show up. The players were not happy about this, but the end result was pretty straightforward. The scout (given that the boats are 2x3 squares) was able to shoot about everything down. Well, that's not completely true. The cleric and favored soul's Spirit Weapons actually finished things off. Our wizard attempted several spells in this fight, but the manticores made their saves. They'd fly past, fire spikes and, frustratingly for me, miss over and over.

Second encounter featured three harpies. They didn't attack, but instead landed on islands and one busted our her harpy song. It... did jack squat. And so the scout killed it. Another tried again while the third tried a flyby attack on the closest target, the wizard. More failure. Another one dead by the scout, but the third, the DFA managed to get in range and blasted with a line of fire that actually took it down.

The final encounter was right after they camped for the night. They'd found a large island, drug their boats onto it and made a lean-to. The rolls they made were good enough to disguise them from everything in the swamp that went by, except a boat with lizard folk in it. They came back in the morning.

Unfortunately, when you have a batch of seven lizard folk, CR 1/2, against a group of level 6 PC's... Let's just say it didn't go well. I even gave the lizards a poison for one of their javelins each, but they couldn't hit to save their lives.

The gem of that session, though, was the interrogation.

They took two lizard folk alive. One was wrapped in Bands of Steel, the other just plain unconscious from subdual damage. The one conscious began to rant about how their new god would flay their flesh from their bones, and the PC's opted for astonishment. "Oh, no! What is this new god!"

I swear, it was so much fun to have an NPC thinking his threats were being taken seriously, while the group was laughing like crazy over what they were getting out of it. The pertinent information was Regiarix is a black dragon hanging out at Rhest and he has a buddy. They feel rather confident in their chances at this point, but they didn't think to ask about where the razorfiends were coming from.

I think there's going to be a surprise this week...

sombrastewart

2013-02-08, 12:44 PM

Whooo, big session last night.

Our scout was out for the night, so our cast of characters is:

Rogue 1/Cleric 5
Dragonfire Adpet 6
Wizard 6
Hexblade 6
Favored Soul 6

On towards Rhest!

The PCs set out towards Rhest, armed with a small map that they had from limited elf knowledge, which marked locations of lizardfolk encampments and two tall buildings in the middle of the lake. That's all they had, and so they spent a lot of time trying to decide to how to approach. The first discussion was for the cleric to use Disguise Self, fake tying one person up as a prisoner to take to Regiarix and having everyone else in the boat invisible. The problem being the duration of the invisibility, but it kept going back and forth between that or just plain invisibility, still with the problem of duration.

I took a page out of the RHoD GM's handbook and rolled percentile to see if we had rain coming up. I rolled a 96, so yeah, monsoon rain came in. Now, as they rowed along in concealment, I kept rolling percentile to see how their direction drifted without any visual reference. They ended up going pretty far off course, but not terribly far from the belltower.

Okay, information for the belltower. I had opted, given that the group had been ripping through hobgoblins with ease, to add one razorfiend to the encounter. The layout I did had a stairwell to the top of the tower, the main floor and a stairway that went underwater to the bottom floor, where the razorfiend was hanging out. I've also made it a habit to redo the bladebearers as guys with scimitars they wield two handed to make them more... different than the rest. Lucky crit can really swing a fight. (FORESHADOWING).

So, the wizard dropped invisibility sphere and they set up to attack. In the main floor were three of the hobo's and the bladebearer, so she kicked off a Fireball and we're off to the races. Now, since she did that, she broke the invisibility, and the bladebearer is at the top of initiative. Oh SNAP, SON! He charged, leapt over the bunks spread around this level, drawing his weapon, landing the attack and *rolls damage* does a grand total of FIVE. Disappointing to say the least. Well, he didn't last long, what with a beating from the Favored Soul and hexblade. The three hobo's on the upper level made their way down after invisible party members shuffled around for position and nailed the wizard with longbow shots, putting her at zero exactly. The party was engaged with the hobo's when one particular initiative pass came up, and out of the water springs the razorfiend. Insert a good "SURPRISE BITCHES" for your personal enjoyment.

The razorfiend landed and did his breath weapon. The wizard ended up at negative 6 HP and things are getting tense. The cleric moves over and dumps a healing spell into her to get her conscious, the hexblade takes down the hobo that he was engaged with, the DFA blasts some other hobos and takes arrows in return and the Favored Soul casts protection from acid on himself and gets in the razorfiend's grill. You know the feeling in the pit of your stomach? Yup. The fiend smiled, said "I love it when food is delivered" and cut loose with a full attack. Bite attack hits. Wingblade #1 hits. Wingblade #2 crits. Like a boss. 2d6+6 x3? So that's 6d6 + 18? Yup. And on the first 4d6 I rolled, it was 6, 6, 6, 5. The razorfiend took him from full to -17 in one turn and popped his head off with a swing of his wingblade.

Things got super serious then. The Favored Soul player chuckled and opted to go to the bathroom.

What was the response? Imagine whatever expletives you'd like, string them together in some creative ways. The wizard, still prone from trying to get cover from arrows with a dead hobo body, threw Bands of Steel at the fiend. BAM. Locked down. The hexblade went to town, killing a hobo, cleaving into the fiend and doing as much crazy damage as possible. The cleric moved up and started stabbing away with the rapier while his Spirit Weapon floated around, stabbing away. The DFA unleashed cone attacks on the rest of the hobos and finally wiped out the encounter.

Deep breath. Whew.

What do I think?

After their initial encounter with the razorfiend, the players had thought they were chumps, but that was a lone razorfiend against the whole party. Now? Now we have a newfound fear/respect for them. And they'll be heading to the Town Hall next. Regiriax is still there, as they didn't wait around. There are razorfiends in the hatchery. The scout will be back, but he's a half elf and the wyrmlord has elfbane arrows.

See, if the scout had been there, things probably would've gone differently. He's been working hard to max out his damage output and getting his AC as high as possible. So, I'm probably going to turn the tables with the wyrmlord and do the same thing. With elfbane arrows. Because why not?

They haven't put two and two together about the hatchery yet, even after being told when the razorfiends started showing up and getting information about the nature of the beasts. So... I'm thinking next fight is going to be very interesting.

The FS player isn't upset, he was already planning his next character. (Knight perhaps) We're taking next week off for Valentine's Day things. In the special way.

Honest

2013-02-12, 07:58 AM

sombrastewart

2013-02-12, 08:21 PM

Hey Guys,

OK, I just signed up to this site because I had to thank the OP on writing this blog. I am thoroughly enjoying it. I am running RHOD from Feb 23 and was looking for some tips. This thread, and Sainthearts excellent options thread for the module has been a gold mine. The opinions and options shared here are fantastic, I am glad I found you guys.

Please keep the playing, and then the blogging, up. It is very entertaining

Cheers

Honest

Wow, I'm genuinely flattered and happy that you're having as much fun with it as I am.

I'll admit to shamelessly cribbing ideas from Saintheart's thread, I can only hope I'm finding ways to contribute back as thanks

Draz74

2013-02-13, 05:41 PM

Hey Guys,

OK, I just signed up to this site because I had to thank the OP on writing this blog. I am thoroughly enjoying it.

This Journal is good stuff, but don't miss out on amazing RHoD Journals that are already finished! I particularly recommend Saph's.

Honest

2013-02-14, 03:50 AM

This Journal is good stuff, but don't miss out on amazing RHoD Journals that are already finished! I particularly recommend Saph's.

Thank you Draz74! I will check it out shortly. As many different tangents the PCs may indulge themselves in, the better I can get my head around things!

Cheers

Honest

sombrastewart

2013-02-14, 11:17 PM

This Journal is good stuff, but don't miss out on amazing RHoD Journals that are already finished! I particularly recommend Saph's.

Saph's is the first one I read, it's great. And thank you, Draz, I appreciate the kudos. :)

sombrastewart

2013-02-23, 03:49 PM

So, we had continuation in Rhest. What happened?

*deep breath*

Cast of characters
Rogue/Cleric
Ranger/Scout
Dragonfire Adept
Wizard
Hexblade

The Favored Soul player wasn't able to make it so he hasn't made a new character yet.

Oooooh-kay. From the belltower, the group decided to take stock of everything that was going on. Rooting around in their gear, they came up with some potions of water breathing, so they decided to go with the underwater approach.

I immediately cribbed notes from the RHoD GM Handbook.

Right next to the ones about the ranger/scout build for Saarvith, with FE: Elves. This is especially interesting given that the scout in our group is a half elf and the wizard is an elf. Hilarity.

So, they start making their way towards the town hall. From the notes I had hastily stolen... used from the aforementioned handbook, they had a 35% chance of Regi being in his lair. Now, bear in mind, they didn't take the time to lay in wait and do recon. They just went in when they reached the lake. Now, as they're making their way along the lake bottom, they find the double doors to the town hall's main level busted outward and thick grooves cut into the lakebed. As if by a Large sized creature (yes, I made Regi large.) Group consensus? FORWARD!

So, I look up from my end of the table.

"Roll percentile."

"Again?'

"Just do it."

"Fine... 16."

Oh. Okay. Well. It was 35% or lower, so the scout swims up first, sticks his head through the water's surface at the only bit of illumination they see above. And Regariax looks right at him and tells him to get out of the water. The scout immediately drops his end of the rope they've been holding to stay together and does as told.

The group, meanwhile, starts assuming the worst and looking around. They go out a window on the lower level to see how the unsubmerged parts of the building look and then start trying to figure out how they're going to save the Scout.

Meanwhile, the Scout is trying to outtalk Regi. Usually, the scout's player is pretty good about doing confusing wordplay, but Regi had him cornered physically and verbally. That's when Saarvith walked in and was all hate glaring at the scout.

Regi: What brings you here, little man?

Scout: Well, I guess you could say you did.

Regi: Truly? Why is that?

Scout: If you're the god the lizardfolk talk about, you would know.

Regi: Yes, but I want to hear you say it.

Scout: Well, I'm guessing I'm going to die in this room...

Regi: More than likely.

Scout: But I'd come here to kill you.

Regi: Bold words.

Saarvith: Let me just kill him.

Scout: I'm sorry, are you the butch in this relationship? I had assumed you were the twink.

THAT started initiative.

The rest of the group was basically a round away from entering combat by my count, so they had to move to the surface and had one square of movement out of the water for things to kick off. Saarvith and Regi threw open the doors to the room and bellowed for everyone else, Regi used his acid breath attack and Saarvith shot thescout. Then the ogres showed up. The DFA cut loose with a line of fire attack that hit an ogre and Regi, the cleric threw his signature Spirit Weapon, the hexblade moved to engaged, the wizard threw a Kelgore's Firebolt, the scout shot and missed and then Saarvith did two things.

1. Free Action: "Go get it!" The group doesn't know he's referring to the razorfiend in the hatchery.

2. Shoot the wizard.

It was about here that time was right for us to call it a night. But, we shall continue on!

My thoughts:

The group is in a bad, bad place. They've basically brought down the entire force of Rhest on their head, starting with the two 'bosses' and a miniboss on the way. Now, does that mean that they're done? No. They're in an enclosed space, so Regi can't make use of his mobility. Saarvith can tumble around and shoot, so there's that. The ogres can... take hits, I guess. The razorfiend will scare the group further.

As soon as they came up to join the fight, they were already discussing the TPW scenario. If they pull this off, they are going to be elated. If not... well, we can roll new characters up. :)

Pandiano

2013-02-24, 07:38 PM

And subscribed! Very entertaining read! Thanks for that, keep up the good work!

sombrastewart

2013-03-07, 11:41 PM

OK, shout out to those who subscribed (I'm still shocked people subscribed to this). We had a week off, but finished with Rhest tonight. We got crits! Dead monsters! PC death!

I have to work early tomorrow, but an update is coming, wanted to whet your appetites.

sombrastewart

2013-03-09, 05:36 PM

Gotta keep my promises, right?

Cast:
Human Rogue 1/Cleric 5
Human Dragonfire Adept 6
Human Hexblade 6
Elven Wizard 6
Half Elf Ranger 2/Scout 3
Former Favored Soul, to be revealed below.

Okay, so when we left, the group was in a disadvantageous position. Also known as 'bad.' The group was clustered in Regi's lair, Saarvith was targeting elves and ogres were in abundance. Oh, and one had run off to open the hatchery door.

So, bad situation right?

What's a group to do?

Crit like maniacs. Sheesh.

Oh, right, our former favored soul. Gotta introduce him. We've got a half-orc barbarian with a greatsword. And a 7 Int. But a 20 Str and 18 Con. Hail an additional beatstick! His introduction had been that he kind of wanted Regi dead for killing his girlfriend's father, but spied the group making their way through the swamp. 'Dem's no elfs or lizards' he thinks to himself, so he follows them at distance. He, being alone, made it out in the lake by making a raft, sticking a reed through it and hanging off the bottom of it, breathing through the reed.

It made sense at the time, it gets the new player in, and it's fun. He joined into the fight by climbing up on the walkway and barreling into the fight, sword swinging. He went straight at Regi and landed a hit, so I added another razorfiend in the hatchery for the sake of a good fight.

Regi made the move to deal with what was in front of him, used his breath weapon and then lifted off. The breath weapon hit the DFA, the wizard and the scout. Scout saved, DFA soaked, wizard dropped to the group, -1 and hemorrhaging. The cleric's spirit weapons floated around and stabbed at things while he healed her back to her feet, 16 HP. Bear in mind, she never did get higher than that. Oh, on Regi's way out, guess what happened? The barbarian got a critical on his AoO. Regi was hurting badly at that point. Given the damage he had sustained and now this massive crit, he was in single digits.

Our DFA cut loose with a line of lightning breath and rolled high damage, so that's some hurting ogres. The scout tumbled and fired at Saarvith (he's got Rapid Shot) and there went a critical. Saarvith was attempting to create room, so he was near one of the ogres to get some AoO threats. The wizard Magic Missle'd him, for more pain, and the Hexblade stepped up. He made the attack on Saarvith with his greatsword, rolled a 19 to threaten and then confirmed the critical. What happens then? Well, if you have Cleave...

Wait, he DID have Cleave. 19 on the die again. Confirmed. Dead ogre. CLEAVE. 20 on the die. CONFIRMED. TRIPLE KILL. LEGENDARY.

Wait, where was I? Oh, right.

The barbarian made short work of the last ogre in the structure and headed outside. He spied one of the razorfiends dive into the lake, but shrugged and walked down to the hatchery. (This doesn't go nearly as bad as you might think.) Once inside, he spied an egg, grabbed it and walked back out. That brings up the fiend from the lake and they engage.

The barbarian wins initiative and throws the egg up in the air. The idea was to kill the razorfiend and catch it. The razorfiend didn't die that easily. The egg fell in the lake and the fiend went after it. So... the 7 Int barbarian went after him.

Now, see, everyone at the table kind of groaned. I was thinking he'd be making ANOTHER new character. Especially after the razorfiend got TWO full attacks on him, putting him at a quarter HP.

What did he do? Oh, right, remember the theme of the PCs tonight? CRITICAL. CRITICAL. I started testing the dice. Turns out the heavens were smiling upon my players and the barbarian, in armor, outfought a greenspawn razorfiend UNDERWATER. And than swam back up.

Where's Regi in all this? Circling over the lake, roaring. It took forever to find a player that made the Spot check, but the Scout finally noticed that the lizardfolk were mobilizing.

"How many does it seem to be?"

"From here, with your looking glass, you can see three villages."

"Yeah, but how many from each village seem to be loading onto the boats?"

"Looks like all of them."

The hexblade chimed in with "Good thing they don't prepare their weapons by coating them with poison or anyt... OH WAIT." Yup, they remembered the poison from last time. The tension level started going up. I ballparked them a timeframe before arrival, and then they noticed it wasn't just the three villages. It was ALL the lizardfolk villages. Tension goes up. GM smiles.

BUT, they made a deal with the elves and they will not let it go. They're determined to kill Regi and finish the razorfiends.

So, suddenly, the wizard casts Fly and takes off after Regi. The DFA's eyes pop out of her head and she follows. I'm a bit surprised, but let it ride. She's saying it's probably suicide, but going anyway. Credit is given.

Me, to the wizard player. "You aren't singing Kenny Loggins, are you?"

Her "No, why?"

Me: "You're about to enter the danger zone.

And, Regi spotted them. He knew she was a wizard, wound up and charged her, landed the bite attack and we have a very dead wizard. -12 and that's all she wrote. We saluted the player, having her first character death in D&D, to a dragon no less. If you're gonna do it, do it with style.

Of course, the DFA approached him. DFA's have bonuses and Regi was kind of desperate. He tried to recruit her to join the Red Hand as a new Wyrmlord, since she had obviously proven herself. He said he needed an answer now, he was not a patient creature. That's when it struck her, and she asked to roll Sense Motive. Oh, he was desperate. So, in a moment of recklessness, she just used her breath weapon on him. The lizardfolk saw her breath lightning and slay their god.

BOOYAH.

So how did the rest of the session go? Kind of anticlimactic, but they still had time on their Water Breathing, they slew the other razorfiend, smashed the eggs, took Regi's head and recovered the wizard's body.

Man, that was a good session.

We're taking two weeks off to play something a little different, then we'll return to the RHoD.

I'm having as much as they are, if not more.

thorr-kan

2013-03-10, 10:37 PM

These're the sessions they'll be talking about for years.

sombrastewart

2013-03-12, 05:28 PM

Two things to contribute to the thread.

First of all, sorry, but I forgot to include this in the last post. Players' reactions to what they found at the end of the last session:

Even though the wizard was dead, I opted to let them go with spending the gold equivalent for identification with the elves.

When they discovered the phylactery and note (they had just thrown everything into bags and taken off under the lake to get away from the lizardfolk. The lizardfolk worried the group with their sheer numbers and the poison they had shown to use in the past.

Regardless, when they read the note, jaws fell open. The cleric's eyes lit up, already pondering on trying to coerce the Ghostlord into helping them. It's interesting because I was already leaning towards the reformed Lich route. Which means this is going to be very interesting in the interaction.

I'll also admit that I'm really loving how this module is going. The group has said time and again "We're all going to die" or "TPK" and largely come out on the other side. They're having fun, and so am I.

Oh, the other thing, and feel free to leave thoughts.

After this module ends, what with the gateway and all, I'm contemplating on doing a version of a campaign I ran once before in plane-hopping. The idea was that the players are recruited by a member of a planar council, whose objective is to make sure the Blood War keeps going and stays contained to evil planes. The players are necessary because while members of the council and their top operatives are Epic level, they are constantly being watched or monitored. That means that the PC's have an important role to play in the middle of a giant conflict and they make a difference. It lets me introduce prestige classes the PC's don't know and all kinds of character possibilities become plausible.

sombrastewart

2013-04-07, 04:01 PM

No, the campaign is not dead!

However, this session was a bit dry.

Cast of characters:
Human Hexblade 7
Human Rogue 1/Cleric 6
Human Dragonfire Adept 7
Half Elf Ranger 2/Scout 4

What happened?

After the win at Rhest and the return to the elves, I pulled the notes I had made at the funeral before they left. Add in all the stuff, and the players had successfully managed to get enough Alliance Points to get a loan of some giant owls. This made the players extremely happy. But they held funeral services for the deceased Favored Soul and Wizard.

This, of course, led to the cleric being put on the spot. Being the concept, he had NO idea what to do and has a grand total of a Knowledge Religion modifier of 6. So... he made it up as he went. It went fine, but several of the elves spoke to each other: "I had never heard of this human custom." "Seems like an odd choice for a funeral." "Humans, what are you going to do?"

The cleric looks at the scout and says "Am I doing okay?"
Scout: "How would I know? Are you?"
Cleric: "Hell if I know. What was the name of this guy's god again?"
Scout: "YOU NEED TO FIND OTHER CLERICS TO TALK TO!"

So, after this, there came a discussion of where to go next. Would they go and check the progress of the horde? Would they head straight for the Ghostlord? Would they go to Brindol?

Given that the owls will return home if they're not treated well, the idea of them just flying away from the whole mess didn't last.

So, they opted to do a flyby of Drellin's Ferry first and see if it was actually evacuated. This lead to some interesting back and forth based on Ride checks. The Scout actually had ranks in the skill, but he was the only one. The cleric rolled a 6, so he was doing good to stay on the saddle. The cleric was trying to have a conversation, shouting over the scout.

Scout: (signing) Why are you shouting, we know Thieve's Cant.
Cleric: I CAN'T LET GO OF THE SADDLE!

Their flyby showed them the ferry still standing, but abandoned. At the edge of the Witchwood, they saw the advance scouts of the horde and opted to clear out fast. They turned and headed to Terrelton.

They touched down and I had a question presented to me.
Cleric: What's the biggest building in town?
Me: blinkblink Well, that'd be the tall building off the town square with the symbol of Pelor on it.
Cleric: I walk up and kick the doors open.

So, they busted in on a worship service.
Cleric: I bring news from the horde!
Table facepalms.
Cleric: I mean, from the front.

The cleric leading the services inside politely directed them to the town hall across the square. Inside were the leaders of Terrelton and Speaker Wiston. They had a discussion about the severity of the threat, augmented by presenting two dragon heads on the meeting table. So, the word had been passed along that the people of the Vale were heading to Brindol. There were some guards from Brindol that were heading south as well, but that had been a few days past.

NOTE: I have pretty much gotten rid of the blockades and will adjust the Victory Point information as well.

So, they opted to start heading south. While they were on the head, the discussion lead to the Ghostlord. From the letter, the discussion was either killing him or maybe blackmailing him into helping. This is interesting because I was actually going to be using the repentant Ghostlord concept from the RHoD GM handbook. However, the discussion turned to whether or not the Ghostlord is a dracolich. The cleric and scout opted to have a bet on who was right, betting their Everfull Mugs against one another.

What did they eventually find at the end of the evening? They saw vultures circling from owlback and went to find Lord Jarmaath's emissary group that had been carrying payment to the Hammerfist Holds. They made short work of the ettins and hobgoblins and that's where we called it a night.

Hope you're still having fun reading, and more to follow!

Arskanator

2013-04-09, 01:07 PM

No, the campaign is not dead!

You had me worried. :smallsmile:

sombrastewart

2013-04-09, 05:13 PM

:)

We've had some players have some losses in the family and so we had a break.

Hopefully this is still a fun read for folks.

Arskanator

2013-04-09, 08:17 PM

We've had some players have some losses in the family and so we had a break.

:smallfrown:

sombrastewart

2013-04-21, 10:36 AM

Okay, last session, what happened?

Let's get rockin'.

Our cast of characters
The half elf Scout
The human Dragonfire Adept
The human cleric
The human hexblade

We got a late start, but made the best of it. So, after finding what was in the coffers and reading the contract letter, the crew opted to just take the coffers to the dwarves on their own. So, they loaded up and flew to the dwarven holds. They landed and had a discussion with the guards.

The group had a discussion about how to let anyone know that the dwarves would be marching to Brindol. Did they have the time to fly? Would one member be able to break off and get there and back quickly? The wizard was dead so... Captain Helmbreaker looked at them, skeptically, and said to the guards "Have Dalrak use one of the scrolls." and went back into the mountain. The group looked a touch stunned.

Regardless, they sat down with the maps they had and after a discussion with one of the mercenaries, they got wind of what they were looking for to head towards the Ghostlord. The mountain that looked like a lion. They were all a little concerned about how oblique that would be, and spent plenty of time discussing what to look for. They were apparently in the habit of overthinking this session, as I had stolen Saintheart's idea and made it a mountain ridge carved to look like a lion.

Now, they didn't get there in one go. They had two random encounters along the way. One was a pack of wights. The cleric's eyes lit up immediately. "I prepared invisible to undead!"

He had run into the tent and cast it on the hexblade so they would be, but the hexblade stated it wouldn't last long because he was going to charge them. It never got that far. The scout fired arrows. They did a little damage. The DFA cut loose with breath weapons.

Interestingly, the cleric, who hasn't ever played a cleric before, remembered about Turn Undead. Some of people laughed, I was rubbing my eyes. So, one big turn roll later and the wights were gone.

So, before crashing for the night, they were getting ready to set down and the ground started rumbling. Up popped a bulette and we had a heckuva fight. The hexblade squared up with it and got hammered on. The Scout used his wand of Arrowmind (I think that's the right spell) and moved up to flank for the hexblade. Now, since bulettes don't like the taste of elves, he went ballistic on the hexblade. The bulette went down pretty fast, but not before dropping the hexblade to single digits and dealt some serious damage to scout.

They set out in the morning and flew into the Thornwaste. Remember what I said about overthinking? They found the lion in pretty short order. So, they landed and had this discussion about if it would be a dracolich or a regular lich or what. No one made any of the Knowledge rolls that were attached to the phylactery, so they didn't have any leads.

Now, I'll state this here. I'm going with the reformed lich idea from the RHoD handbook. I enjoy redemptive characters and I think it'd be a fun twist. That means he's not super interested in leaving, and the Red Hand operatives are keeping him there.

I upsized the map so it would make sense. So as they came up to the entrance, one of them noticed something moving and Varanthian stepped out, regarded them, laughed and stepped back into the mountain.

What do I think

Well, with the fight with Varanthian, it's going to depend on who's there. I'm going to be using the grab/rake in one round change since it's completely inconsistent with other grab/rake rules. Will she swallow one of them? Maybe. Don't know, but we'll see how it goes. Since Varanthian has stepped back into her lair, she'll be able to use the breath weapon to decent effect. I'm guessing the hexblade is going to barrel in, making him the first target. Of course, if the DFA gets too close, that would go badly, being a behir and all.

Anyway, looking forward to next time!

sombrastewart

2013-04-30, 09:43 AM

Last session? Yes indeedy!

We got a late start due to several things, including our former wizard needing to make a new character.

So we now have a dwarven paladin added to the ranks. Once our barbarian gets back, we're going to have serious frontline muscle, but no arcane presence.

Roster:
Half Elf Ranger/Scout
Human Rogue/Cleric
Human Hexblade
Human Dragonfire Adept
Dwarven Paladin

So, the group was standing outside Varanthian's lair, trying to decide what to do, when this dwarven paladin that had followed them from Hammerfist Holds showed up. Conversation verbatim follows:

Paladin: Hail, travelers.
Scout: Sorry, we're here to kill this thing. Get in line.

Now, interestingly, when they looked in, they couldn't actually see Varanthian. It wasn't magically dark or anything, but they could not see her. They tried to Diplomance her through the DFA, which I thought was hilarious. None of the characters or players knew or remembered about behirs' hatred of dragons, so their repeated attempts were incredibly funny to me.

The group opted for the "screw it, let's kill it" approach. The scout walked in, and Varanthian dropped from the ceiling. Look at that climb check and tell me that's not a good idea. Anyway, she dropped and whiffed on attacking the scout and things went wild from there. And by wild, I mean everyone missing. The scout whiffed. The hexblade whiffed his attacks. The cleric's spirit weapon couldn't pass the SR. The DFA tried blasting with lightning, which obviously did nothing. The paladin was far enough back that the fight couldn't pick up for her just yet. Hits finally started landing. Except for Varanthian. The dice were not on my side.

But then, we had the DFA and the paladin line up for breath weapon, and dealt out 30 damage in one go, and they both failed their reflex saves. The paladin marched right up to Varanthian's maw and used a Smite Evil. Being that's the most hurt big V has felt so far, she went ballistic. Made the grab, made the grapple, rake and then next round, swallowed. The paladin's player was absolutely certain I was killing her again because I was angry or something.

That's when the dice lit up. Well, not for me. But the hexblade, scout and cleric all flanked and started laying in the damage. Remember, the cleric has sneak attack dice, too.

But what was the killing blow? The paladin, striking from inside, ripped her way out and killed Varanthian in the process.

That's a pretty epic way to introduce a character.

ThreeDSix

2013-05-01, 10:57 AM

Glad to see this thread is still alive!

I am enjoying this campaign immensely! :smallsmile:

sombrastewart

2013-05-01, 07:25 PM

Glad to see this thread is still alive!

I am enjoying this campaign immensely! :smallsmile:

First of all, thank you. It still blows me away that people are enjoying it so much.

sombrastewart

2013-05-10, 05:33 PM

Next session!

We didn't have our hexblade, but we did have our barbarian back.

Our cast of characters
Human rogue 1/Cleric 6
Human DFA 7
Half Elf Ranger 1/Scout 5
Dwarf Paladin 7
Half Orc Barbarian 7

Hoo boy.

Okay, so we kicked off with the group standing around in Varanthian's lair, looking for a way to progress. The scout established that there was a secret door, but for the life of them, they couldn't get the thing open. The cleric is the one with the ability to open locks and disable device, moreso than the scout. So this lead to a back and forth of argument of who was helping who while the barbarian took the pommel of his sword and started whacking at the wall. Not in the right spot, but still, he was trying to help. Finally, they managed to get the door open, and that's when the first roar went off and the ghost lion attacked.

I had it bust out of the floor on them and the DFA screwed the save, so she was ready to fly out of the place, hop on an owl and make for the hills. Except that the fight didn't even get to her turn in the order. The paladin landed a hit and the cleric Turned the crap out of the poor lion and poof, away it goes.

Continue on further and there goes another roar about halfway there. This time, the barbarian was spooked, but again, this fight didn't last very long. The miss chances weren't helping much, but happened every now and then.

When they reached the end of the tunnel, they found another wall, so they were searching for the secret door. What they found was something kind of shining in the corner. They all gathered to look, and a pair of eyes opened and we have the dire ghost lion's gaze attack go off. Two points of Cha damage to everyone but the barbarian (at which point I just busted out laughing) and another fight is off to the races.

The miss chances really hit high gear here, but... that's when my d20's went cold and the lion couldn't hit the group for crap. No turn attempts were used, but a crit from the barbarian turned the fight sour on the lion pretty quickly.

Okay. Dead lions. Secret door finally opens up. And we have an empty room.

Now, let me preface with some modification I had done on this encounter. Ulwai and the monks and clerics knew the adventurers were here and not to be trifled with. So, they had set up a ruse. The clerics had hidden in one of the two rooms off the guest quarters Ulwai was in and cast Invisibility on themselves. The monks hid in the other and did some Hide checks with junk that was around for some bonuses. I had also restatt'd Ulwai so she would actually have the Bluff check she was purported to have in the flavor text (max that sucker out!) AND cast Glibness on herself. Oh, and I had changed one other spell, first level bard spell: Undetectable Alignment.

Oh snap, son.

They busted into her room, and saw the setup of the Tiamat alter, the scales and so on. Ulwai was sitting in a chair, humming to herself. Her weapons were lying against the wall in the corner. The group immediately distrusted her, being an attractive hobgoblin and all. So what happened? She rolled an 18 on her first Bluff and no one got anywhere close on the Sense Motives they all immediately asked for.

Ulwai spun a tale of being captured by the Red Hand and then sent with the Ghostlord because he liked her singing voice. She said she was stuck and couldn't leave, professed no knowledge of the rest of the dungeon and played the helpless captive to the hilt.

Paladin: DETECT EVIL!

GM: Not evil.

Everyone stops and looks at me. It's quiet for about thirty seconds.

Scout: Not evil.

GM: Not evil.

Paladin: So, no evil.

GM: Nope.

Quiet again.

Cleric: Crap.

So, they were talking to Ulwai. One plan was to chain her up and keep her there until they were done. Another was to let her leave as soon as she could. Another was to bring her along, which she resisted, saying she couldn't do much in a fight.

Scout: Those are you weapons?

Ulwai: Yes.

Scout: How good are you with them?

Ulwai: I know which end to hold.

Scout: And you didn't resist being held here?

Ulwai: With a powerful lich and a behir? With a whip?

The scout continued his suspicious glare.

I held my breath when the barbarian started asking about the other rooms. Ulwai said they were the privvy. The barbarian was shocked they had them indoors and looked in the room where the clerics were. And saw nothing. Whew.

What ended up happening was the group left her there, but the scout put a bell on the door, to alert if it was opened. They continued on, finding the dissection room, which I had changed to being unused, with my angle on the redeemed lich. Then, they opened the door attached to it. After my description and the puddle of water in the sunken floor, the cleric immediately closed the door. "Nope, don't want to go in there."

They continued sneaking along, and ended right where they are about to bust into the room with the bonedrinkers.

My thoughts

My goal with Ulwai this encounter was to have a bard that was as good at Bluffing as stated in the text. Her other stuff will come into play with the battle at Brindol or something similar. However, she did manage to bluff them successfully, but because she had time to prepare. Jumping the PC's seemed like a bad idea given the terrain, so I thought it was the logical course of action.

Draz74

2013-05-10, 05:47 PM

My thoughts

My goal with Ulwai this encounter was to have a bard that was as good at Bluffing as stated in the text. Her other stuff will come into play with the battle at Brindol or something similar. However, she did manage to bluff them successfully, but because she had time to prepare. Jumping the PC's seemed like a bad idea given the terrain, so I thought it was the logical course of action.

As delicious as her fooling the group is, I don't think she would just sit back and watch while they work out something with the Ghostlord to turn him away from his treaty with the Red Hand. That's why she's there, after all -- to make sure he's on board.

It would be nice if she could get her troops to ambush the party without giving away her position of command or evil-ness, though.

sombrastewart

2013-05-10, 06:09 PM

Draz, you're probably right about that. There's enough space that they could leave that room without the Pc's knowing. So that means that they can crash in at a very difficult moment. Maybe even in the room they're about to bust into.

sombrastewart

2013-05-21, 10:06 AM

Okay, update!

Our cast
Human Rogue/Cleric
Human DFA
Dwarven Paladin
Half Elf Scout/Ranger
Half Orc Barbarian

So, they swing open the door to the room to confront what's inside. We have six lesser bonedrinkers, there's a ghostly dire lion wandering around. The Scout won initiative and rolled in, having activated his wand of Arrowmind and trying to get some attention. He did, and got some bonedrinkers after him.

Now, I had a decision made. Ulwai and her compatriots were waiting for the time to dogpile in on these heroes. So, once the sounds of a fight kicked in, they piled out and moved to the secret passage opposite of where the PCs went in. Now, I had changed the spell selections on the clerics a bit and change the monks to swordsages with the dragon chains.

So, we had a bottleneck where the barbarian was in the back of the group, the cleric was at the door, the DFA was with the barbarian and the paladin was waiting for a route to clear to charge in.

With the Scout in the room.

I made use of combining attacks to aid and had bonedrinkers rush on the cleric and the scout was dealing with one of them. The scout was feeling a bit frustrated because he couldn't skirmish on the undead. The cleric got a turn off, which affected the two closest to him. Two out of the fight and so we go on.

The scout hears singing.

Secret door opens and the scout has three of the swordsages on him.

Now, note on the scout's build: He's been working on maxing out his AC, so he's been pretty hard to hit. But he was ECSTATIC. "Things my skirmish works on! I've got this!"

Let me put this out there. The group is only about half engaged in the fight. The bonedrinkers are kind of worrisome for them. The addition of the monks has the players looking worried. Then, two summoned hellhounds come in and they're more exasperated. Then it registers that something has to summon them. Plus the singing. They are worried.

So, the scout tumbles to go fight hobgoblins. The barbarian is engaged in combat with the lion that showed up. He took more Cha damage and some Str damage. This is bad because he has a base Cha of 7 and he's taken 3 Cha damage so far. The DFA is having a very hard time lining up shots with her breath weapon, so she heads back to other room to check out singing she can hear now, too.

The cleric makes room and the paladin goes screaming into the room, swinging her axe and a mangled 'scottish' accent. When she hit the room, the bonedrinkers went right after her, and one got the grapple. As the fight continued, the grapple went on, back and forth, and the drinker managed to do some Con damage. This was especially fun to watch because the description of how the bonedrinkers so their Con damage was severely creeping out the paladin player.

The DFA ran smack into Ulwai. Catfight? Not quite, but probably the closest you'll see in this campaign. The DFA had double moved to get there, and an Unseen Servant was wondering around shutting doors and really confusing players. But with the storm raging outside, Ulwai called a Thunderstrike and hit the DFA for 20 damage. The DFA returned with fire breath. This went back and forth.

The Scout dealt with the monks just in time for the clerics' invisibility to wear off and they went for some Inflict spells. That never did happen. But he was happy to be tumbling around, getting skirmish damage. And they're favored enemies of his, too.

Finally, the big fight in the other room wound down when the barbarian got in there and went ballistic on the remaining undead. Once the scout entered the fight with Ulwai, she dropped everything and surrendered, thinking to bluff them again.

Once the fight was over, there was plenty of "I TOLD YOU SO" about Ulwai between the players. But how did they deal with her? They went for some intimidate checks and rolled over 30. Given how I do the social stuff (series of checks and getting some Sense Motive involved and so on), one good roll doesn't just win a social encounter. But what they rolled? They TERRIFIED Ulwai. She began spilling the beans.

They learned about the Horde and Azar Kul's plan to gain Tiamat's favor and an army of devils. The destruction of the Vale as an offering became much more vital to the group, as was the necessity of stopping him.

About the Ghostlord, she didn't have much information. She was there to keep an eye on him, but doesn't know how to get into his sanctum.

Thoughts

The group was seriously worried about this fight, which is good. It's what I was going for. No one died, but everyone is hurting and some rolls breaking another direction would have made it very bad. However, they emerged triumphant.

Here's a wrinkle: they're planning on bunkering down somewhere and resting so the cleric can prepare plenty of restoration spells for the ability damage. That means he won't have all his spells to take on the Ghostlord.

Okay, notes on the Ghostlord. He wants his phylactery back, so he divines on it regularly. He caught it once, when the group liberated it from the forces at Rhest, so he knows approximately what the group has. That means he'll have Protection from Arrows and Antilife Shell prepared. He wants to talk to the group, being the redemptive lich at this point. Also, he knows who he's dealing with, so he doesn't have to divine on the phylactery, he can use it on them. He knows where they are. He can come find them in his lair. So, if they go to rest, he can come right to them. Prepared and ready to talk.

Fun, yes?

sombrastewart

2013-05-23, 09:50 PM

Sorry, no game this week to report on. Spent all night fighting with my truck and had to get it done.

But, next time, encounter with the Ghost Lord!

sombrastewart

2013-06-03, 06:33 PM

Okay... big meeting with the Ghostlord.

Cast of characters, we had everyone!
Human DFA
Human Rogue/Cleric
Dwarven Paladin
Human Hexblade
Half Elf Scout/Ranger Swift Hunter
Half Orc Barbarian

Okay, so the group opted to forge ahead, even with the cleric low on spells. They don't buy the 8-minute adventuring day, and were worried about more undead showing up. So, they forged on. Given the layout of the map, the Ghostlord being in chamber 16, I think it is? Well, they got there. After going to the room with the tree.

Oh, wait, Ulwai prisoner. They tied and gagged her securely, put pitons into the wall and left her in the secret passage that connects the first chamber to the room with the pool. More on that later. The Scout was adamant she not be killed, as were the paladin and DFA. The hexblade was going to kill her to watch their backs, but she's out of spells, can't move, not interested in fighting back and so, they were going to take her to Brindol for more information. Some joked about waterboarding, which was clarified as joking while looking sideways at the paladin.

As I said before, I'm doing to the repentant Ghostlord, CG version, from Saintheart's handbook. So the tree in here was in fine shape, growing despite everything else and looking healthy. Knowledge checks showed that it was a druid tree, which just baffled everyone. They went through the treasury, with the cleric getting the door open, then telling everyone "Nope! Nothing! May as well go back!"

They didn't listen.

They finally found the Ghostlord in his chamber, contemplating. But, he knows who they are and hand prepared with Protection from Arrows and an Antilife Shell.

Good thing, too. The scout went at him immediately, and the Ghostlord looked at him, and sighed.

GL: Could we talk first?
Scout: Die!
GL: Hold Person. What about the rest of you? Could we talk?

They got a little ways. The Ghostlord was conversing with them, laying out the unfortunate arrangement with the Red Hand. Now, the Paladin's Detect Evil not SHOWING as evil had them confused, but then again, that happened with Ulwai, too. The Scout came out of the Hold and a massive argument between the Scout, the DFA and the paladin broke out about what to do. The Ghostlord let them argue; he explained he was trying to do penance for what he had done, given the creation of the Heart of the Lion and his attempts to dissemble it.

Paladin: We could do it.
GL: Child, I appreciate the confidence, but if I haven't been able to in two hundred years, I doubt you would.
Paladin: We could smash it.
GL: I'd advise against that.
Scout: Why? So you can fake trying to take it apart?
GL: Because smashing it would create a backlash of necromatic energy that would fly uncontrolled in unpredictable directions. I'm not overly worried about myself, but I'd prefer that the people that have stymied the Red Hand over and over not die here.
Paladin: Wait, why would it bother us and not you?
Cleric: You seem to have forgotten we're talking to a lich. An oddly compassionate lich.

And so on.

Now, what happens in the meantime? The Barbarian is bored. The hexblade is debating on killing Ulwai. The barbarian clarifies that they're not killing her so they can get information and punish her.

More on that later.

So, they talk to the Ghostlord and convince him to let them see the Heart. He goes and opens the door and HOLY COW does it register as Evil. He explains again his penance, what he's trying to do.

The cleric finally steps in and strikes a deal. Help defend Brindol and get the phylactery back, but after dealing with Azarr Kul, they come back to make sure he's actually doing what he claims. The DFA had actually found a stack of notes from the lich's attempts to dismantle the device, lending credence to the effect. The lich is concerned about leaving it unguarded, but they bring him around to it. (Remember, I do social interactions as a series of rolls, and they were going.) The Ghostlord is going to work up some stuff to extend a Dimensional Anchor and seal the whole structure so he can. This, he estimates, will take about two weeks.

Given the party's success in screwing with the Red Hand, that's plenty of time. And really good RP.

Ulwai. The barbarian. Good God.

The barbarian left during the discussions and the hexblade had said he was thinking he might go after Ulwai. Given that the paladin and scout had stopped them from killing her, they were concerned, but focused on the Ghostlord.

So... once the parley was done, I asked the barbarian what he had done when he wondered off. The barbarian dragged her into one of the rooms, shut the door and raped her.

Everyone at the table stared at him.

Barb: I'm CN, and a barbarian. We don't think it's a big deal with prisoners.
Me: That's an evil act.
Scout: On my prisoner that I had sworn to protect.
Barb: Depends on the culture.
Paladin: What? No!
Me: No, in D&D, morality is not subjective. That's objectively evil.
Barb: I didn't kill her, you said you wanted her punished.
Hexblade: Yeah, now she just wishes she was dead.

So now, the paladin, scout and DFA are ready to spill his guts all over the floor. The cleric and hexblade are confused. The Ghostlord cast some healing magic and put her to sleep to give her a little peace.

Here's how THAT ended: the barbarian agreed to accompany the group to Brindol for punishment. The scout accepted that. So did the paladin.

So...

Follow up

So, what to do now.

First off, I'm not going to make the paladin fall for knowingly associating with someone who's done evil, given that he's now basically a prisoner.

Ulwai will try to kill herself, I do believe. Perhaps escape. Not sure, but the former is something she's more likely to succeed at.

And, the Ghostlord will be pitching in.

Here's what I'm trying to figure out. Do I just have the barb player roll a new character? How is this handled in Brindol? I'm open to suggestions. I haven't shifted his alignment yet, but I'm close. Here's the other thing: this is a non evil campaign.

The Ghostlord's involvement will be mainly recon in magical form. Given the time he's spent divining to find his phylactery, he's pretty practiced. That sets up the mix n' match in Saintheart's guide of matching up forces against the Hand's special forces. But in the battle? Yeah, I'm not sure there. He's probably not big on making undead for the fight, but it's something I'm still working on.

Please, give me your feedback. Dear God, please.

Saintheart

2013-06-03, 08:41 PM

:smalleek:

As a preliminary, congratulations on being about the first RHOD journalist I can remember since Saph's journal to have a party that doesn't throw down on the Ghostlord. :smallsmile:

Some unleavened thoughts on the Ghostlord aspect: well, recruiting him to fight the Red Hand makes things a bit different. I'm assuming you're leaving him in a relatively unoptimised form? Because if he does have 12 levels in druid on him like the Handbook suggests, the Ghostlord can quite literally obliterate the entire Red Hand army (bar Abithriax and anyone with options for flying) singlehandedly, and with one spell: Blizzard from Frostburn. At CL 12, he can just be thrown down in the middle of the Red Hand and cast the spell even if he gets covered in snow, because undead are immune to cold. 1200 foot radius, a foot of snow per round, opposition takes 1d6 nonlethal damage per round.

I think you're well-served to have him just performing recon for the party; for the aspect of harrying the Red Hand he could probably wind up as the quest marker for the party. He can be kept out of direct confrontations on the assumption he can't risk his destruction for fear the Sphere of Annihiliation, er, the Heart of the Lion will go unguarded. I think you're definitely going to run into hit-and-run attempts by the party based off his scrying or whatnot, so better be prepared for that.

You could have some interesting conflicts in Brindol, too, if you bring him in there. (This is not necessarily a recommendation to do so :smallwink: ) I mean, he's undead, and you've got clerics of the sun god and the death god right there in Brindol. Not to mention the uneasiness of the entire city in having someone like that under their walls, not to mention the potential opportunities Rillor Paln and/or Verassa Kaal might see in getting a powerful undead on their side rather than the party's.

For the Battle of Brindol, which I'm assuming the players will want to use him heavily in, it might be worth finagling things so the Ghostlord takes responsibility for more or less holding an entire section of wall on his own -- say the South wall, which you could say comes under a heavy-but-entirely-unspecific attack from the Red Hand after their attempt to bring down that wall with giants fails (thanks to the party). An 11th level caster or so is a potent asset to be carrying around in a party's pocket, so I'd recommend either you explicitly hand him off so he's under direct NPC (Lord Jarmaath) control or you find something to occupy his time with during the Battle of Brindol.

Other thoughts...
Raping NPCs, always a fun moment in campaigns.

It's here I think you get into real morality issues. How you handle this issue also will reveal something of yourself, I mean, your principles, to the players by how you deal with it in the game world. Some thoughts I had on this:

- First, medieval justice was historically pretty brutal by modern standards. Good-to-neutral alignments don't necessarily change that. Probably a death penalty might be a bit over the top for a settlement that leans towards Neutal Good (IIRC), but if there's a punishment it probably needs to be severe. Castration springs to mind.

- Second, though. And as a preliminary, I (and I would hope anybody) find rape repulsive at the very least. It's an evil act, an exercise of dreadful domination, and must always be thought of that way at least in the real world. Even so, these questions occur to me:

(a) What jurisdiction does Brindol's law enforcement have over an act of rape that necessarily took place outside not only the city walls, but outside Elsir Vale itself? Are there laws of war which apply -- and indeed are they less harsh or more harsh on acts of this kind? She was also the party's prisoner...are the party presently under Jarmaath's command, or can they be deemed subject to Brindol justice since they're working in its interests? I think the capacity for Brindol to punish the barbarian is higher in the latter case. If you wanted to emphasise a Crapsack World, then the former is a get-out clause for the barbarian.

(b) Ulwai's the servant of another god, and a hobgoblin no less. How insular are the religions in your game world? Because there might well be ecclesiastical courts for this sort of "moral offence" (for want of a better expression) if the secular ones attached to Brindol aren't interested. (And indeed maybe the paladin of the party intends to turn the barbarian over to them instead). However, if the gods are very determined they look after only their own followers and be damned to others, this might not be available -- again an issue of jurisdiction.

(c) Politically, would Jarmaath (who's likely to be the judge in a setting such as this) even dare to punish someone like the barbarian? If word gets out he's castrating someone who raped a scion of a force that is coming for Brindol determined to wipe out every man, woman, and child within the city walls, he could have a riot on his hands. He might see his hands tied to not punish the barbarian at all in view of his activities on Brindol's behalf. (Similar issue came up in my campaign surrounding an assassination of Kharn which happened without the two party clerics knowing about it. Made for interesting RP opportunities, though we sort-of handwaved it as the clerics didn't know until the act was over, and Jarmaath was likely to see the assassination as good judgment by the party rather than bad. Rape, of course, is a much different thing.)

EDIT: I would tend to think, though, that the barbarian either gets an alignment shift or winds up in a prison below Brindol's walls for the duration. Should really be a new character. But that's just my personal preference.

Fizban

2013-06-04, 07:09 AM

Are we spoilering now? Okay then.

First off, I'm not going to make the paladin fall for knowingly associating with someone who's done evil, given that he's now basically a prisoner.
Overreaction much? You're penalizing him for not immediately killing anything that registers as evil. Taking prisoners should always be an option for a paladin. Especially since the barbarian didn't even register as evil in the first place. The only way this makes any sense is if he refused to [Edit: wow, that's an important "not" I overlooked there.] lock the guy in chains, because that he most definitely should be doing. Additionally, the barbarian poses a clear threat to a surrendered prisoner under the paladin's protection who has done nothing to betray that trust. If the barbarian cannot be restrained and the penalty for rape is severe enough already (long term prison or execution), I would say it's his duty to execute the barbarian in order to protect Ulwai. [I maintain the rest of my paragraph though]

Ulwai will try to kill herself, I do believe. Perhaps escape. Not sure, but the former is something she's more likely to succeed at.
Again I think you're being a bit extreme. A hardened badass (high level elite NPC) who specializes in lies and possibly even seduction immediately commits suicide after one traumatic experience? Why not do so as soon as she was captured? Why not take revenge? It's entirely possible that this could have happened before in an unwritten part of her backstory.

And while we're talking about what Ulwai should be doing, who says he even pulled it off? I don't know how much re-statting you did, but bardic music doesn't require hands and there's ways around being gagged like say, humming. Thunderstrike is a supernatural ability that can't really be stopped without a silence effect, and you can bet your ass she's not gonna let that happen without burning every last charge she has.

Do I just have the barb player roll a new character? How is this handled in Brindol? I'm open to suggestions. I haven't shifted his alignment yet, but I'm close. Here's the other thing: this is a non evil campaign.
Here's my turn to be extreme: why did you even let this player join? If he knew anything about the party he should have known that an evil character was not okay, and he'd have to be pretty juvenile to think he could pull some subjective morality crap in DnD, in a game run by people, not some youtube thread. What did he do? He wanted to smash things and got bored while the other players were roleplaying so he threw a fit and raped an NPC because he doesn't belong at the table. Kick his ass out.

How is it handled in Brindol? Well you're running a good aligned party and you haven't mentioned any dark themes or anything, and Brindol is run by a LG guy as well. You would apply whatever laws a LG town would have against such a thing, except then you'd realize that there's a state of emergency and they don't have time for this crap. Multiple trustworthy witnesses-wait, scratch that. A PALADIN has already confirmed the crime. No trial, not worth moving the prisoner. Execution or exile depending on how squeamish Jarmaath is, and you can already guess what I'd support.

Saintheart

2013-06-04, 09:07 AM

Overreaction much? You're penalizing him for not immediately killing anything that registers as evil.

Um...I think you might want to have another look at what Sombra wrote. He says he's not going to make the paladin fall for hanging around the barbarian even though he's done an evil act.

Draz74

2013-06-04, 11:46 AM

The Paladin definitely shouldn't be in any sort of falling quandary.

It's possible the Barbarian's player was doing some immature attention-whoring like Fizban concludes, but on the other hand ... raping an attractive female prisoner might indeed be "standard procedure" for a chaotic neutral individual from a savage culture. That doesn't change the fact that it's an Evil act, of course; sometimes cultures endorse Evil acts, and cultural relativism doesn't extend to moral relativism. But it could mean that the Barbarian's action was good roleplaying.

It's still not a kind of good roleplaying that I endorse, mind you; I wouldn't introduce it to a gaming group, and since it can be a sensitive subject for other players I don't think anyone should bring it into the game regardless of what group they play with. So I guess all I'm really saying, as far as it potentially being good roleplaying, is that it doesn't have to damage the story. If you play it right, the going-rogue-and-being-ostracized of one of Elsir Vale's heroes just in the thick of their adventures could become an interesting part of their saga for the bards to sing about.

I'm with Fizban about suicide being an overreaction for Ulwai. Another NPC, maybe, but not one who has undertones of being a Black Widow-style seductress herself. But then, a rape victim committing suicide is also reasonable if that's what you feel like would progress the story most. (Or if the barbarian's player really needs a lesson about how serious rape is. But if that's the case, there are bigger issues than a D&D game involved.)

But I guess the real objective question is mostly what to do with the barbarian now. Hmmm. Yeah, just having Jaarmath lock him in the dungeons and delay his trial until after the war is the easiest answer -- it avoids having to answer tricky questions about legal systems, judicial jurisdiction, and so on for the duration of the adventure.

I kinda like the idea of some NPC who's particularly offended by rape going vigilante on the Barbarian's butt and avenging Ulwai. But I can't think of any of the NPCs who would be likely to do that who are also likely to even know about the incident, unless it's Ulwai herself after escaping. Trellara maybe?

Fizban

2013-06-04, 10:32 PM

Thanks for the catch Saintheart, I skipped a very important word there.

Saintheart

2013-06-04, 11:06 PM

No probs, I also sometimes skip over words, even when I'm writing. It happens to me a lot. :smallbiggrin: :smallbiggrin:

sombrastewart

2013-06-05, 12:46 PM

Ok, so I had an idea as far as punishment goes for the barbarian, and that's to steal from the beloved Giant: institute a Mark of Justice. That would keep the player in the game, but would be a tangible punishment for the behavior. If I further steal from the Giant, then that means the Mark would be tied to the Scout or Paladin. Also tie in that the barbarian will fight with everything he is capable of in defense of Brindol (with Jaarmath suspecting that he probably won't survive). Should he not die in the course of the fight, then the Mark of Justice continues.

As for this player? He's the old-school player that played Chainmail back in the day. I've never seen him do anything remotely like this in a game, so I'm forced to assume (knowing the guy) that this is an anomoly that came out of what he saw as the barbarian background.

As for the Ghostlord, he already broached the topic of being welcome in Brindol. His arrival would probably be outside Brindol and contacting by magical means. Maybe some Alter Self stuff or something that he can meet with Jarmaath or something to that effect.

During the actual battle, he may assume responsibility for defending the south wall on his own, which ties him up quite effectively. Had I restat'd him? No, I hadn't changed him except for a touch of spell selection, but since it wasn't important, I could do so now. Using retraining rules or just a GM Handwave, make him back to straight up Druid or something to that effect. That lets him do the thing with the south wall with defined abilities.