We Be Goblins/Rise of the Runelords

[CheshireCatAW]

So I've decided to buckle down and start going through the Rise of the Runelords with a few friends. Most are new to tabletop RPGs, but there are a couple that will help the rest (as would I, of course).

Schedule is still in the works but I figured I'd take the time to ask the Playground what issues they've had with We Be Goblins and/or Rise of the Runelords that they've had to adapt to.

I don't expect much from We Be Goblins. I've run it before and it's a very fun adventure but not necessarily one that needs much tweaking.

RotRLs though is a much larger beast. I'm reading through the series now to make sure I can do some foreshadowing and include NPC's that show up in later supplements. Any other suggestions? Any words of warning?

[AttilaTheGeek]

I'm partway through RotRL (just started chapter 2 of 7- no spoilers please) and let me just say it is fantastic. I'm an Evocation Wizard 3/Fighter 1, going for Eldritch Knight (http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/prestigeClasses/eldritchKnight.html), and the campaign so far has been excellent.

There are a couple of key fights which might need to be toned down. With the exception of the end boss of ch.1, we've either had DM fiat to ease it up or had at least one person fall into the negatives on every major fight. One notable one was the fight with Bruthasmus (the bugbear), which was particularly tough. For the sake of any elves in your party, leave out the part about how he hates elves. As a squishy Wizard 3 at the time, and the only elf in the party, I waas taken from full HP into the negatives with one unlucky critical hit for no apparent reason.We still refer to it as "the incident". No TPKs yet, but we've had a couple close calls. Another one I'd edit is the fight with the Quasit and Tsuto near the end of Ch.1. DR 5/(something we didn't have), and flying, and summons made it very difficult, especially with Tsuto's super-high AC. However, I do want to note that even though we've had some close calls, the rest of my group is fairly low-op, so if you play with a bunch of min-maxers it should be less bad.

Edit to add: In stark contrast, there was one fight that seemed really easy. As we were fighting Chief Ripnugget of Thistletop, the monk remarked that it had only been one round, and everyone but the chief was down, and then got two lucky crits and punched the chief into the ground. Feel free to turn that one up a bit, especially if the players have a chance to rest after the preceding encounter with the Druid.

I've heard nothing but praise for We Be Goblins, but I've never had a chance to play it myself.

[CheshireCatAW]

Excellent!

You actually touched one something that I've noticed. You had no idea why the enemy went straight for the Wizard.

How do you feel the backstory is being revealed to you? Do you think it's done well? Do you think that you could use more revelation?

[AttilaTheGeek]

You actually touched one something that I've noticed. You had no idea why the enemy went straight for the Wizard.

Actually, I was feeling rather upset about being targeted- I thought it was either because I was the most high-op member of the group and the GM wanted to weaken us, or because the GM picked me at random. He told me afterward it was because the monster hated elves; I never contemplated the connection with my class.


How do you feel the backstory is being revealed to you? Do you think it's done well? Do you think that you could use more revelation?

Um, I'm getting the general feeling that there isn't much backstory to be had. All things considered, perhaps that's not the best thing. I know the monk had an encounter with some sort of eldritch entity and freed it,but that's about it. Perhaps that's not a good thing.

What exactly do you mean by "more revelation"?

[Starbuck_II]

We still refer to it as "the incident". No TPKs yet, but we've had a couple close calls. Another one I'd edit is the fight with the Quasit and Tsuto near the end of Ch.1. DR 5/(something we didn't have), and flying, and summons made it very difficult, especially with Tsuto's super-high AC.


I have the module and I question the fight being that bad:
DR is low (granted those without Sneak attack, power attack, magic items/magic weapon spell might have trouble). Now Fast Heal might be a issue.
Her Dagger is pretty weak (snatch arrows would be awesome here). I'd fear the claws more. She only has 2 summons (1 SM 1 and 1 SM 2)
I can see her whittling the enemy down, but not TPK unless party forgets to run when wounded.

In fact, she can't even use the combat tactics suggested in the book as her strength is too low for a dagger to cut through her skin (DR/cold iron means it needs to be a cold iron dagger but it isn't). She could have attempted to scratch herself (you bypass your own DR with natural weapons) but not with a dagger.

[AttilaTheGeek]

I have the module and I question the fight being that bad:
DR is low (granted those without Sneak attack, power attack, magic items/magic weapon spell might have trouble). Now Fast Heal might be a issue.
Her Dagger is pretty weak (snatch arrows would be awesome here). I'd fear the claws more. She only has 2 summons (1 SM 1 and 1 SM 2)
I can see her whittling the enemy down, but not TPK unless party forgets to run when wounded.

In fact, she can't even use the combat tactics suggested in the book as her strength is too low for a dagger to cut through her skin (DR/cold iron means it needs to be a cold iron dagger but it isn't). She could have attempted to scratch herself (you bypass your own DR with natural weapons) but not with a dagger.

My party was an evocation wizard (magic missile magic missile magic missile), a ranger who had two-weapon fighting but spent most of his time shooting a shortbow, a paladin who spent her single smite evil on the other boss, a monk who was doing more damage than everyone else combined but didn't have reach, and a rogue without a reach weapon. We chose to focus the other boss and kill him first, and by the time we turned on her I was out of spells and had pulled out a crossbow. It was the ranger and I firing our bows at her and the rest of the party trying to cover the adds from the back of the room. That DR (I don't even remember if it was 5) was obnoxious.

Also, it's a 2nd-level fight; no one has magic items. :smalltongue:

[CheshireCatAW]

There's actually quite a bit of backstory to the module and it makes a LOT of things make sense. I suppose one of the things I will have to do is make sure that there are opportunities to find out the reasons why some seemingly random things happen.

It's been my observation that ALL of the characters have a great deal of motivation to do things or be as they are.

I wish I could find ways to translate that over. Hrmm..

[Malimar]

I'm partway through RotRL (just started chapter 2 of 7- no spoilers please) and let me just say it is fantastic.

I'm in about the same place. I was playing a sorcerer, but that character left after being betrayed by the party. Now I'm playing a witch. But my experience so far has been very different than Attila's, so I think the best advice for somebody DMing it will wind up being less "pay attention to these specific fights" and more "pay attention to the abilities of your particular party". To wit:


There are a couple of key fights which might need to be toned down. With the exception of the end boss of ch.1, we've either had DM fiat to ease it up or had at least one person fall into the negatives on every major fight. One notable one was the fight with Bruthasmus (the bugbear), which was particularly tough. For the sake of any elves in your party, leave out the part about how he hates elves. As a squishy Wizard 3 at the time, and the only elf in the party, I waas taken from full HP into the negatives with one unlucky critical hit for no apparent reason.We still refer to it as "the incident". No TPKs yet, but we've had a couple close calls.

We beat Bruthasmus without any trouble at all, he went down like a chump. The party was conveniently lined up all nice, with me in back, so I cast command on him and ordered him to approach me. Between losing his turn to the command and taking an attack of opportunity from everybody, Bruthasmus didn't even get to act before we killed him. I just realized that probably one or two people shouldn't have gotten to make AoOs, because you're flat-footed until you take a turn, but remembering that rule wouldn't have delayed Bruthasmus's death by more than a round.


Another one I'd edit is the fight with the Quasit and Tsuto near the end of Ch.1. DR 5/(something we didn't have), and flying, and summons made it very difficult, especially with Tsuto's super-high AC. However, I do want to note that even though we've had some close calls, the rest of my group is fairly low-op, so if you play with a bunch of min-maxers it should be less bad.

Having to fight the quasit and Tsuto at the same time was a possibility? We beat Tsuto on his own (barely, because there were only two of us) and put him in jail. Then we came back the next day and got beat on by the quasit (we were badly outnumbered and the foes had the action economy on their side, so one character died) and ran away. Then we came back the next day (with a full party of 4 players this time) and beat the quasit (either the DM didn't take into account the quasit's DR, or she was killed by my sorcerer's magic missiles alone).


Edit to add: In stark contrast, there was one fight that seemed really easy. As we were fighting Chief Ripnugget of Thistletop, the monk remarked that it had only been one round, and everyone but the chief was down, and then got two lucky crits and punched the chief into the ground. Feel free to turn that one up a bit, especially if the players have a chance to rest after the preceding encounter with the Druid.

Ripnugget didn't hurt us much, but it did take awhile to beat him and all his buddies into submission. We enlarge personed the fighter, so he threatened pretty much the entire room. I had enough rounds to lay three separate Evil Eyes on Ripnugget and hit him with a spell or two before he went down.

The really super-difficult encounter for us, where we barely got out alive, was last session, when we faced Nualia in the sub-basement.

The spellcasters had hardly any spells left. I was going to somewhat trivialize the encounter by popping glitterdust (one of my most powerful spells, which I had been saving through the entire fort in case we ran into something we really couldn't handle without it), but I failed my will save against the yeth hound's howl, so I ran away before I could do it. The fighter and the cleric got trapped for most of the fight by the portcullis+statues trap (they were behind because they had been dallying, pulling off their armor to jump/tumble past the trap, while the rest of us were exploring). Which left the druid, her animal companion, and Orik the NPC to face Nualia alone. I was pretty happy that Nualia kept channeling negative energy instead of doing more effective things (I don't know what spells she had prepared, but if there were any half-decent ones, she could have wrecked us with them), but she still wound up killing the druid's animal companion.

With nowhere else to go while terrified, I ran straight into the room with several shadows. After my fear wore off, I only managed to get out of that room by casting obscuring mist before running past the shadows. I didn't wind up contributing to the Nualia fight except with a single Evil Eye. Luckily, the shadows didn't follow me out -- with no magic weapons and the cleric having used most of his positive energy that day for healing, they'd have slaughtered us easily.

[AttilaTheGeek]

But my experience so far has been very different than Attila's, so I think the best advice for somebody DMing it will wind up being less "pay attention to these specific fights" and more "pay attention to the abilities of your particular party".

Huh. It's interesting to compare our experiences and see how many different paths a pre-written campaign can take. You make a good point about the abilities of our particular party.

We fought the yeth hounds before Bruthasmus, and the entire party except for the ranger was feared when he came out. Yes, that includes the paladin, who forgot she was immune. On his turn, he just walked out, walked over to me, and whacked me in the face with that flail for a whole bunch of damage.


Having to fight the quasit and Tsuto at the same time was a possibility? We beat Tsuto on his own (barely, because there were only two of us) and put him in jail. Then we came back the next day and got beat on by the quasit (we were badly outnumbered and the foes had the action economy on their side, so one character died) and ran away. Then we came back the next day (with a full party of 4 players this time) and beat the quasit (either the DM didn't take into account the quasit's DR, or she was killed by my sorcerer's magic missiles alone).

We got wrecked by Tsuto in the glassworks. We thought "Oh, it's just a bunch of goblins, we can beat them and go home". But then he came up behind us and oneshotted the ranger with what I found out later was a flurry of sneak attack blows. Despite the monk chasing him (and almost getting killed himself), he got away. We finished him later, in the caves of wrath. Oddly enough, I always think of those caves as the "caves of 'rath' " with no w, which might be familiar if you play magic (http://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=205268).


Ripnugget didn't hurt us much, but it did take awhile to beat him and all his buddies into submission. We enlarge personed the fighter, so he threatened pretty much the entire room. I had enough rounds to lay three separate Evil Eyes on Ripnugget and hit him with a spell or two before he went down.

Yeah, ours went like that too, but instead of buffing the fighter we just had a whole bunch of melee characters.


The really super-difficult encounter for us, where we barely got out alive, was last session, when we faced Nualia in the sub-basement.

The spellcasters had hardly any spells left. I was going to somewhat trivialize the encounter by popping glitterdust (one of my most powerful spells, which I had been saving through the entire fort in case we ran into something we really couldn't handle without it), but I failed my will save against the yeth hound's howl, so I ran away before I could do it. The fighter and the cleric got trapped for most of the fight by the portcullis+statues trap (they were behind because they had been dallying, pulling off their armor to jump/tumble past the trap, while the rest of us were exploring). Which left the druid, her animal companion, and Orik the NPC to face Nualia alone. I was pretty happy that Nualia kept channeling negative energy instead of doing more effective things (I don't know what spells she had prepared, but if there were any half-decent ones, she could have wrecked us with them), but she still wound up killing the druid's animal companion.

With nowhere else to go while terrified, I ran straight into the room with several shadows. After my fear wore off, I only managed to get out of that room by casting obscuring mist before running past the shadows. I didn't wind up contributing to the Nualia fight except with a single Evil Eye. Luckily, the shadows didn't follow me out -- with no magic weapons and the cleric having used most of his positive energy that day for healing, they'd have slaughtered us easily.

Ouch. That's awful luck. I thought I had bad luck on that fight! I ran completely out of spells, so I waded in there with my elven curveblade (yaaaay, elf proficiencies!), and took a couple swings at Nualia herself. But then she beat me to a pulp, sending me to -4 in one round. The paladin tried to lay on hands me, and rolled 1 out of 6 on Lay on Hands healing. Then the ranger tried to give me our only potion of Cure Moderate Wounds- 1 and 1 for the 2d6 healing. And then the rogue tried to give me a heal check, and, you guessed it, natural 1. And then the monk gave me the last potion of Cure Light and the streak kept going for another 1 healing. But I was brought back up to 0, so I ran away and tried to shoot with my crossbow from the back. Somehow, eventually, we downed her without any fatalities.