D&D 3.5: Another Red Hand of Doom Journal

[Bubzors]

I’ve seen a lot of these types of journals around on the playground and enjoyed reading them. They also provided a lot of insight on what can be a problem and how to better challenge the players during the campaign. This past weekend my group and I started the Red Hand of Doom as a filler to play whenever the full D&D group could not make a session for our main campaign. We even had a newbie who had never played before join in. Basically this campaign will go on here and there a lot during the summer months since it is usually pretty hard to get the whole group together for our normal campaign. So here I am joining the bandwagon. Hopefully you guys enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed DM’ing it.

Cast of Characters
Gnome 5 Beguiler (veteran player, our DM during our other campaign. We have never used this class so he decided to take a shot at it)
Human 5 Duskblade (another veteran. Again another class we have never used so he wanted to try it out)
Half-Giant 1 Barbarian/3 Psywar (veteran, our local optimizer. Going for knockback and dungeoncrasher damage)
Human 5 Cleric (player was not here so just ran by the Psywar player as a healbot the first session. Going for an archer/ranged theme cleric)
Human 5 Factotum/Warblade (not sure of the exact levels. This is the complete newbie to D&D)

I have used a lot of ideas from Saintheart’s Handbook on this campaign for upgrading the enemies in the book. Since most of our group is experienced and we have played together for years now, I had to beef up most encounters in order to prevent it becoming a curbstomp by the players. So here we go…

Session 1
Maurauder Attack
So we start with the characters travelling along the Dawn Way towards Drellin’s ferry. The hook I used is that they are a group of adventurers who came across the golden plains together and are travelling through the Elsir Vale. They also heard there may be some “sweet loots” in Vraths Keep so they plan on checking that out along their way.

Cut to the Marauder Attack. The factotum makes the spot check against the hobgoblins and the battle begins. I changed this fight up slightly by adding more hobgoblin regulars than is stated in the book, upgrading the bladebearer, and turning the hell hounds into dire wolves. Also, I had a few of the regulars shoot with bows from up in the trees, forcing the players to use range attacks or climb the tree.

First round the factotum gets enlarged, the beguiler drops an obscuring mist and the rest of the party moves towards the enemy. The fight is goes as planned, with the regular beating up a bit on the factotum who has become the front line. The psywar decides to pursue two of the archers in the trees and moves towards them and climbs on up. At this time the factotum has taken out two of the regulars, and the psywar one of the archer regulars.

Then a golden moment that is bound to be a recurring theme occurs. The beguiler player looks up at me and says “SLEEEEEPPPP!!!” (he did it in the voice of Dr. Orpheus from Venture Bros). After a bit of chuckling he casts sleep on two of the regulars. He then proceeds throughout the battle to cast this 3 more times, every time screaming “SLEEEEEEPPPP!!” It was funny, but quite annoying as he would block charges I could make by causing people in the way to fall asleep.

Meanwhile the psywar is has spent 3 rounds trying to kill the other archer in the tree and cannot. He even spent his rage and missed for another round. (Altogether I think he rolled a 1, 1, 2 , 3, 1 lol) The direwolves have now entered the battle along with the Blade Bearer and the second wave of hobgoblins. The obscuring mist has also been annoying, basically rendering my archers useless as most of the party is hanging out in the mist. The factotum is still tanking up the front lines and killing the most hobgoblins. He gets extra lucky however when the Blade Bearer and another hobgoblin charge at him at the same time and he manages to trip the BB. (He was large and using a scythe) The other hobgoblin hits on the charge and brings him down to 3 hp. If the BB had not been tripped and hit him, that would have been game over for the newbie in the first fight.

To wrap it up, the psywar finally gets back into the fray (missing two more times) and they mop up the remaining enemies. They even manage to stabilize and heal up one of the hobgoblins for questioning. Some terrible roleplaying and skill check rolls later, the prisoner lays dead with his legs cut off and the only information they got was that he was a part of the Red Hand and that he worshipped Tiamat.

Drellins Ferry and Jorr
They move onwards to Drellin’s ferry were they get let into town (not until after pissing off the guards) and go to the local inn, where they piss off the proprietor with some shenanigans. It seems that the group has decided to RP their characters as a bunch of out for themselves a-holes. Lets see how far this gets them. Anyway, they speak with the town speaker and guard captain, agree to take the job for some money, and rest. (Again, not before leaving a bad taste in the town speaker’s mouth) They talk to the town wizard and buy a potion or two then head out on the road to Jorr’s cabin.

When they reach the cabin and encounter the dogs for a second I think they are going to slaughter them. The beguiler suddenly screams “SLEEEEEEPPPP!” and puts them all soundly to rest. He is definitely getting the mileage out of this spell while he still can. Jorr comes out and I role-play him as a redneck southern curmudgeon. He kicks his dogs awake declaring them useless in protecting his property and questions the PC’s as to what they are doing on HIS land in HIS forest. The players fall in love with him instantly and convince him to come along as their guide while they are in the forest.

Scouting Vrath Keep and onwards to Skull Gorge Bride

After talking with Jorr and hearing about Skull Gorge Bridge, the players discuss their next move. They decide on scouting out Vraths Keep on the way to the bridge since it is the reason they are here in the first place. They get to the hydra fight and fail to notice the thing. It gets a surprise round putting a pounding on the factotum. The decision at first is made to stick and fight this thing. It is not until after they take out two heads that they realize they do not have a good method of dealing fire or acid damage. So to wrap it up, after three characters are brought to single digit HP, they high tail it out of there and never look back.

So off they go through the woods and arrive near Vraths Keep. They send the Begulier in to scout things out at night. He goes up to the walls and climbs over after popping an invisibility on himself. Oh yea, another reason they made the beguiler do this is he knows the goblin language, which is key later on.

To make things interesting I decide to have the two worg riders in the stable be drinking and come outside for a piss. I have them decide to go over by the giant skeleton, at which point the beguiler decides to put them to sleep. It goes as follows:

Beguiler: SLEEEEEPPPPP!!!
Me: *rolls a failing will save* Ok the one falls asleep and slumps down in his own piss. The other goblin laughs thinking his friend is just drunk and fell. He starts to wonder though when his friend doesn’t move-

Beguiler: SLEEEEEEPPPPP!!

Me: *roll another failing will save* … the other goblin falls asleep in his own piss too

The player was so proud of himself for this one… He proceeds to check out the door to the stables and goes inside. He notices the two worgs chained up in the stables and they immediately start to howl and growl and make all kinds of noises trying to break their chains. (I know that it doesn’t say that they are chained up in the book, just something I added for the fun of roleplaying out the scouting mission) He suddenly hears another hobgoblin come out of the main barracks yelling for “You damn stupid goblins better shut your stupid dogs up before I have to come in there! Whats this ruckus all about?”

This is when the beguiler knowing goblin becomes key. He decides to make a bluff check yelling back to the hobgoblin in goblin that he is sorry and will get them to shut up right away. Two “SLEEEEEPPPPP!!!!” spells later and the worgs are definitely quiet. The hobgoblin rolls a low sense motive and believes him. He threatens that if it happens again he will get the minotaur to come talk to them and goes back inside. Hearing about the minotaur and feeling like he got sufficient information, he pops another invisibility and makes his way out of there, spotting the manticore on the roof of the building.

The group decides that the keep is very well fortified and that it is more important to destroy the bridge first then come back for the keep. To cut the rest of the session short, they make their way there on the end of the 3rd night after fighting a lackluster battle with a gray render, and an almost TPK against a group of assassin vines. I end the session with a description of the bridge and they are all depressed knowing that there is a dragon to contend with already.

Thoughts
I think the first session went very well. The new player seemed to quickly get a hang of everything and everyone else seemed to really enjoy themselves. Beefing up the encounters definitely made the difference and in each fight at least one character came close to dying, so it is keeping them on their toes. So far going exactly as I planned, except for the skipping of Vraths Keep. Our groups tactics usually consist of smash all enemies and ask questions later, so I was surprised when they skipped out on the opportunity of more loot and xp.

A little long I know but let me know what you think and if you have any advice or questions. Should be playing again next weekend so I will update it then.

[Saintheart]

Bookmarked and watching with interest! :smallsmile:

[Shrikethrush]

It doesn't make sense of the Worgs to be chained, btw. They're intelligent creatures, not animals.

You might want to boost the HD of the Wargs and suchlike so that they're more resilient to sleep/immune. It's great that he's enjoying the spell, but it can be pretty anticlimatic.

[Bubzors]

Hello again to anyone actually reading this. Over the past weekend we got together to play and got a good bit done. This time the factotum player was not here so we had a sub come over to play who dabbles occasionally in D&D. Also, the cleric's player was here for this session so he was more effective than the almost healbot NPC last time. So far with the slight beefing up of the forces in general and playing them as a smart trained army the encounters have been relatively tough for my group. So let us begin where we left off...

The Assault on Skull Gorge Bridge, and Subsequent Retreat

The party is sitting there at the edge of the forest looking at the expanse of open land before the bridge. They fall back into the forest to plan a bit before the assault. They decide to try and take the front two towers and then concentrate fire on the dragon, trying to eliminate it as quickly as possible. So after some pre-fight buffing, they take off across the open land towards the bridge.

I altered this battle slightly to make it more difficult. First off the hell hounds were replaced with dire wolves. I also added a few more Hobgoblin veterans to the squad and had two archers in each of the front towers. Lastly, I added a low-level bard playing a drum just to boost up attack and damage by the hobgoblins during the fight.

The fight opens up with the beguiler dropping a fog cloud in front of the one tower along with a silent image of crows to distract them. The rest of the party moves up, some full moving others taking pot shots at the hobgoblins in the other tower. Both the factotum and the psywar are large now. The factotum is the first to get within melee, and attempts to trip the dire wolf that is attacking him with an AOO. He rolls terribly however and instead of dropping his weapon decides to try and hold on after his failure. He gets tripped. I then roll a critical and do some nasty damage to him. (This will become a recurring theme in this session. The PC's roll crap while I crit. I believe I had something like 6 crits in this battle)

The Psywar catches up finally and thwacks the dire wolf. (This is where I got my first taste of the damage output from this guy. The character has dungeoncrasher and knockback, along with being large and having powerful build. This makes for nasty knockbacks and damage.) The dire wolf goes flying back into the wooden stairway that leads up to the towers. I rule that the bottom part of the stairwell breaks under the impact. This comes to haunt the psywar later on in the encounter.

The dragon then makes his strafing run and hits the psywar, beguiler, and factotum with a clinging acid breath. Thankfully they had resist energy mass up and only puts the factotum to -7. The cleric is forced to rush in and save the factotum while the beguiler pops spider climb and goes up to fight the archers in the tower with the fog cloud. The psywar knockbacks the other dire wolf into the other stairway to the tower and smashes that as well.

During all of this, the archers are still raining arrows fairly effectively down at the party. The dragon makes another strafing run and catches the factotum again along with the cleric. The psywar decides to jump up to the point on the stairs that isn't destroyed since he is large (about 15 feet up) and eliminate the archers in the east tower. Meanwhile, due to the position of the fog cloud that was dropped, sight is lost down the bridge so they have no idea what forces are preparing for them. I have had the other veterans and the sergeant have readied actions on the bridge to shoot the first enemy they see.

After eliminating the first archer in the tower the fog cloud dissipates, leaving the psywar open on top of the tower. Boom, six readied action arrows to the face, four hit, two crit. He goes from almost full health to -9 in one turn. The beguiler and factotum having eliminated the other tower see the psywar go down and decide to get the hell out of dodge. The cleric casts an area effect heal spell the heals 1 point of damage to stabilize the psywar. At this point the whole group is feeling pretty down, having only eliminated the wolves and first towers. There is a group of archers ready to fire at them first chance and a dragon flying around still. Not to mention that the cleric cannot get up the tower to heal the psywar seeing as he destroyed the stairwell.

After some OOC pleading from the psywar, the beguiler player decides to run back and spider climb up the tower to help pour a healing potion down his throat. While this is going on the dragon comes in yet again for a breath attack, but this time the cleirc had readied a sound burst at him. One failed fort save later and the dragon comes crashing down right in front of the duskblade and cleric. On their next turns they both wallop the dragon, one with a crit shocking grasp. Before the dragon gets another chance to act, it is dead. Goodbye Ozzy.

The psywar is up with about 7 hp, the rest of the hobgoblins from the camp have stopped shooting arrows and are charging along the bridge for melee. The beguiler once again says, "I don't care what you guys do, I'm out. Peace." The rest of the party follows suit and takes off.

Licking their wounds, Scouting, and Old Warklegnaw
Having retreated and rested for the evening, the party decides that they need to find a way to destroy the bridge. They decide to send in the beguiler while invisible and silent to go find if there is a weakness that the cleric could use stone shape on. So the cleric and beguiler go off back towards the bridge while Jorr and the rest of the crew go try and find them some forest giants. The psywar and factotum even have and idea to hunt an animal and bring it as an offering to any giants they may meet. Long story short, they hunt and bring a boar to Old Warklegnaw, befriend him, promise to destroy any hobgoblins they can, especially in the Keep, and ask him to try and get his forest giant pals to help them out. Overall, the party RP'ed well and got Warklegnaw's assistance. They say their goodbyes and head back to the meeting place to wait for the beguiler and cleric.

The beguiler arrives back at the bridge to find them on high alert still. He sneaks in invisible and silenced, pops spider climb and starts to climb underneath the bridge to look for clues. However he does not think that silence is a 20 foot radius, and therefore effects the guards patrolling the bridge. Suddenly not being able to hear things makes the guard go alert his brethren and look everywhere for the intruder. Now mind you, the beguiler has no idea this is going on because he is underneath the bridge and can't hear anything. After a few failed search checks he finally finds the weak spot and climbs back from under the bridge to find the entire squad here is running about trying to find whoever is causing the silence. He smartly chooses to take off to alert the others.

After having told the cleric of what he found, they decide to wait for the rest of the party which does not come back until after dusk. They formulate a plan for the cleric to stone shape the weak spot of the bridge while invisible during the night. Without the dragon for blindsense, they do not notice the cleric, who successfully destroys the bridge as the rest of the party charges in to mop up the survivors stuck on this side of the bridge. Finally satisfied they did as best a job as they could here, they turn back and march for Vrath's Keep.

Thoughts
The party actually marched on to Vrath's Keep and started the assault but we did not finish before Game of Thrones came on, so we took a picture of the layout and decided to hold off till next time. I'll write up the whole assault in the next update.

As for the bridge, I really enjoyed it as well as the rest of the group. It is the first time in our 4 years of gaming history that the group tactically retreated after starting an assault. It was a nice change of pace. Usually I as DM roll terribly and they roll great leading to them taking on forces they really shouldn't be able to. They did get lucky with my poor fort save against the sound burst. If they hadn't killed Ozzy then, I do not think they could have destroyed the bridge in time.

I was scared however of the timeline when they decided to split up to find old warklegnaw. At that time they were discussing going back, attacking the keep and seeing if they could get some more supplies and help from Drellins Ferry. As it stands they managed to destroy the bridge just in time, late in the evening of day 6. They are currently attacking the keep in the night of day 7.

Overall it has been really fun so far and looking forward to continuing it. Might be a lapse of about 2 weeks before we play this again as the whole crew can return for our normal campaign. Once it is done though I will post it up on here.

[PrismCat21]

Huzzah! Another Red Hand Journal, Thank you Sir. :smallbiggrin:

[Talesin]

Good read, looking forward to the rest.

[Bubzors]

Hello again. The group has played two times since my last post. As per usual with our group, trying to get everyone together for our normal campaign in the beginning of summer is impossible. Thankfully we started doing the RHOD with anyone who wants to show up. For this session the cast was as follows:

Factotum/warblade: Newcomer, just started playing a month or so ago
Duskblade: My younger brother. Never has played before but picked up real quick and had the two best moments of the night.
Archer Cleric: Veteran, min-maxer
Half-Giant Psywar: Same as cleric
Beguiler: DM of our normal campaign

Vrath's Keep
They made it to the keep in the evening, and before approaching did their pre-fight buffs. They also made use of the beguiler casting invisibility sphere and silence on the party. So they approached the keep staying within 10 feet of the beguiler so they would all be invisible. Having spotted the manticore last time they were here, the decision was made to get the jump on it and kill it before it had a chance to do anything. And that is exactly what they did. It was brutal. The psywar kicked in the door, charging the manticore. Both the duskblad and factotum followed quickly behind, tripping the beast. The manticore tried to stand up the next turn, got hit hard again, and died very unceremoniously.

Pumped from a good start and quick kill, they ran over to the worg stables and attempted to repeat. The beguiler had gotten rid of the stone with silence cast on it for some reason though. So before being slaughtered, the worgs and goblins managed to make enough noise to alert the others. They cautiously approached the doorway getting everyone ready to charge in. During this time I had the Koth gathering the papers in the war room with the minotaur. The hobgoblin's on the inside all had readied actions to attack the PC's as they came through the door.

This is where the party first started taking damage. I rolled very well on my attack rolls and got two criticals. Both the psywar and factotum were large and trying unsuccessfully to quickly destroy the hobgoblins. This worked to the enemies favor however, as they rolled terribly and then blocked line of sight and attacks for the rest of the party. After a few rounds I had Koth sneak through the room and out of the tower while invisible. The minotaur came out swinging, but by then it was too late.

Koth however still had a shining role to play. With all of the PCs all squished close together by the doorway they made excellent targets for fireball. (by the way I had beefed up Koth a little bit with a better selection of feats, one more sorceror level, and better spell selection.) So floating way above the party, he started raining fireballs down upon them. Some failed reflex saves later the entire party was in bad shape. They mopped up the remaining ground forces and went outside to fight off Koth.

They spread out and the beguiler tried to dispel Koth's fly spell, but ended up only taking down his AC buffs. Everyone else was shooting arrows or whatever else ranged option they had, most hitting with his AC lowered now. Damaged and seeing that the keep was lost, Koth decided to get out quick. As he retreated however, the cleric makes one final ditch effort. Firing a few range increments away, he manages to score two hits, one of which is a critical. Koth's HP is now at -4 and he slowly floats to the ground. The battle for the keep has come to an end and somehow they managed to take Koth down too.

Treasure, Interrogation, Execution and back to Drellin's Ferry
Thinking that he may be able to provide some information, the psywar and beguiler take off to try and stabilize him. They get to him just as he gets to -9 and heal him up slightly. Tied up now they drag him back to the keep. They do a very poor job in interrogating him. (In both actual roleplaying and rolling for diplomacy and Intimidation.) They do however find the map and the information on him. Seeing that Koth will not talk and that he will be a liability, the beguiler quickly slits his throat. The duskblade took great offence to this. The character is lawful good and against killing prisoners, but was talked down by the beguiler who made a great arguement about not having the time to drag him back to Drellin's Ferry where Koth would most likely be hung anyway. Upset but seeing the point, the duskblade just walks away from the situation, and joins our Factotum friend, who had just found the secret entrance to the vault.

In the vault the other players are discussing how in the hell are they going to open the locked gates including the veteran players. They are looking at their character sheets seeing if anyone has open lock, discussing how hard it would be to break the bars, etc when my brother has a genious idea. Completely innocently he looks up at me and asks

Bro: "Dimension hop lets me teleport small distances right?"
Me: "Yea why?"
Bro: "If I'm reading this right I can use that four times. Can't I just hop from one vault room to the next and pick up all of the treasure?"
Me: "Why yes you can. That is a great idea"

It was one of those great moments. The veteran players had not even thought about thinking slightly out of the box, and all were entertained that the complete n00b came up with the idea. So they get all of the sweet loots and decide with their new information and the map from Koth to go back and warn Drellin's Ferry.

Town Meeting, repelling an attack, and off to the Blackfens
They make it back to town with no issues, and immediately go and find townspeaker Wiston. They arrive at night so he listens to their preliminary report and asks them to come back in the morning when he can have the rest of the council present. Long story short we roleplayed out the meeting fairly well. The highlight of the meeting was when Wiston asked what they should do and my brother replied, "We need to get as many people as we can, go to Brindol, and Helms Deep that b***h." Which is basically exactly what the book says should happen.

The party was in a dilema over whether to go to the Ghostlord (it really piqued their interest seeing it on the map and asked everyone in town about it), or to go back to Brindol and give warning. This is when I had the encounter listed in the book about a lion of Brindol showing up to warn of roadblocks. I also made it so that the soldier volunteered to ride ahead of the refugees of Drellin's Ferry and give warning to every town on his way back to Brindol. So now hearing of the roadblocks in Rhest, they make a group decision to check out this Ghostlord later. The main reason was self preservation. They did not think they could properly take on someone called the Ghostlord.

They spent the rest of the day gathering small potions and scrolls they may need, identifying all of the items from the keep and actually donating what they could not use to the town. This gave them even more brownie points in convincing the town to leave. And to wrap up the session, I threw in the Goblin Raid encounter. Nothing too remarkable here. One close call with the factotum going into negatives (which has happened in almost every single battle. Starting to be a recurring joke amongst the players) and the battle was won fairly easily. With that under their belts, they decide to cut through the Witchwood via Old Forest Road to the roadblock. (Worth mentioning I kind of changed the exact location of the path so it ran more into the Blackfens.) It is the evening of the 8th day and they are on their way to Act 2

Thoughts
This session was a lot of fun. The players used all of the characters abilities in tandem to easily trump the keep. I was surprised that Koth did not escape. It really came down to the dispelling of his mage armor and shield spells. If that didn't happen, some of the attacks would have missed and he would have been long gone. I was also surprised at how well the new guys played. We have played another session since this one with the party in the Blackfens, but I will post that another time this week.

As always, thanks for reading and hope it was enjoyable

[Bubzors]

This time we had the regular group back playing. However, the group has decided to shuffle characters between players. They wanted to change things up and play classes they never have before. It was fun, but they definitely suffered in planning and strategy as they were not used to the in’s and out’s of the characters.

Manticore and Razorfiend Attack
On their trip through the blackfens I roll a random encounter, and up pops the Manticores. So after a successful spot check, the party notices four manticores flying towards them. Roll initative.

The manticores actually gave the party a run for their money. Just the way initiative fell, all four manticores went in order. This led to a single character getting attacked with 24 spikes a few times. Anyway, the big thing is the beguiler dropped an obscuring mist to help hide the party from flying spikes as the manticores approached. However, the psywar thought it was a good idea to get large and step outside the mist to shoot the approaching manticores. Two rounds of 24 spikes to the face and he was down in the negatives. A similar thing happened to the duskblade, but he managed to stay in the positives. This lead to the Cleric, though he is an archer build, spending his entire time being a healbot. The party ended up grounding two of the manticores and quickly killing them, and shooting down a third. The last one decided these people weren’t worth it and took off.

Now the factotum player is relatively new, and was pumped about having used a potion of fly and tripping one of the manticores. In victory he decided to fly straight up as high as he could and bellow how awesome his character is. Thinking it was kind of funny, I also dropped that while he was up there he could make out a roadblock far in the distance. Reminded once again as to why they were here in the first place, they decide to head off again towards it.

As night fell, I ran the razorfiend encounter. I just used the straight encounter from the book. After having spotted the dead owl on the hillock, they got paranoid. They sent in the beguiler invisible to check it out. He rolled terribly however on both his move silently and spot. Having heard something but not able to see it, the razorfiend popped out of the reeds lit the beguiler up with a cone of acid. Taking pretty good damage, the beguiler ran and hid behind a tree, still invisible. The rest of the fight was uneventful. Two crits from the party, and a few misses from the razorfiend and it was dead. Again, the psywar charge/knockback/dungeoncrasher combo is devastating when he can pull it off.

They proceed to find the owl with the armband along with the other items. They are discussing about how they heard of the elves riding giant owls when the Tiri Kotor come flying in. The players immediately do not like the gruff and demanding Killiar, but manage not to completely mess up the interaction. The elves find the ring and after talking briefly with the PC’s, decide to take them to starsong hill.

Starsong Hill, Funeral, and scouting Rhest
The meeting with the leaders of Starsong hill went as expected. When told that the elves could not help until the Red Hand was removed from Rhest, they made jokes about having to do a fetch quest, then agreed. They immediately asked for owls and were shot down but did take the boats. The party decided to leave the roadblocks for now, reasoning that taking out the base of operations in the area was much more important than a roadblock. After spending the night there, all but the factotum decided to go to the funeral. The character has been played as kind of a jerk the whole time, and usually rubs everyone the wrong way and thought it would be best if he didn’t go. The party convinced him however, which came to their advantage later. The factotum had a little too much to drink, and decided to dance at the funeral. A natural 20 roll later on a perform check had the elves impressed, and the whole party facepalmed that the one who usually destroys diplomatic interactions was doing spectacular with the elves. This is after the factotum has told everyone about “disliking those damn tree-hugging, hippy elves” several times.

With everything wrapped up, they said their goodbyes the next day and boated on up towards Rhest. I decided to not have any random encounters to speed things up a bit. The party anchored when they reached the lake. They decided to sit and watch the ruins for a bit, so I described the bell tower, the base, and all of the lizardfolk villages. They also saw the scene described in the book that has Regi eat two lizardfolk. Then they got to see Saarvith climb aboard Regi and take off. It was now dusk and I rolled Monsoon like weather for the night, so had been dropping hints of a storm looking like it was coming. The players actually spent a LONG time discussing what their attack plan should be, even talking about trying to trick lizardfolk into helping them and spending some time scouting out a village.

As the rain started to come down heavily around them, they decided to send in their Beguiler to scout ahead with expeditious retreat, invisibility, and water walk. Running through the storm he saw the bell tower and hobgoblin guards, then moved on the town hall. It was there he saw the ogres, the ettin, and the outside of the hatchery. Surprisingly, after describing that hissing noises were coming from inside the hatchery area, the player did not actually check it out. He just decided he had seen enough and took off back to the party. So they are still oblivious that the hatchery is even there and that there are more razorfiends. Also, they missed their opportunity to attack during the storm, at night, and while Regi and Saarvith were gone. Not an opportunity this group usually passes up.

Anyway, the next day is bright and sunny without a cloud in sight and the team is kicking themselves for not attacking the night before. So instead of being patient and waiting for night or the dragon to leave again, they move ahead with their attack plan in broad daylight. The plan was to use water breathing to try and navigate towards the bell tower and disable them before an alarm could be raised. However, they did not plan on the water being so muddy they would need a survival check to navigate. Therefore they decided to tie everyone together, and have the factotum navigate with his head barely above water and hiding behind a floating log. The beguiler also dropped a silent image of a few ducks swimming along with the log to hide them even further. Once they were close, the factotum would be turned invisible by the beguiler, use another potion of fly, and attempt to disable the bell while the group attacked.

So, all is going relatively close to the plan, and the factotum is silently hovering by the bell and decides to try and disable it. So he makes a successful check, but I rule that it has the difficulty of tricky and will take 3 rounds. He then makes a move silently check to try and hide that he is messing with the bell, but roles very low. Suddenly two guards on watch look over their shoulders having heard something by the bell, and notice that it looks like something is messing with it; the bell swinging back and forth from the factotum fussing with it. As they approach I remind the factotum that he is soaking wet and dripping water onto the ground. The guards make a good spot check and notice the dripping water and suddenly scream out an alarm. The factotum abandons the disabling, and flies up into the rafters hoping to hide. The bell is rang to alert everyone that there are intruders about. The PC’s in the water hear this and decide its time to swim straight in and start murdering some hobgoblins. And it was late at this point so we decided to wait until next time for the rest.

Thoughts
Good session I thought. Everyone still loves this campaign, especially since almost every fight has someone coming near death. I think I smell a PC death coming up in the assault on Rhest. Speaking of which, the party kind of messed up here. They seem to have not been paying that much attention as they usually do. They noticed that the dragon leaves sometimes with Saarvith, but decided not to wait for it to happen again. They had a storm in the night with the dragon gone, but did nothing. Instead they choose to attack in broad daylight. And now the alarm has been raised. Not looking too good for them.

The bell tower hobgoblins will not present much trouble, but I play on the lizardfolk to mobilize and have poison darts. Also, I am using skullcrusher ogres instead of the normal version, and Regi is going to be large. One question I had for those who have run this before, what is a reasonable time before the lizardfolk reach the town hall after the alarm has been raised? I want the players to feel on a time constraint before a bunch of them show up, but also want it so the players could conceivably finish the job before the lizardfolk arrive.

[Saintheart]

Let's look at how it'd likely go by RAW, then adjust down from there.

If this fight is happening at the town hall, per the map of the ruins at p. 57 of RHOD, then not all the lizardfolk would arrive at once if they're all mobilising from the various huts marked around the lake.

Eyeballing it, the nearest huts look to be about 1500 feet away. The same page says that four or more characters (which I would interpret as PCs) can only paddle one of the lizardfolk's raft (which has to apparently be treated as a rowboat out of the PHB) 40 feet as a full round action.

If you apply the same speeds to the lizardfolk, then by RAW the earliest the first raft of lizardfolk can arrive is 1500/40 = 38 rounds or so after the folk start paddling, which doesn't take into account any rounds spent by the lizardfolk assembling on their rafts. That's obviously a huge period of time, and like I said that's the earliest the first rafts can get there; everyone else has to come further.

That's the RAW version. To cut that time period down significantly, I'd finagle it that the lizardfolk have crafted these rafts for their personal use and to allow maximum speed. PCs certainly are stuck with 40 feet per round if they use a raft because they're unfamiliar with these things. Lizardfolk are not, and can therefore benefit from the Run action with a movement speed of 40 feet so long as they're on the raft, and therefore move at 3 x 40 = 120 feet per round so long as they take a full round action. That brings the time down to 1500/120 = 12-13 rounds or so.

They will look fairly fast at this sort of speed, true; that speed equates to 12 miles per hour. By way of comparison Olympic four-man rowers can pull about 18 miles an hour, but that's done in what amounts to the Jumplomancer of rowing boats. Dragon boats, which are probably a bit closer, are much heavier with more people, and only pull about 8 miles an hour. (Although if you emphasise the lizard folk doing the whole "Hah! Hah! Hah!" thing as they paddle in sync, your party might get the point faster.)

So we've got some options for putting a real time constraint in place. I wouldn't hit the party with every lizardfolk in the ruins at once; rather, about 3 boats in 1 round, then another 3 boats 2 rounds later, and 4 boats 2 rounds after that.

Can your party take out the opposition in 12-13 rounds?

Regular ogres and hobgoblins I'd say most likely and then have a round or two spare to get the hell out of Dodge. What makes it a bit more unpredictable is that you've got Skullcrusher Ogres with close on 100 hitpoints each up there, and they're taking on the dragon at the same time. I didn't run into that combination in my own campaign, mainly because my players pulled the Zero Dark Thirty sequence and took out the ogres and hobgoblin defenders while the dragon was away, smoothing their way with Silence as they went. On most campaign accounts I've seen taking on the whole force at Rhest at once is pretty close to overwhelming for parties at this stage. If they're already close on PC deaths from Skull Gorge and Vraath Keep, then someone's pretty likely to die at Rhest, if not multiples of people. TPKs are entirely possible. In particular your psywar isn't going to have as much opportunity for the whole charge/knockback/dungeoncrasher thing I'd have thought because the quarters are fairly tight around the town hall (especially if you play your monsters smart and they try and toss players into the water and what have you) and Skullcrusher Ogres are pretty damn beefy at resisting bull rushes from size and STR bonuses.

(Also, don't forget at least some of your hobgoblins can get back to the town hall as reinforcements pretty easily: IIRC, the commander there has a potion or two of Fly which was probably intended for that purpose.)

Sorry I don't have more concrete answers...:smallfrown:

EDIT: It also depends what you mean by "finish the job". Remember to win here they have to destroy the razorfiend hatchery, which means they need enough time to kill the razorfiend, search its nest, and then stomp on 30-odd eggs. Even 38 rounds might be pretty damn tight to get all that done and kill the dragon and loot the place and clear out.

If you want to shorten what would be an interminable melee grind when the lizardfolk show up, have the lizardfolk break off their attack when the dragon dies (assuming it dies outdoors). They think of the thing as their god IIRC, so their god falling right before their eyes ought to be sufficient grounds for DM fiat by which to shorten the fight. (Not to mention survival -- if you're paddling towards someone who can take down a dragon, why in gods' names would you think you could take that person on?)

[Bubzors]

First off thanks for the tips and info Saintheart. I have used many suggestions from your handbook in running this campaign and I believe it has made the difference between my party totally destroying this campaign to making it a fun challenge.

That being said, the past session was almost a complete party wipe. They were lucky to escape but that's what they get for charging blindly in the middle of the day when the enemy is alerted. The two changes I made to the mindbender was have glitterdust as a spell known and mindsight as a feat because this party has loved using invisibility. These changes directly lead to a PC getting down to -9 health. Anyway, here is what happened:

The Bell Tower
This was not that bad, seeing at this point the hobgoblin veterans are just fodder to use up some of the PC's spells and chip away at their HP. Where we left was that the factotum was discovered trying to disable the bell tower and make it come crashing down. He had rolled a natural 20 disable device and was 2/3 turns into disabling it, so I nicely ruled that when the bell was rang, the thing fell apart, crushing the hobgoblin who rang it and busting through the ceiling into the lower level.

Then combat opened up. It took a few rounds for the rest of the party to swim up to the bell tower. During this, the factotum was trading hits between the three remaining hobgoblins on the roof. He managed to kill one, before two more reinforcements from below came up. By the time the party caught up the factotum had taken a few lucky hits and decided to fly out over the water to give himself some breathing room. The beguiler dropped a fog cloud on the roof, effectively blocking all sight of what was going on up there.

At this point, the psywar peaked into the room below, and got 3 readied arrows in the face. He decided to wait for the duskblade to catch up before charging inside to face the sergeant and allies. Meanwhile the cleric archer has been making his way slowly to a set of stairs underwater to do climb up into the first floor. He gets there and has a great idea. He declares he wants to climb the stairs to the point where he can just stand up and be waist high in the water. So he does that crouching in the water, and next turn goes rambo style in there, springing out of the water and firing his arrows right in the face of the hobgoblin sergeant. Bam, two hits, one a crit and max damage.

At the same time the duskblade and psywar come charging in and do their job of just destroying all of these poor cornered hobgoblins. Meanwhile the duskblade dismisses his fog cloud and the factotum swoops in to finish the remaining two hobgoblins upstairs. Seeing that he is royally screwed, the sergeant chugs down the fly potion and takes off up out of the hole in the roof caused by the falling bell. Sadly, he did not see the factotum floating up there, having finished the last hobgoblin. The sergeant flies past, givning an AOO. Crit with the scythe and the poor sergeant is missing a head.

It is at this point I describe to the factotum that he sees the scrambling lizardfolk getting into boats and starting to row towards the town hall. Now seeing that there are about 60 lizardfolk coming their way, they try to strategize quickly as to what to do next. This part was entertaining because I told them all discussion takes place in real time in game time, so paranoid they may be overtaken by the lizardfolk, they press on the attack. Sadly, this did not work out well for them...

Failed assault on the Town Hall
So the quick they formulated was that the psywar, cleric, and duskblade would move as quickly as possible underwater to get to the town hall, while the beguiler cast invisibility sphere and silence with the factotum. Those two were to fly over, investigate the razorfiend pit (which they had no idea was inside because they had failed to properly scout it ahead of time) and be ready to ambush once the rest of the party arrived.

The only real preparations I had for the town hall was that the ogres were all awake and on high alert, and Saarvith was with Regi ready to fly out and attack if needed. So, the invisible duo decide to try and unlash the ropes tying the door to the razorfiend pit for some reason and while doing so an ogre notices the door jostling and takes a look. Upon entering the silenced area, he realizes someone is there and runs inside to warn Saarvith and the mindbender. At this time the other ogres on the roof all prepare to throw stones (these are skullcrusher ogres that can throw stones like giants) at the first enemy they see.

The flying duo decide to move over the water by the front door to see what is inside. It is at this point, the mindbender knows that they are there and glitterdusts them. Suddenly the two are lit up like the Fourth of July, and the four ogres use their readied actions to throw stones at the factotum. All four hit and for decent damage. The factotum dumbly had forgotten to heal up to full health, so ended up at -4 health. They go splash into the water and start to sink. The rest of the party is still about 5 rounds away.

So the duo has sank to the bottom, with the factotum bleeding out. The mindbender orders the razorfiend be released to chase the enemies under the water. By the time this happens, the rest of the party has arrived under water, but the razorfiend is in between the cleric and the factotum. Suddenly, the beguiler drops deep slumber, the razorfiend fails and is asleep. So the cleric moves over and heals the factotum which was at -9, and the duskblade coup de grace's the razorfiend. Very anticlimatic...

Anyway the cleric and beguiler see the hole in the floor to Regi's lair, and not knowing the dragon is in there start trudging over there to try the rambo technique again. The psywar has climbed the logs of the razorfiend pit and gets hit with a few rocks from the ogres taking moderate damage. the factotum manages to heal himself a bit for a few rounds.

So we have two party members about to jump into Regi's lair unknowingly, The psywar and Factotum fairly hurt, and the duskblade the only one not in trouble. The psywar and duskblade start fighting the two ogres on the catwalk, the duskblade from the water and the psywar on the catwalk. However, they are not having the best of luck with rolls. Not the same for me however. A full round of stones being thrown at the duskblade, along with two full attacks from the ogres on the catwalk leave him a -4. The mindbender comes out and uses his wand of cause fear just then on the psywar, who of course fails his will save. The only thing that saved the life of the duskblade was that I ruled that as the psywar ran away in fear, he could scoop up his friend.

So now the psywar is in full retreat away from the battle with an unconscious duskblade. It is at this moment I allow a spot check from the cleric and beguiler, who make it and notice that out of the water is a black dragon. The beguiler goes, "Screw this guys, I'm going home," and takes off at top speed along with the cleric. Now the factotum player is pissed he hasn't done anything yet, so he stupidly decides to stay. He gets a lucky crit with the scythe again on the mindbender. Somehow all but one rock misses him. The mindbender tries to dominate him, but fails. He attacks again, kills the mindbender and takes two more rocks to the face. He then jumps into the water and runs away with the rest of the party sitting pretty with 3 hp.

We wrapped up this ass-beating of a session by having the party regroup at their boat, and retreat back away from the lake a bit to camp. Of course during the night, they get ambushed by a group of lizardfolk (I gave a few of them poison darts). They manage to easily kill them but are a little more wary knowing that they have poison darts. We ended the session with everyone discussing what to do next and to formulate a better plan next time.

Thoughts
This whooping happened mainly because of the party's lack of planning. In the other campaign we play in, the DM is a bit easier on the party, so they are used to being able to brute force things. Did not work here. Also, the skullcrusher ogres throwing rocks really did a number on them. They did manage to kill the razorfiend and the mindbender however, along with the bell tower, so that is something. And from listening in to their discussion of plans, they seem to have a much better idea of what to do. I am confident that they will destroy much of the garrison and hatchery while the dragon is out. Despite losing pretty badly, most of the players were actually entertained. They liked that it was challenging and they had to retreat to fight another day. At least no one died.

Anyway, thanks for reading.

EDIT: Also, forgot to mention the lizardfolk arriving at the town hall didn't even come up seeing as the party got beat so quickly and retreated.

[Axinian]

Believe it or not, it seems like this was one of the more successful raids on Rhest if we're judging by campaign journals on the site. For some reason, even intelligent parties seem to forget to plan things out. That said, no one actually died and they did a fair amount of damage, taking out the mindbender, belltower, and razorfiend. Seems like it was a cool session.

[Saintheart]

That was an awesome read, and sounds like it was an awesome session! Can't wait to see how they go with the next attempt...

[Bubzors]

Sooo, we just finished a session tonight, and to say the least it was interesting. I am not quite sure how to proceed from here, more of that in the thoughts section below. But for now, session recap away:

Assault on Rhest Part 2
We last left our grand adventuring party fully rested and healed, watching the town hall from the outskirts of the lake. The players spent a good bit of time discussing their options and plan of attack. After about 30 mins of planmaking and arguements they decided to wait until sunset. I again had Saarvith leave with Regi to go out on a scouting/hunting trip, and again the players squandered the opportunity and waited. So eventually Regi and Saarvith came back and of course then the party decides to attack.

For reasons that escape me, instead of attacking when Regi was gone, they attack in full force. Also, their whole plan hinged on the cleric using the spell control water to raise the water and flood out the first floor, hopefully forcing the enemies all onto the roof. Why they thought this was a good idea with a dragon with swim speed I do not know, but they ran gung ho into it. They found a small building near the town hall to hide out in, and while the rest of the party snuck in closer from under water, Cleric sat in waiting by the building. He used spiritual weapon to distract the ogres, and chipped away at some health over the next few turns. (the god the cleric worships favored weapon is a longbow, so he could hide behind the building and have it continue shooting at the ogres on the roof.)

After a few turns of this, the party is trying to sneak up into Regi's Lair, even though: A) they know the dragon is in there, and B) the base is alerted because the spiritual weapon is firing. At this point the cleric triggers control water, and raises the water level to flood out the first floor. The psywar, with the beguiler clinging to his back, position under the entrance to Regi's lair. At this point I had had Saarvith in Regi's lair getting ready for the attack. Regi spots the intruders, gets Saarvith to grab on, and swims/flys out of the town hall.

The Factotum, beguiler, duskblade and psywar enter the lair, see the hoard of treasures including the box with the phylactery, and checkmark it to see it later for some sweet loots. While this is going on, I have all six of the ogres and the Etting make it to the roof where it is not flooded and lay in wait. All six of them have readied actions to hit the first person who peaks out with thrown rocks. The party then checks out Saarvith's room and the torture room, before the cleric caught up and dismissed the control water. At this point, the factotum peaks his head up the stairs and gets six rocks in the face and almost goes into the negatives. Now knowing that there are a bunch of ogres chilling waiting to slaughter them, they get very cautious.

After a turn or two of buffs, they drop a fog cloud on the roof, along with a slow, and then head up. This part of the battle was pretty ridiculous, with back and forth attacking, lots of missed attacks due to miss chances, and a few close calls. I couldn't do anything with Regi or Saarvith because they couldn't see into the cloud, so I had them circling around waiting for any opportunity to attack. After a long time of back and forth fighting, they killed 3 of the ogres and the ettin. The others ended up jumping down, and circling below the party. Eventually the party killed the ogres below, but Regi and Saarvith did get a few good strafes in a did some damage.

An important detail to note, the party was now in the main entrance area to the town hall, and the duskblade had closed the door to Regi's lair so no one could easily sneak up on them. Key thing is they had not looked at the treasure and had no idea about the Ghostlord's phylactery yet.

This is where things get tricky. I thought it made sense that they would not just high tail it out of there, and at least try for the phylactery. So while they sat in the room and healed up a bit, I had Regi drop off Saarvith to go grab the phylactery from the hoard. After a few good move silently roll's by Saarvith, and a few ****ty listen rolls by the PC's, Saarvith had the phylactery... Not looking too good for the party...

Saarvith escaped with Regi and the phylactery, and the PC's took a few pot shots at them as they retreated. So after a long hard battle and still thinking themselves mostly victorious, they proceed to loot all of the rooms. That is when they find the note about the phylactery... Needless to say, much moaning and kicking themselves proceeded. They then took the loot, destroyed the eggs, and headed back to the elves.
Victorious?
The party headed back to Starsong hill and met with the elves. They told their story, including the discovery of the phylactery and how it was lost. The party had gained enough points during their ventures to both get the Tiri Kotor on their side and the owls to ride on. After spending the night the party decided to ride back on the owls to Brindol to meet Lord Jarmaath, update them, and check on the status of the Vale vs the horde.

They did decide however to split up and send on group to Witchcross to warn the people if they had not been already, and another to Red Rock to do the same. The module only has brief paragraphs about the towns, with Witchcross having some druids and Red Rock some vague sense of racial tension between the dwarves and half-orcs of Red Rock. I took this opportunity to have some fun roleplaying a bit since we had spent most of the night in a long combat that no one was really satisfied with.

In Witchcross the psywar and duskblade land to a mostly abandoned town. They meet the local druids who have refused to leave. The druids plan on staying in the woods and protecting nature while doing hit and run tactics on the Hobgoblins to wear them down. Respecting their decision, the duo wish them the best of luck and take off.

Meanwhile at Red Rock, the others land to find the town still fully occupied. On the fly I decided the people were too stubborn to leave, thinking this would blow over and that the other race (half-orc for dwarves, dwarves for half-orcs) would claim their mines for their own. I played it out as a town of stubborn simple folk who also hated their closest neighbors. The beguiler here stood out as he made a very convincing arguement to retreat to Brindol that included the use of Major Image of the tall walls of Brindol holding back a horde of enemies. The party decides to spend the night in hopes of convincing more people to join in the fight at Brindol, and manage to convince a fair amount of people.

This is when the PC's decide they have not done enough, and concoct a plan to use Suggestion on the leaders of the town. They wanted to save as many people as possible. So a few low will saves later, and the leaders of the town are working their hardest to evacuate the town. Content with their actions, the PC's take off towards Brindol to meet up with their other members.

Meanwhile, I have the other two members show up in Brindol, full of refugees from the Vale. They meet up with Speaker Winston again, and get a meeting with the captain of the Lions of Brindol and Lord Jarmaath. They recap what has happened, including the phylactery, and listen to the updates of the war from Jarmaath. It is here that I decided to stop, mainly because I needed to figure out what to do next wth the phylactery still in the hands of the enemy.

Thoughts
Just as a heads up, I found out that a player from my group has been reading these for both enjoyment and synopsis to refresh between sessions. Therefore I will be spoilering the rest of the thoughts sections. LURCH DO NOT READ THIS!

So the battle was very drawn out, and frankly kind of boring. However, this is mainly due to the players' strategy. There was many times that 3-5 rounds went past that they were just sitting waiting for someone to make the first move. However, the biggest problem with the session was that Saarvith still has the phylactery. I really do not know what to do about this. The module really has no direction for what happens if Saarvith escapes with the phylactery. I do not want to skip the whole Ghostlord section, but am drawing blanks at the moment for how to get the party to do it.

The whole thing about the Ghostlord is it is not supposed to be a combat encounter with him, but at this point, the party is thinking the only choice is to destroy him so he can't help in time for the battle. Also, where do you guys think Saarvith would go? Back to the main horde and admit defeat? I am thinking of having them participate in the asssassins side encounter in the near future.

Basically, I am asking the playground for ideas on how to handle the horde still having the phylactery without it seeming too railroady. The party is at a loss now too, without much direction before the actual battle of Brindol.

Besides this, the players actually had a great time roleplaying trying to convince the towns to leave. It also gave them a feel for how the war was effecting the whole Vale and that it isn't just an isolated incidient.

Sorry if this seems a little like rambling, it is late after the session and I am a little tired.

[Bubzors]

So after some thought and suggestions from others, I think I may have a solution that will make it difficult, but attainable to get the phylactery back. PLAYERS DO NOT READ!

Regi and Saarvith come back to a destroyed hatchery and run off back to Kharn and the main army to inform of their defeat. Here Saarvith is punished and the phylactery taken from him to be hidden within the horde itself (probably very close to Kharn himself, haven't fully decided where yet). I am thinking this may be a good time to run the Marked for Death encounter in the book, seeing as the horde will now recognize the party as potent enemies. With one little change, Saarvith is put in charge of the attack on the party in redemption for his failure.

In the meantime I will have Captain Ulverth urge the party to figure out anything they can to stop the Ghostlord from helping the Red Hand. Also, I believe I am going to make the dwarven mercenaries play a slightly bigger role, and have Jaarmath send the party to make sure the gold sent to the dwarves arrives safely. I am thinking to actually have the Marked for Death take place as an ambush at the Mercenary Gold encounter, kinda mix them together. THEN if they defeat Saarvith, they can find a note about his punishment and assignment to kill the party with a mention of the phylactery in the horde.

This way, if the players feel bold, they can try and stealthy infiltrate the horde and steal back the phylactery. I will of course make this very difficult but not impossible. The party has been resourceful, especially the beguiler, in sneaky/scouting situations. Then, with phylactery in hand they can move on to the Ghostlord.

I am confident in all of this except for if the party actually decides to sneak in and steal the phylactery. Like I said I want to make it a big challenge, yet not impossible. In one of the treasures I gave them a hat of disguise, so they can use that along with a lot of the beguiler's spells/skills to get in. I see this turning into a solo, or just two members of the party sneaking in however, and I don't want to make it so the other players are bored the whole time.

So in all, what do you guys think? Please leave any suggestions you may think of.

[Bubzors]

We finally got to have another session last night. The updates are going to be sporatic from now until the end of summer as usual for our group. Everyone just gets too busy on the weekends and its hard to get people during the week.

Anyway, in last nights session we finally had deaths in this campaign, two to be exact. I decided to go with the ideas I posted above to give the players a chance to get the phylactery back, but it didn't work out so well. So, here we go:

Immerstal the Red & Shopping
A majority of the beginning of the night was spent finishing leveling characters from last time as no one did it between sessions. Finally they are ready and we take back up right after their meeting with Jarmaath and Captain Ulverth. Afterwards Ulverth tells them that he believes that the Ghostlord must be stopped from helping the Red Hand one way or another. If either him or his undead minions attacked Brindol the local militia and Lions of Brindol would be hard fought to defeat them. He suggests seeking out Immerstal the Red to see if he may have more information on the location of the Ghostlord.

Seeing the PC's as powerful allies who also have flying mounts to help them travel faster, he also asks the PC's that if they have the time to find and escort the caravan with the gold for the mercenaries. He fears (rightfully) that with all of the increase in Red Hand activity that the shipment may be attacked before arriving at the Hammerfist Holds. The PC's basically say, yea we will think about that, and head off to see Immerstal.

In the shop they meet his sphinx wife who shows them upstairs to the wizard. Of course I roleplay him as cranky wizard who is annoyed at being disturbed by "troublesome adventuring vagabonds." However, after the party mentions the phylactery and the Lich, his interest peaks a bit and listens to the party. He agrees to look over his library for the night for 100GP and the players agree. They say goodbye and leave.

The next good bit of the session was spent with the players deciding which magic items to buy seeing as this is the first real chance to go shopping. Finally when they are done with that they go back to Immerstal, get the locatoin of the Ghostlord, and also some information on Lich's. After a bit of talking, they players leave and start to discuss their next options. Two want to try and convince the Lich to stop without the phylactery, two want to kill him, and the other has no idea. At one point they throw around the idea to try and convince the lich to have them kill him, so he can reform by his phylactery and put a whooping on those who stole it from him ha. This idea was quickly abandoned however.

Finally they decide at the very least to make sure the payment gets to the dwarves so they can have more firepower in the defense of Brindol. At the very least it is on the way to the Ghostlord so they can continue on there if they decide to. So off they go midway through the 20th day.

Mercenary Gold
For this encounter I decided to change the goblins into hobgoblins, make more of them present and add a bladebearer to make it more than just a slaughter by the PC's. So, riding in on their owls, the PC's see the carts and dead soldiers from far away. In usual fashion they decide to charge right on in. The factotum is first in initiative order, uses his owl to doublemove, then leaps off dealing some major damage to the bladebearer. One of the ettins close in and hit the factotum for decent damage.

It is at this point a certain houserule we use must be explained. We have always played that if you roll two natural 20's, then confirm the crit, it is an instant death. It has only happened like 4 times in the 5 years of us playing together, and always at crucial moments for the party against a big enemy... Not this time. One hobgoblin charges in the attack the factotum. He attempts to trip with his guisarme. On the touch attack he rolls a 1... The hobgobin runs up and attacks. I roll in the open for the attacks. 20... 20... 12 (which with the attack modifier is JUST enough to confirm). Insta-dead factotum. By a hobgoblin regular. In the first round of the fight. The whole table was silent for a moment before the factotum declared "MOTHER-******!!!!!"

The rest of the battle was pretty uneventful as I expected. Did find out that the players do love their new owl mounts, using a bunch of aerial tactics. The duskblade kept strafing by using burning hands on the hobgoblin regulars, effectively taking out a group of them by himself. The Beguiler flew around throwing slow and other battlefield control. The cleric just peppered the enemies with arrows and threw a heal at the barbarian. The barbarian jumped in the middle taking the factotums place and did his normal job of tons of damage and knockback. The barbarian came close to dieing, but was thankfully backed up by the duskblade.

They find the carts with the locked coffers and gold. Surprisingly they decide not to open any, and just continue on the mission towards the Hammerfist holds. They also expend the ressurect from the staff of life to bring back the factotum. So, with two players circling above on owls, the rest hitch up the carts and continue on their way to deliver the payment to the mercenaries.

Marked for Death
As I described in my above post, I decided to have Regi and Saarvith be leading the assasination squad on the PC's trying to make up for their failure. To take into account that they significantly increase to challenge of the ambush, I decrease the blackspawn raiders to 3 and the Barghest to 1. However, it turns out they do not even really matter, as once again the party completely botches the whole thing.

So, during dusk I have the two flying PC's notice the group of enemies and the tied up humans from about a mile or more off. Still too far to notice any details like if the prisoners are dead. They come down and talk with the other members of the party. For some reason they decide it is a good idea to leave the factotum and barbarian(main melee damage dealers) behind to guard the gold and come up with a convoluted plan to rescue the people. It took over 40 mins in real time for them to come up with this plan and in the end it was fairly stupid. Their downfall as you will see comes from their insistence on using the owls.

The plan is as follows, the beguiler is going to fly in on his own owl, accompanied by the cleric and duskblade on another owl. Once in range of fog cloud, which is over 400 ft, he will drop it on the prisoners and enemies. This kind of screwed them as they could not make out from that distance the prisoners were dead, and after the fog cloud, when they approached had no chance to notice. The next part was to have silence on the duskblade and cleric, which would land on the tree the two prisoners were tied to. The duskblade would climb down, see how the prisoners were and take off with one after dimension hopping the other onto the owl with the cleric.

This may have worked out, except they never noticed the dragon and raiders inside the house. The raiders spotted the beguiler circling above the fog cloud, and same with the dragon using blindsense. So now the duskblade and cleric are truly screwed, as they are in silence and cannot hear any shouts of warning, while also being in the fog cloud and not being able to see out of it. The duskblade notices the bodies are dead just as Saarvith and Regi take to the sky. This is when things turn south for the party. The Duskblade gets hit a few times by the ogres, and one blackspawn raider before taking off with expeditious retreat. The cleric finally realizes what is going on when the beguiler dismisses the fog cloud, and he takes off towards the duskblade to try and pick him up on the owl.

At this point I have the enemies stop targeting the players and try to shoot down the owls. A few arrows from the hobgoblins and Saarvith later, and the owl with the cleric and duskblade manage to escape with just about 3 hp. Oh yea, in the meantime the Factoum and Barbarian noticed this going on from their owls over a half mile away, so they are of no use to the party. The beguiler however is not so lucky as his companions. Regi decides to harass the beguiler and his owl with acid breath. One failed save later by the owl and he is dropping out of the sky. The beguiler survives the fall, dumps a cure potion down the owls throat and tries to take off again. He goes invisible, but the dragon has blindsense. Another two rounds later of chasing, he breaths acid again. Beguiler fails his save. Same with Owl. Owl is unconscious, Beguiler dead. Having watched their companion be shot out of the sky, the surviving members take off to regroup.

Thoughts
I am not sure if I was too rough on them during this session. The factotum thing was a complete fluke, and that happens so no big deal. However, I really imagined the marked for death to go a lot better. If they had reconned a little, the beguiler definitely would have noticed the prisoners were dead and that it was staged. Oh well. Also, if the cleric had popped a resist energy mass this whole situation could have been avoided. Funny enough, right before they went in the cleric said, "What else should I buff up? Resist energy mass acid just in case? Nah, I don't think we'll need it." Needless to say he has now vowed to cast that every battle no matter what ha.

Sadly though, the majority of the players seemed disappointed at just how badly the night went. Surprisingly, the beguiler did not care too much, saying **** happens and looks forward to making another character. Also, because the factotum died right in the beginning of the first battle, and was left out in the second, the player literally did next to nothing.

Also since they did not kill Regi or Saarvith, the players once again missed out on an opportunity to get info to find the phylacctery. Not sure where the party will go next, but I think they may try their luck against the Ghostlord...

As always, thanks for reading!

[Bubzors]

Sorry the long delay between posts, but the summer months have caused a wide gap between sessions as it usually does. We have however completed two sessions since last update, both of which have had a much better outcomes than the previous session. We also introduce the beguiler's new character, a gnome sorceror that is very similar in capabilities as the old beguiler.

Regi and Saarvith Meet their End
So after the disapointing failure of a rescue in which the Beguiler lost his life, the team retreats to a secluded spot and licks their wounds. They spend the down time to discuss what to do next. They are all at a lost, seeing as they just lost a member of the team, don't have the phylactery and no way to deal with the Ghostlord. Finally, after a long time of discussion they decide that Regi and Saarvith have to go down.

Suddenly they hear a from a distance. In the not so distant morning sky they can make out Saarvith riding Regi and toying with some gnome below, sweeping back and forth taking pot shots at the poor fellow. The group decides to take this opportunity and takes off immediately towards the fight.

A short time later they get close enough for Saarvith to notice the party. Seeing his enemies come towards him, the duo stops messing around, pelts the gnome with a few arrows and a line of acid, and heads towards the party. The party put up a few buff spells on their way into the fight, and spread out. The party cleric readied an action to use Downdraft once the dragon comes fairly close in an attempt to ground the dragon.

So the dragon come tearing towards the party, with him and regi raining acid and arrows down upon them. However, as soon as they get within 30 ft, the cleric pops downdraft and the duo come slamming into the ground. The psywar, factotum, and duskblade all immediately jump on Regi, trying to max the amount of damage they can do. Being buffed, prepared, and a having a few lucky rolls leads to Regi never rising off of that ground again.

Seeing his long time companion just get destroyed in mere seconds, Regi drinks a fly potion and trys to get away. The factotum however successfully trips him, keeping him in position. Next round of turns come by and the team effeciently dispatches Saarvith.

Also, during the past few rounds the group of Blackspawn raiders and the barghest have been running to catch up to their masters. Saarvith is slain on the same round as that group wades into combat. Without the element of surprise, and the party being buffed, the newcomers didn't stand a chance. A few rounds later of trading blows, and the enemies all lie cold on the ground.

In usual adventurer fashion, the team starts to methodically strip the bodies of their valuable possessions. As this is going on, the gnome looks on at the coldhearted looting and meekly thanks the group for helping. At this time, one of the party looks up from the looting and says, "Hey, you look like you can handle yourself, casting spells and all. We just lost our arcane spellcaster to a horrible death by this dragon, so we need a replacement. We kill other sentient beings and usually take their valuable belongings. Also we are the good guys. Want to join up?" And bam, the murder hobos have a new companion. (Should be noted that this campaign is a side one to our main thing, with rotating players, so not much actual RP time is spent on developing characters...)

Amongst the loot they find a letter from Wyrmlord Kharn to Saarvith. The letter basically outlined that Saarvith has been officially stripped of his title of wyrmlord for his failure to protect Rhest, that the phylactery will stay with Kharn himself in the Horde, and to prove himself again Saarvith must eliminate the adventurers that stopped him at Rhest. The party chews on this key bit of information and start to make their way onwards toward the Hammerfist Holds.

Recruiting Dwarves and Infiltrating Enemy Camps
So after another day or two of carting along these chests of gold, the party finally arrives at the location with the dwarves. They get to meet the leader of the mercenaries, talk to him for a bit, and hand over the payment. As soon as he sees the money, the mercenary leader claps his hands, and motions for his boys to break camp. Gold and glory awaits them in Brindol!

The party turns down an offer to accompany the mercenaries back to Brindol, saying they have some more important buisiness to handle. The team has come to a unanimous decision: they are going to attempt to infiltrate the Red Hand horde itself and steal the phylactery back. The party then spends the next hour or so IRL scouting the horde and developing a plan of attack. Lots of arguing back and forth, and looking up any spell that could help ensues.

Two bits of key information they found out through scouting: 1) Abithriax usually spends the day circling about the horde, doing a bit of scouting/hunting. At night he usually finds his own little clearing a bit off from the main encampent. 2) They successfully identified Kharns tent that gets erected every evening when camp is made.

With this they decided on the following plan. The sorceror cast invisbility of the rest of the team and their owls. The sorceror himself cast a silent image that made him and his owl look to be Saarvith and Regi returning to the Horde, heading directly towards Kharns tent. They hoped that Kharn and some others inside the tent would be drawn out to see what Saarvith had to report, and while they were distracted by this, the rest of the party come swooping in towards the tent. They would get inside the tent, use locate object to try and find the phylactery, grab it and get out as quick as possible. The sorceror would circle the tent a few times to try and distract, and as soon as his cover was blown hightail it out of there.

So, nightfall comes and they begin to execute their plan of attack. Sorceror comes down below the skyline, concetrating on making the silent image of himself as Saarvith and Regi. As he approaches, Kharn steps out of his tent and awaits for Saarvith. The party swoops down, quietly cuts an entrance into the side of the tent and drops in. The cleric uses locate object necklace in an attempt to find the phylactery. They come upon 3 large chests all locked, all pinging with some form of necklace. They do one quick search, finiding nothing of importance, and decide the best course of action is to grab a chest, load it on their owls and take off.

So now is where the plan starts to fall apart. Kharn and the others watching the sorceror are getting suspuscious as he has landed but not dismounted, and not responding to calls from Kharn. Also, one of the guards by the tent entrance also can't help but notice that three chests are magically floating across the room. The alarm is raised and the sorceror takes off as quick as possible. An important piece of information to note here: there are 5 PC's, and only 4 owls as one died with the beguiler. The cleric sans armor and the factotum rode in on an owl together.

So now the camp around the tent is starting to wake, grabbing bows and other weapons. However, most of them are confused as to where to attack, and only a few notice the floating chests. In the meantime most have directed their attacks at the sorceror and his owl. Thankfully he had enough spells to blur himself. They both manage to escape with about 3 HP and much laughter is had that the sorceror almost died on his first time out with the group.

Here is where another bump in the plan happens for the rest of the party, they realize they are all invisible, including the owls, and are having trouble finding out where they are landed. The party wastes a few precious rounds bumbling about for the owls. The duskblade hops on one owl and takes off. The cleric loads up his chest and takes off as well, dodging arrows the whole time. This leaves the psywar and factotum with a heavy chest each. They attempt to load both chest and themselves on the owl, but realize the poor thing cannot hold all of the weight.

Starting to panick as enemies close in around him, the psywar player looks down at his sheet and notices that he has a bag of holding he had forgotten about. He proceeds to smash the lock on the chest, flip the lid open, and scoop as much as the treasure within into his bag of holding. He then mounts with the factotum, and takes off into the night. Elated they managed to pull it off, the party reunites at a safe distance and takes a look at the loot. They get a fair share of treasure, but no phylactery in the two chests. The psywar then empties out his bag of holding, and lo and behold, the phylactery comes out. Spirits renewed, they collect their stuff and head towards the ghostlords lair.

Thoughts
All of us really enjoyed this session. The players got their revenge, and the tension was awesome as they attempted their heist. The look on everyones face when the psywar realized he could use his bag of holding was great. I also had rolled to see what chest the phylactery was in, and I had rolled the one being held by the psywar. When he came up with the plan for the bag of holding, it was too awesome to deny the phylactery any further.

Anyways, I got one more update I'll hopefully get to soon in which the party takes their try at the Ghostlord.

[Bubzors]

So tonight we are scheduled to play again and figured I should finally get around to updating the journal from our last session. This time they finally go through the Ghostlord's lair, and for my usual bumbling party, actually manage to successfully talk their way through the Ghostlord encounter.

Varathian and Ulwai
The party reaches the wasteland near the Ghostlords lair and fly on their owls until they see the Lion shaped base. They decide to come down a bit away from the lair and leave their owls to fly about on their own until summoned. Cautiously they approach the lion, debating on whether or not to go in the mouth or the bottom entrance. Paranoia about the ghostly lions swirling about the head make them opt for the lower entrance however.

As they approach Varathian notices them and climbs a bit up the wall waiting to ambush. The players fail the listen checks and blindly walk up the stairs. Three of the PC's are conviently lined in a row, so Varathian unleashes her breath attack to start the battle, dealing pretty decent damage. The rest of the battle goes south very quickly for the behir after this however.

Varthian drops a globe of darkness down inside the lair hoping to help deflect some attacks. The PC's approach, shooting some ranged attacks with minor success. Seeing the cleric somewhat seperated from the group, Varathian leaps off the wall and successfully grapples him. The cleric gets dealt a fair deal of damage and is one round from swallow whole. The players take this opportunity to close ground and whoop on Varathian. I am fully thinking that at least I will take down the cleric with this encounter before Varathian is crushed next round, but the cleric pops his anklets of translocation and frees himself...

The only exit blocked off by the PC's, and low on health, Varathian angrily grabs the cleric in her mouth again, hoping that the miss chance from darkness can keep her alive one more round. It doesn't. Bye bye Varathian.

The team takes time to collect their thoughts and heal up a bit. Thinking that since this is the Ghostlords lair and there will be traps/secrets galore, the team goes into search mode. From now on until the end of the session, the group stops and purposely searches every nook and cranny. So of course they find the secret passage in this room.

The group walks ahead, putting the psywar in the lead. He walks right past the ghost lion and gets swiped and drained for 4 Str. Everyone who can moves up and attacks. The next turn the lion again drains the psywar for 2 Str, for a total of 6 (this becomes very important later). The rest of the party rolls well for miss chances and destroys the ghost. Quickly learning from their mistakes, the cleric pops the spell Hide from Undead to avoide situations like this again.

They press on down the hallway, and the other two lions fail their will saves and do not notice the team walking right by them. Meanwhile, Ulwai and her troops have heard the Varathian fight and the ghost battle and are prepared as described in the book. The party wanders into the welcoming chamber and can't help but notice the fog everywhere. They slowly bumble about touching all of the wall to get the layout of the room, and then turn back to open the door where the Red Hand troops are hiding.

They open the door and are immediately attacked from the Monks (I restatted them all to unarmed swordsages). The details of the following battle are a little hazy but essentially it is long and drawn out. The party is bottlenecked by the doorway, with the monks hitting whoever steps up. The psywar was in the frontline swinging away, but due to the 6 str drain and poor rolls literally missed over a dozen times in a row. It was quite entertaining to see the main damage dealer so ineffectual. Also part of the reason the battle took so long as he only hit about 2-4 times.

I ran the battle basically as is in the book and it turned out alright. The monks kept them bottlenecked, the clerics healed, summoned the hellhounds to flank, and peppered the enemy. Ulwai sang to boost her allies and did thunderstrike several times to good effect. The factotum almost died again, coming down to 2 hp, but managed to survive.

The end of the fight is where it actually gets interesting. Ulwai cast confusion on the factotum and then a few rounds later, when defeat was obvious threw down her weapons and surrendered. I was trying to preserve her here, having her bluff her way out with some BS story about being forced to be here blah blah blah. Basically biding time until she could escape. She also did not dismiss the confusion on the factotum, knowing there were only a few rounds left and hoping he may kill one of his severly injured teammates. This plan COMPLETELY backfired however. Here is a play by play of what happened.

Ulwai surrenders with very low hp to the duskblade and factotum. They are suspicous, but want information from her so decide to tie her up. However, the only character that is any good with Use Rope is the factotum. Luckily he rolls the percentage on confusion that allows him to act normally, and ties and gags her. The rest of the party finishes off the remaining doom hand cleric in the other room. Factotum turn comes around. He rolls on confusion again. Lands on attack the caster... Standing right next to her, he swings, lands a crit, and executes Ulwai right out...

It was quite entertaining watching the whole party curse the luck of the dice and stupid confusion.

The Ghostlord
The party feeling a bit down from the accidental execution of Ulwai, nonetheless methodically loot the bodies. They then to proceed to search all of the ajoining rooms and the mouth entrance to the lion. Like I said before, they literally decided to search every corner, so of course they found the other secret passage in the welcoming chamber. They decide to take this path and cautiously head down it.

One of the things I changed for this lair is to have the Ghostlord in the Pool of Rebirth room actively making undead for the Red Hand instead of moping about in the other chamber as written. This was also because I thought that the party would screw up the discussion with him and end up fighting, so I wanted him to have a bit of backup from the bonedrinkers.

Needless to say the party comes to the end of the secret hallway, and uses detect evil. Detecting a powerful aura on the other side, they assume it is the lich and back up to regroup. The players spend the next 15 minutes discussing what exactly they will say to the Ghostlord, and decide to take Ulwai's body with them as a trophy to the Ghostlord. So the team takes a deep breath and strolls into the room to face down the Ghostlord.

Instantly the Ghostlord looks up and sees the party and screams, "I told you to never come to these chambers unbidden. How dare you..." This is when he finally notices that the party is not hobgolins, and that they are in fact carrying Ulwai's corpse into the room.

The party: "Sorry to disturb you Mr. Ghostlord Sir, but we have brought you a trophy we think you would like. I understand you did not enjoy their precense in your home."

GL: "Who are you to make such presumptions?! How am I supposed to get my phylactery back now! My precious is lost to me..." Starts to lose focus and mumbles off to himself about the phylactery, half forgetting the adventurers are there.

Party: "Well um, actually what if we told you that they didn't have your phylactery anymore?"

GL: Snapping back to attention at the mention of his phylactery. "They do not have it? Hmm." His eyes suddenly flare up in anger, "Do you!? How dare you come here and talk riddles. Speak now or I will feed you to my minions!" At this point the bonedrinkers come out of the alcoves in the ceiling making their prescense known.

Party: "We have access to your phylactery yes. However, we were wondering if we couldn't make a trade for it. Your phylactery for help against the Red Hand at Brindol."

GL: "You dare blackmail me in my own home? How about this exchange: my phylactery for your life. Decide quickly before I change my mind."

Party: "Ok ok ok, maybe that was a little much to ask. How bout you just don't help the Red Hand?"

GL: "Fools. Hand over my precious and you shall never see me again in your puny lives. Hurry before I lose my patience."

Psywar: "Good enough for me" Pulls out the phylactery that had hid in his bag of holding and hand it over.

The Ghostlord cackles in glee in getting his phylactery back and immediately turns around and heads back towards the Chamber of the Betrayed. The bonedrinkers still stir seeing the party sticking around a bit longer. Seeing their opportunity to bolt, they turn around and get out as fast as possible.

Having escaped the lair, they immediately get on their owls and make their way back to Brindol.

Thoughts
Overall really fun session. I had warned the players in advance that during the Ghostlord encounter anything they said would be considered in character. This caused a lot of tension which was appropriate, and they actually discussed what to say beforehand. It was also quite entertaining watching the bruiser that has been the psywar be completely ineffective.

Also I did not expect the confusion spell to backfire so horribly for Ulwai either. Honestly I forgot that there was a percentage to attack the caster. Oh well, it was entertaining either way. The party will be arriving at Brindol about 10 day before the horde. This leaves them plenty of time to get items made or train the troops. I am really excited for the battle.

Anyway, thanks for reading!

[IronFist]

Wow, finally a party that handled the Ghostlord right ^^