Red Hand of Doom is Still Cool, Right?

[Dravda]

Sit down and buckle in, everyone, because those crazy hobgoblins are at it again...

(MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD! If you are one of my players, stop reading! If you're unsure if you're one of my players, you're not.)

Red Hand of Doom has been one of my favorite published modules ever written, ever since I discovered it years ago. These days, I'm playing Pathfinder rather than 3.5, which adds a little more work in running the module, but nothing too excessive.

I'd like to thank Saintheart for his marvelous RHoD Handbook (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?171284-The-3-5-Red-Hand-Of-Doom-Handbook-for-DMs-Major-spoilers!-WIP-PEACH!), which has been an invaluable resource. Special thanks also go to Antariuk, whose maps have been handed out to all my players instead of the provided ones.

Without further ado, our lineup is as follows:

Caliden Linalda, a human rogue sword-and-board combatant, native of Witchcross and member of the House Kaal Elite Guard.

Restatted in chapter 2 as a TWF ranger.
Eliora Fel, elf wizard with emphasis on summoning and controlling enemies, native of Brindol and apprentice to Immerstal the Red.
Lendon Varols, human cleric of St. Cuthbert with emphasis on support and controlling enemies, native of Marthon.
Garyl Varrion, human barbarian, native of the Marth Forest.

Left the game after session 2.
Martin Longheart, human fighter wielding a polearm, native of Brindol.

Joined in session 3.

It's worth noting that I have a very inexperienced group on my hands: while I introduced the barbarian and cleric's player in 3.5, they jumped on 4e and 5e when they came out and have been playing them exclusively ever since. The wizard's experience is mostly in 5e, but she picks up new systems quickly. Only the rogue's player has much experience with Pathfinder, so I've been relying on him to help teach the others. For this reason, you'll notice that I advocated the group stay close to the traditional "nuclear party." Additionally, I started them at level 6 instead of level 5. They get a few more toys to play with, the encounters are a little more forgiving, and I can upgrade the bad guys if need be, since I'm already going to be under the hood anyways.

We're playing once per week whenever we can schedule a conference call, and I generally cancel the game rather than run without someone for a session ("disappearing plague" is my pet peeve).

Our cleric of St. Cuthbert has long desired to go adventuring and make a difference in the world. When he heard of the haunted Vraath Keep, he decided to make the journey west to put a spirit to rest. Hiring the barbarian as a bodyguard (with the barbarian more interested in looting the legendary vault of Vraath Keep rather than putting down ghosts), they set off.

In Brindol, they joined with two more travelers: a member of the House Kaal Elite Guard, traveling with a young wizard. Lady Kaal had heard rumors of bandits and raiding parties along the Dawn Way outside of Drellin's Ferry. With a vested interest in keeping the Vale a profitable place to do business (and always interested in making Lord Jarmaath look incompetent and out-of-touch), she dispatched one of her elite retainers to survey the situation, rally the Drellin's Ferry militia, and resolve the situation. She even hired a young wizard to provide backup, in case he needed an extra edge.

Note: Since we're just starting off, rather than working with existing characters, I went out of my way to get everybody integrated into the setting. My hope is that it will help them become more invested in the setting as the campaign unfolds.
Right off the bat, the first fight did not inspire confidence. Nobody was ready for the game when it came time to roll dice, and we spent most of the first session making characters. I was frustrated (having let the players know a month in advance and being reassured by everybody that they would be ready to play), but took it as an opportunity to help everyone become acquainted with the rules.

As the encounter began, things went to hell in a handbasket quickly. The archers began whittling down the party's hit points, while it became quite obvious that the wizard had selected no area control spells or the like, instead casting whip of spiders and attempting to wade into melee. The cleric, likewise, forsook his spells and put his questionable feat choices (point blank shot and precise shot) to use with his crossbow.

The only combatant I added to the fight was a hobgoblin sergeant, rebuilt as a teamwork-based fighter. With him granting teamwork feats to the other regulars (and the barbarian unable to roll above a 4 on an attack), things began to look grim. Things got worse when the second wave showed up (so much so that I pulled the cleric, having him putz around in the farmhouse for a few rounds instead of wading straight in).

The cleric went down, with the party mired in rough terrain on the side of the road, surrounded. The rogue was doing quite well (being the only well-built character on the field), but everyone else was suffering. Things came to a head when we learned that the barbarian had decided not to buy any magic items, because "I hate that part of character creation." He had been insisting that 5e was the superior system all the way through the session, and it was becoming apparent that while he liked being at the table with us, this was not the game he wanted to be playing.

Session 1 ended there, with me realizing what a poor job I had done preparing my players for this game and system.
Session 2 was cut off abruptly by real-life issues, but Session 3 marked the party's grand comeback. Everyone hit the books (with the rogue's player taking the lead in helping everyone). With my permission, nearly every character saw significant rebuilds (except the barbarian, who displayed a complete lack of interest in doing any reading or homework for the game).

The issue was avoided when the problem player's work schedule changed, forcing him to bow out. I invited another player, who rolled a polearm-wielding fighter to replace him after the fight.

Combat resumed with the cleric making his presence known. The barbarian failed his save and was paralyzed by hold person, then was summarily executed by the hobgoblin bladebearer (rebuilt as a warblade).

The wizard cast spiked pit, trapping the hobgoblin sergeant and crippling the Red Hand forces' ability to coordinate. She then cast summon monster, bringing desperately-needed reinforcements to bear.

With the rogue flanking the hobgoblins, using a summoned boar as a buddy, the Red Hand forces were mopped up without too much more trouble. The rogue has taken an archetype that gives him medium armor, and combined with his dexterity and shield, he has a VERY high armor class that proved too much for the hobgoblins.
The group looted the Red Hand, marveling at their expensive gear and taking note of the unusual holy symbol of Tiamat carried by the enemy cleric. They found the remains of a butchered merchant caravan, including one guard who was still alive: the fighter. With him rescued, they set about interrogating their two captives (the bladebearer and cleric).
What followed was perhaps the most incompetent bit of interrogation I've ever seen. The party began with threats of torture, mutilation, and death (led by the rogue), then rolled poorly on his intimidation. The hobgoblins, being the fanatics they are, were unimpressed and invited the party to do their worst. So they gutted the warblade.

They then turned their threats to the cleric, who proved even MORE stubborn. When it became clear that intimidation and torture wouldn't work...they doubled down with more threats of intimidation and torture. The cleric laughed and spat in their faces, a fact for which they killed him.

The party left the encounter knowing nothing useful.
If I had feared the botched interrogation would set the tone for this group of roleplayers, I was pleasantly surprised. They greeted Sergeant Hersk cordially (despite the rogue deciding that the place looked suspiciously tranquil), and were shown around town. They opted to stay at the Old Bridge Inn, since it had Hersk's recommendation, reasoning that a local favorite would be a better place to get the lay of the land.

There, they learned the history of Vraath Keep, and decided that the place was most definitely haunted. That evening, they were approached by Norro Wiston, and took his offer with some suspicion. They agreed to locate the source of the hobgoblin problem and report on their numbers, nothing more. Some excellent rolls followed (combined with some harsh, well-reasoned arguments), and they talked him up to his upgraded reward for their help.

With the hook of a seasoned woodsman on the table, they set off to find Jorr Natherson.
The hydra looked spooky and talked a mean talk (and ate the wizard's summoned boar surprisingly quickly), but it was quickly wolf-packed and destroyed by the party. The fighter was upgraded via enlarge person, and the rogue got into a flanking position after they lured it onto the causeway. The hydra was dead in two or three rounds.
The encounter with Jorr went well. On ThiagoMartell's advice, I ran him essentially as Clint Eastwood's character in "The Gran Torino."

"Who the hell are you? Get off my lawn!"

The party loved him.
With Jorr leading the way, they approached Vraath Keep and were there by late afternoon on Day 2. Jorr pointed out signs of recent hobgoblin passage, and they surveyed the ruined keep as they planned their attack...

I'll be updating weekly as we play. Thanks for reading!

[Elder_Basilisk]

I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes for you.

I'm running RHoD in Pathfinder too but I started at level 1 and play once a month (or so) so we're two or three sessions from actually starting the adventure.

[Dravda]

The party snuck up close to Vraath Keep, recognizing the danger the gardener's shack posed and wisely staying clear. The wizard cast invisibility on the rogue, and he was off to scout the keep. Peering around, he found the hobgoblins at their dice games with Karkilan watching, as well as spying the worgs and their riders (beating a fast retreat when I described the worgs stirring from their sleep and sniffing the air suspiciously). Not wanting to open any doors while invisible, he didn't locate Koth or the manticore.

A plan was hatched: they would kick in the door to the stables first, eliminating the worgs and their riders. They hoped to be able to discreetly take on the defenders in groups, rather than fighting the entire keep at once.

It went poorly. The goblins and worgs were killed efficiently, but an alarm was raised in the process. Slamming the stable doors shut, the party reconsolidated and prepared to receive a charge, planning to bottleneck the Red Hand's superior numbers in the doorway. Unfortunately, this gave the Red Hand time to gather in the courtyard, weapons at the ready.

The rogue (foolishly) made the first move, opening the stable door. A fusillade of readied attacks hissed through the doorway, injuring the fighter. Wyrmlord Koth himself was there and lobbed a fireball into the stables for heavy damage (lightning bolt is a weak choice anyways, and I statted him as a draconic sorcerer with red dragon heritage. He gets improved damage when casting fire spells).

Injured, surrounded, and backed into a corner, the party's tactics promptly went to hell. Some baffling choices followed, with the rogue (still uninjured -- evasion!) trying to jump out of the doors to solo the entire encounter by himself. The fighter drank a potion of cure light wounds. The wizard cast summon monster III to help even the fight, while the cleric channeled his healing. None of them, except the rogue, made any effort to spread out.

The Red Hand made them pay for their poor tactics. Still clustered up in the stables, they were hit with ANOTHER of Koth's fireballs, bringing multiple party members down to single digit hit points. Karkilan rendered the summoned boar into bacon in one turn flat, and the rogue failed a save against Koth's blindness spell.

At this point, they finally decided to beat a retreat. With castings of spider climb and fly, they barricaded the doors (finally), smashed a hole in the ceiling, and made a fast exit. Humbled and bloodied, they returned to town.
By the time they reached town, the party had reframed their embarrassing defeat into a victory. They had located the source of the raiding parties AND their leader, which is what they had been paid for! If Drellin's Ferry wanted their help removing the problem, the party would need more support.

Grudgingly, the town paid them another 500 gold apiece for their help in clearing the keep altogether, and sent Captain Anitah along with two of her guards (4th level fighters).

Note: the party had gotten well and truly trounced during the fight. I took pity on them and decided to give them some backup. The two guards were built as sword and board fighters, while Sorannah was built as an archery fighter.
This was a completely different fight. The party moved quickly and efficiently, ambushing the two sentries Koth had posted on the walls and bull-rushing those in the guard towers out front.

With the exterior neutralized, the party stormed into the keep itself. The fighting was fierce, with the remaining hobgoblin veterans pulling speedbump duty as Karkilan waded in with his axe, Koth providing fire support and the manticore watching idly, eventually contributing when Koth ordered it to.

Sorannah performed quite well here, using readied actions to disrupt Koth's spellcasting, which saved the party's hides (they fixated on Karkilan early, rather than the caster boss).

The party fighter was nearly absent for the fight, deciding to run across the roof of the stables, down into and through the hobgoblin barracks, and finally come up around the fight behind Koth. It took him several rounds, but when he was finally in position, Koth was dead in a single round.

Karkilan was overwhelmed, and the hobgoblin troops were cut down handily. The manticore exacted a heavy toll, injuring the cleric badly, knocking one of the guards unconscious and killing another. When it realized that it was alone on the battlefield, it attempted to flee, but was chased down and killed by the rogue after the wizard cast fly on him.

Victory was theirs!
This next scene is where the game finally "clicked." The party began to search the place, going through Koth's notes and journals (they executed him out of hand, remembering their poor results with interrogation before).

When I handed them the Red Hand map, everyone's eyes lit up. It was one of the moments DMs live for: where the group stops feeling self-conscious about speaking in-character, where they truly suspend disbelief and become immersed in the setting. They pored over every detail, conjecturing how big a force they must be up against if it was referred to as a "horde", noting the location of the Red Hand's staging area, and taking immediate notice of the bottleneck presented by Skull Gorge.

After briefly debating the ethics of closing the Dawn Way, the group decided that the possibility of delaying the Red Hand's advance far outweighed any benefit that having the road open would bring.

They also noticed the ominous note on the southern part of the map: "Ghostlord." Immediately, they began asking questions about what that could possibly mean, which prompted me to ask for knowledge (local). Several handy checks later, and they had the complete story about Urikel Zarl, and far ahead of Chapter 3. I was quite pleased about this outcome. Being able to foreshadow the character in advance will make finding his phylactery later on much more poignant.

After gleefully looting the vault underneath the keep, they bid Captain Anitah and her surviving guard farewell. The ferry folk returned to town, while the party insisted on going ahead to assess the growing threat for themselves...
This encounter went very well. The group was absolutely charmed by Warklegnaw, and fell in love with him immediately. After giving him the gauntlet back, they enlisted his help in fighting off the Red Hand. Warklegnaw, delighted that someone needed his help, shared his keep and his food with them before setting off in the morning to go find the rest of his clan.
The party reached Skull Gorge Bridge on day 5 (fretting about the timeline they'd found on the map), and were dismayed to see that the Red Hand had gotten there before them. Suitably impressed at the sight of a green dragon acting as a guard dog (and wondering who would have the power to compel such service), they assessed the bridge for a weakness.

Remarkably, the fighter had taken ranks in knowledge (architecture), and it paid off for him. He was able to easily spot the weak point on the bridge, on the near side. A meager 40 points of damage dealt to that spot would be sufficient to collapse the bridge, and the cleric had prepared stone shape for this exact purpose, which would deal 50.

A plan was hatched, and we concluded the session with everyone eager to see if their daring strategy would pay off...

[Starbuck_II]

You could have been nice and give the Barb Automatic progression subsystem. That way he gets no magic items, but still appears relevant. But he left so I guess it doesn't matter.

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/automatic-bonus-progression

So instead of magic items: at 5th level, he gets +1 deflect AC, +1 resist Saves, attune a weapon or armor to +1.

Less variety but no searching.

[Dravda]

Bookmarked, thank you very much! This will come in handy.

[ComaVision]

Koth is pretty deadly for an unprepared party. I killed the huntsman (that was persuaded to assist them) and 3 out of 5 party members with him.

[Faily]

Always a joy to read RHoD logs! Especially since I ran it for Pathfinder too. Looking forward to the confrontation with the dragon. ;)

[Dravda]

A few thoughts, as I start planning ahead on fleshing out future encounters and filling in gaps in the story...

I've been considering making the lizardfolk more of a threat. As-written, they're pretty uninspiring, and an entire hut of them could plausibly be butchered by a single PC. They're supposed to be numerous and skilled enough to at least "vex" the Tiri Kitor, according to the module, and Saarvith will be relying on them as his spies.

With all that in mind, I'm considering statting up a lizardfolk scouting party or two, possibly a pair of rangers escorted by a druid? Anyone have any thoughts or suggestions?
Varanthian, I am almost certainly going to change to an adult white dragon. The omission is too glaring, and while the picture in the book is awesome, the completionist in me needs my fifth dragon. I read a handbook a few years ago (source, anyone?) that had a brilliant idea: she has a tattoo of a Red Hand across her face. Even more than the others, Varanthian is a fanatic, dedicated to Azar Kul lock, stock, and barrel. Her fanaticism explains why a white dragon is willing to go so horribly out of its environment for a mission.
Before the battle of Brindol, I'm considering adding what may end up being an entire new chapter, with Miha Serani promoted to a major antagonist. Miha will engage in a series of sabotage attacks on Brindol just before the battle, forcing the PCs to get to the root of the problem. Credit to Glyphstone for the inspiration, as well as the first encounter idea. (Obviously, this all goes down the toilet if the PCs kill her on their first meeting)

The first encounter will be with hellwasp zombies (bestiary 3) delivered to one of the temples (possibly Wee Jas, also explains why they get so heavily sidelined). The zombies are delivered as bodies in need of funeral rites, wrapped in shrouds to hide their nature, before lurching to life and attacking. Upon being attacked, the hellwasp swarms will issue forth and cause chaos.

Second idea, for a scene near the walls, Miha has successfully smuggled in several vats of roiling oil (Bestiary 5), disguised as garden variety oil to be boiled and poured from the walls during the battle. As the PCs walk below the walls, there is an "accident" up above, causing the massive ceramic pots to tumble from the parapets and down onto the PCs. The sinister nature of the incident becomes clear when the oozes leap up and attack.

Any more thoughts? I could do with one or two more saboteur encounters before the party tracks her down and catches her red-handed (perhaps with another nasty monster in tow).

[Faily]

I originally wanted to make Varanthian a White Dragon too, as I also felt that the missing White Dragon was a big shame. However, the more I looked at the encounter and the stats of an appropriate CR White Dragon... yeah, a Medium White Dragon just isn't as intimidating as a Huge Behir who can easily take up a lot of space in the battle and dominate it with its long reach and corner the PCs.

So what I did, I made Varanthian a Half-Dragon (White) Behir. It boosted up the CR a little to provide more of a challenge, kept the size of the monster for its originally intended threat, and gave it the Dragon-flavor I felt was lacking in the original stat-up which was Half-Fiend Behir.

[Dravda]

Actually, what's nice about white dragons is that at my target of CR 10, I can make an adult, who is Large-sized. Not as cool as Huge, but the white dragon has a few advantages. Her AC is 3 higher (11 higher if she has time to cast mage armor and shield!), and she has more hit points. Attack routines are otherwise comparable (losing the Swallow Whole for a few iterative attacks).

Splitting the difference and making her a half-white dragon is a pretty good solution, though.

[Seward]

Yeah, that's about how I'd expect it to go with people who lack system mastery in 3.5/pathfinder. Vrath Keep in particular is deceptive, as the Manticore and Koth are much more dangerous than the rest of the defenders, and they're the least likely to be even noticed, much less targeted. It is very common to have people blow away something relatively weak, using all of their surprise and early actions and have a fully organized, coordinated attack shred them.

I like how you are rewarding retreat, regroup, return behaviors. Players love it when they get their ass kicked, regroup and then return the favor (well, they love it when the make the comback. The losing and retreating part can be pretty grim for a bit), and people used to traditional D&D encounters when they are expected to win sometimes are really bad at pulling off a retreat when they get in over their head.

Skull Gorge is a tough fight, with more stuff they're likely not really ready for (flying dragon supported by archers with near infinite healing potions). If they survive and thrive through that fight, they'll likely do ok going forward. I'm glad to hear that they are engaged in the story arc now, because they'll need that engagement when bad things happen in future. Rhest can be tough, Marked for Death is just brutal when it rolls around, etc.

Regarding the lizardmen. I've seen them engaged more in two ways.

1. My party when I played it burned down a village at night to lure out RHOD defenders and learn something about their tactics. That got us an encounter (after alarm bells rang from the tower) with a whole lot of lizardmen, who came at us from all directions - land, sea, swamps with a hob advisor or two and the dragon+wyrmlord sailing in at a key moment. We were much better prepared for the black dragon+archer when we assaulted Rhest, although of course the defenders knew something was going to happen and were also fully alert. For us the nasty surprise was the Greenspawn attacking from underwater while the dragon was attacking from above on the approach. Still, this all let us fight a bunch of smaller fights, instead of one big fight. On the downside, the lack of surprise and our lack of raw firepower allowed the dragon+wyrmlord to escape after we mauled them in the followup encounter, taking some of the precious eggs with them.

2. Party uses disguise or alter self plus draconic plus party diplomat to actually talk to the lizardfolk, who likely aren't all that thrilled with the RHOD presence. You could probably learn a lot if you got their attitude to friendly and offered to remove their offensive presence from the Lizardfolk lands. Party can also perhaps disguise themselves as a lizardfolk delegation to safely approach either the tower or the main stronghold (which has ogres and whatnot for guards, not the sharpest knives - it'll likely work until the mindbender gets a detect thoughts up and running)

[Dravda]

Good thoughts on the lizardfolk! The possibility of allying with the lizarfolk is an unconventional one, but I like it. They may revere Regiarix, but they're probably still not too happy about all these mammals moving into their swamps (and even commanding their dragon-god; blasphemy!)

Session 5 is done, and I must say, Skull Gorge went remarkably smoothly.

With the cleric, rogue, and fighter sporting invisibility (and the wizard staying hidden in the woodline), the battle began. The wizard has been very fastidious about keeping herself stocked with scrolls and the group stocked with potions, and it has been consistently paying off. The rogue charged the nearest hellhound, attacking and breaking his invisibility while the fighter received a fly spell to go take out the near watchtowers.

As they did this, the cleric had identified the weak point in the bridge and was making all due haste toward it, ignoring everything else.

The hellhound engaging the rogue died without doing much of anything, and the second one bolting across the bridge did nothing to help. While its scent made it aware of the invisible cleric, it was not aware of the bridge's weak point and thus not aware of the danger the group posed. The dragon flared his wings and spewed acid onto the rogue, who passed his save. It also clipped the cleric, injuring him, but failing to stop him.

As the hobgoblins on the far side of the bridge gathered their weapons and the wizard began trading missile fire with one of the near snipers, the cleric cast stone shape.

At first, nothing happened.

Then, there was a deep rumbling sound. The bridge came loose first at one end, with the cliff face crumbling beneath it. A watchtower fell into the abyss, taking a screaming hobgoblin sniper with it, and then the other as the centuries-old edifice failed catastrophically. The hobgoblin reinforcements were halfway across the bridge at this point, throwing them to their deaths. The portrait of destruction was complete as the dust settled, the far side caving in as well to drop the two anchor towers on the far side into the chasm. The party let out a cheer.

Ozyrrandion howled in anger, intent on vengeance. He swooped in, discharging another breath weapon and injuring the cleric, missing the rogue entirely, and melting his only remaining ally (the hellhound).

The dragon only intended to stick around for a single full attack, hopefully to kill the cleric, but even that was too much. With a summoned boar and the rogue flanking, the fighter charged in to power attack. After receiving an enlarge person, the fighter enjoyed his unsurpassed battlefield control.

Ozy rolled poorly on his single full attack, only dealing minor damage to the rogue (who was the only one he could hit), and by the time his next turn came around, he was below 30 hit points.

He used a withdraw action, vowing revenge as he left. Due to his reach, though, the fighter got a single attack of opportunity...which he used to confirm a critical, cutting the dragon down as he tried to flee. Ozyrrandion let out a final howl as he was defeated.

Thoughts: the party did quite well here, identifying the most tactically efficient way forward and pursuing it. The rogue's high armor class has saved his life several times at this point, and is allowing him to act as a "tank" even more than the fighter, who is focused on reach and power rather than defense.

The group got lucky in the sense that Ozyrrandion's attack routine was essentially a flop, and that in the 1 round described before the bridge collapsed, the hobgoblin reinforcements couldn't make it across. The group's original plan was to run in, collapse the bridge, and run away, but upon seeing the dragon alone with only a hellhound for backup, quickly changed gears to take him down.

Once again, never underestimate the PC "wolfpack" against a single large, impressive enemy. Ozyrrandion was reduced from full health to a smoking pile of lost hit points in only two turns.
After a cursory look around to loot (most of the gear was lost when the majority of their foes plummeted into the gorge, the group decided to return to Drellin's Ferry rather than confirm the size of the force they suspected at Cinder Hill. Forced marching to make it there in a single day (with the cleric using his channel to remove fatigue), they arrived in the evening.

They wasted no time finding Norro Wiston, telling him that he was in massive danger and demanding their money. They hoped to scare him into action, but overestimated his ability to react well to stress, and were unhappy to see him freeze up with panicked indecision.

The next day, after meeting Teyani Sura (they didn't so much as get her name before sending her packing back to Brindol), they had a meeting with the town council. Iormel was brow-beaten into silence, Kellin was shouted down with fiery and dramatic threats of "utter doom and wanton destruction of humanity", and after a few nice Diplomacy rolls, the town was evacuated. Norro even tried to push the evacuation off a day, but they insisted that everyone had to be gone within 24 hours.
As they watched the miles-long caravan of refugees leaving Drellin's Ferry, the party was at a bit of an impasse what to do next. They'd missed the importance of the roadblocks (a very underwhelming hook, I must agree), and so needed Wiston and Captain Anitah to stress the importance of getting those roads open so that reinforcements could arrive (but couldn't a messenger, like, skirt AROUND the roadblocks, and then if they returned with reinforcements, wouldn't the reinforcements be enough to bust those roadblocks themselves?). The party agreed, and decided to set off via boat. I was delighted, obviously, because it meant I wouldn't have to railroad them into their first fight with the razorfiend.
For simplicity's sake, I am allowing the group to level once at the end of each chapter, which should keep them roughly on the correct power level. Anytime they level, they also have the opportunity to rebuild or tweak their characters, if they're unhappy with what they have.

To my surprise, it was the rogue's player, my veteran, who wanted a rebuild. With my permission, he rebuilt to a ranger with a similar focus on two-weapon fighting. He wasn't too sad to see sneak attack go, especially since he picked up some nice wilderness survival abilities, which will serve him well for the rest of the campaign. He definitely went more offense-oriented than defensive, losing the shield for a kukri, which brings his AC down into the low 20's. I intend to make him regret it. >:D That high AC has been the cornerstone of his playstyle so far, and he will be in for a rude awakening without it.

The change that strained disbelief the most was the inclusion of his animal companion, a large-sized wolf (Boon Companion feat), which I hand-waved as being left in town.
The rest of the session was taken up by a pair of random encounters they rolled while poling their way up towards Lake Rhestin. On Day 7, they encountered a Red Hand patrol (hobgoblin troopers and a blood ghost berserker). The hobgoblin troops were butchered en masse by the polearm-wielding fighter, while the blood ghost got a single good hit on the ranger's new animal companion (taking out nearly half its hit points) before being killed.

A brief interrogation followed, much more successfully than the last one, with the party asking one of the captured troopers what they were doing there, and attempting to glean intelligence on what the Red Hand would do without Skull Gorge Bridge. However, it soon became apparent that this guy was not privy to decision making, and was operating out of contact with the larger forces.

Funny quote of the session:

Ranger: "What will the horde do, now that Skull Gorge Bridge is destroyed?"
Hobgoblin: "Skull Gorge Bridge has been destroyed?!"
Group: "Yeah, this guy doesn't know anything."

The next encounter was something a little different. I rolled a green hag on the random encounter table, and had her in disguise as a beautiful elf, washing clothes on the side of the river. Upon seeing the party poling their way up the stream, she asked them curiously what they were doing in "her" swamp and demanding a toll of 500 gold to pass.

Obviously, that wasn't going to fly, so the party tried to ply her with questions, but she became impatient and reiterated her desire for money, or "something bad might happen to you."

Once again they refused, and she retreated into the trees. Several hours later, they came across a massive cobra (an emperor cobra: the result of a second random encounter roll) asleep on a log that was stretching over the river. The ranger passed a wild empathy check to realize that the thing was asleep and wanted no trouble, so they elected to beach the raft and carry it around the snake.

The hag, watching from nearby, decided now was time to act. Using ghost sound to create the sound of a roar, she startled the snake awake, off the log and onto the boat with the party!

A brief but tense fight followed, with the hag giggling at her own cleverness and using pyrotechnics to harass the party as they dealt with the snake. Wolfpack tactics and some bad rolls on the snake's part meant it was dead in two rounds, and the hag took a magic missile from the wizard. Deciding she'd had enough, she used invisibility to dive in the water and escape.

Determined not to let her get away, the ranger and the wizard set off on a high-speed pursuit, with the (blinded) fighter staying behind with the cleric. In spite of their determination, the hag's combination of a swim speed and invisibility was impossible for the two to match. If I had wanted to be a real bastard, I could have punished them for splitting the party by having the hag lead the two into a THIRD random encounter, but the session was winding down by that point.

Annoyed, the party regrouped and resolved to keep an eye out for the "elf" as they continued. The important part of this encounter is that they are not going to get a chance to rest again before the razorfiend encounter: they have become accustomed to burning out on the first encounter of the day, confident that they are allowed to rest before choosing another engagement.

Session 5 ended with the group approaching the Blackfens on the evening of Day 8...

[Seward]

The fight you described with the dragon is typically how it goes when the dragon actually gets stopped. It goes from full health to being in trouble, and the party does something clever or gets lucky as it flees. Generally they have exactly one chance to stop it, as it can withdraw 300' or run 600', and that's so fast it can often simply outrange even a bow or fireball after a second round, or if it can't, it can find full cover in the nearby forest on the Drellin side of the cave or in the hills on the other side.

Kudos for the party for focusing on the goal. They essentially took the hobgoblins out of the battle, at the risk of splitting the party, but had the combat gone badly for them they could have retreated while still accomplishing the objective (although possibly leaving a comrade behind).

Your rogue-to-ranger player sounds like he has the most system mastery. Don't be surprised if you find it difficult to exploit the AC weakness of his rebuild and of the wolf. There should be opportunities (the RHOD has a lot of ranged combatants who can hit AC20) but if he knows how to play a light infantry, the 50' move speed of the wolf and close-range blender of a ranger (he did take favored enemy dragon and goblin right?) may limit how many full attacks you're able to inflict. From the sound of it he looked at his party and said "ok, we're now doing ok on spellcasting utility, scouting and such. We need more offense". Rangers are quite good at covering the rogue scouting role, their only weakness being lack of trapfinding, which isn't a big deal in RHOD.

In the end, if AC becomes too much of a problem, well, Ulwai Stormcaller has a +2 mithril breastplate which is ideal for boosting a ranger, if he makes it to chapter 3, and he should be able to find other basic AC items along the way (Dirty Rotten Scoundrels has magic bucklers if he's willing to suck up a -1 with offhand to have the option to boost his AC a couple points in an emergency, and +1 amulet or ring should be the sort of thing he can just buy in Brindol, ditto scrolls of barkskin or whatever)

Negotiations with the lizardmen usually don't focus on the fact that killing the dragon is a goal. The party I saw focused on eliminating the horrible mammals and glossed over the idea that anything bad might happen to the dragon. When it died (lit up by a fireball while fleeing, kind of obvious), well, lets just say they didn't use the lizardfolk disguise again. They traded diplomacy and bluff out for intimidation when exiting the scene.

[Dravda]

Good thoughts on all! It will be interesting to see how the new build plays out...and the party's approach moving forward.

Another thought I just had for Chapter 3, why not replace the Ulwai's opera with something a little more plot-centric? I figure instead of an abstract about Tiamat killing good dragons, it's an opera chronicling Azarr Kul's rise to power, which is a perfect opportunity to give the players a little background on their enemies.

An Opera by Ulwai Stormcaller

Act I
Scene 1: Featuring a gory sacrifice of a screaming maiden to a terrible blue dragon.
Scene 2: In which Azarr Kul, as a young warrior, shows he is destined to lead his tribe. He meets and strikes up a friendship with the impetuous warrior, Hravek Kharn.
Scene 3: In which Azarr Kul and Hravek Kharn discover the Fane of Tiamat, and learn Azarr's true destiny. The two hobgoblins swear fealty to Tiamat.
Scene 4: In which an impressed Tiamat sends the white dragon Varanthian to Azarr Kul's service. Azarr Kul receives a vision of glorious conquest in Tiamat's name.

Act II
Scene 1: In which Azarr Kul returns to take rulership of his tribe, naming them the Kulkor Zhul (People of the Dragon).
Scene 2: In which Azarr Kul conquers other hobgoblin tribes and gains the service of a green dragon named Ozyrrandion. Wyrmlord Koth is introduced as a bumbling, pompous braggart.
Scene 3: In which Azarr Kul conquers the goblins, and gains the alliance of a black dragon named Regiarix.
Scene 4: In which Azarr Kul allies with his most powerful rivals, the Stormcaller tribe, and names their leader (the beautiful, cruel, and clever Ulwai) a Wyrmlord.
Scene 5: In which the red dragon Abithriax offers fealty to Azarr Kul. Azarr Kul's father, the dragon Tyrgarun, tells him how proud he is of him. Azarr Kul rejects the praise for himself, swearing future glories to Tiamat.

Act III
Scene 1: In which Azarr Kul's army, united under a glorious red hand, go forth to crush the cowardly, treacherous humans and elves. Azarr Kul's longtime friend and leal servant of Tiamat, Hravek Kharn, promises to deliver the Elsir Vale to his friend by summer's end.
Scene 2: [unwritten]
Scene 3: [unwritten]
Scene 4: [unwritten]
Scene 5: A triumphant Azarr Kul and Hravek Kharn stand victorious, and the two friends embrace as brothers. Thanking him for his aid, Azarr Kul then addresses his people, telling them that this victory is only the first, and soon the People of the Dragon will spread Tiamat's glory all across the world.

[Seward]

Any time you can bring in stuff that makes the NPCs more than just targets full of hitpoints to knock down by the PCs is a good thing, doubly so if it brings in enemy motivations/backstory.

[The Glyphstone]

Watching this with interest, for obvious reasons.

For Miha, you might need to present her as slightly more competent/skilled than I did, if you want your group to take the bait - they seem a bit more genre-savvy than mine was, and a beleagured fellow adventurer in need of backup might go over better than a classical damsel-in-distress. Only the cleric will be able to cast Detect Alignment spells, and I doubt they'll be genre-savvy enough to scan her for both Good and Evil (let alone Law and Chaos), so Undetectable Alignment will still serve her well.

[Dravda]

Funny you mention it, Glyphstone, I'm thinking about scrapping Miha entirely. Or, rather, making her a red herring.

I know my players well enough to tell right now that they'll see right through her crap. "Damsel in distress" displaying "unusual interest" in the group? She's a spy/doppelganger/succubus/pod person. To throw them off the trail, I'm going to include her as-written, except that she actually IS a traveling sorceress who was accosted by a drunk a few nights before.

The REAL aranea (name undecided) will be another adventurer already helping the clerics (good call there). I'm thinking a swashbucklerous (yes, that's a word now) treasure hunter who starts chatting up the PCs to learn their plans, while cheerfully sharing his own alibi (he was traveling from Dennovar to search for lost artifacts in the Wyrmsmoke mountains when the Red Hand happened).

The real problem with the encounter, as-written, is that it has too much work put into very specific parts, and players can smell that a mile off. In order to avoid drawing attention, both the clerics need names, and there needs to be two or three more interesting refugees, at least.

[Seward]

Heh. My party avoided her because we were using low-tier magic to travel much faster (a mix of force marching horses+healing and druid spells to make the terrain easier). We weren't going to let a random NPC tag along, the burden on our spell slots would have been too high even if we were inclined - and we would have noticed if she tried to use her "mount" spell to keep up and track our progress.

If you do use her, her most important attributes are her Whispering Wind spell and her Sending scroll. Passing information on where a party will be soon can alert the blockaders or help set up Marked for Death type encounters, and passing information on their tactics, to, say, the mindbender in Rhest can help them defend, although if she is out of whispering wind range, you're limited to 25 words, so choose wisely.

Our GM just had her go to Brindol and cause trouble, and she showed up to fight for the final showdown and likely helped skew some of the social encounters there against us with a week or two of preparation with us doing other things.

I kind of like the idea of having the shapeshifter/sorcerer being somewhere else and having the Rescue encounter being some other woman who has reason to tag along and maybe sell info to the highest bidder. One cool thing about that option is that the PCs can maybe win her over, and use her to sell MISINFORMATION - or if they treat her badly she can screw them over at some point. Start her out as indifferent-greedy and let the PCs reap what they sow. If the party has female or gay-male characters you could also change up the gender, which might help blunt the obviousness of the trope.

[Dravda]

All good thoughts. I'm probably not going to have the spy travel with the party (for the meta reason that it will slow down combat), but they will most certainly cross paths again at Brindol.

Without further ado, here's Session 6:

Upon spying the remains of the giant owl, the group approached cautiously. Sure enough, they were ambushed by the razorfiend, which had been snoozing nearby. It caught the fighter, ranger, and the ranger's animal companion wolf in a breath weapon right off the bat, then proceeded to put its Spring Attack to good use.

The wolf ate an AoO getting close to the razorfiend, which confirmed a critical and knocked him down to negative hit points. The ranger was livid, and the group engaged wolfpack mode. The razorfiend avoided the worst of it all with spring attack, but its AC was simply too low to be avoiding major damage, and it went down after only one more hit on the fighter.

Thoughts: Despite the fight going (relatively) smoothly, the group has never seen an enemy heavily using spring attack before, and they were unprepared for it.
Furious at the razorfiend's confirmed critical on his beloved pet, the ranger gutted the thing out of anger, and was surprised to find a ring inside! ("Wait, I was actually MEANT to do that?!")

The group recovered the owl's bracelet and was just divvying up the razorfiend's "hoard" when the Tiki Kitor approached. I was a little antsy about what they would do to the Tiri Kitor, since I made no effort to have the elves phrase their questions politely, but things went relatively smoothly. The party explained their presence quickly and succinctly, immediately offering up Lanikar's ring before it was asked for and rolling nicely on their Diplomacy (Killiar went from unfriendly to friendly).

Killiar invited them to Starsong Hill to speak with his leader. Despite the fact that the group has been keeping an anxious eye on the timeline, they agreed to meet with the elves.
The meeting with Sellyria was well-handled, if somewhat uninspiring. They rolled quite poorly on her impression of them, leaving her indifferent. Trellara was made friendly, and they immediately picked up that she knew Lanikar and offered condolences.

They were most interested to hear of the Red Hand's presence in Rhest, and concluded that they must be up to no good. A lot of effort went into trying to secure an alliance then and there, but Sellyria wasn't having any of it, though she did invite them to attend Lanikar's funeral the next night.

Afterward, the ranger stayed behind to speak with Trellara, offering her words of sympathy. Trellara's grief was slowly crystallizing into ice-cold rage, and she confided darkly that she wanted the Red Hand to pay for what they'd done. She made an intriguing offer: though the Speaker was not interested in fighting a human war, if they could make a strong impression amongst the community and help drive the threat out of Rhest, she might be able to galvanize enough support to go to war. The ranger thanked her for this information and was on his way to bed (it was long after dark at this point).

The group spent the day at Starsong Hill, preparing for their expedition into Rhest. The wizard spent the day purchasing and copying spells into her spellbook, while the cleric met with Ilian Snowmantle and volunteered his services casting healing spells free of charge (but rolled too poorly to make the other cleric friendly: guess a faux pas or two happened in there). The fighter and the ranger spent the day making gather information checks, learning the lay of the land.

Lanikar's funeral was unremarkable. Nobody had any perform skills or anything, so I opened the floor up for any skills the group might want to argue as being usable. The ranger volunteered his craft (woodworking) skill he'd put a few ranks into, and got a measly 13 in making some handmade flutes. Nevertheless, the Tiri Kitor were appreciative of the gesture and the fascinating look at human craftsmanship.

For those counting, they are sitting at 6 AP right now: 2 elves impressed, 2 points for generosity, 1 point for a dead razorfiend, and 1 point for hitting a DC 10 at Lanikar's funeral. That wooden flute might clinch the alliance for them...assuming they drive the Red Hand out of Rhest without letting the razorfiend at the hatchery escape.
Day 10 saw the group setting off for Rhest in an elven canoe. Asking for some giant owls to ferry them was briefly considered, but shot down because 1) they didn't want to be spotted approaching, 2) they REALLY didn't want to fight a black dragon in the sky and 3) they didn't want to test Sellyria's patience. Not in that order.

After observing the lake city for a bit and debating on the best way to approach the city, they decided to test the Red Hand's defenses. Sneaking up on one of the huts, they attacked from ambush and slaughtered the inhabitants. After mopping up the lizardfolk (who posed no threat, and were all killed in one shot), the session concluded with them waiting to see what the Red Hand's response would be.

Thoughts: I've left the lizardfolk in the huts the same. If they kill enough enemies to provoke a response, I'm going to run an encounter with some leveled-up lizardfolk trackers.
The ranger's player began spitballing ideas on the Red Hand's motivation after the session was done. Trying to puzzle out why the Red Hand was apparently occupying Rhest, since it seemed to have no tactical value whatsoever, he came to two conclusions. 1) They valued it for its seclusion, meaning they were hiding something there. At this point, he went wide-eyed and wondered if it was something to do with the Ghostlord (whom they'd seen marked on the Red Hand's map). He hypothesized that maybe they'd stolen the lich's phylactery or something and were hiding it here, while I struggled to maintain my poker face.

His second theory was also playing on the seclusion, but also considering the recent greenspawn infestation. He wondered aloud if the Red Hand were perhaps breeding razorfiends in there, since the city was an ideal combination of swampy, secluded, and fortified.

[Elder_Basilisk]

Nice to hear that the Ranger is putting two and two together and getting four. I suspect my players may manage that too, but I remember a few previous groups I DMed for (not RHOD but other adventures) regularly came up with answers like three or seven.

[Dravda]

Session 7!

Having concluded the last session with a strike on a lizardfolk hut, the party laid in wait to see what kind of reprisal they would provoke. As they waited, the ranger shared his theories with the group, who agreed that they all sounded plausible. In the interim, they saw a group of lizardfolk go into the town hall and have a bad time, then watched with interest as the dragon and a goblin in bright armor left. Now, they concluded, was the time to act.

They discussed fiercely how to infiltrate the town, ranging from invisibility to disguise self. After some debating on the rules (both casters had to reread their spell lists), they decided that the fighter and the cleric should be disguised as lizardfolk using magic, while the wizard and the ranger hid under a tarp (the ranger's animal companion kept on hand with a carry companion spell). Loaded down, they began paddling a lizardfolk raft towards the center of the lake.

Pleased that they were not challenged on their approach, they decided to hit the belltower first to silence the sentries they'd seen. With two groups identified (one on the top floor, and one at water level), they split up to take both groups out simutaneously.
As the ranger climbed the side of the tower, invisible, the cleric and wizard lurked out of sight of the water level entrance as the fighter greeted the hobgoblin garrison inside (still disguised as a lizardfolk). The hobgoblin bladebearer (rebuilt as a warblade with White Raven and Diamond Mind disciplines) rose and assumed a hostile stance, yelling at the "lizardfolk" in Goblin to leave and take their complaints to the town hall. Upon seeing the blank look on the fighter's face (who didn't speak Goblin), he switched to broken Draconic (which the fighter also didn't understand).

As he took a step forward to help the hobgoblins with their game, they drew swords and attacked. Hearing the sounds of battle, the ranger dismissed his carry companion spell, dropping his wolf below the bell to prevent the hobgoblins from using it. The rest of the fight saw him neatly cleaning up the sentries above, while the rest of the group struggled with the garrison below.

The wizard opened with web, ensnaring the hobgoblins as the fighter kept them bottlenecked in the doorway. Though he was in no danger from the veterans, the bladebearer's pearl of black doubt stance worked wonders on him (especially since he had trouble rolling above a 4), while the bladebearer for his part neatly demonstrated the potency of martial maneuvers even balanced against Pathfinder characters.

With the cleric in a desperate race to heal the fighter of the damage he was suffering and the bladebearer miraculously avoiding every spell thrown at him, the wizard eventually just resorted to using Koth's 5th-level wand of magic missile, whittling him down a dozen hit points at a time. The bladebearer cursed and gnashed his teeth at the "cowardly witch," but couldn't get through the fighter to kill her and was eventually killed. As the ranger finished up and joined the group downstairs, the mop-up went swiftly.

The group had successfully cleared the belltower, and all without allowing the alarm to be raised. After a brief looting session, they attempted an interrogation of the still-breathing bladebearer. This one almost went better: they goaded him into talking, and he gloatingly told them that "Regiarix" would kill them all. Instead of exploiting the opportunity, however, they decided he was unlikely to tell them anything and killed him. Oh well. >>
With a waterbreathing spell divvied out, the group narrowly passed their Survival check to navigate the lake bed and found themselves in the town hall. They came up through the floor in Regiarix's lair, the ranger moving ahead first to scout. He discovered the dragon's hoard and gleefully scooped it up into their bag of holding. When he discovered an odd chain necklace strung with lion teeth, his eyes went wide and he began silently mouthing to the rest of the party "This is it! This is it!" His suspicions were confirmed when the wizard cast a quick detect magic, finding a strong aura of necromancy. In the bag it went, with the rest of the loot. A brief but fierce debate began, whispered as loudly as they dared, but they decided that the fate of the phylactery could wait until they'd cleared the building of hostiles.

As the group emerged into the back of the town hall, chuckling that they had entered from the rear and thus looted the dragon's hoard first, the fighter botched a Stealth check against the ettin waiting in the next room. The door opened, and he took a surprise hit to the face. The ettin was quickly wolfpacked and killed, but the damage was done.

Ogres began streaming in as Nurklenak joined the fray. Nurklenak I recast as an alchemist, since hobgoblins are supposed to hate and fear arcane casters (something I want to play up), but have a strong tradition of alchemists. Laughing madly, Nurklenak threw a poison gas bomb into Regiarix's lair, hurting the fighter and nauseating him for several rounds (which effectively took him out of the entire fight).

Things looked grim until the cleric revealed that he was good for more than just bandaging wounds as they happened and cast a game-changer: holy smite. All hostile forces present were severely injured, with one ogre blinded and Nurklenak's retreat conditions triggered. Opting for the better part of valor, he ran upstairs to rouse the rest of the ogres and cover his retreat.

The ranger jumped back into the water to swim around the side of the building and up to the roof to try to head Nurklenak off. His wolf took the water as well, harassing ogres from the water as the Jaws theme was cued up. Inside, things looked grim: the cleric and wizard, both low on spells, faced down a half dozen ogres with the fighter incapacitated and the ranger MIA.

Still able to soak up hits, however, the fighter ran into the doorway with the cleric, keeping the ogres bottlenecked where they could only attack one at a time. On the roof, the ranger found a wounded Nurklenak drinking a potion of fly to escape, and scored a critical hit that diced the mad bomber in half.

The fighter finally overcame his nausea and waded into the combat proper. With the ranger joining them, it was shaping up to be a long (boring) mop-up, so I had the ogres flee in terror with Nurklenak dead and no other commanders present to keep them in line. The party let out a cheer as the enemy forces broke and fled, with the wolf companion hunting them down one by one.
Despite his independent streak, the ranger thought better of trying to solo the hatchery and waited for his party to finish searching the town hall. The note they found from Ulwai confirmed their suspicions about the phylactery (setting off another heated debate which was tabled until they cleared the rest of the area).

The razorfiend hatchery was breached, and the group spotted the razorfiend lurking in the water before it noticed them. The razorfiend got a single good hit off before being destroyed, the hatchery being a killing jar, pure and simple. They went to smashing the razorfiend eggs and rolled handily to find them all.

Nearly an hour had elapsed (in-game), and I had rolled only 1 hour for Regiarix' and Saarvith's hunting trip. They would be back soon. The group brought up what to do: the cleric and wizard were both nearly out of spells by that point, but everyone was at full hit points and the ranger and fighter were confident in their abilities. The ranger, especially, was anxious to ensure they secured the Tiri Kitor's alliance, and was in no hurry to see the Red Hand's two commanders escape (since they had no reason to stick around anymore, with everyone and everything dead, broken, or stolen).

I have a policy of confirming that players know what they're getting into. I think it's hilarious if poor decision making leads to a catastrophe, but not if poor DM communication leads to that same disaster. So this time, I asked them, "Are you sure you want to face a double helping of BBEG, with both of your casters basically dry?"

The answer: a resounding "yes" from the two warriors, with the two casters too unsure of themselves to speak up to the contrary. Well, they asked for it.
So far, the phylactery has generated fierce debate. The cleric favors destroying it, with the fighter (a devotee of St. Cuthbert as well) in fervent agreement. The ranger replied that this would only anger the Ghostlord, and a knowledge check from the wizard confirmed that he would, indeed, feel the pain of it being destroyed. The wizard also confirmed that the box it had been in was affected with obscure object: the phylactery was hastily stuffed back inside until they could come up with a plan.

At this point, the cleric insisted that the thing had to at least be taken to a church and stored somewhere safe. The ranger argued that they should return it, but lacked a persuasive counter to "why wouldn't he just kill us once he has his immortality back, then?"

The wizard has so far not taken a side, and the fate of this phylactery rests solely upon the ranger's ability to make a convincing argument to the others. He has (privately) discussed going behind his party's back, taking the phylactery out of its scry-proof case during his watch to let the lich see that they have it. I intend for something horrible to happen if he does this. (Ghost lions in the middle of the night? Zombie animal messenger bearing a note that simply reads "GIVE IT BACK" scrawled over and over in insane, spidery lettering? The sky's the limit)

[Fizban]

I have a policy of confirming that players know what they're getting into. I think it's hilarious if poor decision making leads to a catastrophe, but not if poor DM communication leads to that same disaster. So this time, I asked them, "Are you sure you want to face a double helping of BBEG, with both of your casters basically dry?"

The answer: a resounding "yes" from the two warriors, with the two casters too unsure of themselves to speak up to the contrary. Well, they asked for it.
And this is how people die. Never, ever, ever continue when you're out of spells. EVER. Both casters are empty but the brutes want to keep going because "waugh, hit points!" Do they even have ranged weapons? TPK imminent. Oh, and good on you for proper communication, exactly what I'd recommend.

[Dravda]

Yep, Regiarix is a cautious soul, so he's going to stick to strafing runs while Saarvith peppers the enemy with arrows. With a handful of elf bane and human bane arrows at his disposal, plus favored enemy bonuses against both types, I foresee at least one death at Saarvith's hands before they retreat. The only one with any kind of significant ranged ability is the wizard (with her wand of magic missile), so she may be targeted first. Saarvith can't breathe underwater, so I doubt Regiarix will pursue them alone once they flee underwater.

The real trick is going to be how they pull off the ambush itself. Both Regiarix and Saarvith are fairly perceptive, but if all goes well, the party will have one chance to trap them inside the building at close quarters before they take to the air. Hopefully they are able to capitalize on it.

One way or the other, this will be a learning experience.

[The Glyphstone]

So far, the phylactery has generated fierce debate. The cleric favors destroying it, with the fighter (a devotee of St. Cuthbert as well) in fervent agreement. The ranger replied that this would only anger the Ghostlord, and a knowledge check from the wizard confirmed that he would, indeed, feel the pain of it being destroyed. The wizard also confirmed that the box it had been in was affected with obscure object: the phylactery was hastily stuffed back inside until they could come up with a plan.

At this point, the cleric insisted that the thing had to at least be taken to a church and stored somewhere safe. The ranger argued that they should return it, but lacked a persuasive counter to "why wouldn't he just kill us once he has his immortality back, then?"

The wizard has so far not taken a side, and the fate of this phylactery rests solely upon the ranger's ability to make a convincing argument to the others. He has (privately) discussed going behind his party's back, taking the phylactery out of its scry-proof case during his watch to let the lich see that they have it. I intend for something horrible to happen if he does this. (Ghost lions in the middle of the night? Zombie animal messenger bearing a note that simply reads "GIVE IT BACK" scrawled over and over in insane, spidery lettering? The sky's the limit)

This entertains me greatly. Considering this has been the reaction to both your group and mine, immediately upon finding it, it must be a fairly common reaction. So why did the writers not even consider the remote possibility that it would happen, even in a sidebar of some kind?

[Fizban]

Saarvith can hold his breath and Regi has blindsense to guide him (so he won't get lost looking for them after surfacing for air), while the players have only so much Water Breathing left, and no water mobility spells mentioned. What weapons do they have? Swimming with just the skill is laughably slow, ranged attacks are nigh impossible, and melee attacks with non-piercing weapons take a massive penalty (-2 hit and 1/2 normal damage). Even with piercing weapons, with no water mobility he can just strafe them underwater without ever being caught. If the pair do actually play it cautious, the player's best chance of survival is hiding inside the lair behind the threat of that magic missile wand until such time as the dragon leaves.

That of course is assuming they do play it that safe. And isn't there some line about them attacking the elf camp later if forced to retreat, giving the players a second free chance to kill them? Seems to happen a lot anyway.

[Antariuk]

Thanks for the shout-out, Dravda. I hope my maps serve your game well, if you need something custom just shoot me a line.

Since I'm pretty busy right now I'll put this thread on my reading list, but I'll try and give some feedback soon.

[Dravda]

Glyphstone: I agree, it is a strange oversight. I'm also hesitant to have the Ghostlord simply show up at Brindol, since he's meant to be an overwhelming encounter all on his own, without Kharn and the other surviving wyrmlords there to back him up.

Fizban: Those are actually good points. While Saarvith likely won't make much contribution underwater (-2 penalty to ranged attacks per 5 feet of distance and all), Regiarix has no reason not to just skim the water over and over, breathing acid and retreating. With a 60-foot range, he could even stay outside of the fighter's impressive reach, not to mention out of sight in the murky water. I could make this a REAL pain for my players. :smallbiggrin:

As for retaliation, I don't believe I'll have the Red Hand pursue it. The book recommends having them come after the party at Starsong Hill if the party gives the Red Hand a black eye, but since at this point the hatchery is destroyed, the garrison has been wiped out, AND Saarvith's hated supervisor is dead, the two have no reason to stay and will likely beat a retreat for friendly lines when given a chance.

Antariuk: My pleasure, the maps have been a great help! I'm looking forward to any feedback you have.

[The Glyphstone]

You might consider using the Ghostlord as a third-party agent entirely at Brindol, assuming the phylactery gets busted. If the Hand loses their control over him, he might decide to take revenge by sending his legions to Brindol anyways and just indiscriminately slaughtering anything they encounter, human or hobgoblin. No need to pit the party against the Ghostlord personally, but a few encounters against various undead, and narrative of other undead also killing the attackers, could orchestrate his 'rogue' status effectively. I did something similar, though my Ghostlord waited until the most opportune moment to backstab Kharn, nuking him in the final BBEG fight as he was about to deliver the deathblow to a PC.

[Dravda]

That's a really good idea, actually! The backstory given to the players already describes him essentially destroying a city with his ghost lions. There's no reason to think he wouldn't try to do to Brindol what he did to Rhest, if provoked, and waiting until the Red Hand attacks just ensures that he can kill two birds with one stone.

[Dravda]

We had a very quick but productive game last night. Here are the results:

The session began with a quick discussion of how exactly this ambush would be laid. After some debate, they decided to wait inside the town hall on the second story (at water level), and let the goblin and dragon come to them.

The wizard beat Regiarix and Saarvith for perception, hearing them land on the roof before the Red Hand heard the party. Regiarix heard the party moving below as they crept into position, and Saarvith called out for the missing sentries, as well as Nurklenak.

Hearing no response, the two Red Hand commanders alighted on the roof of the hatchery, seeing their worst fears confirmed. The rogue crept up onto the third story with fly active, but was noticed by Saarvith. He took a readied action arrow for minor damage, and the fight was on.

The group all (foolishly) abandoned their covered position downstairs and ran up onto the third story. Regiarix took off, ending up FAR off the map with Saarvith peppering the group with arrows. With very little to do, the fighter and ranger both took to the air while the cleric and wizard readied their meager ranged options.

Regiarix' breath weapon was a flop: both the fighter and ranger saved and protection from energy took care of the rest. Saarvith, however, was doing fearsomely. Peppering the fighter and ranger, then the ranger's animal companion, the party had no real way of harming either of them.

Regiarix got too close on his one breath weapon run, allowing the fighter and ranger to each score a hit, as well as the cleric getting off an admonishing ray on Regiarix, but after that he stayed well away. When the wizard made her appearance on the roof with a borrowed +1 goblin bane heavy crossbow, Saarvith snarled in anger and focused his attacks on her.

She took heavy damage the first round (Deadly Aim + Favored Enemy + a stack of elf bane arrows), but foolishly elected to remain on the roof to take a second shot. On the next pass, Saarvith scored a hit with Manyshot and she was dead on the spot.

Finally recognizing that they were fish in a barrel, the party finally retreated inside, bringing the wizard's corpse with them. The two enemies made a few more passes around the building, badly injuring the ranger's wolf companion as he foolishly stood in a window. Once everyone was clear of the windows, the party readied actions and braced for an attack.

The standoff continued for a few more rounds, but with Regiarix unwilling to enter the killing jar that was the town hall, Saarvith eventually decided to cut his losses and order a retreat. Flapping away, the two were soon over the trees to the southwest and out of sight.
The party's reactions were mixed. The fighter pointed out that they had accomplished their mission in destroying the hatchery, butchering the Red Hand garrison, and forcing their commanders to retreat in disgrace, but the cleric was less optimistic. They had, until now, prevented ANY enemies from escaping alive. Until now, they were completely anonymous. Now, two important enemy commanders knew who they were and were leaving to report back. The ranger pointed out that they could at least be cautiously optimistic that Saarvith wouldn't be a commander for too much longer, and they boarded their raft for home.

On the way, the cleric used their staff of life to bring the wizard back from the dead. She had regained her bearings sufficiently by the time they arrived back in Starsong Hill.
The party was greeted as they arrived by Trellara, who was anxious to know how the mission went. With their success reported, she took them to see Sellyria immediately. The High Speaker informed them that they had done well and upheld their part of the bargain. And with Trellara rallying support for the war in their absence, they had come to a conclusion: they would send their hunters to help. The humans of the Vale would not stand alone against the Red Hand.

Notes: For those counting, the party ended up with 9 alliance points: 2 for dead razorfiends, 2 elves made friendly, 2 for kindness, 2 for defeating the Red Hand...and 1 for a DC 10 check made at Lanikar's funeral. That alliance was won by a wooden flute.
Afterward, the party gathered for a somber reflection on what had occurred. The wizard was shaken by her ordeal, despite the aftereffects having been resolved already, and had changed. The ranger, too, was having a crisis of faith.

A fairly cool roleplaying encounter followed, to which I'm sure I won't be able to do justice here. The ranger asked why the cleric believed in St. Cuthbert, and why the gods seemed to answer his prayers but not the ranger's. Why, he asked, hadn't his prayers been answered when his brother had been taken by bugbear slavers years ago?

The cleric counseled him as best he could, and with that, the ranger headed into the woods alone. Bandaging his wolf companion, he set the beast free. The fight with the dragon had taught him that war was no place for someone he loved. While he spent time alone, gathering his thoughts, the party regrouped and began to prepare for the mission that had initially brought them there: taking down the Red Hand's roadblocks.

Notes: Some really awesome roleplaying at the end of that session, and the game even panned out perfectly for the mechanical changes everyone wants to make. Everyone is leveling up to 8, giving them the opportunity to rebuild if they desire.

The wizard has been unhappy playing a prepared caster (despite doing well at it), and is going to rebuild to an arcanist with the twilight sage archetype, representing how changed she is from her death experience. Mechanically and thematically, she'll be very similar to how she is already operating, but with a little more versatility (spontaneous casting means more spells per day, but fewer unique spells prepared). The Consume Life ability is very flavorful and represents her brush with death nicely, although this all comes at a critical cost: the Battle of Brindol will take place at level 9, limiting her to 4th level spells instead of 5th.

The ranger, for his part, is dismissing his wolf companion (who has been having difficulty contributing in a few of these last fights) and will be gaining a giant owl companion (mechanically, either an eagle or a roc). He hopes it will be more useful and versatile than the wolf (and spare the ridiculous image of a horse-sized wolf riding through the Blackfens on a raft with them).

The cleric has been having difficulty finding his role, and is rebuilding to focus more on his spellcasting, rather than trying to be both an archer AND a cleric. This isn't going to see a significant change in his playstyle, only his effectiveness.

[Dravda]

Session 9

After finally remembering what they actually came to the swamp for in the first place, the group set off for the east blockade on Day 12. With them was the ranger's new animal companion: a giant owl, Kialara, who was Liokio's mate. I honestly considered skipping the second blockade, but I figured I'd rather waste their (in-game) time to keep the time crunch real.

The ranger crept up invisibly to get the lay of the land, and the group began rubbing their hands together in evil glee as I described the sleeping (and helpless) ogres. In all, the blockade presented a scintillating tactical challenge, which would have been more relevant if the bad guys could hold a candle to a group of level 8 PCs.

In the end, the arcanist cast hold portal on the north door, then cast grease near the south wall and set it ablaze with a dropped torch. The fighter and ranger sneaked in and delivered a coup de grace each to the sleeping ogre, which was hilarious overkill.

The battle began with the owl companion swooping down and dragging off screaming hobgoblins, an occasion for which I lined up the Wilhelm scream (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xn6hhrX34Pw) on the soundtrack. The arcanist had finally learned to disregard the "optimization" forums and cast a long-time favorite: fireball. The one spell alone wiped out most of the remaining Red Hand forces, and a holy smite chaser finished them off.

As the arcanist demonstrated her new Consume Life ability on the fallen, to shivers all around, the group merrily watched the fort burn. After a moment, the cleric suggested frisking some of the hobgoblin officers for intelligence, which turned up a map to the other road block. The party groaned: they were hoping to be well on their way, not going days out of their way to clear up another road block. After some deliberation, they decided to make a forced march to Starsong Hill that night, then set out in the morning.
The second roadblock went basically the same, albeit smoother because the party had a good idea what to expect. They actually ended the fight with a live hobgoblin sergeant, and so decided to take the time to interrogate him.

The arcanist used Consume Life on another hobgoblin next to him to get his attention, which terrified their prisoner. Not being the fanatic that other Red Hand troops are, he began blabbing and they could barely get a word in edgewise to ask questions.

The masterwork weapons they'd been finding came from a temple in the mountains; he didn't know where, since he hadn't been allowed close. He knew the names of the Wyrmlords but not the dragons. He didn't know where any of the Wyrmlords were, and they only got information by runner ever week or two. He didn't even know where the horde was. Through all this, he pleaded to be allowed to go home, and I actually got a very confused dilemma from the party.

The consensus seemed to be that this particular hobgoblin was no threat to them and was unlikely to rejoin the horde. He wasn't a zealot, he'd been conscripted. The conversation was cut short, however, when the ranger ran their prisoner through the heart.

Still conflicted but acknowledging that he may have made the right call, the party moved on.
The party stood at an impasse, looking at the map and wondering where to go. It was at this point that the ranger brought up the phylactery. He argued passionately that the phylactery should be turned over to the Ghostlord, since the Red Hand was evidently using it to secure his cooperation.

This time, the cleric and fighter somewhat agreed, in light of the fact that he didn't seem liable to become Sauron if he got it. He just wanted to be left alone, not conquer the Vale for himself. The biggest concern at this point was being able to make the transfer safely, since they hold a healthy fear of the Ghostlord and have no way of preventing him from killing them.

The idea was briefly floated out to remove the phylactery from its anti-scrying box, leaving it lying out in the open with a note to be detected when it is inevitably scryed (something along the lines of "For the Ghostlord, please don't smite us kthxbye"), but was dropped without too much deliberation.

The issue is that they're too afraid to destroy the damn thing, but also too afraid to give it back to the Ghostlord. I'm not sure everyone's making the connection that doing nothing with it is equally bad.

Finally, the ranger hit upon a winning idea: take the phylactery to his patron, Lady Kaal. Glancing over the bios provided, the group reasoned that she would have either a good idea of what to do with it, or at least the resources to secure it much better than they could. Lord Jarmaath they immediately ruled out as being too trustworthy to be trustworthy: since he was literally in bed with Pelor, they assumed he'd do something stupid with the phylactery like destroy it.

[Dravda]

Hell of a long session yesterday. I'll try to cover everything as best I can.

Session 10

The party made steady progress back through the swamp and down the Rhest Trail to Brindol, pushing hard on summoned mounts to arrive in the evening of day 15. They wasted no time contacting Lady Kaal and showing her the phylactery. She immediately turned them around and sent them packing to the Ghostlord's lair: they were dangerous combatants, competent negotiators, and (most importantly) in her pocket. The group went off to get some rest, then spent Day 16 searching for clues as to the Ghostlord's location.

The ranger spent the day perusing Lady Kaal's library, finding nothing. The cleric took a penalty to spend part of the day searching, then spent the rest of the day tending to Brindol's flood of refugees. The fighter spent the day getting the lay of the land, making gather information checks to find out local rumors and get his finger on the pulse of the city, and spread hope wherever he was able.

The arcanist, for her part, contacted her teacher: Immerstal the Red. I played Immerstal as Tony Stark: a self-obsessed, genius millionaire with a snappy wit. He knew of an old map that showed where the Ghostlord might be: the location of the lion monument from the stories. The arcanist thanked him and spent the day perusing his library, verifying the information while helping him with his experiments.

The party reconvened that evening to discuss their next move. They would leave to find the Ghostlord the next day.
I'd begun dropping hints that the PCs were being recognized by this point as the "heroes of the Vale" since both the Drellin's Ferry refugees and the Tiri Kitor had arrived by this point. I'd planned for their notoriety to spread by the time they returned from dealing with the Ghostlord, enough to be invited to Brindol's defense council meeting.

My players, on the other hand, had their own ideas.

The ranger rolled a natural 20 on a gather information check to find Captain Ulverth, then waylaid him as he was inspecting defense construction. He then pulled out a map and began laying out his plans to defend the city, right then and there.

I considered having Ulverth tell him to shove off, but instead elected to have the captain recognize him, tell him that Lord Jarmaath would really like to meet them in person, and invite them to a defense council meeting that evening.

Hey, whatever slows the party down a little bit. There's no chance of them coming CLOSE to missing the battle of Brindol, so I'm just nickle-and-diming them for days now.

Regardless, the party agreed and I ran the defense council meeting then and there. The recap of the game so far was pretty cool, and helped remind the players of the plot when the details may have been getting foggy.

Two out of four PCs made their checks to impress the council, giving them a handy bonus on their further diplomacy but denying them the free VP for everyone making it. The meeting flowed organically, and everyone had a lot to say about the defense of the city. Their major decisions were as follows:

Lord Jarmaath's initial plan was to commit Brindol's cavalry to a pre-emptive, early strike to knock the Horde back on their heels and deny them the ability to dictate the pace of the battle. Captain Ulverth wanted to hold the cavalry in reserve, with Lady Kaal and Tredora unsure. The party opted to keep their cavalry in reserve and meet the main force of the Horde at the wall (smart).

Since they had Trellara there, she brought up the defense of the city in case the walls fell. Several decisions were made, which I'll detail further in a minute. When the issue of clerics came up, the party overwhelmingly supported dispersing them to the front lines, rather than centralizing them. Because of this, I'll let them draw on their 5000 gp worth of magic items at any time between encounters, rather than having to report back to the cathedral for support. However, the clerics will be described as suffering heavy losses, Tredora Goldenbrow will not survive the battle unless they make some special effort to keep her alive, and there will be no NPC cleric support available in Brindol after the battle.

Finally, the party was initially paralyzed with the magnitude of the political choice they had to make in assigning the telepathic link, but went with the smartest (and safest politically) choice of giving it to Trellara Nightshadow (I have her commanding the Tiri Kitor while Sellyria Starsinger stayed behind at Starsong Hill. War is a young person's game, and Trellara was the one pushing for war in the first place).

The party brought up a number of additional concerns:

The soldiers should be spaced all along the walls, not just at the gates, in case the walls are breached or the horde makes an attempt to scale the walls.
Additional effort would need to be made in training archers to counter the Red Hand's air superiority (books were cracked open as they attempted to design cheap flak cannons, but all their methods proved too expensive to be feasible).
Torches and light spells should be used liberally, to counter the Red Hand's darkvision advantage.
The northern bridges of the city should be demolished.
Soldiers should be stationed all along the riverfront, to guard against amphibious assault.
The orchards outside of town should be harvested for lumber or burned, to prevent the Red Hand from building assault rafts, siege engines, or ladders.
Water and sand should be stockpiled in case of the likely event of fire. The ranger favored demolishing buildings to create firebreaks ahead of time, but was voted down. The council decided to keep tools to do so handy, since the possibility of the Red Hand using fire-breathing dragons was deemed likely.
Booby traps should be deployed outside the town, along the Dawn Way and in the orchards surrounding the city, to slow down and terrorize the Red Hand.
In the event of the walls failing, cavalry should be deployed to flank the flankers.
Barricades and road blocks should be built all across the city. Soldiers should know their fall-back positions in advance, and groups should be prepared to use guerilla warfare.
The Tiri Kitor should be used primarily as scouts and messengers, as well as a quick-response force.


Thoughts: All in all, I was very impressed with my group here. They've all put a LOT of thought and effort into this, and we marked up a copy of Antariuk's Brindol map nearly beyond recognition throughout the course of the meeting.
The party set off on day 18, using communal mount and riding their horses hard to cut down on time. So paranoid were they about the timeline that they tried to borrow 10,000 gold from Lady Kaal to get their hands on a carpet of flying. She turned them down, but offered a scroll of teleport to hasten their journey back. This means I've only got one shot to run all the Elsir War encounters I want to.

The party stopped to help a group of clerics in Talar. The woman with a broken arm who kept looking at them set off alarms immediately, as did the charismatic explorer, Rollan Malone, who was making inquisitive conversation. The ranger decided he didn't trust the two clerics, and the cleric narrowed his eyes at a few farmers who pinged on detect evil (I sprinkled a few run-of-the-mill jerks into the group to keep things interesting). Needless to say, tensions were high, and the ranger had instructed everyone not to say a word about their mission.

Regardless, they couldn't find anything suspicious and didn't divulge enough information for the hidden spy to work on, so they wormed their way out of the Marked For Death encounter later. As they were bidding the clerics and their patients farewell, the arcanist found a suspicious rock with detect magic.

After rolling an impressive Spellcraft to determine the spell being used, she found it to be misdirection.

"What's misdirection?"
"It switches the target of divination spells. It makes the rock ping as they would, and them ping as the rock."
"I cast detect evil on the rock."
"It's evil."
"Mother f...stop that caravan!"

After dispelling the misdirection, they went haring after the caravan and swept for evil and magic again, finding both on the adventurer, Rollan. They opened fire without so much as getting him out of the wagon with the injured.

He snarled in anger and broke his disguise to attack, revealing himself to be an aranea. The group, suitably freaked out, focused their firepower. He managed to slow them down with a black tentacles spell, but was overwhelmed in short order.

After apologizing to the clerics for the ruckus, the party interrogated the aranea. Rollan knew much, giving them the estimated numbers of the Red Hand, foreshadowing the kinds of monsters they would fight (without revealing the blackspawn), confirming that the Red Hand had only five dragons and naming them, and admitting that he had been sent to find the party and set up an ambush to reclaim the phylactery.

The party executed him, and they were on their way.
I've never understood why the book assumes that a party will always end up fighting the Crimson Tigers. My group didn't: the ranger even tried to recruit them to Lady Kaal's service. The others left, deciding they had better things to take care of than petty looters, and the ranger eventually ended up stabbing one for disrespecting him. The others cleared out after that, and the group was on their way.
The goblins and ettins were cleared out without too much trouble, and the group didn't so much as consider keeping the gold for themselves. Since the Hammerfist Holds were on their way, they kept on pressing to deliver the payment.

They'd been pressing their summoned mounts hard and even decided to push for 16 hours per day, so they arrived at the Hammerfist Holds late that night. They promptly delivered the gold, were put up overnight, and headed out to finish their journey the next day.
Crossing the Thornwaste was a non-issue: they used enlarge person on the ranger's owl, making her huge (any spell that affects the ranger can affect his companion), and she easily carried the group overland.

After brief deliberation on how to approach, the group decided to head straight into the lion's mouth. Flying directly in, they bypassed a surprised Varanthian, who was snoozing downstairs. I recast her as an adult white dragon and the most clearly fanatical of the bunch so far: she had a tattoo of a red hand across her face, from snout to horns.

As the ranger used his gloves of reconnaissance to spy on the Doom Fist Monks in the next room, Varanthian crept up silently behind them. A nice Stealth check on her part and mediocre Perception checks on everyone else' meant that they were unaware of her existence until she let loose a bone-jarring roar and fired her breath weapon, altered into a burst with Shape Breath, into the lion's mouth.

Everyone took a hard hit, and the fight was on. Panicking, the group bolted for the doors, deciding they'd rather fight the hobgoblins than the dragon. The ranger's owl companion bolted and flew away, buying the rest of the group one round (which is how long it took for Varanthian to run the owl down and finish her off).

Stunned that the owl was dead already, the group drank potions of resist energy and kicked open the doors. The Doom Fist monks fared poorly: a holy smite damaged and disoriented all of them, and they were dispatched quickly while the fighter held the doors shut. A miraculous opposed strength check on his part barely kept them closed as Varanthian threw herself against the far side.

They got one more round to prepare before Varanthian kicked the doors open, scoring a nasty hit on the fighter. Varanthian had both mage armor and shield active already, bringing her AC to an unassailable 35. The ranger and fighter rolled forward while the cleric worked on dispelling and the arcanist frantically spent points from her arcane pool to reconfigure her spells prepared into something useful.

A full attack from Varanthian left the ranger at 6 hp, and they'd still barely made a dent in her. Finally, the group got their act together, with the ranger retreating to pull out his bow while the fighter scored a few good hits with his glaive. The arcanist pulled out a fireball and started doing decent damage, though she rolled poorly to overcome SR and lost a spell or two.

Varanthian nearly killed the ranger when she let loose a second breath weapon, but a combination of a successful save and resist energy saw him through with a single hit point remaining. With Varanthian below a quarter of her hit points at the start of her turn, she took one last bite at the fighter before turning to exercise the better part of valor. The fighter missed his attack of opportunity as she went, and so Varanthian lives to fight another day.

In the aftermath, the group reeled. It was only due to several VERY lucky rolls that Varanthian didn't wipe them all out: half the players had begun literally praying to St. Cuthbert during the battle. They had burned a large number of spells, their healing resources took a beating in recovering from the damage sustained, and they hadn't even won a decisive victory. The dragon was gone, sure, but it wasn't dead, so they knew they'd be seeing it again. Whether that would be at the Battle of Brindol or in ten minutes after Varanthian licked her wounds, they weren't sure, but no one wanted to stick around to find out.

Turning, they went to head deeper into the lair. Ahead of them, they know that a garrison of fanatical hobgoblins are waiting for them, led by Wyrmlord Ulwai Stormcaller.

[Dravda]

Session 11

Nervous that Varanthian could still be behind them, the party elected to press onward into the Ghostlord's lair. The arcanist and cleric warned that they had expended a lot of their top-tier spells in the last battle, but they were eager to secure the Ghostlord's aid rather than chance a rematch with Varanthian.

Since the Red Hand forces were alerted to their arrival and had heard the commotion outside, I repositioned the hobgoblin defenders to area 4, the welcoming chamber. Since I was unimpressed with Ulwai's retinue, I restatted her as a Spell Warrior skald and replaced one of her clerics with a Doom Hand Warpriest. In the end, this made for an interesting and challenging fight.

Things got off to a grim start as the party descended down the pitch-black stairs, carrying a light source with them. They triggered the warpriest's readied unholy blight and the battle was on. Ulwai opened with her Enhance Weapons song (with Superstition, Witch Hunter, and Disruption as her rage powers: hobgoblins hate and fear arcane casters, remember), giving all her allies +2 shock weapons, +4 on saves against spells and supernatural abilities, +3 damage against spellcasters (3/4 of the party), and increasing the DC to cast defensively near them by +4. The first Doom Fist monk rolled handily to grapple the ranger and began constricting him.

The party rallied quickly. Things looked grim when fighter failed a save against the warpriest's confusion, but the cleric removed the condition before it could cause any damage. The party unloaded their AoEs into the room: holy smite with a fireball chaser sent the hobgoblins reeling. Once the ranger extricated himself, they dropped the monks quickly, followed by the cleric, then the warpriest. Ulwai had dropped her invisibility near the end of the fight to attempt a counterspell and to land some enchantment spells, but her contribution to the battle was minimal beyond her song.

Alone but only lightly injured in a room full of enemies, Ulwai opted to surrender rather than dimension dooring her way out. After all, she couldn't feed them misinformation if she escaped, and she'd thought to cast glibness ahead of time.

Her glibness spell was discovered, but she still passed every Bluff check she made handily. She painted a sob story to the party: how her people were oppressed by the Kulkor Zhul, how she hadn't wanted to serve but she had no choice, how she wasn't a fanatic like these others (whom the party had just finished executing). Appealing to their sense of honor, she offered information if they promised her honorable treatment as a prisoner of war. She knew the location of Azarr Kul, and that he was mustering a second horde. But she would tell no more until she was safely in Brindol and had parleyed with Lord Jarmaath: that information was her only safeguard from getting her throat cut like so many other hobgoblins.

The party raged. They threatened. They begged, pleaded, reasoned, and gnashed their teeth. They tried EVERYTHING to get her to talk so they wouldn't have to bring her all the way back to Brindol, but Ulwai was no fool. The ranger even tried making a coup de grace prematurely, and was stopped by an AoO from the fighter as the arcanist dive-tackled their prisoner to get her out of the way.

The debate over what to do with their high-value prisoner ended up being just as fierce as deciding what to do with the Ghostlord's phylactery. In the end, they agreed to her terms and decided to take her back to Brindol, though the ranger's player warned everyone both in and out of character that if he was left alone with Ulwai, he would kill her.

With their bound and gagged captive in tow, the party quickly found the secret passage leading straight to the pool of rebirth. Entering into the room, they were alarmed to see a ghostly dire lion blocking the way to the Lion's Heart...then another lion, then another, as more and more of them crept forth from the alcoves, fangs bared.

Then, the Ghostlord himself (http://carpet-crawler.deviantart.com/art/Lich-96647060) entered the room: wispy and insubstantial, garbed in flowing robes and tortured spirits, with eyes glazed over with milky cataracts.

"Why...why did they come here?" he gasped in a voice like ash.

Everything the players said was in character from this point, so they kept it short and sweet. Everyone was terrified of this guy, and so handed the phylactery over as swiftly as they dared. For the Ghostlord, I went with an overwrought rasping voice, referring to everyone except himself in the third person ("What do they want with me?")

With his phylactery returned, the Ghostlord demanded that they leave, which they did post-haste. The entire encounter was tense and left everyone shaking with exhilaration, though they did delay their retreat long enough to grab Ulwai's manuscript from her quarters (on her insistence).

Thoughts: the encounter went just about perfectly, though in hindsight I shouldn't have moved the Ghostlord's location. The group expressed some regret that they didn't get to explore the entire structure. While moving him to the Pool of Rebirth room was more dramatic, with the lions emerging from all sides to reinforce their master, the group wasn't going to fight him either way, so I might as well have kept him where he was.

Also in hindsight, I should have asked for a save against his paralysis when they handed over the phylactery, but they were terrified enough as it was, so I suppose it wasn't a big deal in the end.
The group took stock as they left, glad to see no Varanthian. With no owl to transport them back, the group was forced to slog overland back out of the Thornwaste...making an average of 1 mile per hour. The ranger was under no such restriction, and abandoned the party to go at his own pace (starting to see a pattern with him), making the edge of the Thornwaste before nightfall.

The others weren't so lucky. They elected to trudge through the badlands rather than camp, so I rolled on the random encounter table and threw a bulette at them. Even low on spells and down a man, the fighter took the bulette down easily enough (which is good: they would have been angry with the ranger if his negligence had led to a PC death).

They rejoined with the ranger at the edge of the Thornwaste, where he'd used the extra time to begin the 24 hour process to gain a new animal companion. They camped there for the day, setting off for Brindol on day 21.
I threw this encounter at them (the ranger was metagaming HEAVILY as soon as I drew the map. When he began asking "Why do we have to stay in the farmhouse? I camp a mile down the road instead!" I had to pointedly ask him if he'd rather begin this ambush without cover instead.)

The encounter went smoothly enough: the hobgoblin troopers were no match for the PCs at this point, and the barghests got one good attack routine off, injuring the fighter, before retreating. Unfortunately, one of them had seen that they had Ulwai prisoner, and the party guessed (correctly) that they were off to set an ambush.

Deciding that their current campsite wasn't safe, they pushed through the night, casting communal mount several more times to see them the rest of the way to Brindol. There they collapsed, exhausted.

Thoughts: My intent was to run Marked for Death on the way back as an attempt by the Red Hand to rescue Ulwai, but honestly, it would strain disbelief that they could move a large group of crack troops and set up such an elaborate bait so quickly if they'd attacked that same night. If the party had waited until morning I would have had no qualms throwing the ambush at them, but as it stands, they made good decisions and deserve to be rewarded for them.
Reaching Brindol in the morning of Day 22, the party collapsed with exhaustion and elected to take a day to rest before beginning their preparations. Training of the militia, then, began on Day 23.

I used kjones' idea for training the militia, presented in Saintheart's Red Handbook of Doom here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=9513822&postcount=7). Though they started off slowly, fumbling a lot of rolls (they came up with 24 at least a dozen times), they built up a respectable number of points to use during the battle.

The ranger came up with an idea for a sixth area of training: trapmaking. After some discussion, we agreed upon the following rules. The DC 25 check he would have to make would be his craft (trapmaking) skill plus his charisma modifier. During the battle, for 1 point he could place a single CR 1 trap, 2 points for a CR 2 trap, and 3 points for a CR 3 trap. I think the presence of booby traps throughout the battle will be a nice way to represent his contribution to the city's defense, rather than just talking about them.

In the end, they came up with 6 points in melee combat, 5 in ranged combat, 2 in defense and tactics, 9 in first aid, 7 in magical defense, and 8 in trapmaking.

During all this, Wyrmlord Ulwai was escorted to Brindol Keep's dungeon, where she negotiated for her life with Lord Jarmaath, feeding him misinformation about the horde's strength and telling him about the mythical second horde in the Giantshield Mountains. None of it was corroborated, however, and the ranger took the opportunity for another "I told you so" (he hasn't missed a chance to insist to anyone who will listen -- Lady Kaal, Lord Jarmaath, or the rest of the party -- that she should be executed).

The group took heart when, just days before the battle, the Twistusks showed up in force to help defend Brindol. Old Warklegnaw was a favorite of my group, so I played to the crowd a little bit and brought him back. =p

Finally, the cleric cast commune to ask St. Cuthbert several questions. Most of it was just corroborating what they already knew: there was no second horde in the Giantshield Mountains, Azarr Kul was in the Wyrmsmoke Mountains, the Red Hand was NOT sending every dragon they had at Brindol, Wyrmlord Ulwai could not be trusted.

We ended the session there (with everyone chanting "Praise Cuthbert," I may have an actual cult on my hands >>), and will begin next session with the Battle of Brindol.

[Fizban]

Good show with the prisoner gambit, shame absolute divination magic had to ruin it. My own group never would have bought it of course (and didn't in a similar encounter), but they were obliging enough to not immediately execute someone just for being incredibly suspicious. It didn't go well for them, sadly more due to overexertion than the sudden and inevitable betrayal.

[Dravda]

I live!

After several months of delays, we finally got a few good chances to sit down as a group and do some gaming. We finished the campaign on Sunday evening. Below is the recap of the Battle of Brindol, and I shall be posting the raid on the Fane of Tiamat tomorrow, most likely.

Sessions 12-14

Glyphstone came up with a very interesting idea for streamlining the Battle of Brindol, which Saintheart presented in his Red Handbook of Doom. The basic idea was that the PCs themselves are part of Brindol's reserve forces, not the entire reserve in and of themselves. As threats arise, they can choose to deploy themselves or some of their allies to turn the battle their way.

First came the Red Hand's hill giant batteries, attempting to batter down the walls. There was a brief debate as to whether the Tiri Kitor or the Northern Cavalry could close the gap faster, but in the end, they decided to gamble on the cavalry rather than compromise their eyes in the sky. The cavalry galloped forward, decimating the giants with a fearsome charge and then harrying them to death with their javelins. The cavaliers were back inside the safety of the city gates before the Red Hand could effectively counterattack. Victory!

With that, the Red Hand sent swarms of manticores to harry the city walls as their infantry marched in. The PCs deployed the Tiri Kitor without much deliberation. The elves suffered heavy casualties but cleared the skies. Victory!

Frustrated at their lack of results, the Red Hand deployed their chimeras to wreak havoc on the walls as their infantry scaled them. The PCs very nearly entered the battle themselves here, and I had drawn up the battle map before they decided that Immerstal the Red might as well get a chance to earn his keep. With fly active and a host of summoned air elementals as his vanguard, Immerstal did his best Iron Man impression by blasting the chimeras from the sky. Depleted but victorious, he set down. Victory!

With that, the Red Hand assault was upon the walls. The fighting was fierce, but the defenders were much better composed than the Red Hand had anticipated. With the dwarven mercenaries deployed to staunch the bleeding, the attack on the walls was easily repulsed. Victory!

Thoughts: the players really loved this mechanic, and were well and truly engaged by it. It does a great job of engaging the players' tactical thinking skills, as well as highlighting their accomplishments throughout the campaign so far. Bravo, Glyphstone!
The heroes chased Abithriax to the northeastern quadrant of the city (near where they would make their stand in Streets of Blood). Abithriax was something of a poseur: he flew overhead looking big and scary, but his breath weapon flopped thanks to protection from energy. The fighter charged and scored a critical hit, and he was peppered to death with ranged attacks and spells within a round. Not nearly as impressive as Varanthian had been, after all.

While the arcanist went through her spell list after the battle, looking for AoE spells with the cold descriptor, the ranger easily threw five Survival checks to put out all the fires on his own. So much for Abithriax's contribution to the battle. =p
The players dug in, calling Captain Anitah for their reinforcements and deploying bear traps along the street to slow the attackers.

The first wave did little more than waste the PCs time and a few of their precious spells: even though I was strictly enforcing low-light vision penalties, it was essentially a shooting gallery, and even the manticores were taken out easily. The blood ghost berserkers fared similarly, falling prey to a black tentacles spell, and only one of them even made it over the barricade.

For the third wave, I had Varanthian make her return with several more squads of hobgoblins. Despite quaking with fear when they saw her again, Varanthian was wolfpacked and taken down relatively quickly, even with her hobgoblin support. The players let out a cheer, and the arcanist made good on her promise to eat Varanthian's soul and wear her hide as a coat.
Lord Jarmaath was just ordering a regroup when he was abruptly cut off. Immerstal the Red came in a moment later, panicked, and shouting that Lord Jarmaath had been killed by a sniper. In a hilarious case of the players having a theory way more interesting than the actual game, the group immediately theorized that Lady Kaal had sent her OWN assassin to kill him and make it look like enemy action.

The group made their perception checks to tell what block the sniper shots were coming from, eating only one or two arrows in the process (and making their saves against Skather's poison). When they reached the building in question, the ranger breached the second story alone while the rest of the party breached the first story.

With Skather rebuilt as a slayer, he was able to fire his crossbow in melee and even make AoOs, but rolled relativey poorly against the ranger's excellent rolls, and lost the one-on-one duel handily. On the ground floor, things looked grim when both war adepts fired their readied lightning bolts at once, reducing the fighter to single-digit hit points. The party on the bottom floor fell back, but once reinforced by the ranger's animal companion, successfully stormed the building without another enemy spell landing on them.
Were I less lazy, I would have perhaps taken the time to read Pathfinder's Path of War rules. I did not, and thus ran Kharn as a cleric/crusader/ruby knight vindicator. The group was flummoxed at first by his combination of spells and martial abilities, but the ranger's player soon picked up on his build (but didn't say anything).

For the fight itself, the group gathered on the steps, ringing the rest of their traps around them. The ranger and the arcanist took up position on the cathedral's belltower, overlooking the battle. Kharn made his appearance alongside Regiarix with Saarvith mounted, as well as the ogres and giants described in the book.

The ogres and giants were hobbled by the traps as they entered the fray, buying the party critical time. The ranger scored a lucky crit at the beginning of the battle, taking Saarvith out of the fight immediately (and denying Regiarix the ability to have hits negated via Mounted Combat).

The cleric and arcanist were dangerously close to empty by this point, and Kharn waded in under the effects of child of shadow, granting him a surprisingly-useful miss chance. He opened with doom charge while under the effects of divine power, giving him a shockingly good opening round. His rolls promptly went to ****, and was unable to land enough hits to really be impressive thereafter.

As they fought on the ground, Regiarix swooped up to the second story to harass the party's snipers. With the arcanist's help, the ranger was able to put his favored enemy bonuses to good use to punk Regiarix, though it tied them up for a few critical rounds.

Still, Kharn was defeated without too much difficulty, triggering a general rout of the Red Hand forces.
Though I amped up the suspense in my announcement of what happened next, my players absolutely crushed this campaign. They ended with a grand total of 62/40 victory points, shattering the Red Hand horde.

Exultant in their victory, the PCs gratefully accepted their rewards from Lord Jarmaath. I opted to give them their end-of-adventure spoils now, before the Fane of Tiamat, rather than afterward (since the game will be ending then anyways).

Martin the fighter was given a pair of gloves of dueling, Lendon the cleric an amulet of wisdom +4, Eliora the arcanist a ring of wizardry 1, and Caliden the ranger a Maw of the Wyrm (blue).
The battle really served well as the highlight of the adventure. I think everyone really had a chance to shine, the challenges were varied and enticing, and the thrill of such an anticipated victory left the entire room giddy (myself included). Moments like these are why I play.

[Dravda]

A few days late, but here's our finale...

Session 15

With a warning from Lord Jarmaath of the impending doom on the horizon, the heroes left Brindol for Vraath Keep, with the arcanist using her spells to teleport them there. From there, they hiked to the river, built a raft, and began poling down the river. Their intent was to follow the river to the south of the Fane, then dismount and walk the remaining distance cross-country.

As they approached the Fane, they beheld a curious sight: a Red Hand encampment, empty, but with evidence of a battle. Broken and rent equipment was strewn across the ground, but there were no bodies. The ranger attempted to use tracking to figure out what had happened, but couldn't identify the attackers: their prints seemed an odd mix of feet, claws, hooves, and stranger things.

I was foreshadowing that Azarr Kul was rushing the portal creation process, and as a result weakening the barrier between the planes, letting all kinds of awful things slip through. In this case, it was a horde of demons that destroyed this hobgoblin encampment. Guessing correctly on the extraplanar nature of the attackers, the party theorized that there was actually a civil war between Azarr Kul's religious wing and Hravek Kharn's military wing of the Red Hand...which is way cooler. Oh well.
The party came across the bridge hesitantly, seeing the crackling beam of light in the sky that evinced Azarr Kul's work. When the statue of Tiamat began to "speak", they hardened up, showing no fear and challenging the wyrm goddess. With that, Tyrgarun flew down to attack.

The party had proofed themselves against electricity, but not against fire. By staying out of reach, Tyrgarun bombarded the party, reducing several people down to single digits. The ranger pulled out a save by revealing his new Pinpoint Targeting feat. That, along with a stack of dragonbane arrows, Vital Strike, and several other goodies, allowed him to make a single shot against Tyrgarun's touch AC (hilariously low) that dealt 30+ damage per round.

It took him several rounds to bring the beast down, but it did spell certain death for Tyrgarun. Charging to end the archer threat, he came into range of the fighter and was taken down.
The trap on the door proved little more than a minor nuisance, and the party was soon inside the den of their enemies.

With the Battle of Brindol done, I wanted to keep the Fane short and sweet. The adventure already climaxed: no sense making the mop-up drag on any further. With that in mind, I cast the Fane as the site of a battle. Azarr Kul's ritual has been weakening the barriers between planes (as mentioned before), causing a Black Mesa-style meltdown. Now, the Fane was empty except for the outer sanctum, where his last clerics were holed up and still chanting to amplify his ritual.

The result was a very interesting and suspenseful session, with the players exploring room after room of slaughtered defenders and slain attackers, guessing as to the rooms' original purposes. The players had thought to research the Fane ahead of time (and had rolled spectacularly in doing so), so I gave them an extremely rough layout of the Fane from the point of view of one of the adventurers who had defeated the cult years before.

Thus, they knew to search for a hidden door when they reached the great temple, and made their way through the cavern of the guardian spawn to where the Red Hand survivors had holed up.

Inside were four doom hand clerics, two doom hand warpriests, and a forgefiend.
Do you know what the synonyms for "forge" and "fiend" are? "Smelter demon."
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/LR4UOQhR6CA/maxresdefault.jpg.

The fight was made easier by a surprise round on the PCs' part, which devastated the clustered Red Hand troops, but complicated by third-party activity: a pair of kalavakus (horned demons) burst through the side door during the first round to join the fight.

The battle was more complex than it should have been, with the forgefiend using wall of stone to split the party, leaving the fighter alone with all the enemies. He killed the forgefiend but promptly failed a save against dominate person, then flubbed his reroll against killing his friends.

When the wall came down, the demons were both back at full hit points and the fighter was with them. The cleric finally managed to dispel the mind control (having failed to roll anything above a 4 all evening. With so many enemies featuring spell resistance, he'd been having a tough time contributing), and the demons were killed without too much further difficulty.
I changed the battlemap of the inner sanctum to the one pictured in the book: a glassy, pentagonal surface surrounded by the downward shaft leading to the rest of the fane.
http://static1.squarespace.com/static/55ef5707e4b00992366cdd80/55f0b471e4b09dbc6cb8740b/562e7236e4b04d344aeec898/1445884529527/Lore%2BWarden%2BFINAL.jpg

Azarr Kul, having heard the sounds of battle below, prepared with several buff spells: bull's strength, bear's endurance, freedom of movement, death ward, and finally mislead. With his erinyes flanking him, he strode forward with slow, implacable confidence.

The ranger and his animal companion mopped up the erinyes fairly quickly, leaving Azarr Kul alone. While he lurked invisibly towards the back of the map, his illusion strode forward and acted invulnerable. They hit it with spells. Nothing. The fighter launched a full attack routine, scoring hits into the low 40s. Nothing.

Everyone gaped as Azarr Kul laughed. He cast antilife shell, holy blight, and flame strike, scattering the casters like bowling pins.

Finally, the ranger attacked the half-dragon and made his Will save to recognize the illusion for what it was. His clever idea of using scent was temporarily thwarted by the fact that mislead includes odor, but when the illusion collapsed, they successfully located the half-dragon. He fought viciously, but was eventually overwhelmed.
As Azarr Kul died and the PCs began their victory celebrations, the portal swung open and Tiamat herself howled down at them. As she threw herself through, the portal began to collapse, with the goddess getting further and further away while she got closer and closer...

The PCs took their surprise round to brace themselves, with the ranger's animal companion attempting (but failing) a heroic bull rush to keep the aspect out of the Material Plane. And then the goddess was among them.

The ranger's animal companion nearly died on the first round, but the party focused their fire intensely, and brought the aspect down. Though she was big and intimidating, they held nothing in reserve and pummeled her with everything they had.

VICTORY!
In the years to come, Lendon the cleric and Martin the fighter built Vraath Keep into a massive church, Vraath Abbey, devoted to St. Cuthbert. There, they trained the next generation of the Elsir Vale's faithful while watching the Wyrmsmoke Mountains for future threats.

Eliora the arcanist returned to Brindol, punked her smug teacher in a duel, and opened her own school of magic.

And Caliden the ranger left civilization entirely, spending the rest of his days finding peace.

Thank you all very much for reading! It's been one hell of a journey, and I hope you enjoyed following our adventures!

Happy gaming!

[The Glyphstone]

Glad to see the tactical-reserves variant of the Battle worked out well for another group.:smallcool:

[Fizban]

Hey, you came back! Nice to see the end, was good. Mislead strong.

[Zhentarim]

I'd like to try this.