[PF] One-shot help

[Alberic Strein]

Hello, magnificent people.

I'd kinda love your help, for I find myself in quite a pickle.

Some context:
So, after our last Pathfinder (PF) campaign ended, our GM started another one in Warhammer Fantasy RolePlay 2nd edition (WFRP), and it has been going on strong for a year now. Thing is, that GM is quite ambitious. By the time of our PF campaign he actually had two campaigns the same day set in the same universe, the US team and the European team. Eventually the US team had a near total party wipe due to bad party mechanics and us, the European team, took the one survivor -and borderline problem player- of the US team and finished the campaign. Again, immediately following that our GM switched to another campaign in another setting and game system, but maintaining the same mechanic of having two parties in two different timezones. Except this time he also made it possible for us to have multiple characters, to mix it up a bit, which ended with three different parties (the neutral and evil EU party, and the so-good-it's-uncanny US party.) with the evil party being very high maintenance.

So, after more than two years non-stop of that our GM decided he needed a breather, and asked me to GM a PF one-shot for him and one of his friends on top of our regular games.

I have honestly no idea why he thought that I, who never GM'd for PF, nor GM'd at all in years and who doesn't even speak english as his first language would be the right person for the job. But he did, which is extremely flattering since he is one of my most respected GMs ever, and I care deeply for this dude, so I really don't want to let him down.

So here is the one-shot, please tell me your impressions:
I don't know what my GM will play yet, but his friend will be a sorcerer with a divine archetype giving her access to divine spells. We're starting at 7th level, they rolled their attributes with the pool method and, to quote my GM "Yeah, the magic side of things is pretty much dealt with with her character." my GM should either play a frontline type or a skill-monkey, possibly with leadership to get a frontliner.

The party starts in the biggest capitol of the known world, Malan. They finished a contract in a nearby country a few months prior, were paid in jewels, and thought a place to sell them at the best rate, get some custom magical items done, and spend days pleasantly while said items were being crafted, so they came to the only city with all these traits: Malan. While they were staying here, the tensions between the local nobles were raised to near civil war status, while other countries were preparing to enter full-blown war. In that context, the rumors of an ungodly powerful weapon sleeping forgotten under the ruins of Triste-âme were rekindled. Triste-âme being a minor city whose claim to fame was to have been razed and resettled at the exact same place with the exact same name many, many times. You'd think the villagers would want to settle elsewhere, or at least get rid of the name, but no. One thing to complicate the matters is that Malan is surrounded by a huge marsh named the Rotting Sea (if you read Nausicaä, you get the idea) in which everything rots at extreme speeds due to an ancient curse. The curse dates back to the Third Runic War, the Superweapon dates back to the same period, so having that kind of power resurface may be a very bad idea.

Anyway, the party's first order of the day would be to find an employer, the Danglars noble house (subtle, yes I know) is ready to pay a huge sum for the weapon, but will only pay a tiny bit if the party doesn't deliver the weapon (there will of course be a trick with the weapon, but it's still possible for the party to succeed), while Sir Pellé of the royal administration mainly wants information on the Triste-âme situation and will pay a bonus if the party identifies the weapon, more if they bring it back, but will pay decently if they "only" get to the bottom of the affair. While the Admiral Morcerf mainly wants to put a stop to the renewed Gnoll attacks around Triste-âme that threaten his supply of wood, which he obviously needs for his armada. The rest is just gravy, but he promises he will pay good money for the weapon should it exists, he just very much doubts its existence.

There could be other employers, but this will be the main ones, and others should fall between these lines, with varying degrees of trustworthiness.

Next, the party will have to decide how to reach Triste-âme. I see three main ways of transportation, either they choose to cross the Rotting Sea on foot by themselves, not keeping to roads and going straight for their goal, estimated travel time is seven days, and I'll mostly ask them each day to roll for stealth, failure means they couldn't avoid the pride of manticores, the gallows tree, the gnoll warband if they're close to Triste-âme, and also an encounter where they cross the top of something that looks like a mound, that suddenly trembles, and when they go look at what's going on, they realise they were trekking atop a cave, made some noise and woke up a lazy wyvern. Another encounter is to find an oasis of pure water with a small mound in the center where a single woman plays the harp. The woman is a Nereid, and quite hungry/pissed at humans. The party will receive from time to time the help of some royal roadwardens, with carbine and horse, even if their "help" is simply to tell our fearless adventurers to do the courageous thing and flee like hell, some encounters being way too hard.

If the team decides to join a caravan that will bring them to a city close to Triste-âme, they will meet Lars Vanhel, a drunk cleric with a totally inappropriate love for lightning. He should be introduced as a useless bum at first, and then shoot a lightning bolt from the inside of his wagon the first time the party is having issues. The caravan has five wagons, with the three middle ones having small ballista turrets on top. Encounter-wise, once during the first three days the party will be attacked by a wyvern, that will then be attacked by a sepia snake in a "bigger fish" scenario. After that fight the party will meet Serenia, who is in the fifth wagon and a non-magical healer of some skill, apparently she was there from the start, they simply weren't acquainted. In reality Serenia is a vampire that snuck in during the attack, and dominated some people to help with her cover story. She will drain kill, and raise as a vampire spawn a caravan member per two days until she is unmasked. Between the fifth and seventh day, the caravan will chance upon a green woman by the side of the road. She is strangely beautiful, and slowly leaves with a sexy swaying walk to the cover of trees, deaf to all warnings, soon after a horrified scream is heard. A perception 10 reveals the woman as a kelpie, but a relevant knowledge test reveals something weird: Kelpies are aquatic creatures. There are indeed some putrescent lakes where that creature could have lived, but none nearby. If the party follows the kelpie they will get ambushed by assassin vines and then notice a weird pod in front of them, when the fungi queen warps on top of it and attacks, if put in a difficult position, she warps out. If the adventurers don't follow the kelpie, some caravan guards will, and the party will be here to see the caravan get attacked in the rear by four fomorians, one taskmaster and three warriors, with the help of one Grimstalker. If Serenia is still part of the caravan, she will reveal herself as a vampire and help fight that attack, since it directly endangers her wagon, and will take as a personal insult the Taskmaster's vain attempt at dominating her, and his successful attempts at dominating her vampire spawns (yeah, I know it shouldn't work, but I'll houserule that since the vampire keeps the spawns open to domination by her, they are open to domination by a creature as powerful as her). While that happens, a pod appears next to the rear assaillants, while the sides are attacked by two assassin vines each. The Fungus Queen will warp to different sides of the battle to disable the ballistas and drain and dominate the caravan guards, mainly those that got entangled by the assassin vines. At this point the two guards that went to chase the kelpie come back as fungi slaves with said kelpie under its true form to attack the front of the caravan. If the caravan gets destroyed in the fight, then the party will go on alone, possibly with Lars if he survived. Otherwise, if the caravan/players are in bad shape and Serenia is fine, she will turn on them, if she took too many wounds, she will flee. If the fomorians are saved from the fungi infection, they will be dazed for one round and then join the fight on the side of the caravan. If they survive they will gift a minor magical item to the party, otherwise it will be on their carcasses. If the caravan survives, the party will be paid a bonus. At the 8th day, the caravan reaches the trading city of Beri and has to continue alone to Triste-âme.

The party could decide to simply fly to their destination, in which case they reach Triste-âme in two days, and will be attacked by some wyverns, the fight taking the form of a chase of sorts. If the party takes too much damage, they will see one single mountain in range of their flight spell, with the city of Fegrono on top. Halfway towards this city, three wyvern raiders will come meet them, help chase off any remaining monsters if needed, and escort them to Fegrono, where the party can breathe, restock, but unfortunately not learn anything new.

As they reach Triste-âme, no matter the mean of transportation, the party will be visited by a Pale Stranger (except with two kopises instead of two guns and medium armor), the encounter is supposed to be more atmospheric than anything, the Stranger passing as though he didn't even see them, only muttering "Eeeeeeelf..." to himself. The party can engage and defeat him though he should be a hard fight. Then, finally, as the party finally reaches the ruins surrounding Triste-âme, they will chance upon a peculiar situation, with some men fighting off a skeleton attack near a cart. Successful perception tests however, reveal the men as bandits, two innocents hidden under the cart, and the skeleton attacking the bandits. The skeletons will not attack the innocents, and will not try and defend against the party until they strike the first blow. If allowed to finish the bandits, the skeletons will not harm the innocents and take the corpses, then a spectral voice rings and invites the party, whether they destroyed the skeletons or not, to the necromancer's lair, if no skeleton survived, he will send a will o' wisp. The necromancer is actually somewhat decent, will act as a shopkeep for magical items, give what little information he has, and if given a book, any book, will even provide the will o' wisp in a bottle to find the offending gnolls. The party will only have to open the bottle, follow their diminutive guide and find the gnolls.

The party then crosses some ruins, and then climbs a dome-shaped hill, finally reaching Triste-âme. The party will find a small village with a big-ass church and a decent inn. Some people have disappeared, and the villagers are on the fence regarding the adventuring party that came before our heroes, with one (elven) wizard, and two humans, one a fighter-type and the other a slayer. That adventuring team works for one of the guys our heroes don't work for, and don't have a competiting goal, so they can easily ally themselves with our heroes.

The party then needs to investigate Triste-âme and the ruins surrounding it. In the ruins the party can eventually find a gnoll raiding party, if they let a gnoll flee, it will lead them to an entrance leading the party to the second level of the Undergrounds, where they will confront 20 odd gnolls and their gnoll leader. Eventually the gnoll survivors will try and make a run for the exit, failing or not depending on our heroes, but leaving our brave adventurers free to explore the Undergrounds.

Otherwise, Triste-âme suffers from disapperances, the first time the party stays up late to try and find the culprit, they will chance upon a gnoll that will lead them to the entrance to the second level. Killing the gnolls doesn't stop the disappearances though, and subsequent times, the team will find that something peculiar happened to the ground in some parts of the village, sometimes it's ancient, sometimes less, sooner or latter they find that the disappearances are centered around the well, when they climb it down, they discover that it's not nearly as deep as it seems, like 30 feet tops, with a persisted darkness spell at the bottom, alongside a water purification and a water creation spell. There also seems to be a side-tunnel, which is helpful because at this point if the party used a rope to rappel down, it is suddenly cut. Luckily, they can stand in the puddle of water without issues. Then as they follow the side tunnel, they come out of a long extinguished fireplace and on the second floor of what definitely looks like an inn. It's even eerily similar to the one the heroes slept in, and filled with skeletons, some of which animate themselves to attack our heroes. They just arrived at the first level of the Undergrounds.

Back in the village, the woodcutter obviously has a secret, but it's a red herring, he merely has an intimate relationship with the innkeeper's daughter, which is adult but still his junior by fifteen years. Likewise, the butcher pings on detect evil and has some very weird and peculiar meat in his backroom. Again it is a red herring, he simply fancies himself a gourmet and considers it his mission to taste the meat of all creatures, that includes sentient creatures and indeed humans, but he only ever tried bandits and corrupt nobles, and didn't fancy it, so he isn't responsible for the disappearances in the village. He does invite the heroes to sample his newest dish: fomorian fillet.

The blacksmith is intriguing, as he sells much, much better quality weapons than he is capable of producing, even including magical arms and armor and some with peculiar steel that cannot be produced in this country. If our heroes play their cards right, the blacksmith will admit that these weapons are from his father's personal stash, which is also weird to him, since his father didn't have that level of skill either. Should the party search the blacksmith's house, they will find a hidden door in the cellar that gives to a poorly dug tunnel that goes straight down and reaches the Undergrounds level one, except that this time the party chances upon the old smithy that has been mostly pillaged, and the door to the rest of the level is heavily barred.

Lastly, the church is excessively weird. It is dedicated to the "Wyrm" (the local priest pronounces it extremely weirdly) and our heroes simply can't get a read on the head priest, who is also condescending and refuses to help them in any way shape or form. If they adventurers insist and infiltrate the church by night, they may reach a secret door in the study of the head priest, that will directly bring them to the first level of the Undergrounds, but still inside a secret passage, there the party needs to pass some tests to keep finding the right doors that allow them to keep going down and bypass the levels, after the seventh test they bypassed all of it and reach the last level.

Otherwise the Undergrounds represent each time Triste-âme was razed, basically the town is razed, sinks into the marsh, rebuilt on top of it, and eventually started forming the mound on which present Triste-âme rests. The levels are as follow:

Level1: Tunnels bring the party to different establishments, all eerily similar to the ones in current Triste-âme. Enemies are skeletons, slime skeletons, and corpse bugs, who disguise as a bone and animate a skeleton, substituting the marrow with his tendrils. These parasitic insects will also try and latch on human targets, a swarm of them once destroyed Triste-âme and is still there, sleeping due to lack of food, but will wake up when the adventurers walk in. Our heroes can flee to the second level with the swarm hot on their tails, the exit is at the bottom of the church, prompting a three-way fight between the swarm, the gnolls and the heroes.

Level2 : This time there is some sort of huge open-space with arches maintaining the ceiling in place. That Triste-âme was wiped by a plague, of which nothing remains, but gnolls have found an entrance to that level, ransacked it and used it as a base of operations. 20 odd gnolls with a leader and a cleric. Likewise, the exit is at the bottom of the church.

Level3 : Can happen a level lower, but this is when the other adventuring parties will start catching up to our heroes, since they cleared the upper floors, it can be only a party with one quaterstaff magus, war priest and archelogist bard (I think, meh, I don't know, the one with detect traps) or there can also be the other party in Triste-âme if our heroes didn't take them along. There could be some tensions between the parties, since the second one has a competiting goal with our heroes. This level is still recognizable as a village, but the buildings seem... Weird. This is also the first level that wasn't looted over the years, and has some masterwork stuff for our heroes to pillage, as well as scrolls and potions. But it's also the home to aberrations such as mimics, to the shopping weekend may not be a walk in the park for our heroes and their fearless companions (if they're still alive). While the stairs to leave the level are inside a building, and our heroes can find religious iconography inside, it is completely different from the previous churches.

Level4 : This level is the dirtiest of all and doesn't look like anything like the previous levels. Huge insects crawl the floor (CR5 insects) and all perishables have been consumed, food, wood, leather, even the parchment magic scrolls were made off and potions (in the former case, the parchments exploded and killed a number of insects) only some treasures hidden behind magic wards survive. Upon further exploration fo the level, the adventurers stumble upon a main room where a huge blob of troll flesh is chained to the wall by a huge centipede feeding on the blob, the entrails of the blob are open and swarming with insects devouring its flesh that is always regenerating. The blob has two heads, remains of the two-headed troll that lead his tribe to destroy Triste-âme in ages past, and the most astute adventurers can see two small intellect devourers exit the twin heads to mingle with the swarm of insects to sneak attack the group. Upon the destruction of the melded troll flesh, a door to the level below is revealed, requiring a special magical key hidden somewhere on that level.

Level5 : Vampires turned insane by the thirst, resembling less humanoids and more huge hulking muscular bats, lampreys, or other sucking beasts. At this level the city is unrecognizable, with ancient architecture, arches, and buildings, the stairs appear to be cursed, resounding like a crypt, in an eerily familiar fashion to the team. They lead to a locked chamber where the fallen vampire lord rests. The door to that room only opens after answering a riddle. The room itself is home to flame flowers, walking upon them instead of the ground incurs damage, the vampire used them to distract him from his hunger. Upon being woken up, the fallen vampire will attack the heroes, but after round one the fight is interrupted by the arrival of the Pale Stranger, who just walks through the walls, muttering "Eeeeeeelf" again, and breaking into a great flaming smile and huge laughter if he indeed sees an elf in the party, charging towards her. Otherwise he would attack the first person to attack him. It is entirely possible to have the two of them fight each other and run like hell to the other side of the room, where the door is locked by the same key the adventurers used to reach that level. Using it opens the door and gives access to the sixth level.

Level6 : Resting from this level onwards gives our heroes weird dreams about dragons and an endless sky. Concidentally -or not- this level is home to some pseudo-dragonkins of different sorts, but is otherwise an eery level filled with blasphemous glyphs and home to evil outsiders brought here by the power of the Dread Jewel. However, upon fighting their way to said jewel, that is part of a pillar, the party that discovers either by moving or destroying it, that it really doesn't have much power at all. Nevertheless, its absence dissipates the outsiders. Stairs from the building it was found in, lead downwards.

Level7 : This is where the shortcut from the church stops, and indeed, for the first time in some levels, the party arrive in a clearly recognizable church. Again it is eerily similar to the one on the surface, except for one fountain of white liquid in the center. That being said it is completely open and a wealth of information in the classical tongue about the world as it was in the closing days of the Third Runic War. Upon exiting the church the party seems to be transported in their dream of an endless sky and about to be devoured by a black dragon when they return to reality, having only made one step into the final corridor. As they reach the last room, they hear an applause from behind, the head priest congratulating them for being the first creatures ever to reach this far, and like any respecting bad guys, explains to them what is going on before engaging them with the help of a huge ass worm.

After that the party is in front of the weapon and needs to decide what to do with it, and has to climb back up (if they don't find the church shortcut)

The End.

Writing this, I realize I really need to think about the Underground Puzzles a lot more, also perhaps have a full team of adventurers with the caravan instead of only Lars (with one of them becoming a vampire thrall).

Thoughts?

[DeTess]

I've at the moment only quickly looked through your adventure description, so don't expect any in-depth bug-finding yet. I'll start with some of the obvious question though.
First, how long is the adventure supposed to take (in sessions). When I hear one-shot, I usually think of 1-2 sessions, but your adventure seems like it could easily span 4 or more, depending on the time spend playing each session.

Secondly, what are your plans for if the party tries to go off the rails? To give an example: your players reach the dungeon, go into the first level, meet the parasitic swarm, go "Hell no!" and use Dimension door to leave the dungeon. They then decide to dig a tunnel straight to the lower levels to bypass this.
For context, I've done something similar as a player. You'd be surprised how much dungeon-bypassing a party in which everyone has a relevant craft or knowledge skill, almost everyone has spells and one person has craft: Siegcecraft (or something along those lines). We ended up jsut collapsing the entire dungeon, rather than going through it.

[Alberic Strein]

For the length, yeah I know, sorry. I had never actually written out the entire thing for the goddamn game and I didn't expect it to be this long. The length will mostly depend on my adventurer's speed, from experience 2 player games tend to be quite speedy so I wanted to account for that, but I might have overdone it a bit.. Or a lot. The length could also depend a lot on their means of transportation, with the caravan being the longest (in games) and flight being the quickest. So it could vary a lot there...

Anyway, I asked my players (okay, calling my GM "player" is just plain weird) and it seems 4 sessions, or more, would still be alright with them as long as there are no big breaks between games.

For the "off the rails" well, they didn't seem like they would throw off the mission altogether, so that's good, but if they find a legit way to bypass levels, I say let them. Basically anywhere they dig at new Triste-âme would bring them to the first level, if they go down the mound and dig sideways they reach the second, and if inside the Undergrounds they don't find the door, or say **** no to what they see and dig down from here, I say let them bypass the level. Digging would still take time, be tiring as all hell, and make noise that would bring unwanted attention from the creatures of the level they're at, so I'm fine with only giving them the encounters they attract like this.

Should I not? I know I tend to be way too permissive with my players...

[DeTess]

Should I not? I know I tend to be way too permissive with my players...

Oh no, I think you definitely should allow it if they come up with something. Just try to have some ideas in mind in case they do come up with something weird or unexpected. Speaking of those things, I've read through the adventure more carefully, and have come up with a couple more situations where I, if I where playing your game, would maybe/probably behave differently than you tend to anticipate.

1. What's to stop the party from hiring a wizard/sorcerer to teleport them straight to triste-âme, as it seems to be a reasonably well-known location? If there's nothing to stop them, think about what you would do in this case (remember that teleport's can go somewhat off-target if the caster isn't too familiar with the location).

2. Depending on the kind of characters your players are, and their expectations of the world, they might just decide to take out the necromancer, or to stay as far away form him as possible. Think about what they might find if they kill him, and what that fight might be like.

3. On level 7 of the dungeon, I'm not all that sure I'd let the big bad finish his speech. If your players think the same, how will he react to getting interrupted in the middle of his grand-standing? Also, have you considered that some well placed spells by the PC's could end this encounter relatively quickly (hold person comes to mind)? That's not a bad thing in and of itself, but you might want to be prepared for it.

Note on the following comment: This might be some personal preference/experience playing that might not apply to you. Take it with a pinch of salt.

For the rest, I would be a bit careful with the competing companies, as you don't want them to overshadow the PC's, and you probably don't want the PC's to recruit them, as that might throw off a bunch of the planned encounters, and massed combat tends to get bogged down in PF unless you prepare for it with some alternate rules. I'd recommend you think of some reason that the parties won't work closely with the PC's no matter what they offer, or something that stops them from joining them on level 7 if the PC's do manage to convince them.

Edit: Oh, and btw, I can see why your GM decided to ask you to run this game. The preparation you've already done is really great!

[Alberic Strein]

Thanks a lot for the feedback!

1. Okay, my poort understanding of PF is at fault here. I could have freaking sworn Teleport had a component cost. I also didn't expect Teleport to be as costly as Overland Flight (since regular flight can't cut it) and so cheap compared to a scroll. I mean 450gp is a pretty damn good deal for a teleport spell, no? Anyway, my answer to that, which may be somewhat assholish, would be to have the wizard simply refuse to be teleported in the one village that gets razed regularly and is right now under threat of gnolls, skyrocketting his prices to twice his usual rate (so 900gp) and adding 450gp on top of that for the other teleport spell he needs to cast to come back to his lab. Said wizard could them direct them towards a Overland Flight spell, almost as good and that doesn't put him in danger, maybe even lowering the price to 400GP. If no matter what the party wants to use the teleport, we'll roll on the "only seen the target once" table and see what happen. If they blow a huge sum of money to bypass all the cool marsh adventuring stuff, and it works, then I may cry myself to sleep for a while, but it works.

2. I sent them the setting, with necros working in symbiosis with the country, if they still stay away from the dude, it's okay, the adventure continues on. If they accept his invitation, and then decide to murder him... Well ****, that guy is supposed to be pretty ****ing strong. Well, if he survives to his initiative he casts Dimension Door to get the hell away, the room he invited them in is filled with nonmagical books and the corridor to his laboratory proper is filled with nasty traps, after a while I suppose I could have some undeads walking in to push back the heroes but yeah, I may have to map his lair just in case.

3. Well yeah, but in that case we just roll initiative, no? Also, while a successul Hold Person would definitely take him out of the fight, his will save as a powerful cleric should be pretty good. Since he walked in from behind the adventurers we could even have him cast his longer buff spells before walking in the room, so he could have some spell resistance and the like. If you feel the final fight is too lacking, we could have two worms instead of one, but I am quite fond of the "Level 20 or not, you die to a knife to the throat, buddy." so the weakness of an inherently human final boss could be fun to have.

4. For the other companies, yeah I should probably have them around lvl5 instead of lvl7 for the PCs. Probably also with a lower level of optimization. Otherwise I'm not too scared of them teaming up, even if all adventurers join up, which should be unusual, we reach a max of 8 characters (10 if by some unearthly miracle the PCs manage to get Lars and Serenia to stay help them) and we'd probably have a lower headcount. I mean, you can't quite put the fear of fun things like Intellect Devourers or parasitic insects if you don't have a few red shirts die to them, right? The other adventurers were more here for that, and also in case the PCs are in a too ****ty situation, but yeah, I should be careful not to have them be too important.

For the massed fights, I go by "if the PCs can't see it happen, it falls under DM fiat" with a general tendency and not dice rolls.

[DeTess]

Regarding point 2, if the players know that necromancers aren't generally evil in your setting, it'll probably be fine.

On point 3, if the bad guy is going to spend time pontificating, I'd argue one of the pc's could get a surprise action off if they decide to interrupt him, as he's talking, not ready to spring into action if one of them decides to chuck a fireball at him. I'd either have an explanation why he is ready, or just concede a single attack from one player if the guy fails a spot or listen check to see it coming.

The encounter is probably fine, I just recommend that you have a plan B for climactic boss fights if your players manage to trivialize it. This doesn't have to be "bigger monster shows up", just try to avert too much of an anticlimax in case they unexpectedly manage to floor him and his worm in 6 seconds flat.

[Alberic Strein]

Point 3 again: Yeah, normal surprise rules, if the big bad fails a spot check, sure I could let one player (or both, if they used secret signs to act at the same time) have a surprise round before the initiative starts, no problem. Yes, it's more fair that way. Point taken.

For the climatic encounter, I wanted the climax of the last room to be more character driven, though it's complicated with a one-shot. Should they release the weapon? If yes how? And is releasing a weapon absolutely noone can control a good idea? Or one they can live with.

But sure, if they floor the boss and his worm pet in one round or before the boss can do anything, then I can always pull the old "second phase" trick and have him stand up as a wormy abomination, like the Human Worm that Walks. Possibly getting a surprise round if our heroes fail a spot check to see his body writhe and get back up. Oh the irony. Yeah, I like that. No need to pull that card if they have enough trouble with the normal cleric and Death Worm with Frost Worm stats (but not the abilities).

[Alberic Strein]

Hello, I'm back with an update on the "one-shot"!

Also, fun tidbit: Being quite nervous about the whole affair, I asked another group I play with to be my test group, but due to the difficulty of mobilizing that group, they'll actually play after the group they were supposed to test the adventure for.

So, after a fairly long session, the team reached Triste-âme, here is what happened on the way.

First, characters: My GM played Darium (henceforth referred to as DAYUM) a Warlock1/Fighter6, with synergystic training, teleporting and vital striking any and everything in range. His female friend played Bree, a very flirtatious sorceress (divine sorcerer + strega) which liked to use a maximized channeling blast with siphon on top for 72 damage and a truckload of temporary hit points (and of course I failed every single damn save against it) also she worked as a face and, well, let's just say that no man could keep secrets from her. Both play human/tiefling custom races with fiendish heritage and both are healed by both negative and positive energy. I need to remember to make the next priest they meet gay.

Anyway, the game started, I gave them a quick reminder of the situation, and they promptly decided to work for the three possible employers I gave them, catching me slightly off-guard. But in the end only two employers really had complimentary goals so they chose these two.

After some deliberations they decided to go with the caravan (again, unexpected, but that was the chain of encounters I had mapped out the most, so hurray for that!) and promptly met their allied adventuring team, consisting of the quarreling Jern, mercenary priest, Sofia, the resident paladin, and finally the not-quarreling petite half-elf rogue Amber. Immediately, DAYUM tried to separate the quasi-blackguard and paladin, before Amber explained that due to the terms of the contract those two HAD to work together, at which point the Caravan Master arrived and whispered to the beleaguered PC that these two seemed to be "together" in more ways that one, and that the constant bickering was some sort of weird mating dance. One facepalm later, Bree decided to cast detect magic, accurately picking up divine powers from Jern and Sofia, identifying them as 5th level characters, and a much greater power coming from inside a carriage and belonging to Lars Vanhel, identifying him as being as strong as our heroes. Now, I was quite bummed out at that point, since with their insane diplomacy bonus they could get the Caravan Master to tell them that unlike what he seemed (a useless drunk bum in medium armor that got on the caravan through being the nephew of the Caravan Master's boss) Lars was the only person on the caravan trusted by his uncle and here as the main insurance in case something went south, I wanted that reveal to arrive a bit later. Luckily for me by the point they started asking questions about Lars, the Caravan Master had gone back to work, and to everyone else he was just a useless bum. Bree also learnt that while seduction worked against him, it would always be limited by the fact that Lars' true love was lightning. Clerics are weird like that.

Anyway, with the team fully introduced, Sofia and Jern were given rings to bicker telepathically instead of getting on everyone's nerves and the caravan went on its merry way and was attacked at the end of the very first day of travel (rolled 1d3 for it) by three wyverns, two normal and one with dual stingers. I ruled that due to the carts having ballista turrets, the wyverns had to arrive with evasive maneuvers, which gave our team some rounds to buff themselves (but they had none to cast) and 2 rounds of ranged combat before the wyverns were on them. Well, they definitely hit the wyverns hard with a fireball and some scorching rays, the surviving ones were quickly dispatched by a couple good vital strike and more scorching rays. I thought I was clever with my sepia snake, being able to grapple and constrict the sorceress, lifting her up into the air, and, I thought, preventing her from casting. But all I did was give her the room to channel negative energy without murdering all the poor innocent folks in the caravan. I failed the saving throw to halve damage, and the snake died very quickly afterwards.

Then they camped and I introduced Serenia, the undercover vampire. They were obviously suspicious of her, but when people started disappearing a few days later, there were so many suspicious people on the caravan they couldn't zero in on her. Sofia was suspect because as the goddamn paladin she was supposed to be their radar against that kind of sh*t, Jern was a quasi-blackguard that regularly pinged on detect evil, and Lars was a lousy drunk with enough divine power to challenge our heroes. Said heroes investigated, but never under the carts, where the fresh vampire spawns were stocked. They did track the footprints (well, pawprints) left after one disappearance, and since they were of the wolfen sort until it reached a pond littered with footprints, including humanoid ones, they wondered if they were being preyed on by lycans. They decided to try and test everyone in the caravan with a silver blade, since I ruled that just touching a wereperson with it would start burning them, they held off on actually prickling their target with it (which may have outed the vampire) so everybody took the test, and everybody succeeded in proving they weren't werewolves. One other reason that Sofia and Jern were this suspect was because they (sometimes indirectly) opposed the party's plans to avoid other disappearances. For example DAYUM proposed having groups of three people being tied together to avoid them being taken. Hearing the proposal, Jern made a bad BDSM joke and from this point on Sofia adamantly refused to any form of tying up including herself. She instead took of the telepathy ring from Jern and gave it to Amber, saying that a telepathic link was at least as good as rope. Our heroes grudgingly accepted the idea and had everybody but the adventuring party and Lars (he tied himself to his vine tankard) tied in groups of three. Going back in time a bit: The first person to have disappeared was thought to have deserted, the second raised some suspicions, prompting the first reactions from the group and a good inspiring speech from DAYUM. The party also started keeping watch. When the third person disappeared, the heroes took it as a serious threat and had the rope idea. When a fourth person disappeared, seemingly having gone to pee alone in the night, the team made latrines in the middle of the camp. Then the fifth person disappeared. It started with a three people group having screamed after being attacked by a wolf, which led to the tracks bit, and when the party came back, one more person had disappeared. The following day some major sh*t went on all around the caravan, as the troops of the Fungus Queen started encircling our heroes. The vampire queen took the opportunity to have her own guys go out in the rotting woods, trigger detect magic and evil left, right and center as she dimension hops to grab Amber (who was about to understand the whole mess) and drain her. During that mess, Bree was going to the Caravan Master, thinking that perhaps the cargo was the reason for this whole mess. Seduced, the Caravan Master told everything: The cargo was important and pricy, but nothing cursed. They were also carrying a good quantity of jewels and gems to the next city as payment. Fearing a cursed jewel Bree asked to see them, but the Caravan Master didn't have them: Lars did, in the false bottom of his tankard he kept refilling. Bree then went on to seduce Lars, her efforts slightly dampened by the fact that she was not a majestic bolt of divine fulgurance, and also because the way she tried to go about it made it seem like she was about to steal the jewels for herself. After a thankfully low bluff roll on her part and me warning her that Lars was onto her, she came clean. Which prompted Lars to show the jewels, none were cursed, and tell Bree to get the paladin off his back, as she had detected him casting magic earlier and was very suspicious of him. Lars claimed to have only cast locate person, in vain. They were interrupted by a scream, prompting Lars to hide the jewels again.

Outside Sofia was wailing on Jern with her sword, Jern having actually had to pop some buff spells to ward off the assault. A few successful sense motive checks later, it became clear that the paladin didn't believe the blackguard had done any wrong, she was using him to vent her extreme distress at him. DAYUM walked, unarmed, between the blackguard and frankly out of her mind paladin, making her at risk to fall if she attacked him. Which she was about to do when, having lost initiative, she was grappled by Jern to avoid her falling. Arriving on the scene, Bree tried a slumber hex on the paladin, which had a huge will save, but I ruled that given her extremely shaky mental state, she auto-failed the will save. Once the paladin out cold, Jern explained that while everything was going crazy around them and their attention was spread thin, Amber suddenly went silent. Without even a thought. Which was impossible, as she was accompanied -but not tied- by other people, and nobody saw anything (actually some did, but had their minds and memories rewritten as the attention was focused on the paladin's emotional episode) the sheer horror and insanity of the situation being what drew the paladin to such insanity herself. Acting quickly, DAYUM and Bree looked for tracks, which was very difficult, but succeeded in determining Amber was abducted through dimension hop and dimensional agility. But with a dimension door spell, tracking the culprit (which was already back at the caravan) was next to impossible. DAYUM wanted to stay here and search when Jern came, fully buffed, royally pissed off, and tried to separate DAYUM to Bree, and when they refused he pulled a small crystalline bottle with a lock of Amber's hair on it, claiming he could locate her tomorrow at dawn with that, and then very obviously turned his back to them, and then walked away. He was clearly testing them in case our heroes were the abductors. Bree knew that his spell would fail however, since Lars had already tried, and told him so when they held counsel to decide their next course of action. Jern was visibly shocked, and DAYUM gave him and Sofia his word that he would definitely bring Amber back. Our heroes were about to leave the caravan to try and find the resident necromancer -in that country they act as sort-of sherifs- to get more information when the caravan leader approached them and told them in private that he was sorry, but Amber was most probably already dead, and even if someone else was disappearing tomorrow, they were now only a couple of days away from the next Town, Elmeria, and Lars could prepare a sending spell to get the authorities to come and escort them the rest of the way, they had the means to pay such a sum. So even if he had to weigh one more life against the safety of the caravan, he would choose the caravan. DAYUM wanted to object but couldn't find a flaw in that logic. He stil devised one last trap: The ground where they were camping would be covered by rotting leaves, with a rope under it, all named characters sans Serenia were tied to it by one leg, and they were the only ones out. So if the abductor came, dimension hopped to them, grabbed someone and tried to dimension hop away, they would be unable to lift them all and be stuck here. Unfortunately, noone tried to abduct anyone and the night came to an end. Lars contacted the authorities and the caravan resumed its march.

But not for long, around midday the caravan met a green woman on the side of the road, DAYUM quickly identified her as a kelpie, a shapeshifting predator. But something was weird, Kelpies kill their preys by drowning them, and there was no source of water deep enough nearby. DAYUM tried to talk to her, but she simply left. When I told him he had the speed to catch up to the Kelpie, he went and tried to bar her way, weapon still sheathed. Bree followed. It took him three combat rounds, but he did it, only to realize that the Kelpie was clearly dominated and had brought him into a trap. Both heroes quickly saw the assassin vines about to spring and grapple them, as well as the fungus-infected Formian warriors and the pod the fungus queen was going to use to come attack them. Deciding to make it the shortest battle in history, Bree walked a few steps to get everyone in a maximized negative energy blast, killing each and everyone. Sensing that, the fungus queen decided not to make an appearance and DAYUM destroyed the pod. It took to rounds to our heroes to come back, and by then the caravan was well under attack.

On the left flank, some assassin vines and one formian group (one taskmaster and four warriors) was attacking the guards, one being grappled by one vine and another already dominated by the taskmaster. On the right flank, near the rear, the fungus queen herself was attacking, helped by another formian group. While in the rear Jern and Sofia were fighting off two formian groups, helped by the vampire queen and her seven vampire spawns, including Amber. At the start the vampire was not fighting the fungus queen, but then one taskmaster dominated one of her spawns, which the vampire took as a personal insult and attacked the formians. I ruled that since vampire spawns are essentially dominated by the vampire, they could be dominated by other things. Our heroes had left at the front of the caravan and started fighting their way towards the rear, shooting one fireball on the formian group on the left. I ruled that while the formians took damage, the fungi infecting them were destroyed, ending the domination and dazing them for one round. Lars joined the battle, blasting four formian warriors on the right side with a lightning bolt (which he shouldn't have been able to do, immunity to electricity and all that, because trees are obviously immune to lightning strikes, you know?) but f*ck it, I'm making his damage fully divine from now on. On her next turn Bree tried fireball the fungus queen, and managed to pierce her spell resistance, the formian taskmaster was in the blast and he got dazed. DAYUM tried to vital strike the queen a couple of times, failing due to poor dice rolls until the fungus queen made a pod and teleported away. DAYUM then went for the vampire spawns, teleporting in and great cleaving four of them in one go. Due to fighting formians, that was all of them minus Amber. The vampire then cast greater invisibility on herself and moved away. DAYUM didn't think she moved the turn she disappeared and so was one round late the next two times he tried to kill her. Bree was busy on her hand getting attacked and grappled by the tentacles of the fungus queen, who had hidden nearby after her teleportation. She got level drained but used a hero point to make her save and nullify the drain. She could not blast her negative energy due to Lars being nearby, as well as the caravan NPCs, until my GM told me that Lars hadn't acted in two turns so he should help. I concurred, added some buffs on Lars and had him hack at the tentacles holding Bree. The damage reverberated on the fungus queen and was enough to drop her. The vampire queen had a couple of turns however, so she casted fireball on DAYUM and the freed formian group, killing them all, and then on Bree, Lars, and most surviving caravan NPCs, again killing them all. DAYUM then succeeded on his perception check to track her due to the muddy ground and when she tried to escape him she walked right into Bree's channel range. Even counting all the bonuses I rolled poorly and the vampire took a f*ckton of damage, almost dropping her. My GM opiniated that a vampire's fast healing should not apply to positive energy damage, and I concurred. The vampire tried to vampire touch, failed due to my blighted rolls, tried to run away, breaking line of sight with Dayum due to a cart, but was still in range of the channeling, she couldn't take it even if she made her save, encounter over. At some point in the rear, Amber was silently put down by Jern, clean blow to the heart, from the front, didn't suffer unduly.

The caravan was blocked, due to the horses dying by mean of fireball, as well as most of the crew, but the caravan leader was fine. The formian taskmasters came to our heroes, holding out their paws. When said paws were shaken, our heroes heard the voice of the formian queen, thanking them for having freed part of her hive, and having ceased their undue domination and the end of the fungus queen. Well, technically Bree heard her taskmaster try and pick her up before his voice was overruled by the queen, but let's not dwell on that. The formians then gave each of our heroes rings of protection (+1) and went their merry ways. The cavalry always arriving late, that's when a roadwarden (mounted with carbine) arrived, assured the caravan leader that more were coming, with replacement horses, and that they would accompany the caravan to Elmeria. And so they did. Our heroes were paid 1k gold for their services, as agreed, and 2k bonus because they had really come through for the caravan. Our heroes then pondered stealing Lars' gems, but decided against it and went to Triste-âme. Camping on the way they met the Pale Stranger, muttering an absent "eeeeeelf" and promptly told him to f*ck right off. Which he started doing when my GM convinced his friend to adress him in elvish. At this point the Pale Stranger literally flared up, muttered "eeeeelf!" in glee and charged Bree, taking an opportunity attack from DAYUM, taking it, and reaching Bree, only pulling his blades at the last second when he saw her definitely round ears, which extinguished his flames, including the one in his eyes, and he gave the most dejected "eeeeeelf..." that anyone ever heard. Trying to learn more about the undead, Bree got a natural 20 a,d got the full tragic backstory. DAYUM voted to blast the Stranger away (fine with me, he comes back.) but Bree refused. Having succeeded so hard at her knowledge test, she even knew that he had an oath to help any dwarf if he was called using the ancient words of his oath, and Bree knew them. The Stranger then complied with the renewed "please f*ck right off" and disappeared into the night. The next day our adventurers met a column of six skeletons, and as they passed them, an amulet worn by one of them flared and the necromancer candidly adressed our heroes through the amulet with a "Howdy folks" making the Texan GM friend cringe, invited our heroes for tea, which I knew my british GM could not refuse. They were escorted by the skeletons, invited into the necromancer's lair, Bree decided to drop any and all clothing, and they were introduced to the jolly necromancer and his not-quite-a-succubus assistant. The necromancer then proceeded to get dope slapped repeatedly as he repeatedly failed at not lowering his gaze. Everybody sat down, tea was served, our heroes purified it in case of poison, which put a damper on the necromancer's mood, as that meant he had lost a bet to his assistant, but since our heroes bribed him with some very precious books (150gp each) he still proposed his services, and even gifted them a bottle containing a will-o-wisp that would track the nearest gnoll in the vincinity.

Our adventurers thanked the necromancer, milked him for information, and left, reaching Triste-âme without further issues, and we ended the session here.

Thoughts?

Also, I ruled that no, you couldn't vital strike a pod, nor an invisible target, because how the hell were you supposed to attack their vitals precisely?

That being said, vital strike isn't explicitely precision damage (only behaves like it) and really doesn't need the nerf anyway.

That being said, I really need, for this group at least, to up the difficulty. They got a level from all that and are cruising through encounters.

I'm thinking of being more devious with the creatures, and having a Souleater Warpriest of Szuriel show up at the end of the 6th floor, as they are about to destroy the magic ball, with a couple daemons. I still don't know which, the daemons of the horseman of war being either too weak (genthrodaemons lacking an advanced form) or too strong, the daemons more in the heroes' range belonging to other horsemen. Oh well.

[DeTess]

This sounds like it went really well! There are one or two things I might have done differently, but not nessecarilly better.

Regarding your demon trouble, you could always re-fluff one of the 'medium-power' demons to be of the correct horseman.