Calthropstu
2019-04-19, 04:02 PM
I am running a pathfinder campaign for several months now.
Took me quite some time, but I have a good solid group which regularly attends with one guy who sometimes shows up and sometimes does not.
Last session ended... poorly.
To understand everything, you need some extra background. So here goes.
First the characters.
LE (Started LN but he did enough evil acts that I decided his alignment had shifted) half elf Monk
LE elf Witch child.
CE Psion kitsune
NG human Ranger
CG Half-Orc barbarian.
And a 6th who has died in 2 consecutive sessions.
So here's the situation, since the game began the monk has decided to take a semi-paternal role with the elven child necromancer witch. Every time the child does something he views as "wrong" he "chastizes" the child by hitting him in the back of the head. This has resulted in many hilarious consequences. (Such as an undead bullete bloody skeleton attacking the monk because it was told by the necromancer to defend him from all attackers.) After quite a bit of time away from the campaign, the kitsune player decided that it was his job to protect the elf child from this treatment.
Up until recently, this was merely manifesting itself with a 1 damage ability the kitsune manifested that hit the monk. Last session however got... brutal.
The assignment:
So the party has been working to secretly undermine the defense of a city. The country's magocracy has been doing something reprehensible: rapid manufacturing of magic items using millions of elemental souls. The elementals have formed alliances and are attacking the country. The country is mounting a vigorous defense, but there is blame going every which way, and factions have formed. Some factions feel they have done nothing wrong, and that elementals are but tools. Other factions feel reparations are in order and that all the magic items should be destroyed and the souls freed. All told there are 8 different factions within the magocracy at the moment clamoring for different actions and the head of this particular city decided, on his own authority, to come clean to other nations and outsiders and request aid in defending the city from attack.
The party witnessed this meeting because they were assigned to guard it. As they guarded it, an "assassin" of sorts was sent in to try to kill the mage in the middle of his speech. The attacker was armed with a gate scroll who was to summon a powerful uncontrolled devil (the devils had allied with the elementals) to wreck havoc on the meeting. The PCs stopped him. The necromancer used speak with dead to get the whole story from the attacker.
Fast forward to shortly before the attack. The PCs are assigned a... babysitter... (CN 12 year old human Wilder psychopath lvl 12 prodigy) of sorts after "botching" several missions in a row. Their new mission: Recruit one of the dragons in the area by offering to assist in the destruction of another dragon and giving the first dragon the second dragon's treasure.
They contact the Elemental Fists and the Monk receives the mission from them: recruit both dragons to the elemental fist's cause. The monk tells them this and adds a little extra to it: Kill the psion watching over them. They botch the attempt pretty badly. They end up killing her, barely, but not before she kills the cleric. However, her soul escapes into her psicrystal and the necromancer uses a spell called restore corpse. She then jumps back into the body using a true mindswitch crystal, and gets healing from the elven PC. Restored to life, she reports back to the captain. (The kitsune missed this session)
So the PCs continue their mission, and report back. Obviously, their cover is blown. The kitsune is once again back with the party. So they are making their report and they hear a large number of footsteps outside the meeting room. The Sargent they report to is keeping his cool, but the crazy 12 year old is a crazy 12 year old and yells out to the PCs through the closed door giving them ample warning. Here is how they reacted:
The monk tries to talk their way out by claiming the psycho girl tried to attack them.
The Kitsune immediately begins accusing the monk of working for the elemental fists.
The Barbarian pulls out his axe.
The dead cleric sits waiting patiently with his new character waiting to appear.
The elf child does nothing.
The ranger sits there dumbfounded as the whole mess goes down.
I give the party an out, the wall looks like it can be punched through and they can potentially escape.
The Monk immediately flees, while the kitsune actively tries to hamper their efforts to flee. The elf stays waiting.
I decide that the elf and the kitsune have proved their loyalty enough and that they can now work on the elemental fist's true objective. They are told to guard something of great importance to the defense of the city from their former compatriots.
At first, things go fairly well. They are led to a location with a large female watering flowers in a garden. A few detection spells later reveal that magic flows into and out of the creature at extremely high rates as if it is feeding something. (It contains a special regulator crystal that maintains the barrier of the city. There's more circumstances to be revealed later, but for now this is what the PCs believe.)
The psycho girl is assigned to go along with them. Before the attack commences, the elf and kitsune get word to the others about what they were guarding and where it was. As soon as the attack starts, the other PCs attack. First they attack the psycho girl who promptly teleports away declaring "I already died once to these guys, I ain't dyin again." (Not suspicious at all right? Hooray for 37 bluff check.)
Here's where things get really weird. The attacking PCs then turn on the woman who has still not responded to anything and simply waters the flowers. They quickly deduce it's not what it appears to be. It's actually an iron golem. They attack it, and the elven child and kitsune... decide to "maintain their cover"
They launch attacks that hit both the other PCs and the golem to mask it as "accidental friendly fire." They figure the monk and the rogue (replacement character for the dead cleric) can use evasion. They both fail their checks. Party damage becomes a thing.
The rogue gets killed, the monk is down to 1/4 hp, the barbarian goes into the negatives, the ranger is the only one uninjured. The Iron golem finally goes down and the kitsune begins plane shifting the injured PCs disguising it as an attack.
All except the monk.
The monk continues trying to open the chest cavity of the golem and the elf child continues to try to stop him and chase him off. The elf child then shadow walks with the chest cavity outside the circle garden... triggering the collapse of the barrier. The barrier down, the kitsune plane shifts to the elemental fists base. And the monk is by himself, down to under 1/4 hp, in a city that is under attack, fire raining down from the sky, the city out for his blood, the attackers not knowing who he is...
In short, the kitsune screwed over the monk ROYALLY and it was extremely petty. Everyone did not enjoy the session because of the bickering that ensued between the monk and the kitsune. The counter-operation stuff got on everyone's nerves and the whole thing was a giant mess.
TLDR;
Party fractured, infighting, counter operations gone horribly wrong, **** moves result in stranded injured PC in a city with fire raining down upon it. Kitsune psion plane shifts everyone but the monk to safety leaving him stranded, injured and without healing access.
Some thoughts and advice would be appreciated.
Took me quite some time, but I have a good solid group which regularly attends with one guy who sometimes shows up and sometimes does not.
Last session ended... poorly.
To understand everything, you need some extra background. So here goes.
First the characters.
LE (Started LN but he did enough evil acts that I decided his alignment had shifted) half elf Monk
LE elf Witch child.
CE Psion kitsune
NG human Ranger
CG Half-Orc barbarian.
And a 6th who has died in 2 consecutive sessions.
So here's the situation, since the game began the monk has decided to take a semi-paternal role with the elven child necromancer witch. Every time the child does something he views as "wrong" he "chastizes" the child by hitting him in the back of the head. This has resulted in many hilarious consequences. (Such as an undead bullete bloody skeleton attacking the monk because it was told by the necromancer to defend him from all attackers.) After quite a bit of time away from the campaign, the kitsune player decided that it was his job to protect the elf child from this treatment.
Up until recently, this was merely manifesting itself with a 1 damage ability the kitsune manifested that hit the monk. Last session however got... brutal.
The assignment:
So the party has been working to secretly undermine the defense of a city. The country's magocracy has been doing something reprehensible: rapid manufacturing of magic items using millions of elemental souls. The elementals have formed alliances and are attacking the country. The country is mounting a vigorous defense, but there is blame going every which way, and factions have formed. Some factions feel they have done nothing wrong, and that elementals are but tools. Other factions feel reparations are in order and that all the magic items should be destroyed and the souls freed. All told there are 8 different factions within the magocracy at the moment clamoring for different actions and the head of this particular city decided, on his own authority, to come clean to other nations and outsiders and request aid in defending the city from attack.
The party witnessed this meeting because they were assigned to guard it. As they guarded it, an "assassin" of sorts was sent in to try to kill the mage in the middle of his speech. The attacker was armed with a gate scroll who was to summon a powerful uncontrolled devil (the devils had allied with the elementals) to wreck havoc on the meeting. The PCs stopped him. The necromancer used speak with dead to get the whole story from the attacker.
Fast forward to shortly before the attack. The PCs are assigned a... babysitter... (CN 12 year old human Wilder psychopath lvl 12 prodigy) of sorts after "botching" several missions in a row. Their new mission: Recruit one of the dragons in the area by offering to assist in the destruction of another dragon and giving the first dragon the second dragon's treasure.
They contact the Elemental Fists and the Monk receives the mission from them: recruit both dragons to the elemental fist's cause. The monk tells them this and adds a little extra to it: Kill the psion watching over them. They botch the attempt pretty badly. They end up killing her, barely, but not before she kills the cleric. However, her soul escapes into her psicrystal and the necromancer uses a spell called restore corpse. She then jumps back into the body using a true mindswitch crystal, and gets healing from the elven PC. Restored to life, she reports back to the captain. (The kitsune missed this session)
So the PCs continue their mission, and report back. Obviously, their cover is blown. The kitsune is once again back with the party. So they are making their report and they hear a large number of footsteps outside the meeting room. The Sargent they report to is keeping his cool, but the crazy 12 year old is a crazy 12 year old and yells out to the PCs through the closed door giving them ample warning. Here is how they reacted:
The monk tries to talk their way out by claiming the psycho girl tried to attack them.
The Kitsune immediately begins accusing the monk of working for the elemental fists.
The Barbarian pulls out his axe.
The dead cleric sits waiting patiently with his new character waiting to appear.
The elf child does nothing.
The ranger sits there dumbfounded as the whole mess goes down.
I give the party an out, the wall looks like it can be punched through and they can potentially escape.
The Monk immediately flees, while the kitsune actively tries to hamper their efforts to flee. The elf stays waiting.
I decide that the elf and the kitsune have proved their loyalty enough and that they can now work on the elemental fist's true objective. They are told to guard something of great importance to the defense of the city from their former compatriots.
At first, things go fairly well. They are led to a location with a large female watering flowers in a garden. A few detection spells later reveal that magic flows into and out of the creature at extremely high rates as if it is feeding something. (It contains a special regulator crystal that maintains the barrier of the city. There's more circumstances to be revealed later, but for now this is what the PCs believe.)
The psycho girl is assigned to go along with them. Before the attack commences, the elf and kitsune get word to the others about what they were guarding and where it was. As soon as the attack starts, the other PCs attack. First they attack the psycho girl who promptly teleports away declaring "I already died once to these guys, I ain't dyin again." (Not suspicious at all right? Hooray for 37 bluff check.)
Here's where things get really weird. The attacking PCs then turn on the woman who has still not responded to anything and simply waters the flowers. They quickly deduce it's not what it appears to be. It's actually an iron golem. They attack it, and the elven child and kitsune... decide to "maintain their cover"
They launch attacks that hit both the other PCs and the golem to mask it as "accidental friendly fire." They figure the monk and the rogue (replacement character for the dead cleric) can use evasion. They both fail their checks. Party damage becomes a thing.
The rogue gets killed, the monk is down to 1/4 hp, the barbarian goes into the negatives, the ranger is the only one uninjured. The Iron golem finally goes down and the kitsune begins plane shifting the injured PCs disguising it as an attack.
All except the monk.
The monk continues trying to open the chest cavity of the golem and the elf child continues to try to stop him and chase him off. The elf child then shadow walks with the chest cavity outside the circle garden... triggering the collapse of the barrier. The barrier down, the kitsune plane shifts to the elemental fists base. And the monk is by himself, down to under 1/4 hp, in a city that is under attack, fire raining down from the sky, the city out for his blood, the attackers not knowing who he is...
In short, the kitsune screwed over the monk ROYALLY and it was extremely petty. Everyone did not enjoy the session because of the bickering that ensued between the monk and the kitsune. The counter-operation stuff got on everyone's nerves and the whole thing was a giant mess.
TLDR;
Party fractured, infighting, counter operations gone horribly wrong, **** moves result in stranded injured PC in a city with fire raining down upon it. Kitsune psion plane shifts everyone but the monk to safety leaving him stranded, injured and without healing access.
Some thoughts and advice would be appreciated.