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Saph
2008-10-18, 05:00 PM
I've been running a Red Hand of Doom game for today and last week, and decided it would be fun to write up a brief campaign journal. I know quite a few of you guys have played/run the module, so I'd be interested to hear anyone else's experiences/advice. Plus, it's always fun to read about other people's misfortunes. :) (Though my lot have actually done pretty well so far.)

For those who've played or DMed it and know it well, please tell me if I'm coming up to any bits that you think I could use some advance warning - or just relate any funny stories, that's good too.

So, here's the beginning party. Everyone had their choice of 28 point buy or 4d6 rolled. I treated below-average HP rolls as low-average, causing everyone to have a little more HP than normal for their level.

• 5th-level NG sun elf wizard (RotW elven generalist racial substitution levels) - Maxed-out Int score, crummy at everything else. Uses spells from all schools.
• 2nd-level CN barbarian/3rd-level fighter, halfling. Uses a halfling-sized greataxe, likes hitting things.
• 5th-level LG human cleric of Tyr - Newbie of the group, mostly healbots.
• 5th-level N human druid of Obad-Hai - Summoner, wolf animal companion, pretty experienced at playing druids.

There's also a floating 5th player who varies from session to session, but these are the regulars. The wizard and barbarian were drawn into the campaign via the 'Vault of Vraath Keep' adventure hook, while the cleric and druid got involved via 'Omens of Doom'.

Session 1

Mostly taken up with character creation. The PCs got through the Marauder Attack event with no real trouble, and learned the ins and outs of Drellin's Ferry.

- Saph

Saph
2008-10-18, 05:01 PM
Session 2

PCs met Jorr and befriended him with no problems. Random encounter, shambling mound, defeated fairly easily though the halfling was nearly squished (Improved Grab + Constrict is nasty). The PCs encountered the hydra on the causeway and dealt with it by running like rabbits, taking a few bites and losing a horse in the process.

The group rested and hit Vraath Keep the next morning. In the ensuing melee the PCs ended up fighting every single monster in the place in one drawn-out battle, though the time delay and bottleneck terrain meant that they could take on only a couple at a time. In the end the PCs won the day with surprising ease - the hobgoblins were fireballed to death while they slept, the worg riders were worn down in a series of fights in the courtyard., and the manticore fled once it was knocked down to 5 HP. However, Wyrmlord Koth was able to escape once all his minions were gone (though the PCs did manage to secure the map).

Thoughts

It seems pretty hard for the PCs to stop Koth from escaping. With mage armour and shield his AC was 23, preventing them from hitting him easily even if they didn't have their hands full with all the other monsters, which they did. With his potion of fly he was never at real risk of being killed.

Difficulty seems about right at the moment - the battles are difficult and the players feel like they're at risk of death, but no-one's come really close to dying.

So far the PCs have been winning without casualties, probably due to having 5 members rather than 4 and playing reasonably powerful characters. We'll see if the battle at Skull Gorge Bridge next week gives them any more trouble.

- Saph

YPU
2008-10-18, 05:25 PM
am running this campaign in a home brew 4 E version. There are some things that do not carry over particularly well. In last week session they managed to create a magic circle around the east part of Drelins ferry. One that would block a lot of the horde from crossing the river. This would of course be difficult, but with a few good rolls they had the whole village helping clearing the circle of obstacles, and with a few days of time preparing a circle that big was not a problem. So I think ok, I’ll give her a penalty on her arcane check and it wont keep the horde for long. That would all be well if she hadn’t rolled a natural 20…

Anyhow, before I derail your topic, make sure you have some suitable dramatic text for the scene after skullgorge bridge. I had to use movie references before my players were getting the idea of the scene, and that does kill the awesome of the whole scene. Make sure your players are going to say “Oh ****” even before you mention the giants and dragons.

Saph
2008-10-18, 05:39 PM
Anyhow, before I derail your topic, make sure you have some suitable dramatic text for the scene after skullgorge bridge. I had to use movie references before my players were getting the idea of the scene, and that does kill the awesome of the whole scene. Make sure your players are going to say “Oh ****” even before you mention the giants and dragons.

I'm not actually sure how they're going to see the scene after Skull Gorge Bridge - if they succeed and destroy the bridge, there's no way for them to get across! I suppose if they do really really well and actually kill Ozyrrandion . . .

On that subject, I think I might have a full 6 players next week. Given that the campaign's designed for 4, should I bump up Ozyrrandion from a Young green to a Juvenile? (CR 5 to CR 8 increase.) I can't decide if it'd make it too difficult or not.

- Saph

YPU
2008-10-18, 06:29 PM
My party had the same attitude as the village, “a hundred or so hobgoblins? We can take them.” The map did little to change that. A lotr reference did.
Anyhow, both options would work, it simply depends on what feeling you want to give. But considering that the bridge is very important to the horde, I say the fight should be hard, no matter the party size.

MeklorIlavator
2008-10-18, 07:55 PM
Interesting, I recently started one of these as well, though it has fallen by the wayside because my group decided to have lives beyond my game. The thread is here, but the only real notable thing so far is that I had my first PC death ever. Combat wise I'm a little nervous, as they've had trouble so far dealing with pretty normal stuff.

EvilElitest
2008-10-18, 09:03 PM
will you be doing this for other games as well?
from
EE

Saph
2008-10-19, 05:50 AM
Interesting, I recently started one of these as well, though it has fallen by the wayside because my group decided to have lives beyond my game. The thread is here, but the only real notable thing so far is that I had my first PC death ever. Combat wise I'm a little nervous, as they've had trouble so far dealing with pretty normal stuff.

Yeah, the causeway battle is pretty tough due to the terrain advantage it gives to aquatic monsters.

My party (sensibly) just ran across the causeway as fast as they could and left the hydra behind. It did mean they missed out on the treasure, though.

EE, I doubt it, but I'll keep this one up for a few weeks and see what feedback I get.

- Saph

KillianHawkeye
2008-10-19, 07:22 PM
Great adventure! My players are getting pretty close to the end now, and are loving it!

Koth got away from my players, too. I still have him in reserve, thinking of giving him some ogre-mage mercenaries for his next appearance. Ulwai also escaped thanks to combined invisibility, haste, and rolling a natural 20 on her Move Silently skill.


I'm not actually sure how they're going to see the scene after Skull Gorge Bridge - if they succeed and destroy the bridge, there's no way for them to get across! I suppose if they do really really well and actually kill Ozyrrandion . . .

Well, my group didn't want to destroy the bridge (I made up some plot hook about reviving the trade route to some kingdom in the west), so they went to see how bad the horde really was. Needless to say, they did destroy the bridge on the way back. :smallwink:

Anyway, if they don't destroy the bridge, then they don't get that nice little preview. However, that probably means that they're confident enough that they're going to try to defend Drellin's Ferry (my players weren't, they told everybody to get the heck out). So, just run some of the advance scout encounters (like the chimera), and then when the actual horde arrives they can see how badly they're outnumbered. This will also make the rest of the adventure a bit more frantic than mine was, since your players won't have that extra time to warn people and the horde's advance units will be on their tails the whole way.

Anyway, I'll be happy to share my experiences with you. I'm really curious about other people's play of this module, since this is the first time I've been the DM.

Waspinator
2008-10-19, 10:26 PM
I'd like to read more. Red Hand of Doom is a pretty fun adventure. It also has perhaps the most fun to say name of any D&D module I've heard of.

Saph
2008-10-20, 05:39 PM
The name reminds me of that Munchkin card, "Of Doom." You could tack it on to any item and it added to the title. So the Spiked Codpiece became the "Spiked Codpiece . . . OF DOOM!"

New issue, now. A newly-joining player has asked if he can play a ToB character. Main problem is that all the NPCs and enemies in Red Hand of Doom don't use ToB - the soldiers all have Fighter levels instead, and I don't have the time to integrate ToB into the campagin world. Hmm, what to do . . .

- Saph

KillianHawkeye
2008-10-20, 07:09 PM
I don't think you have to change all the NPC Fighters into Warblades just because you allow a someone to use ToB. I mean, pretty much the only Fighters in the adventure are nameless hobgoblin and human soldiers (except for Soranna and Lars, I think, and they're probably not going to be fighting the PCs anyway).

I'm not an expert on ToB, but I don't think it would be such a big problem. If necessary, maybe you can say that Warblade > Fighter like Fighter > NPC Warrior, resulting in Warblade > Fighter > NPC Warrior.

Waspinator
2008-10-20, 07:36 PM
Eh, it should be fine. I would at most rebuild a big, named NPC or two to use Warblade, but nameless mooks can be fighters just fine. It's not like the existence of the two classes is mutually exclusive.

Saph
2008-10-20, 07:56 PM
Well, there's also the issue that several of the PCs are playing relatively weak builds - there's a Barb/Fighter, a single-class Fighter, and a single-class Rogue. None of those players are familiar with ToB, so I'm worried about a Warblade or whatever showing them up. Up until now the party's been very balanced, with everyone contributing and the difficulty level being exactly right, and I want to try and keep that.

- Saph

RTGoodman
2008-10-20, 10:43 PM
I love RHoD, though none of my groups seem to get past the end of Chapter 1 without the game falling apart.

I'm actually REALLY surprised at part of your run-through - I've NEVER, EVER heard of a party that wanted to run from the Hydra. It's always problematic, but it's ALWAYS happened. I had one group that had a really tough time with it and nearly lost 2 of 4 PCs to it, and one group of 4 PCs (two players with two PCs each) ran at it headlong and took it out in two or three rounds (glaive + enlarge + Improved Sunder = dead hydra). Running is actually a VERY smart tactic considering that it's not a huge loss of XP or treasure (IIRC).

Vraath Keep was a biggie for my one group that got there, too, and it seemed to work to work out almost the same as your version. All of the monsters (hobbos, gobbos, wargs, Karkilan the Minotaur, and the manticore) all came out basically in a row, but my PCs (an unoptimized group of Soulbow, non-Zilla melee Cleric, TWF Ranger, and sneaky Rogue) handled it. In fact, they even managed to KILL Koth after a slightly altered encounter.

(Basically, I had thrown in a secret escape door in the top of the tower that connected to his "lair," and the PCs started lock-picking and busting it down, which he heard. He readied a blindness/deafness, which deafened the Rogue, but the same Rogue managed to him with a near-max damage SA with a hand-crossbow before he could fly away.)


Regarding ToB, I don't think it'd be that big a problem, especially if the player decides on a Crusader. He wouldn't be taking away from either the healers or damage dealers, and would be a good 5th (or 6th) wheel for the party, I think.

Also, for a VERY interesting read, check out Caligula's Red Hand of Doom - Total Recap! (http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=642066) campaign diary from the WotC boards. I followed that for months, and loved his DM style and all the characters. It gave me a lot of inspiration for running RHoD.

Coidzor
2008-10-21, 01:09 AM
Ah... Koth. The only person, place, or thing whose name our party's chronicler managed to spell right apparently.

We actually got him with a long-range bowshot that had a cumulative -5 to it. Somehow. I mean, my fighter2/rogue3 managed to shank him a couple of times before he flew out of the top of the tower and he took a full salvo of wizard and druid magic, but it was kinda funny to have to scour the forest floor for the wand he had with him and then climb all the way up a tree to get him out of the branches. Didn't know the minotaur was worth getting a name though.

The green dragon was laughably easy due to a miscommunication about the rules relating to Call Lightning and ended up frying him right after he retreated from us to heal himself, really pissing the DM off. This was right before the hobgoblins on the other side of the bridge blacked out the skies with their arrows. It ended up with the ranger, my rogue-fighter, and the barbarian cursing our luck as we had put up a rig and made a deal with our necromancer to cast gentle repose so we could haul the green dragon carcass back to the main city and sell it for meat and leather. We then had a rather drawn out discussion about what we could do to go get the corpse while exchanging arrows with the remaining hobgoblins until the wizard got bored and nuked their leader, breaking their morale. Then they ran away and the party shot down my idea to follow them back to the main body of the army as we were all scared ****less by the idea of an actually organized, unified army of monstrous humanoids. I think we got fat and complacent with the fact that the orcs we faced killed each other as often as not.

We managed to work out a possibility of how to get at it, but it wasn't feasible for our party due to the fact that we had no flight capability and didn't have time to spider-climb down, make a pulley and block and tackle, and hitch up the entire party and a forest giant we managed to bribe with the corpse of the Lord of the Vraaths (or to us, the Verifs). We ended up just giving the guy back his lost property.

We're currently in some swamps, completely lost and fighting random undead right now. Mainly because the gnomish paladin can't actually make it through the swamps without being mounted. That, and the map's not really good enough to tell us where in the middle of the swamp to go, so we kinda just burned down the keep, followed the road until we reached the swamp and plunged in blindly. That was fun. Though I still don't know why you'd try to cut off access to a road that isn't even in use and doing so only attracts attention to your (supposedly) subversive activities.

We're 8 PCs strong though (theoretically), due to the fact that the DM just couldn't stand his first two players alone together after their first (they both doubled up). One of the players has recently gotten sick and hasn't been able to make it, effectively rendering us without arcane casters as she was only there for Koth and hasn't really made it since. That, and one of the PCs is level 3-4 and we're ECL 6-7, so it's really more of a cohort that we converted so he wouldn't have to put as much work into changing things. I think we're roughly moving into a sort of rotating roster as we go along though....

As you can probably guess we're all relatively new to this.

RTGoodman
2008-10-21, 02:04 AM
Didn't know the minotaur was worth getting a name though.

Well, the only reason I remember his name (or even that he HAS a name) is that he had carved his name in big block letter on his belongings or a table or something like that (I don't remember if that was in the module or if I made that up because it seemed cool at the time) and, to show the PCs what they had found, I accidentally sort of carved his name into the back of my DM notebook with a pencil. :smallredface:


As you can probably guess we're all relatively new to this.

Hey, are you having fun? If so, then just keep doing what you're doing. So what if you can't remember or pronounce the names or forget stuff - either way RHoD is an epic campaign that HAS to be fun to play. (I know I wish I had a chance to play it rather than DM it.)

Saph
2008-10-21, 06:36 AM
I love RHoD, though none of my groups seem to get past the end of Chapter 1 without the game falling apart.

I'm actually REALLY surprised at part of your run-through - I've NEVER, EVER heard of a party that wanted to run from the Hydra.

My group's been taught to fear hydras through several nasty battles. :) In this case it was probably a good idea, since the terrain makes it very hard for meleers to reach the critter without getting AoO'ed to death (and nobody had Improved Sunder).


Also, for a VERY interesting read, check out Caligula's Red Hand of Doom - Total Recap! (http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=642066) campaign diary from the WotC boards. I followed that for months, and loved his DM style and all the characters. It gave me a lot of inspiration for running RHoD.

Yeah, I read the first few pages of that. It was entertaining but not all that much help for balance purposes, since the power level on Caligula's game seems to have been really wonky - the starting PCs were level 6 and loaded down with major magic items (like +4 weapons!)

- Saph

Dizlag
2008-10-21, 10:13 AM
I ran this one back a year or so ago. An extremely fun, rewarding mini-campaign that truly gives you the best bang for the buck. =)

I wanted to make a comment about the bridge encounter with Ozzyrandon. If I remember correctly, my group fought the hobbos and dragon barely escaping with their lives. They knew an invasion was coming, so they sent their scout up ahead beyond the bridge to see how big of a force they were dealing with. Let's just say ... I was able to put "the fear" into them early letting them know just how big the army was. Hehehe

It didn't really help much either that being the first session for a couple of players, I ended up killing my wife's character that night. They were freaked because they knew I wouldn't be holding back ... not even for her. Granted after they left my life sucked for a couple days, but hey ... you don't charge a reaping mauler (my own addition) with your ninja! =)

Anyway, the next session they rigged the bridge for a wave of worg riders and giants. I just went with the flow of it as to what they'd like to do and they had a blast! Looking back now, it was probably my most successful campaign I've ever run.

EDIT: Just adding a comment on a new player wanting to us ToB. Fortunately for me, I put this campaign area near a coastal area so if an "exotic" character such as that would've been played we could just say he/she came from across the seas, etc. Not knowing how fleshed out your campaign world is, I'm not sure if that would work for you or not. I know the ToB classes are more uber than a typical fighter melee class, but shouldn't be unbalancing in my opinion.

Enjoy! And good luck!

Dizlag

Coidzor
2008-10-21, 11:27 AM
Hey, are you having fun? If so, then just keep doing what you're doing. So what if you can't remember or pronounce the names or forget stuff - either way RHoD is an epic campaign that HAS to be fun to play. (I know I wish I had a chance to play it rather than DM it.)

Well, I was mainly covering myself with the obvious in case I had said something really stupid. That, and I just realized I forgot to tell how we managed to take Vraath keep relatively easily by having the hobgoblins massively fail all of their listen rolls. The only two that actually heard us were Koth and the minotaur. We were readying to bust in on the minotaur anyway and Koth couldn't resist the chance to see who the hell had just killed half of his garrison. I think one of the biggest reasons for this lucky stroke was that the patrols were all out doing whatever it is they were doing.

Somehow managed to avoid them, other than the 2 that came to back up the ambush that hit us when we first rolled into town. It's not so much fun killing as it is making me apprehensive about where the DM will kick it up a notch. I know he's already been deviating enough from it to know that I probably won't gain anything other than a very nasty pit-trap to the face if I act like I know what I should be running into. Since he's going to be running some famous adventure after our characters are retired from the Red Hand of Doom (and we never, ever speak of the Dread Necromancer class again. And find some holy water to douse the character sheet with), and is looking for practice implementing punishment for bringing in out of character knowledge of what the module should be like.

Saph
2008-10-25, 09:56 PM
The lead-up to this week's session was dominated by in-group social politics, which were not fun to deal with. Spoilered because it doesn't really relate to the campaign.

There'd been tensions building between some of the players for a while now, and after last week's session they came to a head. To cut a long story short, two of the players (the wizard and the barbarian) weren't willing to DM themselves, but weren't willing to accept the authority of any other DM either. After last week, I finally sent an email around telling players not to argue with my rulings or rules in-session, and to bring any issues they had to me after the game from now on. The two players in question both responded by quitting.

Having to discipline players is my absolute least favourite part of DMing (I hate playing schoolteacher), but I was glad I did it. After the initial reactions (angry emails, misinformation to the other players, attempts to start up a rival game) things settled down, and today's session was the most fun I've had as a DM in months. You don't realise how much of a drag some people are until you suddenly don't have to deal with them anymore.

Session 3

After the dust had settled, the players for today's game were:

• 5th-level human cleric of Tyr (newbie, present at sessions 1&2)
• 5th-level human druid of Obad-Hai (present at sessions 1&2)
• 5th-level elven rogue (present at session 2)
• 5th-level human duskblade (experienced player, only now joining but here to stay)
• 5th-level elven wizard (newbie who joined late and only half-filled in his character sheet.)

After meetings, greetings, treasure division, and introductions, the players saddled up and reached Skull Gorge Bridge with a minimum of fuss. On seeing the dragon, they started to have second thoughts. After several hours of debate, they came up with a plan and launched their attack.

The PCs engaged the bridge defenders with arrows and managed to kill a hell hound at range before the green dragon, Ozyrrandion, reached their position. A Flyby Attack devasted the tightly-bunched group, but they healed and started advancing towards the bridge under the cloak of a camouflaging spell from the Druid.

Unfortunately, the elven wizard didn't get the memo about being stealthy and hit Ozyrrandion with a couple of spells as the dragon returned from drinking his potion of bull's strength. He didn't seriously hurt Ozyrrandion but did succeed in annoying him and one acid blast later, the wizard was at -8 and Ozyrrandion was searching his body for valuables. (Memo to low-level arcanists: your Constitution should be higher than 10, especially if you're in the habit of picking fights with dragons.) The cleric charged the dragon, while the rest of the party broke cover and assaulted the bridge.

To everyone's amazement, the newbie cleric managed to not only survive the first few rounds against Ozyrrandion, but hung in there for round after round. Each turn Ozyrrandion would unload on the cleric with his breath or a full attack, and each turn the cleric would use either a healing spell or a charge from the staff of life from the Vraath Keep treasure vault to recover. The increasingly aggravated dragon ended up ripping the wizard's head off out of spite to stop the cleric from healing him, but he just couldn't take the cleric down. The cleric ended up tanking Ozyrrandion for no less than fifteen rounds, taking nine full attacks and half-a-dozen blasts of dragon breath. On three separate occasions he was reduced to only 1 or 2 hit points, but he always just survived.

This gave the attack team at the bridge time to wear down the hobgoblin defenders. While the duskblade cleared the towers and took the hobgoblin veterans down one at a time, the rogue used his Search skill to discover Skull Gorge Bridge's weak point, and upon getting the signal the druid fired two Crumble spells at the bridge. Ozyrrandion returned, having finally driven off the cleric, but exactly one round too late, and the Crumble spells caused the bridge to collapse. The party fled back to the treeline, pursued by the enraged green dragon, and finally managed to lose him in the forest. With the bridge destroyed and the majority of the defenders dead, the session was over.

Having defeated the equivalent of a CR 10 encounter, the PCs earned a buttload of XP and proceeded to level up to level 6, gaining feats, HP, and spells. And there was much rejoicing.

Thoughts

Awesome session. The battle was epic, perfectly balanced, and everyone in the party (except for the deceased wizard) got to feel like a hero at some point. The rogue and druid teamed up to take out the bridge in only a few rounds (which neither could have done on their own), the duskblade killed the hobgoblin sergeant with a single action using a Quick-Cast True-Striked Arcane Channeled Power Attacking Shocking Grasp, and the cleric went toe to toe with a dragon for an amazing length of time and survived to tell the tale.

Watching the battle today reminded me that clerics are a great class for a newbie - their toughness and ability to recover from just about anything makes them very forgiving to play. Today also reminded me that wizards are just about the worst class for a newbie, the wizard achieving nothing except to draw the dragon's fire.

I'd considered tweaking Ozyrrandion to toughen him up, and I'm glad I didn't. While many of the enemies in RHoD could be more effectively built, the end result is a game difficulty setting that's pretty damn good, producing encounters that are neither walkovers or unbeatable to an average party with a mix of newbies and veterans.

The PCs have now mostly finished Chapter 1, with only some mop-up battles and the big diplomacy event left to go. So far RHoD's proving to be an excellent module. The only modifications I'm thinking of are to do with Koth and Ozyrrandion surviving - I'll have to arrange for them to run into the PCs again in chapter 2 or 3, as the players have managed to do an superb job of driving them absolutely nuts. :)

- Saph

RTGoodman
2008-10-25, 11:35 PM
That sounds like a great session, and I'm glad to hear that the pre-game drama didn't de-rail it. That's how most of my games end up falling apart. :smallannoyed:

Also, quick question - where's the crumble spell from? I've never heard of it, and the one group that managed to take out the bridge when I DMed only did so with the aid of his energy-substituted sonic fireball or three (apparently you can't actually choose sonic anymore, but whatever).

If you haven't decided finally on where you want to put Koth and Ozy back in, I always like the idea of wyrmlords and dragons that survived leading forays against the PCs during the Battle of Brindol. I think the module suggests just lumping all the dragons together at the entrance to the Fane of Tiamat in Chapter 5, but to me that just sounds like a TPK in the making (especially if they still have to fight the Blue AND maybe the Red at the same time).

(Spoilers in white text, since I'm never sure if players are around that don't need to see them.)

Saph
2008-10-26, 08:24 AM
Also, quick question - where's the crumble spell from? I've never heard of it, and the one group that managed to take out the bridge when I DMed only did so with the aid of his energy-substituted sonic fireball or three (apparently you can't actually choose sonic anymore, but whatever).

It's a little-known spell from the Spell Compendium, specifically designed for taking out buildings (d8 damage per level). The druid had just enough spell slots to do the 50 HP damage he needed.


If you haven't decided finally on where you want to put Koth and Ozy back in, I always like the idea of wyrmlords and dragons that survived leading forays against the PCs during the (spoilers)

Yeah, I think that makes sense - I could substitute out Skather, since fights against stealth-enemies tend to drag a bit. Either that, or I'll have them run into one of them ahead of the horde or in the Ghostlord's lair. Grudge matches are always way more fun than random monsters. :)

- Saph

Saph
2008-11-08, 08:05 PM
Session 4

A break last week while we played a one-off. More players have joined and now the group's big enough again to have no problems with shortage of players anymore. Man, building up a group is hard work. :)

This is the new party roster, which ought to stay fairly constant from now on:

• 6th-level human cleric of Tyr (original player)
• 6th-level human druid (other original player)
• 6th-level tiefling fighter (was there for session 1, rejoined now as she just got back from Greece)
• 6th-level human duskblade (was there for session 3)
• Human 2nd-level Marshal/4th-level Paladin (new player. I've never seen a Marshal played before, what do other people think of the class?)
• 6th-level human sorcerer (another new player, took the Celestial Sorcerer feats, fairly effective despite focusing on lightning attacks.)

. . . and one more player who got himself killed just like the last session he played, making him 2 for 2 so far. 7 players is a little more than I'm comfortable with, but I'm assuming not everyone will be there every week from now on.

Events

The players spent most of the session finishing up chapter 1 and getting to know the new characters. Highlights included the PCs managing to convince Old Warklegnaw to help them out against the Red Hand, the druid doing scouting flights in eagle form in which he finally eyeballed the horde, and three fights: a random encounter with a bunch of stirges which they wiped out effortlessly, a rematch with the hydra, and the Goblin Raid encounter.

I bumped up the numbers of the raiding party, adding in an extra worg rider, two hellhounds, and an extra sorcerer in the second wave, but the PCs still didn't have much trouble. The newly-made barbarian got killed, but that's what you get when you run 80' ahead of the rest of the party and charge the enemy lines solo.

As for the hydra battle, due to disorganisation and conflicting opinions, the PCs ended up getting their butts handed to them and were forced to flee AGAIN (the third time they've fled from the same CR 5 monster). It's getting hilarious, I'm almost tempted to have the thing show up just so they can run into it a fourth time. :)

Despite the setbacks, though, by the end of the session the PCs had convinced the Council of Drellin's Ferry to evacuate and wrapped up Chapter 1. Their final victory point total:

1 VP - Aid from the forest giants
2 VP - Taking out the bridge
3 VP - Evacuating the town

Total: 6.

The two objectives they've yet to complete are killing Koth (2 VP) and killing Ozyrrandion (1 VP) but I'll make sure they get another shot at that.

Those of you who've played it; how's that score compare to yours?

Thoughts

I'm really enjoying RHoD, it's a very cool module to run. Everyone's having a good time, and the atmosphere at the table is great. Having 7 players gives the PCs a major action advantage, though, so I've decided to increase enemy numbers by 50% across the board from now on.

Something interesting I've noticed is that blaster-casters are NOT ineffective in this campaign. Due to the large amount of enemies with low-to-medium HP (like the 13 HP goblin regulars) being able to toss a Fireball or a Scintillating Sphere into the middle of a bunch of them is a pretty effective method of crowd control.

The Knowledge Devotion feat which the duskblade has picked up seems a little on the powerful side; any opinions?

Next week we'll be starting Chapter 2: The Ruins of Rhest. Let's see how the PCs do against those razorfiends!

- Saph

Matthew
2008-11-08, 08:16 PM
I can't comment much beyond saying that I am enjoying reading about the exploits of your group, Saph. Thanks for taking the time to keep us updated!

Will_Shakespear
2008-11-09, 07:50 AM
Hi Saph.


Session 4• Human 2nd-level Marshal/4th-level Paladin (new player. I've never seen a Marshal played before, what do other people think of the class?)

I've played a Marshal once and i liked it. Some auras are really helpful and can give the party a nice boost. The Marshal's CHA-Modifier as a bonus to damage rolls, trip checks, saves etc. is a nice power boost, i guess. So i think the class has power, but is not overpowered. As with most things in D&D, the Marshal gets real power at high levels, where the CHA score can be real high, granting allies almost invincibility e.g. with high save boosts.


The Knowledge Devotion feat which the duskblade has picked up seems a little on the powerful side; any opinions?

The Knowledge Devotion feat is a strong one, i think. But i dont find it overpowered. You have to make very high Knowledge checks to get to the +5 bonus. So I think it becomes really powerful at high levels, where making the appropriate Knowledge check for the +5 bonus becomes easy. If the Duskblade is not totally cheesy and overpowered (getting the +5 against most enemies, most of the time) this feat will mean a nice boost for this campaign.

Cheerio

Will

Lord Lorac Silvanos
2008-11-09, 08:18 AM
I can't comment much beyond saying that I am enjoying reading about the exploits of your group, Saph. Thanks for taking the time to keep us updated!

I would like to second this!
I am happy I stumbled on this thread.

Saph
2008-11-09, 09:34 AM
Well, I guess I'll keep writing it, then. :)

- Saph

Matthew
2008-11-09, 12:08 PM
The lead-up to this week's session was dominated by in-group social politics, which were not fun to deal with. Spoilered because it doesn't really relate to the campaign.


There'd been tensions building between some of the players for a while now, and after last week's session they came to a head. To cut a long story short, two of the players (the wizard and the barbarian) weren't willing to DM themselves, but weren't willing to accept the authority of any other DM either. After last week, I finally sent an email around telling players not to argue with my rulings or rules in-session, and to bring any issues they had to me after the game from now on. The two players in question both responded by quitting.

Having to discipline players is my absolute least favourite part of DMing (I hate playing schoolteacher), but I was glad I did it. After the initial reactions (angry emails, misinformation to the other players, attempts to start up a rival game) things settled down, and today's session was the most fun I've had as a DM in months. You don't realise how much of a drag some people are until you suddenly don't have to deal with them anymore.



I forgot to say that I think you handled this exactly right. Nothing worse than people challenging your authority to interpret the rules in a game that relies on you doing so! I think it is out of fashion to say so now, but they sound like typical rules lawyer extremists. You are definitely better off without them (I also dislike that school teacher element of being the game master, but it is sometimes necessary).



The newly-made barbarian got killed, but that's what you get when you run 80' ahead of the rest of the party and charge the enemy lines solo.

Poor guy. Reminds me of this snippet of wisdom: The slaughter will continue until play improves (http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=31736&start=11). :smallbiggrin:


Something interesting I've noticed is that blaster-casters are NOT ineffective in this campaign. Due to the large amount of enemies with low-to-medium HP (like the 13 HP goblin regulars) being able to toss a Fireball or a Scintillating Sphere into the middle of a bunch of them is a pretty effective method of crowd control.

I think the move in D20/3e towards fewer and more powerful monsters was largely a response to the effectiveness of spells like fireball in AD&D. In some respects, not including challenges where such spells are useful is contrary to the whole concept behind the D20/3e CR/EL system. Good to read this is not the case in Red Hand of Doom.

RTGoodman
2008-11-09, 03:56 PM
Ah, glad to see this back. I look forward to hearing more about your party's forays against that Hydra in coming sessions. :smalltongue: And actually, if they continue to not be able to beat it, you could be REALLY mean and have it show up at the Battle of Brindol or somewhere with the Half-Dragon or similar template tacked on. Just say the Red Hand hordes captured it and one of the higher-level casters did some experimentation to make it into a living weapon for the horde. :smalleek:

Regarding the Marshal/Paladin, I don't think you'll ever have to worry about him being overpowered, but he should be a pretty effective buffer/leader. The Marshal is usually seen as basically a one-level dip for Paladins or Diplomancers (which is why I did THIS (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=64384) bit o' homebrew a while back), but I like the fluff and think the Aura feature is pretty neat.

On AOE/damage-happy spellcasters, I agree that they work will in RHoD. As a military campaign, the set-up of having to deal with low-level fodder, mid-level elite troops, a higher-level leaders (the dragons, wyrmlords, etc.) really gives everyone a chance to shine, and I think really a blaster is sort of necessary if you don't have a trip-master or something.

When I've DMed, the one party I've had make it this far was SLIGHTLY ahead in VPs, but I don't think your PCs are in bad shape - the party wthat did make it that far was sort of newbish, so I went a little easier on them with a couple of encounters (yeah, I'm a bad DM :smallwink:). At the end of the last session we played, though, they were thinking of heading to Rhest, but were trying to convince the leaders of Drellin's Ferry that evacuation was still the best option. :smalleek::smallsigh:

Lord Lorac Silvanos
2008-11-09, 04:16 PM
Ah, glad to see this back. I look forward to hearing more about your party's forays against that Hydra in coming sessions. :smalltongue: And actually, if they continue to not be able to beat it, you could be REALLY mean and have it show up at the Battle of Brindol or somewhere with the Half-Dragon or similar template tacked on. Just say the Red Hand hordes captured it and one of the higher-level casters did some experimentation to make it into a living weapon for the horde. :smalleek:

Yes, there is not much better than a reoccurring Hydra, but you have to make sure that the battlefield advantage goes to the Hydra or it is too easy to run away from and/or target with ranged attacks. Mobility is one of its biggest weaknesses.

Now a Half-dragon Hydra is either a tribute to Tiamat or blasphemy. :smalltongue: But in either case, the wings help with the mobility issue and making it a White Pyro-Hydra or Red Cryo-Hydra makes acid the only energy that won't allow the critter to get a-head.

Matthew ones told how he likes to place adventurers on a raft in a swamp and then have a Hydra emerge to upset things.... Isn't it just adorable? :smallamused:

Lemur
2008-11-09, 05:45 PM
I always enjoy reading about your games Saph, so this thread makes me happy. By the way, whatever happened to your warblade in a different campaign from a while back?

Also, note to self: put hydras in swamp.

Matthew
2008-11-09, 06:13 PM
Matthew once told how he likes to place adventurers on a raft in a swamp and then have a Hydra emerge to upset things.... Isn't it just adorable? :smallamused:

Ha, ha. I cannot remember the last time I did that, which means it is probably about time to do it again. Well recalled (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=51558), at any rate. Interestingly, I have since discovered that not a few AD&D folk consider the "free attack" to apply to entire attack routines, so running away from a Ghoul results in three attacks (claw/claw/bite). Under that interpretation the AD&D Hydra would function much like the D20/3e Hydra... :smallwink:



Also, note to self: put hydras in swamp.

You won't regret it. :smallbiggrin:

Saph
2008-11-09, 07:44 PM
I always enjoy reading about your games Saph, so this thread makes me happy. By the way, whatever happened to your warblade in a different campaign from a while back?

It only ran four sessions in the end; the DM was a bit uncomfortable with the power level and called it off, mostly due to the ToB characters.


Matthew ones told how he likes to place adventurers on a raft in a swamp and then have a Hydra emerge to upset things.... Isn't it just adorable? :smallamused:

And, as a matter of fact, the area the PCs are heading into right now (the Blackfens) just happens to be a swamp. I'll see how they do against the razorfiends first, but I love the idea of having the hydra come back in augmented form for the battle at Brindol. The looks on the players' faces would be hilarious. :)

Then again, if they decide to travel by boat up the river to Rhest, a rematch might liven things up a little . . .

That said, I still don't run hydras as nastily as my old DM (the same guy) used to do. He read the line in the MM which says "A hydra's Combat Reflexes feat allows it to use all its heads for attacks of opportunity" as meaning "when you provoke an AoO you get one attack per head." Since our party at the time was pretty careless about provoking AoO's, the results were messy.

- Saph

Matthew
2008-11-09, 08:12 PM
And, as a matter of fact, the area the PCs are heading into right now (the Blackfens) just happens to be a swamp. Then again, if they decide to travel by boat up the river to Rhest, a rematch might liven things up a little . . .

Ha! Great!



That said, I still don't run hydras as nastily as my old DM (the same guy) used to do. He read the line in the MM which says "A hydra's Combat Reflexes feat allows it to use all its heads for attacks of opportunity" as meaning "when you provoke an AoO you get one attack per head." Since our party at the time was pretty careless about provoking AoO's, the results were messy.

That interpretation is actually the one that best fits the RAW, from what I recall of the discussion linked above, which is not how I would run a D20/3e Hydra encounter, but that is a different matter. :smallwink:

Anybody who wants to read such exciting things can do so here:

Sundering Hydra Heads and Attacks of Opportunity (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=18648) (September, 2006)
Red Hand of Doom and Sundering Hydra Heads (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=32081) (January, 2007)
Hydra Attacks of Opportunity (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=51558) (July, 2007)

RTGoodman
2008-11-09, 09:18 PM
Also, note to self: put hydras in swamp.

Yeah, the one in RHoD is sorta like that - it's in some watery area near a causeway with a lot of varied terrain. My least favorite hydra, though, is from the "Savage Tide" adventure path from Paizo (I guess - the DM could have been making things up, but I doubt it). Your ship has to stop to take on fresh water, and the small boat that goes towards the island you find gets ambushed by a seven- or eight-headed hydra in deep water. That's a GREAT session to play in as a full-plate/heavy shield Crusader, especially when it basically stays 40+ feet from the boat and you have a Dex of 11 or so. :smallannoyed: At least the PCs had taken a ballista from another ship so I could spend the time missing attacks with it instead of my normal sling...

And yeah, all the DMs I've played with have used that rule for Hydras and AOOs. I personally play that they can make a number of AOOs per round equal to the number of heads it has. So, it can make all (six/eight/million) at one time against one PC, or it can spread them around on each PC that provokes each round.

Lord Lorac Silvanos
2008-11-10, 03:34 AM
That said, I still don't run hydras as nastily as my old DM (the same guy) used to do. He read the line in the MM which says "A hydra's Combat Reflexes feat allows it to use all its heads for attacks of opportunity" as meaning "when you provoke an AoO you get one attack per head." Since our party at the time was pretty careless about provoking AoO's, the results were messy.

Well at least he did not increase the dex. It only gets 2 AoO, so if anyone can take the punishment (2 x heads) the poor thing is all out of opportunity....:smallwink:

Saph
2008-11-10, 05:11 PM
Two entertaining highlights from Session 4. :)


Loot the Barbarian

During the Goblin Raid event, the party barbarian charged a trio of goblin worg riders on his own. After much fighting and long-range support, the barbarian was on negatives, but only one worg rider (minus worg) was left.

Neither having the goblin coup-de-grace him nor having the goblin find another opponent sounded right, so in the end I came up with an alternative; have the goblin start searching the barbarian's body in the middle of combat. He found one of the barbarian's healing potions and drank it.

The paladin charged in to save his friend and hit the goblin; the goblin grabbed another healing potion off the barbarian and drank that.

The paladin hit the goblin again, and the goblin did the same thing a third time.

The now-very-frustrated paladin hit the goblin yet again and the goblin, figuring that this strategy seemed to be working, searched the body yet again. (By this point the game of Loot the Barbarian had been going for five rounds or so, and the rest of the party were laughing their heads off.)

Me: "Got any more potions?"
Barbarian: "Just one."
Me: "Okay, the goblin grabs it and drinks it. What does it do?"
Barbarian: "Gaseous Form."

So the somewhat surprised goblin turned into mist, the paladin tried to hit him and couldn't, and eventually just healed the barbarian up. The gaseous goblin floated away. I'll have to have him show up again some time.


Prisoner Treatment; A Class Comparison

For much of the session the party had been trying to capture a hobgoblin to interrogate about the Red Hand's plans, and during the Goblin Raid they finally succeeded. Next day, the party went to interrogate the prisoner.

Attempt 1: The Druid, with his 8 Charisma and no social skills.

Druid: "I sit down next to the hobgoblin."
Me: "He glares at you."
Druid: "I advise him to talk, if he knows what's good for him."
Me: "No response."
Druid: "I cast Call Lightning and let it play over my fingers. I tell him, 'Answer my questions, or you start losing fingers.' " *failed Intimidate check*
Me: "He spits in your face."
Druid: "..."
Druid: "I walk outside and relieve my feelings by calling down lightning bolts and burning some holes in the fields and nearby trees."

Attempt 2: The Paladin.

Paladin: "I sit down next to him and say, 'We'd like to ask you some questions."
Me: "He spits in your face."
Paladin: "I wipe it away calmly. I apologise for how my friend acted. I would ask you not to judge us all by his example." *Diplomacy check of 30-something.*
Hobgoblin: "Stupid human! You may have won today, but it won't be for long! The Red Hand will destroy you!"
Duskblade: "Really? What makes you so sure?"

(At this point the CG-in-theory Celestial Sorcerer chips in.)

Sorcerer: "You've already lost. Make it easy on yourself and tell us what you know."
Me: "He spits in your face too."
Sorcerer: " . . . Tell us what you know or I'll kill you, and that's a promise."
Me: "He glowers at you."
Sorcerer: "Fine. I Storm Bolt him."
Duskblade: "What?"
Paladin: "WHAT?"
Sorcerer: "Right through the chest and into the wall."
Paladin: "No! I stop him!"
Me: "Sorry, but he caught you completely flat-footed. Roll damage."

(One Storm Bolt later)

Me: "The hobgoblin's body hits the floor."
Cleric: "Oh crap! Is he dead?"
Me: "Based on the smoking hole through his chest, your skilled medical opinion would be yes."
Paladin: "WHAT THE HELL did you DO THAT FOR?"
Sorcerer: "Hey, I promised I'd kill him if he didn't talk. I was just keeping my promise."

The paladin gave the sorcerer an outraged lecture, accompanied by threats, and the fighter and duskblade were equally aggravated, pointing out that they hadn't spent half the session trying to take one alive just so the sorcerer could get some target practice. Probably the funniest reaction, though was the supposedly-LG cleric of Tyr:

"But I'd just cast Zone of Truth! I'VE WASTED A SPELLl!"

- Saph

Lord Lorac Silvanos
2008-11-10, 05:32 PM
Two entertaining highlights from Session 4. :)


Good fun indeed.
(Okay, so I need to work a little on the commentary...)



Probably the funniest reaction, though was the supposedly-LG cleric of Tyr:

"But I'd just cast Zone of Truth! I'VE WASTED A SPELLl!"


LOL, priceless. A classic example of player vs. character. I guess we know who won this one.:smalltongue:

Matthew
2008-11-10, 05:48 PM
And I thought nobody won in Dungeons & Dragons, or maybe it is just that some people lose... :smallbiggrin:

Raum
2008-11-10, 08:30 PM
Hehe - both earned a laugh!


And I thought nobody won in Dungeons & Dragons, or maybe it is just that some people lose... :smallbiggrin:Ideally everyone wins! :smallwink:

kjones
2008-11-10, 10:33 PM
Saph, this thread has inspired me to run a Red Hand of Doom campaign of my own. I've been looking over the module, trying to figure out how it will all play out, and I was wondering how you managed to get the players from one part to the next without feeling lost (or having, say, Jorr give "helpful hints" all the time). For example, I don't see how my players would figure out that they were supposed to destroy the bridge just by seeing the map. Any suggestions?

EDIT: Just realized, I didn't get a chance to say: Fantastic campaign journal. Please, please, keep it up - I can't wait to see how some of the cool stuff later on plays out. (The elves, for instance... but maybe that's just me.)

Charity
2008-11-11, 04:41 AM
The map in Varath keep is suposed to have helpful tactical hints scrawled on it in goblin.
Even then, if they go to skull gorge just have the dragon keep shouting "defend the bridge it's pivotal to our plans!" and the like, if they still don't take the hint, it's no biggy the horde just gets there a little quicker.

My problem with the RHoD was that the encounters in Brindol are too hard and too fast, my party got mauled.... a lot.

Saph
2008-11-11, 08:11 AM
Saph, this thread has inspired me to run a Red Hand of Doom campaign of my own. I've been looking over the module, trying to figure out how it will all play out, and I was wondering how you managed to get the players from one part to the next without feeling lost (or having, say, Jorr give "helpful hints" all the time). For example, I don't see how my players would figure out that they were supposed to destroy the bridge just by seeing the map. Any suggestions?

I found it surprisingly easy. All you have to do is tell the PCs upon showing them the map that the map identifies Skull Gorge Bridge as an important point. From there any players with tactical leanings will start thinking in terms of 'what can we do to slow them down', and the bridge is the only bottleneck around.

I found a bigger problem was finding a way for them both to destroy the bridge and also get a look at the horde at Cinder Hill, just to make sure they're properly intimidated!


EDIT: Just realized, I didn't get a chance to say: Fantastic campaign journal. Please, please, keep it up - I can't wait to see how some of the cool stuff later on plays out. (The elves, for instance... but maybe that's just me.)

I'll definitely keep it up, since I've gotten so much good feedback. :)

- Saph

Charity
2008-11-11, 08:19 AM
My guys never went to cinder hill... it seems ultimately pointless really, they soon get the point when the hoard hits drellins ferry...
Which reminds me... Our super fast move barbarian, ran all the way from varath keep to drellins ferry to warn them of the attack (narrowly avoiding a grey render) and all he did when he got there was shout "Theres a big army of hobgoblins Run!" at the town gaurd and ran off again... well he wasn't the sharpest tool in the box.

Lord Lorac Silvanos
2008-11-11, 12:12 PM
Which reminds me... Our super fast move barbarian, ran all the way from varath keep to drellins ferry to warn them of the attack (narrowly avoiding a grey render) and all he did when he got there was shout "Theres a big army of hobgoblins Run!" at the town gaurd and ran off again... well he wasn't the sharpest tool in the box.

Yeah that should definitely work...

Town guard: "Abandon town! All is lost. Run! This random person outside the gates, whom I have never seen before, just told me so."
:smallsigh:

Gorbash
2008-11-11, 12:28 PM
This thread sure brings back memories, and it sure is intresting to see how other parties managed encounters in RHoD. My group finished it about 6 months ago, hell of a time we had.

Also, this thread motivated me to try to journal my ongoing Savage Tide campaign. Would anyone read that?

Lord Lorac Silvanos
2008-11-11, 12:32 PM
Also, this thread motivated me to try to journal my ongoing Savage Tide campaign. Would anyone read that?

Yes, it is always great to read these journals. :smallsmile:

Gorbash
2008-11-11, 12:34 PM
The problem is, they're already starting chapter 5 (out of 12), so I could only write a summary about those 4... Chapter 5 is where stuff really gets intresting, anyway.

Saph
2008-11-11, 12:38 PM
Yeah that should definitely work...

Town guard: "Abandon town! All is lost. Run! This random person outside the gates, whom I have never seen before, just told me so."
:smallsigh:

Funnily enough, my group did almost exactly the same thing, except they used a messenger bird.

I had to explain to the group out-of-character that an entire town was not going to up stakes and evacuate just because a talking budgie told them to.

- Saph

Matthew
2008-11-11, 01:11 PM
Also, this thread motivated me to try to journal my ongoing Savage Tide campaign. Would anyone read that?

Yes, it is always great to read these journals. :smallsmile:

Agreed.


The problem is, they're already starting chapter 5 (out of 12), so I could only write a summary about those 4... Chapter 5 is where stuff really gets intresting, anyway.

Don't sweat it; if people have questions about the summaries, they'll ask! :smallwink:



Funnily enough, my group did almost exactly the same thing, except they used a messenger bird.

I had to explain to the group out-of-character that an entire town was not going to up stakes and evacuate just because a talking budgie told them to.

As it goes, one group I ran put a lot of trust in what they were told by a talking owl... :smallbiggrin:

Lord Lorac Silvanos
2008-11-11, 06:39 PM
England, where you can always trust a talking bird....

RTGoodman
2008-11-11, 10:07 PM
Yes, it is always great to read these journals. :smallsmile:

I'll agree with that - I'll probably not get a chance to play Savage Tide again, but it seems like a really great adventure path and I'd like to hear more of it. (I think the part I played was 5 or 6, since that's the level our characters were.)


Also, Saph, that little story of the goblin looting the barbarian repeatedly was hilarious. There's actually a table floating around online somewhere (and repeated in a 4E Dragon Mag, but I don't remember which one) of what a Kobold would do if it managed to down a PC. It had everything from looting the body to hiding beneath the body for protection to be so pumped it healed itself and got stronger. I've not had a chance to use it yet, but I bet you might be able to do that if you get in another similar situation.

Crowheart
2008-11-12, 12:39 AM
I ran Red Hand of Doom to it's conclusion and it was one of the more memorable mini-campaigns according to my group of regulars. I thought I might give you some of the thoughts I had while running this module.

In no particular order: (heavy spoilers)

1) Because of my group size of six, I upgraded the black dragon to large size. It ended up working fairly well, so don't be too afraid to upgrade some of your dragons if the group is having an easy go of it.

2) I had the Aranea join the group on their way to Brindol than try to assassinate the PC's. She far too weak to be an effective assassin anyway. I used her later to justify a part of the Invasion(see below).

3) Watch out for the Behir. If any "dragon" doesn't need upgrades it's this one. With his given tactics and damage capability, he can (and did for me) kill a single PC every round. I'm not sure the reasoning behind the ruling of his cleave is correct, but I went with it regardless, and it makes him a scary bastard. For posterity, the ruling was(paraphrased): "If the Behir makes a successful swallow whole attempt, he may make an immediate cleave attack, and possibly grab another target."

4) During the first part of the siege of Brindol, I used the hidden Aranea as an excuse as to why the second group of rock-throwing hill giants succeeds in breaching the walls. My players were confused as to how the second group succeeds and it made the traitor in their midst all the more reprehensible for it.

5) Since (like most of those who posted before) my Koth got away as well, I included him in the final battle with the General. I think having that extra spellcaster in the battle made it far more interesting. There's not much he can do besides lightning bolt anyway.

6) For the General's personal guard of hill giants I modified them slightly: I gave the hill giants chain shirts (which does almost nothing except increase their speed back to 40 ft.), replaced their clubs with glaives (I like the glaive look for personal guard), and replaced one of their feats for the feat Short Haft in the PHB2. The following does little to change them besides giving them extra reach which I found to be more tactically satisfying.

7) My Blue Dragon was killed in one shot with the spell Prismatic Ray (from SC I think?). A terribly unsatisying end for Azarr's dad, but my PC's were cheering so I guess it was okay. *sigh*

8) Because of the skill and power level of my PC's I made the final battle very difficult:
-Azarr began prebuffed with everything that lasts 1 minute/level or longer.
-I removed the two Erinyes' from his personal quarters and put them here to aid in the fight (this definitely makes the battle harder).
-My Azarr had spell imunity cast to protect him from some of their more prevelant spells (rationalized that he knows the tactics of the PC's by now).

In the end, the final battle was satisyingly difficult but they still won anyway. Hell, the Aspect of Tiamat was easier than Azarr and his minions. They only suffered one death from their wizard who was singled out by the Erinyes archers for killing the Blue Dragon in one shot.

So that's all that I can remember from that campaign. I hope it helpes or inspires in some way. :)

kjones
2008-11-12, 12:50 AM
Crowheart, do you think you could post more information about the characters/general build ideas you were playing with? I'm concerned about the power balance of this module - I can't tell what kind of power level it's designed for. Obviously not super-optimized, but I can't tell where it lies on the spectrum of:

Sword and Board fighter, Blaster caster, Healbot cleric, Rogue with a bow

and

Warblade, Batman caster, CoDzilla, (appropriately powerful skillmonkey).

I feel like the first party would have a really tough time of it, whereas the second would be the ones that they warn you about in the fall of Drellin's Ferry on page 41.

EDIT: If you're concerned about spoilers, you can always use the spoiler tags.

Saph
2008-11-12, 07:40 AM
I ran Red Hand of Doom to it's conclusion and it was one of the more memorable mini-campaigns according to my group of regulars. I thought I might give you some of the thoughts I had while running this module.

Cool! This is exactly what I was looking for.


1) Because of my group size of six, I upgraded the black dragon to large size. It ended up working fairly well, so don't be too afraid to upgrade some of your dragons if the group is having an easy go of it.

Yeah, I'm definitely planning to bump up Regiarix to Large. It makes him much tougher, but with 7 PCs it'll be necessary. I don't expect the PCs to reach his lair for 2 sessions, though.


2) I had the Aranea join the group on their way to Brindol than try to assassinate the PC's. She far too weak to be an effective assassin anyway. I used her later to justify a part of the Invasion(see below).

That makes sense. I couldn't really see the point of the aranea encounter - 90% likely that the PCs don't notice her as a spy anyway, and she can't hurt them if they do.


3) Watch out for the Behir. If any "dragon" doesn't need upgrades it's this one. With his given tactics and damage capability, he can (and did for me) kill a single PC every round. I'm not sure the reasoning behind the ruling of his cleave is correct, but I went with it regardless, and it makes him a scary bastard. For posterity, the ruling was(paraphrased): "If the Behir makes a successful swallow whole attempt, he may make an immediate cleave attack, and possibly grab another target."

I checked, and, it's in Varanthian (the behir's) statblock. The main weakness to her Swallow Whole attack is that her stomach's only big enough to hold 2 Medium PCs.

Of course, if she doesn't swallow them whole, she can just constrict them and rake them six times instead, which is quite likely to have the same result.


5) Since (like most of those who posted before) my Koth got away as well, I included him in the final battle with the General. I think having that extra spellcaster in the battle made it far more interesting. There's not much he can do besides lightning bolt anyway.

I was thinking of having him go after the PCs personally on their return from Rhest, accompanied by Ozyrrandion. More interesting than just another random encounter.


7) My Blue Dragon was killed in one shot with the spell Prismatic Ray (from SC I think?). A terribly unsatisying end for Azarr's dad, but my PC's were cheering so I guess it was okay. *sigh*

Yeah, that's utterly anticlimactic. And very unlikely. Well, I guess it'd be kind of unfair to deny them a shot as lucky as that. :)

The other stuff is a long way off in the future - I'll come back and have a look at this once the PCs get to the later chapters!


Crowheart, do you think you could post more information about the characters/general build ideas you were playing with? I'm concerned about the power balance of this module - I can't tell what kind of power level it's designed for. Obviously not super-optimized, but I can't tell where it lies on the spectrum of:

Sword and Board fighter, Blaster caster, Healbot cleric, Rogue with a bow

and

Warblade, Batman caster, CoDzilla, (appropriately powerful skillmonkey).

While I've only done Chapter 1 so far, from what I've seen it seems somewhere in between the two. A totally unoptimised party will get TPKed, a super-cheese-optimised party will get bored. I think RHoD does a pretty good job of making a module thats works for the average party, given that most players fall in between the two extremes. So far the challenge level has been about right for my group.

- Saph

CockroachTeaParty
2008-11-12, 04:29 PM
I've been keeping up with this thread, for it smacks me upside the head with the old Nostalgia Hammer. We played through the Red Hand of Doom this past summer, and I can honestly say it was the best campaign I ever played in. Our party was four strong, (fighter, rogue, spirit shaman, and myself as a wizard/warmage/ultimate magus) and while we came close to utter destruction a few times, we managed to defeat the Red Hand... handily.

Saph is right on so far: if we were all as experienced and had as well-built characters as mine (I was the most experienced/powerful), the game would have been a breeze. That said, none of us were particularly unoptomized, and the way the campaign unfolds allows different characters to shine at different points.

For instance, by the time the Battle of Brindol began, I was well into Ultimate Magus and had plenty of spells, but I dedicated most of my wizard spells to bringing down the Red Dragon. If it were not for the rogue and the fighter dishing out the pain to the various minions and lesser bad guys, my character would have ran out of spells quickly. I nova'd on the dragon fight, and relied on items and low-level spells for the rest of the battle; the great-cleaving fighter was much appreciated as we ran through the burning city streets.

I would actually have to say that the hardest fights were the Osyluth, the wyverns, and some wraiths we ran into in the Fane of Tiamat. The Osyluth nearly destroyed us, spamming Ice Walls and keeping us from supporting each other. Before the Fane, the Greenspawn Razorfiends gave us hell near Rhest, and a random encounter with an advanced Chuul nearly wiped us out. Our DM beefed up most of the dragons; the green and black were large and unpleasant, and I believe he increased the red's age category as well.

Since you've got a larger group, Saph, I heartily encourage you to beef up the dragons. Your players will grow to become very experienced dragon hunters by the end of the campaign. If it weren't for Mass Resist Energy, Stoneskin, and similar abjurations, we would have been dead nine times over. By the end we fought dragons like an organism, each of us doing our part to bring the beasties down. I'm having an epic moment here... breathe... breathe

kjones
2008-11-12, 04:43 PM
Saph, your party managed to actually see the horde on Cinder Hill by having the druid go a-scoutin' in eagle form. But what if they don't do this, and destroy the bridge first? How are they supposed to see the horde?

(I think somebody else asked this earlier, but I don't remember seeing an answer.)

I guess it's not essential, but it seems like it would be an excellent moment of "... We're gonna need a bigger boat ..." that is unfortunately very difficult to pull off logistically.

Saph
2008-11-12, 07:55 PM
I prodded my group a bit by encouraging them to get first-hand evidence. "Yes, I know what the map says, but you know that if you go back with this the mayor at Drellin's Ferry is going to ask if you've confirmed it. So far all you've got is guesses."

Even if the PCs destroy the bridge first, there are lots of spells and abilities that let a PC cross the chasm and take a look-see, so someone'll get curious sooner or later. It's definitely worth encouraging the players to do, just for the, "oh, crap!" reaction. :)

Cockroach, yeah, I'll be beefing up the dragons. I've got Regiarix already advanced an age category, and I think I'll post his stats up before the next session, just to take bets. :)

- Saph

KillianHawkeye
2008-11-13, 09:09 AM
Wow. Great read. It's so interesting to see what other groups have done with this adventure.

Anyway, here's my advice on how to best use your razorfiends: I had mine on a 4 round cycle where they would remain underwater when it wasn't their turn, only jumping/flying out every other round and using their flyby attack to alternate use of their breath weapons or their wing blades. Because the water is too dark to see anything, they can't be targeted by anything until your players figure out that they have to ready actions to attack them. Luckily for me, my players had taken up positions in the bell tower, giving my razorfiends free reign to circle around on their non-attack turns and spring up from whatever direction I desired. I used 4 razorfiends against my party of 8, and they lasted longer and did more damage than Saarvith and Regiarix did, thanks to the effectiveness of the strategy.

Anyway, please let us know how it goes for you!

Hzurr
2008-11-13, 12:09 PM
Man, RHoD was a great campaign. My group made it through the end of chapter 2 before we had to take a break for the summer, and never really picked it back up.

Two things really stick out in my mind from this campaign. The first one was the fight against Kaath, where eventually Kaath said "screw it", and started flying away thanks to his potion. The Paladin turns to me (the GM) and says "Wait, I want to talk to him, is there any way I can use diplomacy to at least get him to pause and talk to us?" I'm thinking "There's no chance in hell," but to be a nice GM, I said "roll it." ... 2 seconds later I'm looking at a natural 20, plus the paladin's crazy diplomacy modifier. (Note, this player is a great guy to play with, but he also possesses the ability to roll natural 20s on dramatic cue. It's uncanny). So Kaath stops, speaks to the party a bit and argues with him, all the while the party ranger is making really good stealth checks and gets around behind Kaath. When the talks eventually go sour, and Kaath takes off again, he didn't make it 30 ft before he was dropped by half a million arrows and magic missiles (from the wizard who managed to re-gain consciousness during the talks)

The other thing I remember is at the end of chapter 2 when The party found the Lich's phylactory. They headed to Brindol to get information on the Lich,and entered into some of the best roll-playing I've seen, debating about what to do with the phylactory. The party quickly realized that they could use it as leverage and get the Lich to assist them in the war, but the party was (mostly) good, and wanted to destroy the Lich on principle.

What made it really awesome was that one of the PCs was evil (had a ring of alignment masking), and was actively working for the crime-boss lady in Brindol (whose name I never remember), and was trying to talk the party into leaving the phylactory with her.

Eventually, they decided to leave the phylactory in the safe keeping of the church (who put it inside of a bag of holding filled with holy water, kept in an un-scryable area)

So yeah, where I planned on having them head and start chapter 3, they spent 2+ hours in an amazing in-character debate over the ramifications of chapter 2. It was awesome.

I'd like to run it again sometime, if we get sick of playing 4E (which doesn't seem likely, since most of my group is really enjoying 4E; except for the guy who still wants to be playing 2E)

Darkxarth
2008-11-13, 04:47 PM
I DMed Red Hand of Doom over the summer, but it was very unconventional. I had one player who played two PCs that each started at level 8. Needless to say, this made Chapter 1 a little too easy. It took me a short while to get the hang of bumping encounters up. She (the player) loathed Norro Wiston since I played him as a man who almost refused to come to grips with what was happening. When they returned from Vraath Keep, they convinced him to call a meeting of the Town Council, and he stalled for 3 days while they waited, defending the town from various raids. When the a Chimera nearly took out a group of townspeople, he finally called the meeting that night. Having (through luck mostly) managed to acquire the aid of Jorr and Warklegnaw, the PCs knew when the army would be arriving, and knew they only had a few days before the town had to be evacuated.

Since one of the (foolishly high) PCs was a Wizard (yeah, I know) they hopped a couple of phantom steeds and bolted across the Vale, warning the townspeople and gaining much appreciated role-playing time.

The high points including returning the phylactery to the Ghostlord and escaping with Ulwai Stormcaller as a prisoner.
Missing the Behir in the Thornwaste.
The Wizard (with Overland Flight) fighting the Red Dragon in midair.
Ulwai's escape from Brindol.
Fighting the Behir and the Blue Dragon (not together, thankfully) at the Fane.
Going into the Fane, killing nearly everyone, failing to kill Azarr Kul, and teleporting away.
Returning to the Fane, killing more Abishai and Blackspawn, failing to get to Azarr Kul, and teleporting away.
Returning to Fane once more, killing Azarr Kul with Finger of Death, and fighting the Aspect of Tiamat.

The only issue I had was the player was quite annoyed since every time she thought she had beaten the Red Hand, there was always another figure in the background (Wyrmlord Koth, General Kharne, Azarr Kul, Aspect of Tiamat).

On a side note, we are still playing a game with those same characters (now each level 15) and they still haven't gone back to kill the Ghostlord. She was REALLY concerned that he was going to kill them, especially after they killed a Ghost Dire Lion (barely) and when he walked in he summoned it right back (perhaps a little plot magic on my part, I can't remember exactly what the deal is with Ghost Lion regeneration).

Saph
2008-11-15, 08:24 PM
Session 5

Chapter 2 start!

The party's steadied down, with most of the PCs having now played 3 or more sessions in the group. Rebuilds are finished, and these should be the characters for the reminder of the campaign (barring deaths, of course).

• 6th-level druid. Summoning specialist but also casts Bite of the X and goes into combat with his decent physical stats. Uses his wild shape mostly for scouting (eagle form), which has proven to be very effective.
• 6th-level cleric of Tyr. Mostly healbots. High AC but not much attack power.
• 6th-level tiefling fighter (no LA). Sword-and-shield but is fairly effective due to having the best stats in the group.
• 6th-level duskblade. Also uses sword-and-shield, but has shocking grasp spells to bump up his damage.
• 5th-level paladin / 1st-level fighter. The player gave up on the Marshal class in the end and took a bunch of luck feats from Complete Scoundrel instead. Huge AC, little hitting power, but due to the Good Karma feat can redirect attacks from other PCs to him (which he uses frequently).
• 6th-level sorcerer. Fairly experienced player. Electricity specialist, with Scintillating Sphere and the Storm Bolt feat.

And a seventh player, who was playing a wild elf ranger but who I'm just going to call 'Kenny' due to his habit of dying so frequently. I'm not bothering to pay much attention to his characters since they never last long enough to matter - besides, he talks inaudibly and his character sheet is illegible, so I only have a vague idea what he's playing anyway.

With the party now (mostly) a cohesive unit, the PCs set out along the old Rhest Trail, heading for the Blackfens!

Blockade Busting

The first encounter of the session was the blockade. While most of the PCs launched an ineffective frontal assault, the druid used wood shape to open up a passage around the side, and the sorcerer went through, walked up to an arrow-slit, and fired two scintillating spheres through into the main building, doing a total of 14d6 electrical damage to the hobgoblins inside, wiping out 80% of the enemy forces and effectively winning the battle by himself. Note to other DMs who run this adventure: Blasting spells are NOT ineffective.

Prisoner Treatment, Part 2

The PCs had managed to capture a hobgoblin during the battle (the sorcerer blinded him with glitterdust and then put the boot in while he was unconscious on the ground).

The paladin, cleric, fighter, and duskblade struck a deal with the hobgoblin; they'd let him go free if he told them what he knew. He did, and after an hour's interrogation they cut him loose.

Paladin: "Okay, you're free to go."
Me: "The hobgoblin nods and hurries away to the north."
Paladin: "We symbolically turn our backs as he runs."
Fighter: "Yeah, I let him go too after threatening him a bit."
Duskblade: "Same."
*pause*
Sorcerer: " . . . I've climbed up to the top of the blockade. I wait for the hobgoblin to get about 100 feet away, then I kill him with a magic missile."
Cleric: "WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?"
Sorcerer: "Hey, he's evil. I'm not letting him go."
Me: "I should point out that you guys did promise to let him go free . . . a promise which you've just broken the spirit of, if not the letter."
Sorcerer: "They promised. I didn't."

R.O.U.S'es (Razorfiends of Unusual Size)

Into the Blackfens. The PCs found the body and were jumped by two razorfiends. Although the following battle gave the party a run for their money, the fighter, duskblade, and sorcerer did enough damage to the razorfiends to eventually take them down, though the fighter was reduced to single-digit HP by an augmented critical. Kenny would have been killed yet again by the second razorfiend's last full attack, but the paladin used Good Karma to take the hit in his place.

With that done, the party met the elves, were taken to Starsong Hill, made some friends with some Diplomacy checks, learned about Rhest, performed (badly) at the funeral, and were on their way again to the ruins of Rhest within 24 hours.

Submarine Attack!

At session end, the PCs were encamped near the ruins of Rhest, having just spent several hours watching the ruined city. Having correctly deduced the existence of the razorfiend hatchery, they've decided to make a stealthy approach to the Rhest Town Hall.

Their current plan is to cast water breathing and launch a submarine assault upon Rhest by submerging their rowboats and carrying them underwater along the bottom of the lake and then surfacing the boats near the town hall.

Yes, that's what I said.

No, I don't know why.

There are so many things wrong with the plan I don't know where to begin, but they seem absolutely determined to try it. Their current idea is to launch an assault upon the town hall directly, ignoring the alarm tower, meaning that as soon as they get there and the alarm is raised every living creature in Rhest is going to converge from every direction on their position.

About the only thing in their favour right now is that Saarvith and the black dragon Regiarix have just gone out hunting, meaning that the PCs have a window of 1d4 hours before they come back. Whether that'll help much remains to be seen.

Anyway, next session should be pretty entertaining. :)

Thoughts

The PCs are progressing steadily without many problems. They've managed to accumulate 8 alliance points already, meaning that if they succeed in Rhest they're guaranteed to gain the aid of the Tiri Kitor.

That said, I'm feeling as though the campaign's a little too easy right now, due mostly to the action advantage the PCs have with eight characters (seven PCs plus the druid's companion). I've been bumping up the numbers, but even so, out of the 7 PCs in the party, in the five sessions we've played, five of them (the cleric, the fighter, the sorcerer, the paladin, and the druid and his wolf) have yet to even drop to negative hitpoints. I always feel that a campaign's a lot more fun if there's a bit of a sense of danger, so I'm kind of looking forward to the PCs setting the alarm off next week and fighting the entire Red Hand force in Rhest at once. They need a challenge. :P

The question is when to have Saarvith and Regiarix return. For maximum dramatic effect it should probably be just after the PCs finish destroying the hatchery . . .

- Saph

Matthew
2008-11-15, 09:42 PM
Very interesting. I kind of want to know what happened to the wild Elf this week, though...

KillianHawkeye
2008-11-16, 09:46 AM
It's kind of difficult to run for such a large group. My group also had 8 PCs, and none of them were ever killed even though I started them two levels lower than recommended. It gets even more difficult to balance encounters for such a big group later on.

At least I'm glad to hear that your players are following closer to the expected strategy than mine did. :smallamused:

Saph
2008-11-16, 09:52 AM
The wild elf managed to live this week, due to the paladin taking the last hit that would have killed him. I'm sure he'll manage to die again soon. :)

Staying alive didn't seem to suit him either, though, since he was asking if for his next character he could play an OA Samurai / Wilderness Rogue. I wasn't quite sure what to say.


At least I'm glad to hear that your players are following closer to the expected strategy than mine did. :smallamused:

I'd love to know what could be further from the expected strategy than turning the party rowboats into submarines. :P

- Saph

Lord Lorac Silvanos
2008-11-16, 10:07 AM
I'd love to know what could be further from the expected strategy than turning the party rowboats into submarines. :P

Tunnel drills!

Coidzor
2008-11-16, 11:46 AM
Fun times... With that blockade, I think no one was really feeling it, since the toughest opponents there stayed at range and had a bow-fight with my rogue/fighter and the ranger, and everyone else pretty much followed my plan to conjure flaming spheres to set the palisade on fire and limit how much of our flank was exposed while creating a sort of bottleneck of more flaming spheres and our heavies on those trying to actually exit the fort in our direction.

The only problem was that I forgot that the doors swung outward rather than pulling to one side or pulling inward, so of all people, our monk was the one hit by the doors as they opened.

Our druid was our main supporting caster, doing all of this from around 100 feet away while the ranger and I were about 25 feet out and taking out 6 hobbos in the tower (they came up in twos with weaklings, middlings, and what must've been the commander and lieutenant as the battle progressed) while 10 more tried to put out the fire while two ogres blocked off our ability to proceed (but at least the formation I thought up put us into a good position to gang up on one of the ogres without the other one being able to hit us around it.)

Yeah, this was actually my character's crowning moment of usefulness to the party other than to open up chests... That and grappling koth's legs and dragging him to the ground when he was hovering over us once. One or two of the hobbos escaped out of the back of the fort to go tell the others that the fort fell. We still have no idea why someone would have a blockade there though, since the entire countryside around Rhest and north of it is either abandoned or has some of that negative magically radioactive fallout from the Shar or Sharn or what have you.

In Rhest I pretty much hit some undead and soaked some razorfiend damage and helped cut off some retreating hobbos after 45 of them attacked at once (control, AoE spells came in handy here) with my tripping abilities. The commanders have a tendency to want to retreat or get killed by the things we throw at them to soften them up. I ought to use my sap sometime to actually capture one so we can figure out a thing or two that's been bothering the Paladin.

I got hit by a suggestion spell to strike at any who try to harm our new dragon overlords and majorly failed the will-save, so that made the boss-fight against the black needlessly harder than it should have been. Well, that and the fight with the army of hobbos that we didn't rest after due to a lizardman attack (darn retreating hobos). The ranger hardly got in any attacks before the lightning storm had dumped his corpse in the lake and taken his partner down by some major HPs... Then we realized that he had DR and so we were barely scratching him after that despite his weakened state.

I think one of our players has been relegated to playing the NPC cohort of the week, similar to that wild-elf that bites it all the time. He was brought in as Jorr, made a bad decision to get drunk at the wake of one of the swamp-elves that were riding giant owls and having some troubles with the razorfiends that got loose. so he took on the role of our elven bard guide (partially because our wizards have a mysterious tendency to vanish in game when it would be most useful to have them around, like when we've fought any dragons other than the green at the bridge.)

In fact, they both disappeared mysteriously once and came back with medallions depicting platinum, gold, and silver dragons leading to a joke that they're carrying dragon babies.

Doomsy
2008-11-16, 02:26 PM
The wild elf managed to live this week, due to the paladin taking the last hit that would have killed him. I'm sure he'll manage to die again soon. :)

Staying alive didn't seem to suit him either, though, since he was asking if for his next character he could play an OA Samurai / Wilderness Rogue. I wasn't quite sure what to say.



I'd love to know what could be further from the expected strategy than turning the party rowboats into submarines. :P

- Saph

I think the basic mentality there is that amphibious assaults are just cool. And at this point I'd pretty much let 'Kenny' do what he fancies - deathwishers are great for comedy, provided they don't take the rest of the party with them.

skeeter_dan
2008-11-17, 01:30 PM
Nice thread, so far. I'm currently running RHoD for my group as well. The group is just about to enter Chapter Four: next session should be the war council, though they still have some time before the army reaches the walls of Brindol. I have some other things for them to deal with. A number of refugee children have been disappearing and there's the possibility of one or more spies within the walls. Of course, the party could also be sent out to escort more refugees to the city as well. Since the Psion Nomad can now Teleport, their mobility has significantly increased, so they'll be jumping around a lot more.

The difficulty level has been about right for my group as well. None of the PCs have died yet, but many of them have come awfully close. Almost every person in the party has hit negative hitpoints at least once. I have a group of 5 pretty capable PCs, so I've upped the difficulty of a few encounters.

Koth, Saarvith, and Regiarix have all escaped, but the party took down Ozyrrandion and Ulwai. Koth, Saarvith, and Regiarix will all show up in the Battle of Brindol, if not sooner.

The party gained the aid of the Tiri Kitor and ended up hiring some dwarven mercenaries with their own money! But the best moment of the campaign was when the party druid Awakened a dire lion they rescued, creating Courage, the Lion of Brindol! The part is pretty excited at creating a potential legend and, for his part, Courage is perfectly willing to aid the party in defending Brindol given that they saved him from becoming an undead monstrosity, teleported him while he was paralyzed and awakened him. I'm really hoping he makes it through the battle, but even if he doesn't he'll be a huge inspiration to the soldiers (the Lions of Brindol) during the battle.

Saph
2008-11-17, 06:41 PM
Session 6 - Preview

Whew, all done. I've been doing a bunch of preparation for next week's session and I'm finally finished. I've decided that it's time to start upgrading the enemies, since the PCs were able to chew through the book-standard encounters even when there was 5 of them, and for next week there'll be 6 (of which one is a druid, so it's more like 7). Adding levels, etc. to the monsters was a lot of work, but this is supposed to be the big climactic battle-zone of Chapter 2, and I don't want the PCs to be disapppointed.

The PCs have settled on a plan that involves waiting for the dragon and rider to leave (which will happen within a day or so) then performing a submerged approach to the Rhest Town Hall. I've decided that walking 2000 feet along the lake floor with water breathing will take them about an hour or so, plus discussion time. Once they get there, they'll face the following:

First Wave: 2 second-level ogre warriors on the boardwalk and 4 second-level ogre warriors on the roof. Each is CR 4, but the PCs will have surprise. The fight should probably alert the . . .

Second Wave: Ettin (also upgraded with two warrior levels for a total of CR 7), bard/mindbender (a weak CR 7), greenspawn razorfiend (also CR 7), and the flying hobgoblin bladebearer from the lookout tower (CR 4). The order the PCs will meet these guys (and how many ogres are still alive) will depend on how they act.

Third Wave: 4 hobgoblin veterans (a weak CR 3 each) in a boat, along with a few dozen CR 1 lizardmen on rafts. By the time these guys get there the battle will probably be over.

Assuming the PCs beat all that, I'm guessing that they'll loot the town hall and destroy the hatchery. By the time they finish, the dragon and his rider should be about due to return.

Final Battle: Saarvith and Regiarix

Saarvith: 9th-level goblin ranger, HP 71, AC 23 (25 with barkskin), longbow attack +14/+14/+9 (1d6+2), favoured enemies elves and humans, eagle animal companion, Mounted Combat (Ride +20), a small supply of elf- and human-bane arrows.

Regiarix: Young adult black dragon, Speed 150, Swim 60, HP 152, AC 24 (28 with mage armour), SR 17, DR 5/magic, breath weapon 10d4 line of acid (Ref 21), frightful prescence (Will 21), darkness, water breathing, CL 5th.

Attack routine: Bite +19 (3d6+4/19-20)
and 2 claws +17 (1d8+2)
and 2 wings +17 (1d6+2)
and tail slap +17 (1d8+6).

Against that, the PC party will consist of a fighter, a druid plus wolf, a sorcerer, a ranger, a pally/fighter, and a duskblade, all pre-buffed and forewarned. (The newbie Cleric's going to be missing this week.) All will be level 6, maybe 7 if they go do another encounter first.

Okay, those who've read this far, what do you think the result's going to be by the end of the session? Total party win, total party kill, or somewhere in between? I'll take bets - the session is on Saturday, and whoever predicts the result most accurately gets a cookie. :P

- Saph

Matthew
2008-11-17, 06:48 PM
Magic Eightball says... Total Party Kill! Somehow the wild elf ranger fubars everything up and the party is completely wiped out. The lizard men deliver the final humiliating blow. :smallbiggrin:

No wait... only the wild elf ranger survives!

Darkxarth
2008-11-17, 07:10 PM
I predict that the Hobgoblin Bladebearer proves to be more of a nuisance than ever thought possible.
And/or that the Mindbender manages to Charm/Suggest one of the PCs and it throws the entire battle into chaos.

Starbuck_II
2008-11-17, 07:11 PM
Tunnel drills!

Only if the drills pierce the very heavens!

Saph: I call that there may be a death or just unconscious, but the Party will make a tactical retreat.

RTGoodman
2008-11-17, 08:18 PM
I think the party will probably be okay with the first several waves, though the Second Wave might be pretty tough (just since there's a lot of different enemies to deal with). I'm guessing they'll all survive that, but then when Saarvith and Reg return it'll be a tough one (especially with his favored enemy AND bane arrows). I predict at least one or two PCs (and maybe the Wolf) may die fighting that battle.

skeeter_dan
2008-11-17, 10:05 PM
I'm guessing the PCs will be fine. The Druid in my group locked down the battle with a couple summons. I re-statted the mindbender as a psion (because I have a psion PC) and he was completely useless. He got pinned down by Dire Wolves and got slaughtered...

I even had Regiarix and Saarvith there when the PCs arrived and they still won pretty handily. Reggie and Saarvith escaped, but just barely. Saarvith got picked off and knocked unconscious with a long range snipe, but Reggie managed to catch him and took off.

Suffice it to say, if you're group is anything like mine, they won't have any troubles. Of course, I didn't bump up the encounter at all, so your experience may be different.

Vinotaur
2008-11-18, 12:00 AM
My bet, one of them is smart enough to not destroy the hatchery, so that for once their enemies don't escape.

That's the worse part of Red Hand.

There's all this stuff that dictates if someone runs away, and the PCs can't reasonably know any of it.

(If you sneak past all his guards and attack him in his room, Koth flees, if you create a giant brawl, kill each of his hobgoblins, the Manticore, and the Minotaur right in front of him, he keeps fighting if he has spells.)

But my bet is they don't do the hatchery in, and so Hobby fights to the death. Maybe one of them is even smart enough to disguise as a Hobgoblin and sit in the tower, so that the rest can ambush him after he gets off the Dragon.

kjones
2008-11-18, 08:47 AM
My bet, one of them is smart enough to not destroy the hatchery, so that for once their enemies don't escape.

That's the worse part of Red Hand.

There's all this stuff that dictates if someone runs away, and the PCs can't reasonably know any of it.

(If you sneak past all his guards and attack him in his room, Koth flees, if you create a giant brawl, kill each of his hobgoblins, the Manticore, and the Minotaur right in front of him, he keeps fighting if he has spells.)


I agree with you in general (though I've never run RHoD, just read it) but I think this example actually makes sense. If the PCs have the element of surprise, Koth retreats, so that he can fight on his own terms. If Koth is fighting alongside all his allies, they've probably managed to do some damage to the PCs - Koth is desperately trying to finish them off. (Recall that if Koth returns to the horde with failure, he is tortured - and he probably knows this, or at least suspects that he'll be in trouble.)

Vinotaur
2008-11-18, 09:48 AM
I agree with you in general (though I've never run RHoD, just read it) but I think this example actually makes sense. If the PCs have the element of surprise, Koth retreats, so that he can fight on his own terms. If Koth is fighting alongside all his allies, they've probably managed to do some damage to the PCs - Koth is desperately trying to finish them off. (Recall that if Koth returns to the horde with failure, he is tortured - and he probably knows this, or at least suspects that he'll be in trouble.)

Except he doesn't retreat to fight on his own terms. It specifically says that he just flat out chugs a potion and runs like no tommorrow straight back to Azur Kul, do not pass GO, do not collect $200.

So he actually just abandons an entire legion for no reason.

If you don't think you can kill Koth before he runs, the best move is to have a Rogue sneak invis past the entire fort, pick up the map on the way in, throw a dagger at him, and then loot the bottom while Koth runs away like a ninny.

Then sneak back out, you got most of the good treasure, you have the map, and you "beat" the entire camp, and so get all the XP you would have gotten otherwise. All with only a single attack.

Saph
2008-11-18, 10:43 AM
Except he doesn't retreat to fight on his own terms. It specifically says that he just flat out chugs a potion and runs like no tommorrow straight back to Azur Kul, do not pass GO, do not collect $200.

So he actually just abandons an entire legion for no reason.

Sorry Vinotaur, but this is wrong. In the guidelines for running Wyrmlord Koth, it says that he drinks his potion and runs away if no allies remain. Yes, he runs away - if the PCs kill the two worg riders and their mounts, the minotaur, the hobgoblin veterans, and the manticore first. In any case, the character descriptions are guidelines, not ironclad rules. They're just to give you ideas on what the monsters will do.


But my bet is they don't do the hatchery in, and so Hobby fights to the death. Maybe one of them is even smart enough to disguise as a Hobgoblin and sit in the tower, so that the rest can ambush him after he gets off the Dragon.

Actually, a couple of the more aggressive players were talking about trying to set up an ambush for the dragon when it came back. The smarter ones pointed out the flaws in the plan, but we'll have to see which approach wins out. :)

- Saph

arguskos
2008-11-18, 10:46 AM
Except he doesn't retreat to fight on his own terms. It specifically says that he just flat out chugs a potion and runs like no tommorrow straight back to Azur Kul, do not pass GO, do not collect $200.

So he actually just abandons an entire legion for no reason.

If you don't think you can kill Koth before he runs, the best move is to have a Rogue sneak invis past the entire fort, pick up the map on the way in, throw a dagger at him, and then loot the bottom while Koth runs away like a ninny.

Then sneak back out, you got most of the good treasure, you have the map, and you "beat" the entire camp, and so get all the XP you would have gotten otherwise. All with only a single attack.
Even is it implies that... what DM is going to look at it, and say "oh, well, Wizards of the Coast wrote it, it must be perfect and completely logical! He flees if against a single, lightly armed/armored individual with no allies in his room!"

Really. I mean... REALLY. That's pretty silly, don't you think? Just use some logic, and that issue vanishes. Of course, it's badly written, but meh, lots of stuff is. :smallwink:

Vinotaur
2008-11-18, 12:34 PM
Sorry Vinotaur, but this is wrong. In the guidelines for running Wyrmlord Koth, it says that he drinks his potion and runs away if no allies remain. Yes, he runs away - if the PCs kill the two worg riders and their mounts, the minotaur, the hobgoblin veterans, and the manticore first. In any case, the character descriptions are guidelines, not ironclad rules. They're just to give you ideas on what the monsters will do.

Actually, a couple of the more aggressive players were talking about trying to set up an ambush for the dragon when it came back. The smarter ones pointed out the flaws in the plan, but we'll have to see which approach wins out. :)

1) No, it pretty much says that if they attack him in that room without warning he runs.

2) It's easy to ambush a Dragon, and that's the only sensible thing to do. You just have to arrange it such that it doesn't have line of effect, since blindsense doesn't work without it.

Then you all pop out when you hear it settle on the roof. and get your surprise round.


Even is it implies that... what DM is going to look at it, and say "oh, well, Wizards of the Coast wrote it, it must be perfect and completely logical! He flees if against a single, lightly armed/armored individual with no allies in his room!"

Yes, I can correct the problems. They still exist.

Saph
2008-11-18, 01:12 PM
1) No, it pretty much says that if they attack him in that room without warning he runs.

I've got the book open in front of me. It says that if the PCs surprise him he flees out into area 11 or area 8 for assistance. If there are no allies left, then he drinks his potion and flies away. In any case, a little common sense should make it obvious that he's not going to abandon the keep without a good reason.


2) It's easy to ambush a Dragon, and that's the only sensible thing to do. You just have to arrange it such that it doesn't have line of effect, since blindsense doesn't work without it.

Then you all pop out when you hear it settle on the roof. and get your surprise round.

Mm-hm.

I won't point out the flaws in that plan, but suffice it to say that my PCs already spotted them. :)

- Saph

Dizlag
2008-11-18, 01:19 PM
I gave Saarvith some elf-bane and human-bane arrows when I ran him as well. Ouchies! I took out the human wizard in one multishot. =)

Depending on how much down time they'll have before the Final Battle, this could hurt a LOT!

Ok, you can be VERY mean here, Saph. An underwater battle with the hydra while they are walking on the bottom of the lake. 'Nuff said.

:smallbiggrin:

Dizlag

Vinotaur
2008-11-18, 02:29 PM
I won't point out the flaws in that plan, but suffice it to say that my PCs already spotted them.

You won't point out any flaws because there are no flaws. Worst case scenario you are exactly as well off as if you tried to fight him normally, Best case scenario you all get a surprise round.

I don't know who your PCs are, but very few people benefit from giving a Large Black Dragon and his Goblin Ranger with bane arrows and favored enemy, PC races, line of effect from several hundred yards away.

KillianHawkeye
2008-11-18, 07:10 PM
I'd love to know what could be further from the expected strategy than turning the party rowboats into submarines. :P

Sorry, I didn't mean combat strategy. I just meant that my players didn't follow the predicted story flow all the time. For example, they managed to avoid contacting the elves in Rhest until after they assaulted Saarvith's base. And once they did see them, they didn't give a crap about them at all, and didn't want to do anything in elftown.

But as for unusual combat strategies, when they got to the Battle of Brindol (which they did after doing all of Chapter 5), they split up into 3 groups successfully defending the walls from the giants and killing Koth and the troop of Ogre-Mages I'd given him while the Telepath dominated the dragon and turned it on the army. Then while the horde was assaulting the walls, one group led half the dwarven mercenaries out the south entrance to attack the army from behind!

I guess part of my problem was that most of the PCs were chaotic neutral, and the ones who weren't (besides the Evil-leaning TN Necro-Wizard) mostly refused any chance of leadership.

Anyway, I continue to enjoy reading this thread, so please keep it up! And I wish you luck challenging your players. Believe me, I can relate.

Saph
2008-11-22, 09:43 PM
Session 6 - Results!

Okay, so that did not go according to plan. Although it was an exciting session, today was not a good day for the PCs.

The PC's plan at the beginning of the session was to wait for the next day, wait for Saarvith and Regiarix to leave, and then sneak in underwater. This was a good plan. Unfortunately, they didn't stick to it. The next day was rainy, and when the PCs learnt that visibility was low and they wouldn't be visible from the tower, they decided to launch their attack early . . . with Saarvith and Regiarix still in the Town Hall.

This was a mistake.

First Battle of Rhest

The PC lineup was 6 characters: the druid plus wolf, the duskblade, the tiefling fighter, the pally/fighter, the lightning sorcerer, and Kenny, currently playing a wild elf ranger.

The PCs made the underwater journey to the Town Hall with no problems and launched a surprise attack on the patrolling ogre warriors (a CR 9 encounter, in theory). The ogres got in a couple of hits and one managed to jump down to warn Regiarix and the others, but within three rounds every ogre was killed quickly and brutally.

The PCs were left in possession of the roof, looking at the hole that led down into Regiarix's lair. When the dragon didn't show himself, the duskblade shouted down and insulted him a few times while the druid cast a mass resist energy. The annoyed Regiarix used darkness to shroud his lair in shadows and hid in them, preparing to sneak up on the party through the now-shadowed hole in the roof.

This was where things started to go wrong.

The tiefling fighter jumped down through the hole, landing right next to Regiarix without seeing him. At the same time, the other characters ran down the staircase and ran into the ettin. At the same time, Saarvith got the ogre's message and burst into the room, running for Regiarix and jumping upon his back. And one round later, Nurklenak emerged from his chamber. All of a sudden the PCs were fighting the four most dangerous enemies in Rhest all at once.

Things went south pretty fast after that. Nurklenak hit Kenny the ranger with a telepathic suggestion, telling him "run to the adjacent building, along the boardwalk! There are allies in there, powerful allies! Free them and they will help you!" Kenny ran off to the razorfiend hatchery, while Regiarix beat the crap out of the fighter and duskblade, who failed to land a single hit in return. The sorcerer nuked Nurklenak and the ettin with a scintillating sphere, critically wounding both, but took the paladin way into negatives with the same blast, and would have killed him if the paladin hadn't saved himself with the Tempting Fate feat. All of a sudden, half the PCs were down or incapacitated, and the remaining ones certainly couldn't take down the enemies still left.

At this point I decided to give the PCs a break. Saarvith spoke to the duskblade, telling him that he'd let him live if he killed Nurklenak (who Saarvith hates). After a quick assessment of their position, the duskblade agreed and backed off towards Nurklenak's room, where Nurklenak was engaged in a spell duel with the sorcerer. Unfortunately the sorcerer had forgotten about the ettin behind him, and when Nurklenak screamed for help the ettin turned and whacked the sorcerer through the doorway. Sorcerer was brought to -10 in one attack. Dead.

Meanwhile the wild elf ranger found the hatchery and opened the door. He marches in, looking for the 'allies', and sees nothing but water. He goes to the end of the walkway. Feels breath on the back of his neck. Turns. The greenspawn razorfiend hits him with its wingblade, knocking off 30% of his HP. The ranger tries to jump into the water and hide. Razorfiend AoO's. Rolls a natural 20 (I rolled it openly in front of the players, so they couldn't complain). Confirms. Augmented Critical, 39 points of damage. Ranger goes down to -7. The razorfiend plays with him for a couple more rounds before biting his head off. Two PCs dead now.

Back in the Town Hall, the PCs had killed Nurklenak and finally figured out that it was time to cut their losses and run. Regiarix was in position several times to make full attacks, but I had him hold off, waiting to make sure Nurklenak was dead. When Saarvith finally saw Nurklenak's corpse, he gave Regiarix the go-ahead to finish the PCs off, but by this point they'd withdrawn to the room and were able to dive into the water. Regiarix didn't pursue, and with their water breathing spells the four surviving PCs made their getaway.

Regrouping

It took the PCs the rest of the day to regroup. The druid had managed to recover a small part of the dead sorcerer, and was talking about reincarnating him. I was expecting them to pull back to Starsong Hill, and they were going to, but then for some reason changed their mind at the last minute and decided to launch a second assault on Rhest instead.

The PCs took the time to level up, and the level 7 duskblade, druid, pally, and fighter got ready for another underwater assault. By this time Regiarix and Saarvith were hunting them, but the PCs could still have gotten away if they'd withdrawn. Instead they went back for another battle.

Second Battle of Rhest

Same deal as before; water breathing spells, underwater approach. Unfortunately, while the PCs were underwater Saarvith and Regiarix found their tracks leading back into the water, making it pretty obvious where they'd gone. By this time both Saarvith and Regiarix had had it up to here with the PCs, and were in no mood to strike any more deals. They returned to the roof of the Town Hall, intending to wait until the PCs surfaced and then kill them all.

The PCs came in via the underwater entrance this time, emerging in Regiarix's lair. Regiarix was on the roof right above. The druid heard the scrape of claw on stone above but chose to enter Regiarix's lair. Druid's Move Silently vs. Regiarix's Listen. Regiarix wins by a mile, hears all the PCs pull themselves out into his lair, waits for them to move a few steps inward, and jumps down right behind them.

Final Battle

Regiarix opens up with a full attack and tears chunks out of the duskblade. The paladin and the druid's wolf engage the dragon; the tiefling fighter, though, does something totally unexpected. She jumps up onto the dragon's back (nat 20 on the jump check), grapples the surprised Saarvith, and drags him off into the water. They sink - but the tiefling's got a water breathing spell and Saarvith doesn't. Saarvith tries to break free but can't.

Up above, though, the battle is not going well. Regiarix has caught the PCs entering his lair for the second time and this time there's no Saarvith to cut a deal; he wants them all dead. The paladin is hacked down to negatives, is healed to consciousness, and then pops up and uses Good Karma and Tempting Fate to absorb a critical that would have dropped the druid. He's pushed his luck too far this time, though, and as he lies there at -9 a furious Regiarix drives a claw through his skull. Minus one paladin.

The duskblade makes several Arcane Channelling attacks but misses every time. At last, on low HP, he withdraws to the back end of the room. Regiarix blasts him with his breath weapon, and this time the duskblade doesn't have a resist energy. Duskblade goes to about -20 or so. Four PCs dead now, and only the druid's left alive.

In the water below, Saarvith drowns. Scratch one Wyrmlord. The tiefling starts to swim up. While she does so, the druid wild shapes into eagle form and tries to run from Regiarix. Regiarix uses his AoO to grapple the druid and proceeds to tear him literally to pieces. The tiefling pokes her head above water just in time to see the dragon scatter the pieces of the druid all around the room. She submerges and flees, swimming away underwater once again. The battle's over.

Results

Red Hand casualties from first assault - 6 dead ogre warriors, 1 dead ettin warrior, 1 dead mindbender (Nurklenak).
PC casualties from first assault - Dead ranger PC (Kenny), dead sorcerer (but the druid had a bit of his body to reincarnate).

Red Hand casualties from second assult - 1 dead Wyrmlord Saarvith.
PC casualties from second assault - Paladin PC, druid PC, and duskblade PC all killed.

Red Hand survivors: Regiarix, the greenspawn razorfiend, and a handful of hobgoblins.
PC survivors: The tiefling fighter and the druid's animal companion.

Summary

Total bloodbath. Both groups were largely wiped out. With Saarvith and Nurklenak dead, the effective leader of the Red Hand in Rhest is Regiarix, who has no particular interest in overseeing troops or plans. The razorfiends are going to keep hatching and will continue to spread unless stopped.

Of the PC party of seven, five are now dead, the only survivors being the tiefling fighter and the cleric (who missed the session and thus avoided the whole CF).

Thoughts

With retrospect, the PCs were doomed as soon as they made the decision to go back for a second try at Saarvith and Regiarix. Given that they hadn't been able to beat them with six PCs, they had no real chance with four. The only reason they were even able to take out Saarvith was by the tiefling's ingenious (and surprisingly effective) drowning plan.

I feel bad about killing so many of the PCs, but there really wasn't any way I could justify doing anything else by the end. I already stretched plausibility by having Saarvith and Regiarix let them get away the first time. The PCs have been ruthless in killing Red Hand members whenever they have the chance; by comparison, having Saarvith and Regiarix squeamish about killing intruders would have made absolutely no sense. Followers of Tiamat don't go in for mercy, and insulting a dragon and breaking into its hoard guarantees that it is going to do its best to try and kill you.

The initial decision to assault Rhest while the dragon and rider was also a bad one, and the way the party split up afterwards made things worse, leading to them fighting every enemy at once. Ultimately, the PCs made bad decisions and paid the price for it. Harsh, but that's how it goes.

The tiefling and cleric have now withdrawn back to Starsong Hill and are going to be recruiting a new party next week - who are going to have to go back for another shot at Regiarix, because there's really nowhere else for them to go. Let's hope they do better than the last ones!

Cookies

Darkxath correctly predicted the outcome of the first battle; two deaths, but a tactical retreat. Matthew was the only one to guess TPK, which was the outcome of the second battle for all PCs but one. You two get a joint cookie. :)

It's sort of amusing that the only survivor at the end of the bloodbath was the player with the weakest build (sword-and-board tiefling fighter). Not only that, but the player is the least metagamey type imaginable, going out of her way to make decisions based only on in-character information even when she knows out-of-character that it's dangerous for her (e.g. swimming back up after killing Saarvith to emerge next to the dragon).

Although it was a bit of a depressing ending, the players generally had fun and the whole session was less of a downer than it sounds. Since the PCs did kill the enemy general after all was said and done, they didn't feel like it was a total failure. It was still a near-TPK and a really bad result for the party as a whole, but then, if there's no chance of failure, success doesn't mean anything . . .

- Saph

Doomsy
2008-11-22, 10:09 PM
That Tiefling fighters decision to decide things from an IC perspective probably saved her life there. Not many people would have thought of drowning him, to be honest.

Otherwise, it looks like your guys pulled off a Pyrrhic victory in the classical sense. At least the Tiefling is a roleplayer and can tell the new characters the wonderful story of how everybody else got their heads handed to them. As long as the PCs are having fun, it went pretty well. And the fact they are still enjoying it with about 90 percent casualties proves you're doing things really right. Kudos to you.

kjones
2008-11-22, 10:42 PM
I'm very concerned about running the battle of Rhest, for this very reason. How can I make it clear to the PCs that just charging in and fighting all the enemies in the town hall spells instant death? My players are exactly the sort who would try that.

Maybe I'll have to kill them all off once to teach them a lesson.

Brilliant work on the grapple, though. That's the stuff of ages.

Vinotaur
2008-11-22, 11:59 PM
Wow, I can never understand how different my group is from everyone else.

We did Rhest: Wait for them to leave, swim/walk under the water. Party was:

Wizard 3/MS Abjurer 2/Incantatrix 2 (wasn't allowed to take Persist spell, not that it mattered at this level).

Druid 7 Fleshraker companion.

Cloistered Cleric 3/Church Inquisitor 2/Divine Oracle 2 (not allowed to DMM Persist) But still Archery based.

Sorcerer 5/Mindbender 1/Mage of the Arcane Order 1 (modified to be given 0 spells at odd levels).

For the approach, I cast Heart of Water on everyone, except the Druid who did himself.

Our strategy with various Ogres and hobos was basically have the druid and his pet grapple them and drag them into the water to drown. Usually the Sorcerer would open up by glitterdusting them to make it easier.

We had already found the phylactery by the time the Dragon has headed back.

He had tough fight against the Spawn, relatively speaking because it got a surprise round pounce on the Sorcerer. But the Cleric had touch of healing, so he was back up to full with minimal healing spells afterward though.

The Mindbender was little threat because we all had really good will saves, either from PrCing, or Wis focus. The Ettin had some minions with him or something, and the DM treated them like a swarm, so the Cleric pulled out something called Wave of Grief, and the Druid had something else and they were taking -5 or so to everything, so we were pretty safe other then AoE damage for being in the square. Eventually we wailed them down while the Druid had Kelpstranded the Ettin. Then the Cleric just shot him a lot.

Then game the big game, we had killed just about everyone, so what we did was I used Silent Image to create an Ogre patrol, and everyone else set up in Sav's room with Resist Energy on. When he walked in they pounced him hardcore, killing him with a double fleshraker pounce.

The Sorcerer then started spamming Slow on the Dragon every round, and the Cleric started shooting. After the initial ineffective breath, the Dragon (who I think was Large, and had some weird PrCs from Draconomicon) used real darkness, like 100% deeper darkness or something, and then started beating on us. The Sorcerer spent his time telling us what square/area to fire at with his Mindsight, Eventually, I just used Black Tentacles and Reg rolled bad. At that point, The Sorcerer remembered that SLAs are dispelable. So I set about dispelling his Darkness. It worked after a few tries, but got my Black Tentacles too.

But at that point Reg was in flee mode, and so he tore off and the Cleric and Sorcerer brought him down.

The Cleric insisted we search the water for his corpse and then make sure the elves could see it. Meanwhile I manically plotted our future bargaining with the Lich.

Also, I summoned up our steeds, we went back to the Elves, got some help from them, and headed to Brindol.

The end.

Sorry, got a little involved there, but my original point was that drowning people was our favorite strategy ever, and we used it almost exclusively when available.

I once had a Factotum that had Dust of Dryness with him all the time, including the pellets. And we all had Aquatic Armor, so we would go into dungeon fights, fill the room with water, and do the whole fight like that.

RTGoodman
2008-11-23, 01:28 AM
Man... that was... crazy. I mean, I guess I can understand how it all happened, what with the TERRIBLE tactical planning of entering while the dragon and Saarvith were there, but still - I didn't expect THAT big of a bloodbath.

I have to admit, though - the Tiefling tackling Saarvith and drowning him was the kind of thing that groups talk about for years to come.

Sorry to your party about the TPK, but I think that'll at least teach them that the Red Hand isn't playing games, and the module itself is VERY deadly. I look forward to what types of heroes the remaining PCs can recruit at Starsong Hill (especially what Kenny'll go with next - he's on what, character #3 or 4 by now? :smallsigh:).

@Vinotaur: I think one thing your group had going for you was a LOT more optimizing than Saph's group. I mean, Incantatrix, DMM Cleric, Fleshraker Druid, etc., are all probably in a LOT better shape from the outset that, say, a sword-and-board Tiefling Fighter. (Honestly, I don't even KNOW most of those spells you were talking about.) I mean, it might not have been the only thing, but it certainly didn't hurt.

Vinotaur
2008-11-23, 01:37 AM
@Vinotaur: I think one thing your group had going for you was a LOT more optimizing than Saph's group. I mean, Incantatrix, DMM Cleric, Fleshraker Druid, etc., are all probably in a LOT better shape from the outset that, say, a sword-and-board Tiefling Fighter. (Honestly, I don't even KNOW most of those spells you were talking about.) I mean, it might not have been the only thing, but it certainly didn't hurt.

I know, sometimes I am surprised that everyone doesn't play like that, and that's what I'm saying. To imagine what it's like for a blaster sorcerer, a druid who um, well it's never really been explained what the druid does, and SAB fighter... Well it's interesting at the least, and maybe even enlightening.

Will_Shakespear
2008-11-23, 04:51 AM
Hi there,

i have to admit that the idea of drowning your enemies sounds like a good one. But IMHO it won't work in the end because you can hold your breath for a number of rounds equal to twice your CON. So an enemy with CON 14 e.g. can hold his breath 28 rounds before he's going to begin making his CON checks. So either your Rhest encounter took minutes per battle or you made up your own drowning rules.
But as i said, it's a nice idea nonetheless.

Cheerio

Will

Saph
2008-11-23, 07:24 AM
I'm very concerned about running the battle of Rhest, for this very reason. How can I make it clear to the PCs that just charging in and fighting all the enemies in the town hall spells instant death? My players are exactly the sort who would try that.

I just don't know. My party figured out that they should wait until the dragon was gone, then decided against it at the last minute. All you can really do is warn them once and then let them make their own decisions.


Sorry to your party about the TPK, but I think that'll at least teach them that the Red Hand isn't playing games, and the module itself is VERY deadly. I look forward to what types of heroes the remaining PCs can recruit at Starsong Hill (especially what Kenny'll go with next - he's on what, character #3 or 4 by now? :smallsigh:).

Heh, number 4 by now. Yeah, at least now they know that the enemy isn't going to be nice. The players are going to make new characters either from the residents of Starsong Hill or from new reinforcements, and we'll see where we go from there.


Hi there,

i have to admit that the idea of drowning your enemies sounds like a good one. But IMHO it won't work in the end because you can hold your breath for a number of rounds equal to twice your CON. So an enemy with CON 14 e.g. can hold his breath 28 rounds before he's going to begin making his CON checks. So either your Rhest encounter took minutes per battle or you made up your own drowning rules.

Nope, I was looking at the rules. However, those holding your breath rules only apply if you don't take actions - if you do, you can only do it for 1 round per point of Con. That reduced it to 14.

Also, the fighter was making grapple checks to crush the air from Saarvith's lungs, throttle him, etc, and winning every check, so every time she succeeded on one I reduced Saarvith's air supply further. It was a pretty situational tactic (how often is the major bad guy going to be Small-sized and Str 8?), but a clever one. :)

- Saph

kjones
2008-11-23, 10:46 AM
I thought of a way to convey the dangers of Rhest to the players. Perhaps some of the Tiri Kitor (sp?) elves have scouted it out a little, and (with appropriate diplomacy checks) can offer some general ideas of what they're up against.

It seems to me that the biggest danger here is intel - the players, for the most part, have no way of knowing what they're walking into, and if they try to scout out ahead, one failed hide/move silently check means that they're going to be bringing it all down on top of them. This could help mitigate that.

Vinotaur
2008-11-23, 11:17 AM
i have to admit that the idea of drowning your enemies sounds like a good one. But IMHO it won't work in the end because you can hold your breath for a number of rounds equal to twice your CON. So an enemy with CON 14 e.g. can hold his breath 28 rounds before he's going to begin making his CON checks. So either your Rhest encounter took minutes per battle or you made up your own drowning rules.
But as i said, it's a nice idea nonetheless.

The major advantage in the Rhest battle is that it prevented them from calling out for help of any kind, and if they do escape the grapple (they are Ogres, a few did) they are still under water, and have to make swim checks, and the Druid can still catch them and re grapple them.

With Dust of Dryness it's mostly a mobility thing.

Matthew
2008-11-23, 04:08 PM
Matthew was the only one to guess TPK, which was the outcome of the second battle for all PCs but one. You two get a joint cookie. :)

I was so close! I just backed the wrong horse to survive...

Great write up, Saph. I am looking forward to the next installment.

Saph
2008-11-25, 09:13 AM
Great. Now one of the players is asking if he can make a Wizard with Arcane Thesis. Charop forums have a lot to answer for. :P

Oh well, it's to be expected, I guess. At least the worst the Druid player wants is an animal companion with Natural Bond.

And the sorcerer is planning to make his new character a pirate-ninja.

- Saph

Lord Lorac Silvanos
2008-11-25, 11:25 AM
Great. Now one of the players is asking if he can make a Wizard with Arcane Thesis. Charop forums have a lot to answer for. :P

Oh well, it's to be expected, I guess. At least the worst the Druid player wants is an animal companion with Natural Bond.

And the sorcerer is planning to make his new character a pirate-ninja.

- Saph

I would be extremely careful with that last request... it sounds really broken. :smallamused:

Matthew
2008-11-25, 03:19 PM
Heh. This bodes ill. It sounds as though, rather than assessing their tactical errors, the players are looking at how to further "optimise" their characters. A natural enough reaction, I suppose, though it never really occurred to me that party defeat and character death might be an impetus towards optimisation. Silly, now I think about it, it is rather obvious. :smallbiggrin:

Lord Lorac Silvanos
2008-11-25, 03:50 PM
Heh. This bodes ill. It sounds as though, rather than assessing their tactical errors, the players are looking at how to further "optimise" their characters. A natural enough reaction, I suppose, though it never really occurred to me that party defeat and character death might be an impetus towards optimisation. Silly, now I think about it, it is rather obvious. :smallbiggrin:

It is an arms race... I hear the Razorfiends will have improved critical soon. :smallamused:

Matthew
2008-11-25, 04:11 PM
It is an arms race... I hear the Razorfiends will have improved critical soon. :smallamused:

Quite so. That is the problem with optimisation as a solution to bad play decisions, it just results in the game master ramping up the power level of the monsters... :smallwink:

Doomsy
2008-11-25, 05:12 PM
Quite so. That is the problem with optimisation as a solution to bad play decisions, it just results in the game master ramping up the power level of the monsters... :smallwink:

It does make the TPKs a lot more colorful and entertaining, though.

kjones
2008-11-26, 03:07 AM
Saph, perhaps you should have the next foe they capture/fight boast of how easily they dispatched with the previous party... rub it in until they really understand what bozos they were.

RTGoodman
2008-11-26, 11:29 AM
Saph, perhaps you should have the next foe they capture/fight boast of how easily they dispatched with the previous party... rub it in until they really understand what bozos they were.

Aw, man, now that's just CRUEL. It is, of course, also hilarious, and I now plan on doing this exact thing when I inevitably TPK a party. http://www.tswb.org/Portals/5/ForumSmiley/Devil%20Gallery/_thumbs/devil-smiley-019.gif

Matthew
2008-11-26, 12:06 PM
It does make the TPKs a lot more colorful and entertaining, though.

I don't know about that; possibly, I suppose.



Saph, perhaps you should have the next foe they capture/fight boast of how easily they dispatched with the previous party... rub it in until they really understand what bozos they were.



Aw, man, now that's just CRUEL. It is, of course, also hilarious, and I now plan on doing this exact thing when I inevitably TPK a party. http://www.tswb.org/Portals/5/ForumSmiley/Devil%20Gallery/_thumbs/devil-smiley-019.gif

Heh, heh. Displaying the mutilated bodies (or parts thereof) of the dead characters sounds about right in this context. Using the magical gear of the fallen against the new player characters is also sometimes entertaining (have to keep an eye on how that impacts potential treasure gained, though).

metagaia
2008-11-29, 11:22 AM
Well, if you play the adventure without mercy, then after the third attack the forces at Rhest wil pursue them to the death if necessary, so they'd better finish the job this time!

Are any of the hobgoblins in the belltower still alive?

Saph
2008-11-29, 08:58 PM
Session 7

We were at Dragonmeet this week, a gaming convention in Kensington, London. Our group wandered around and saw the sights during the morning, then met up in a side room in the afternoon to play.

After much emailing back and forth today's party roster was as follows:

• 7th-level cleric of Tyr, original character.
• 7th-level tiefling fighter, other original character.
• 7th-level druid with a Natural-Bond black bear companion. Somewhat on the overpowered side, but not stupidly so.
• 1st-level ogre barbarian, named Huk. Quote: "Huk smash!" Ugly, stupid, and obnoxious, but highly entertaining to have at the table.
• 7th-level diviner wizard. This character went through a lot of builds during the week. Originally designed as the standard silly-damage nova wizard, but at last I sat down with the player and explained that this would just lead to every major monster having its hit points increased by 250% or so. He saw the point and made the character a bit more rounded.
• 5th-level fighter/2nd-level monk. Character is a ninja pirate. Spiked chain tripper. Actually fairly effective.

And finally, the one you've all been waiting for - Kenny!

• 4th-level fighter/3rd-level monk. Used a katana, and thus could be said to be a monk and a fighter and a samurai, which I think has to be some sort of record.

The characters laid some plans in Starsong Hill, then headed back to the ruins.

Third Battle of Rhest

Underwater approach again. The opposition this time consisted of Regiarix (CR 9), 6 hobgoblin veterans (CR 3, in theory), the hobgoblin bladebearer (CR 4), and 'Greenie', the advanced Greenspawn Razorfiend (CR 8).

In theory this was a CR 12ish encounter, but all told, the party didn't have much trouble. The hobgoblin veterans were complete pushovers and did nothing except to slow the PCs down. Regiarix was the main threat, but this time the characters knew what they were facing. The melee fighters could only barely hit the dragon's AC of 28, but the wizard had no such trouble, and wore Regiarix down with lesser orb spells. The pirate-ninja killed the bladebearer but then was taken down to -6 by a full attack from the dragon; he was healed by the cleric, but wisely stayed down and didn't draw any more fire. The tiefling, the bear, and Huk battered away at Regiarix, while Greenie the Greenspawn Razorfiend arrived and hopped up onto the roof from behind, engaging the druid and the cleric.

The party's action advantage finally swung the fight in their favour. Regiarix was knocked down to 20% health and started to withdraw. The wizard could have killed him with an orb of force but cast a true strike instead. Regiarix sized up the situation and with a final threat and a curse, fled away into the distance at 600' a round.

Oh My God! They Killed Kenny!

Back on the roof, Kenny the samurai monk managed to get up next to Greenie the razorfiend (having missed the first half of the battle due to a combination of failed Jump and Climb checks that dropped him down a level). He attacks and misses. The razorfiend full attacks him and hits three times. Kenny, on 23 HP, makes another attack and tumbles away. The razorfiend jumps over, hits him with a wingblade, scores an Augmented Critical (15-20 threat range), and drops him to -20, decapitating him. (For those keeping score, that's Kenny's fourth death in this campaign. It also puts him into the rare category of players who've managed to have two separate characters killed by the same monster.) The angry wizard flies over and blasts Greenie with his orb of force, killing the razorfiend and ending the battle.

Aftermath

With Rhest taken, the chapter was basically over. The PCs destroyed the hatchery at their leisure and then stole the hobgob skiffs to carry away the metric ton of treasure contained within the Town Hall. They found the letter and the phylactery, though due to some crossed wires didn't figure out that the phylactery was a phylactery until a good hour later. They also found the remains of their previous party, and took them back for Sellyria to reincarnate.

The duskblade, paladin, and druid from before were reincarnated the next day, leading to the interesting situation that the three players now each had two PCs. In the end the problem was solved neatly by having the three duplicate PCs go off with the help of the elves to destroy the second barricade, while the main party headed to Brindol to report back and decide on where to go next. (I'm planning to have the three ex-PCs carry on as NPCs, fighting in the skirmishes the PCs miss - I think it might be a fun way to show the other fronts in the war.)

Chapter End - The PC's Next Move

The PCs are now in possession of the Ghostlord's phylactery, but aren't really sure what to do with it. They haven't figured out that the Red Hand is forcing the Ghostlord to create a unit of undead (which, to be fair, is pretty hard to deduce from the evidence . . . I gave them a few hints via Sellyria, but they didn't pick up on it). They've checked up on the status of Brindol, and have realised that there's only so much they can do in the soon-to-be-besieged city. Plans currently floated include:

1. Infiltrating the horde and trying to kill some leaders
2. Helping with the evacuation
3. Doing something about the Ghostlord

The party would like to do 3, but haven't yet been able to come up with a plan. They'll be emailing each other over the week, trying to decide. Everyone's engaged, anyway!

Chapter 2: The Ruins of Rhest - Victory Point Total

Blockade Busting - 2 VP
Tiri Kitor Alliance - 5 VP
Hatchery Removal - 2 VP
Killing Wyrmlord Saarvith - 4 VP

VPs from Chapter 1 - 6 VP

Current Total: 19 VP

All in all, the PCs seem to be doing pretty well.

Thoughts

Despite its reputation, Red Hand of Doom isn't proving all that difficult a module so far. Today the PCs fought an (upgraded) Regiarix as well as an advanced Razorfiend and all the hobgoblins at once, and won with little trouble - okay, Kenny died, but it's not like that proves anything.

Right now, lack of information is causing the PCs more trouble than anything else. Although the druid made her Knowledge (geography) check to remember the vague location of the Ghostlord's lair, the party still doesn't have enough pieces of the puzzle to realise just how important it is that they go after the Ghostlord. They're currently on day 27, meaning that they'll have to hurry to get to the Ghostlord before he sends his undead to join the Red Hand's horde . . . a detail they don't know.

That said, the players are all really into the campaign and seem to be having lots of fun. Next week, on to Chapter 3. :)

- Saph

Matthew
2008-11-29, 10:05 PM
Good stuff. Poor old Kenny, though. That Fighter/Monk/Samurai just needed a bit more Ninja! :smallbiggrin:

RTGoodman
2008-11-29, 10:22 PM
Alright, I've got an idea - Kenny's new character needs to be a Mineral Warrior Dwarf Knight/Fighter/Dwarven Defender (or Martial Adept going into Deepstone Sentinel) in enchanted full-plate with Diehard, Improved Toughness, and all that. If he can't survive like that, then there's no hope for the poor fella.

As far as helping the party figure out where to go next, what about giving them a chance to make some Knowledge (History) checks (or whatever you use to figure out tactics and strategy) to see what the Red Hand might be doing with the Ghostlord. If not, maybe have one of the major NPCs give 'em a little hint.

Lord Lorac Silvanos
2008-11-30, 05:18 AM
I am glad they finally managed to come out on top, but a pity the BBED got away.


The razorfiend jumps over, hits him with a wingblade, scores an [B]Augmented Critical (15-20 threat range), and drops him to -20, decapitating him.
(My emphasis)

I knew this would be a source of hilarity as soon as you mentioned it. :smallbiggrin:

metagaia
2008-11-30, 08:19 AM
It's not entirely clear whether the delays to the horde (skull bridge and forrest giants) apply to the creation of the Ghostlord's army. If you really feel they will not make it in time and it is not their fault, then you can easily say they have an extra 5 days in which to do it.

Diviniation is probably the easiest way they they learn of the undead army, by asking something like "why do the red hand have the phylactery?"

only1doug
2008-11-30, 09:26 AM
Session 7

We were at Dragonmeet this week, a gaming convention in Kensington, London. Our group wandered around and saw the sights during the morning, then met up in a side room in the afternoon to play.


Dang, I missed Dragonmeet again.... I always miss the good conventions...

I even had the day off as my Fiancee and Daughter were at her parents.
(at least i got some gaming in running a session for my nephews)

Saph
2008-11-30, 10:25 AM
I am glad they finally managed to come out on top, but a pity the BBED got away.

The Wizard was unbelievably POd, since his character was supposed to be the cousin of the paladin who Regiarix killed last session. If he'd cast his Orb of Force he probably would have taken the dragon out, but casting True Strike instead gave Regiarix the one round he needed to get away.

On the topic of the Ghostlord, the PCs know he's there, know roughly where he is, and have enough time to get there and do his lair if they step on it. They just don't know that they need to approach him to stop him making a ghost-and-bonedrinker unit for the Red Hand.

I'll give them a few more hints through research and hopefully they'll figure it out eventually. Alternately, they could try assassinating the horde's leader. :P

- Saph

kjones
2008-11-30, 03:21 PM
How did they secure the alliance of the Elves? I assume you just glossed over that in your recap, but I'm curious as to how that went down. (Did anyone dance at the funeral? I love how you can use any perform check - I had a gnome bad with Perform(Comedy), and I can see that going over really well.)

Doomsy
2008-11-30, 06:29 PM
Kenny seems to have a combination of very poor rolls, very poor planning, and very poor luck.

I almost want to see him in something optimized to see how fast he dies with that.

Saph
2008-11-30, 07:10 PM
How did they secure the alliance of the Elves? I assume you just glossed over that in your recap, but I'm curious as to how that went down. (Did anyone dance at the funeral? I love how you can use any perform check - I had a gnome bad with Perform(Comedy), and I can see that going over really well.)

The paladin had already asked Sellyria for the elves' aid in defending Brindol; Sellyria's answer was "deal with the razorfiends and impress everyone enough, and see what they say".

Their final alliance point score was:

3 points from slain razorfiends (2 in the Blackfens, 1 in Rhest)
5 points from Diplomacy checks (they made Sellyria and Killiar helpful, and one other elf friendly)
2 points from driving the Red Hand out of Rhest
2 points from Perform checks at the funeral (the duskblade and the druid, despite both having negative Charisma modifiers and no ranks in Perform Storytelling. They got decent rolls).

The party got their alliance, and the elves even gave the party a lift to Brindol and sprang for a few reincarnates. The PCs arrived in Brindol along with Killiar and the first group of elven hunters. One of the PCs followed the elves up to the keep and then when they got there, declared loudly before Killiar could speak,

"An alliance once existed between Men and Elves! We come to honour that alliance!" (if you're a fantasy gamer, you should get the reference).

They got some strange looks.

- Saph

PS - Kenny's new character is a Chaos Gnome Bard. Seems appropriate, in a weird way - means no-one has to pretend to take him seriously.

kjones
2008-11-30, 11:47 PM
"An alliance once existed between Men and Elves! We come to honour that alliance!" (if you're a fantasy gamer, you should get the reference).


No you didn't.

Shame they didn't get the owls, though. Those would certainly help them stop the lich.

Charity
2008-12-01, 07:03 AM
I have to say the Ghostlord is a wuss, it was all I could do to persuade my party not to kick his ass, his lions are a much bigger threat than he is.

metagaia
2008-12-01, 07:55 AM
Depends how the saving throws go really. If the tank(s) fail the fear saving throw and run like screaming banshees from the room; the rest of the party will be mopped up pretty quickly.

Maybe he could be bribed with plants, they are kinda like currency to him I guess.

Saph
2008-12-01, 09:54 AM
I have to say the Ghostlord is a wuss, it was all I could do to persuade my party not to kick his ass, his lions are a much bigger threat than he is.

I already noticed that. I'm going to put him up a level, redo his spell selection, and give him a couple of ghost dire lions as bodyguards. He's supposed to be tough enough that the party need to negotiate with him. Having him fill the entire room with stinking clouds while the dire lions hit everyone with Charisma damage and Strength drain ought to do the trick.

- Saph

Saph
2008-12-06, 09:31 PM
Session 8

The party embarked on their journey to the ashen wastes of the Ghostlord, harried by enemies in search of the cursed item they carried. Kinda like the Lord of the Rings, except with a lot more deaths.

Today's party:

• 7th-level human cleric
• 7th-level tiefling fighter
• 7th-level pirate-ninja (some fighter-monk combo)
• 7th-level human druid
• 7th-level human wizard (divination spec but goes in for blasting)
• 6th-level half-elf duskblade (newly reincarnated)

Total PC count: 6.
Total PC deaths by end of session: 5. Yeah, I know. In my defence, I don't usually kill quite this many characters when I DM . . . well, unless it's funny, and let's be honest, when isn't it?

Setting Out

After much emailing and a few divination spells, the PCs decided to go pay the Ghostlord a visit. Their initial plan involved offering him a national apology and official recognition from Brindol as the owner of the Thornwaste, under the mistaken impression that this would make him happy somehow. Their backup plan if this didn't work was to reveal that they had his phylactery and to promise that they'd keep it in a safe place until after the Red Hand was gone. It was probably just as well that they never got the chance to put it into practice.

The PCs headed out. As they travelled southwest, they passed pretty close to the main body of the horde. The horde noticed - two of the members of the horde, in particular.

Koth and Ozyrrandion: The Rematch

Wyrmlord Koth (levelled up to 7th-level sorc): CR 8
Ozyrrandion, Young Green Dragon: CR 6
Wyvern Mount for Koth: CR 6

Party Level: 9
Encounter Level: 10

A Graphic Demonstration of why Fireball is Not an Ineffective Spell

Both groups started pre-buffed, Koth having liberally spread around some castings of bull's strength and mage armour. The PCs began clustered obligingly together. Koth promptly fireballed them, twice, taking off about half the party's HP in the first two rounds.

The wyvern charged into combat, while Ozyrrandion made an appearance, going for the cleric. The pirate-ninja charged at the dragon, ill-advisedly running through the wyvern's threatened area in the process.

So the wyvern AoO's him.
So the pirate-ninja fails his save, takes 10 Con damage, and goes to negatives.
So the druid stabilises him.
So Ozyrrandion uses his breath weapon and kills him.
So the druid runs over and casts Last Breath on him, reincarnating the pirate-ninja as a kobold.
So Koth fireballs the area again and kills him a second time.

By this time the tiefling fighter has killed the wyvern, but the party are sucking fumes for HP. Ozyrrandion knocks the cleric down to 3 HP, but the cleric uses his last charge from his staff of life to heal himself up again. The tiefling and the druid's animal companion manage to knock Ozyrrandion down to single-figure HP, and with a curse Ozyrrandion flees. Koth, seeing the way the wind's blowing, withdraws as well using his fly spell, but by this point the party were angry enough to pursue. The wizard cast fly and the druid took eagle form, and both started chasing Koth. They quickly found out that chasing him while they had 19 hitpoints between them was a mistake. Koth magic missiled the druid into negatives; by the rules she should have dropped like a stone and died from falling damage, but I allowed her to glide long enough for the wizard to catch her. Koth escaped. Battle over.

Next time someone tells you how unimportant Reflex saves are in 3.5, don't listen to them. The party were almost TPKed by the combination of a few fireballs and Ozyrrandion's breath weapon.

The Thornwaste

The PCs made their way to the Thornwaste, meeting the pirate-ninja's new character along the way, a necromantic shapeshift druid. Because it seemed appropriate, I had his character be the Ghostlord's renegade apprentice.

The PCs by this point were close to level 8 (or thought they were, which works out to the same thing). They'd also drunk a lot (we were playing at the flat of one of the players), which may have contributed to what came next.

Me: "Okay, random encounter roll."

A random encounter roll is made - it's a 97. The PCs are apprehensive, until I tell them that on the random encounter tables, the higher results are weaker. The PCs fight two monstrous spiders and slaughter them effortlessly.

Wizard: "Man, that was awesome! We owned those guys!"
Druid: "Yeah, if we get a few more like that we can level up before we meet the Ghostlord."
Me: "Okay, you come out of the thorns and you're only a few miles from where you believe the lair to be. Random encounter roll for the day, someone."
Fighter: "Yay! We got another encounter!"
Me: "Okay, roll for it."
Druid: "Uh, 1."
Wizard: "You mean 10?"
Druid: "No, 1. As in zero-one."
Cleric: "That's good, right? We get something worth lots of XP, right?"

I look up the Thornwaste Random Encounter Table to see what a 01 means.
Varanthian.
Ah, crap.

Down the Hatch

Whoever it was who wrote earlier about Varanthian, the half-fiend behir, being the one encounter in RHoD that does not need to be buffed up for an increased number of players?

Yeah, he was right.

First round: Varanthian bites and grabs the duskblade.
Second round: Varanthian swallows the duskblade and bites and grabs the shapeshift druid.
Third round: Varanthian swallows the druid too, killing the druid and the duskblade as well.

By this point the reminder of the party were backpedalling frantically away, hoping not to be the next ones eaten. The only one effectively hurting Varanthian was the wizard, who blasted her with two orbs of force - which made him the next target. Varanthian bit and grabbed the wizard, he tried to take out his scroll of dimension door and found that he couldn't, Varanthian wanted to swallow him and couldn't do so with her gullet full - so she just constricted him and raked him six times instead for a total of 78 damage, producing pretty much the same result. The tiefling killed Varanthian next go, ending the battle. Three dead PCs, one dead behir, and it was all over in five combat rounds.

Revolving Door Afterlife

The surviving PCs made camp while they waited for the druid to reincarnate their dead party members. Meanwhile, the shapeshift druid, the duskblade, and the wizard appeared on the Fugue Plane, Kelemvor's realm. An angel approached them.

Angel: "You guys again?"
Duskblade: "Yeah."
Angel: *sigh* "All right. Listen, after what happened the last time, we're placing you in the 'Short Stay' category. Don't join the queue to judgement until three days have passed."
Wizard: "Why not?"
Angel: "Because we don't want to try and process you until we know you're not going to get reincarnated again. It really messes up our paperwork."
Wizard: "Great."
Angel: "But while you're here, would you mind filling out this survey? We're doing some research on adventurer deaths. We're especially interested in knowing whether at the time of death, you'd classify yourself as being 'very surprised', 'completely surprised', or 'resigned and fatalistic'."
Druid: "I guess we've got nothing better to do."
Angel: "Oh, and when-and-if you get back, could you ask your druid to give us some notice next time? It really makes things simpler."
Duskblade: "Actually . . . Could I have a word?"

Let's Make a Deal

Out-of-character, the duskblade's player was sick of having so few HP and had decided he wanted a less glass-cannon character. He approached the angel saying that he only wanted to go back to Faerun long enough to take out the Ghostlord; after that, he'd go on to the afterlife. In exchange, he offered the angel his services.

It occurred to me at this point that this was exactly the sort of thing an angel of Kelemvor would really, really like. (Kelemvor is the LN Forgotten Realms god of death, and if there's one thing he can't stand, it's undead.) So I came up with something off the top of my head. The angel presented the duskblade with a contract. He'd be returned to Faerun for one week, until he was dead, or until the Ghostlord was destroyed, whichever came first. As part of the deal, the angel gave the duskblade a modified, usable-by-anyone scroll of an obscure 9th-level wu jen spell from Complete Mage called Transcend Mortality. It makes the caster almost invulnerable and gives them an insane power boost, but at the cost of killing them at the end of the spell's duration, permanently.

The duskblade signed the contract.

The confrontation with the Ghostlord should be real interesting. :)

Back Again

The duskblade reappeared in his half-elf body (his choice.)
The shapeshift druid was reincarnated as a halfling. The player promptly started trying to drink himself into denial.
The wizard was reincarnated as a half-orc. Yes, seriously.

Another day's delay followed, and finally, after about 7 straight hours of play, the party FINALLY reached the Ghostlord's lair.

By this point several players had consumed enough alchohol to take them a fair distance from the surface of Planet Serious. The PCs found the secret door and bashed their way through the ghost lions. As if by unerring instinct, they homed straight in on the room where Wyrmlord Ulwai Stormcaller and her hobgoblins were staying, and opened the door onto all of them. At this point it was 10:30, the following battle was guaranteed to take a good hour and a half at minimum, and lots of us needed to catch trains home, so I decided to leave the game on a cliffhanger. We wrote down the initiative order and we'll pick it up next week.

Thoughts

What I said earlier about RHoD being not all that difficult? Yeah, I take that back. The party had five deaths today, three of which from the same player.

Someone pointed out that the pirate-ninja's player had gone through no less than four character bodies in one session. (Started as human, reincarnated as a kobold, came back as another human, reincarnated again as a halfling.)

AoE attacks are very very nasty against a large party.

I think a lot of the deaths are due to the fact that I've been playing the 'named' characters - the Wyrmlords and the dragons - to the best of my ability. They're supposed to be the equals of the PCs, and I use all the same tricks and equipment boosts that the players do. The random monsters don't give the PCs any particular trouble.

Next week the party will be facing Ulwai Stormcaller. I put her up from level 9 to level 10 and changed her spell selection, giving her confusion. I wonder how the PCs will do against her?

After that, there's the Ghostlord. I think most of the party are still under the impression that they're going to negotiate with him. The duskblade's deal might throw a bit of a wrench in that plan. But hey, at least it's not going to be uneventful . . .

So once again, a bloodbath and loads of deaths, but again the players all told me they had a lot of fun, so I guess it's working out. :)

- Saph

AslanCross
2008-12-06, 10:08 PM
That contract thing sounds totally awesome. Looking forward to how it turns out.

I physically flinched when I saw the Wizard's death at the hands of Varanthian. Being shredded isn't a nice way to go.

Matthew
2008-12-06, 10:44 PM
Sounds like you all had a lot of fun. Poor Kenny, though. Things just never seem to get any better for him... :smallbiggrin:

I think you are making good choices, though. The players don't appear to be getting their asses handed to them through gross misfortune or unfair play, they are getting beaten fair and square.

Lemur
2008-12-06, 11:22 PM
Yeah, it sounds like they could stand to be a bit more cautious. After the first fireball you'd think they'd split up, or maybe get a resist elements scroll out or something. And for a while I've been wondering what exactly Kenny's objectives are at the gaming table.

Starbuck_II
2008-12-06, 11:29 PM
A Graphic Demonstration of why Fireball is Not an Ineffective Spell

It isn't so much that Fireball is a bad spell for NPCs; just PCs.
It has its uses regardless.


The wizard was reincarnated as a half-orc. Yes, seriously.


- Saph
Since Reincarnate dfoesn't transfer mental penalties: that is a boost (he only gains the Stat bonuses anyway.
What did you do with the human bonus feat? Did you count it as racial to be taken?

Stupendous_Man
2008-12-07, 12:57 AM
A Graphic Demonstration of why Fireball is Not an Ineffective Spell

Both groups started pre-buffed, Koth having liberally spread around some castings of bull's strength and mage armour. The PCs began clustered obligingly together. Koth promptly fireballed them, twice, taking off about half the party's HP in the first two rounds.


Well, a resist energy spell would have cut down the effectiveness of fireball a lot... it wouldn't even have been that hard to obtain. A partially charged wand of resist energy can be quite cheap, after all.

RTGoodman
2008-12-07, 01:40 AM
VERY nice on bringing back Ozy and Koth - I think that's pretty awesome. (Except they got away, so now they get to come back a THIRD time!) And I gotta say - that Tiefling just keeps on truckin' and keeps saving EVERYBODY. He's the only one that survived Rhest the first time (right?) and now he's the one that finished off Koth's mount AND Varanthian, too.


[...]Koth magic missiled the druid into negatives[...]

Pure gold. :smallbiggrin:


Well, a resist energy spell would have cut down the effectiveness of fireball a lot... it wouldn't even have been that hard to obtain. A partially charged wand of resist energy can be quite cheap, after all.

Well, and they have a Cleric, a Wizard, AND 2 Druids! You'd think they'd MAYBE start getting a better idea as to what to do with those 2nd-level spell slots. Hell, PROTECTION from energy (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/protectionFromEnergy.htm) is only a 3rd-level spell...

Stupendous_Man
2008-12-07, 01:51 AM
Well, and they have a Cleric, a Wizard, AND 2 Druids! You'd think they'd MAYBE start getting a better idea as to what to do with those 2nd-level spell slots. Hell, PROTECTION from energy (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/protectionFromEnergy.htm) is only a 3rd-level spell...

Wait, what?

What are they doing that gets them into so much trouble?

kamikasei
2008-12-07, 07:35 AM
Of course, we all know what's going to happen.

Kenny will use the scroll.

bladesmith
2008-12-07, 07:40 AM
I gotta say that this thread brings back a lot of great memories. The one time I played through Red Hand of Doom has to be one of the most enjoyable games I ever have played through. The thing is, I don't remember having as much trouble with things as your guys seem to. Seriously, we only had one real character death, and that was just because of the bad weather at the battle of Rhest(a slightly misplaced fireball and a botched Ref save took out my rogue, res'ed a minute later with the staff of life). But I should probably explain our party dynamics, first...

-Sarden, half-elven rogue. Began the game with more INT then the wizard. I'm not even sure that the term 'skill monkey' begins to cover my role in the party.
-Hana, human greatsword fighter. Our massive damage dealer, and expert hobbo slayer. Well, and just about everything else.
-Emerson, human cleric of Kord, Strengh and Luck domains. Duked it out with alongside the fighter most of the time, thanks to spells and stuff. Hated being a healbot.
-Jayne(or "Sparky"), human illusionist, though he did a lot of blasting. Particularly during the battle of Brindol, after we acquired several metamagic rods.

Yeah, it was seriously a standard fighter/rogue/wizard/cleric party. The only character that hadn't been around from level one was the wizard, who joined after our human male monk was reincarnated as a female elf. Awkward. But, in the end, most of our survival ended up being because of decisions made in character, rather then any sort of attempt at optimization. So, you can imagine that makes me rather inclined to support the tiefling fighter in all this. He seems to be playing his character well, and he ends up surviving. So, keep on trucking, Tiefling! :-p

Oh, and one of the highlights from our game:
-While crossing the causeway, Hana sees what looks like a snake laying on an overturned wagon. She insists that its a snake. Sarden insists that it doesn't look right. To prove a point, Hana breaks out her long bow and shoots the snake. The snake shrieks and retreats into the water.
"See, it was just a sna... Wait a second! Snakes don't shriek!"
*Initiate hydra fight.*

Zenos
2008-12-07, 08:08 AM
That Tiefling is badass. Duskblade contract is badass. Well-played, scarily efficient monsters are badass. Love it.

metagaia
2008-12-07, 08:13 AM
Of course, we all know what's going to happen.

Kenny will use the scroll.

and then will promptly be killed by lightning bolt :smalleek:

I suppose the benefit of killing the behir outisde the Ghostlord's lair is that you have more chance of catching Ulwai by surprise. If they have caught her by surprise then the encounter will be a hell of a lot easier then the EL suggests, it could well be a massacre (of the NPCs for once) :smallbiggrin:

Saph
2008-12-07, 08:42 AM
What did you do with the human bonus feat? Did you count it as racial to be taken?

By the rules I think they're supposed to lose it, but that doesn't make much sense, so I counted that as cultural. He also didn't get the mental stat changes.

As a result, the Wizard, with his 18 Intelligence, is now probably the smartest Half-Orc on the planet.


Well, and they have a Cleric, a Wizard, AND 2 Druids! You'd think they'd MAYBE start getting a better idea as to what to do with those 2nd-level spell slots. Hell, PROTECTION from energy (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/protectionFromEnergy.htm) is only a 3rd-level spell...

Oh, they've been using resist energy spells. It's just that they weren't quick enough on the draw - by the time they thought to cast it, Koth had already fireballed the party twice. It also doesn't help that they have a tendency to cluster.

But one thing I've noticed by now is that at low-mid levels, against the PCs, fireball is one of the most dangerous spells out there. Each casting of fireball did in between 49d6 and 28d6 damage shared out equally, which comes to 100-170ish total. That's way more deadly than most melee monsters, even with the save for half.


I suppose the benefit of killing the behir outisde the Ghostlord's lair is that you have more chance of catching Ulwai by surprise. If they have caught her by surprise then the encounter will be a hell of a lot easier then the EL suggests, it could well be a massacre (of the NPCs for once) :smallbiggrin:

Yep, for once the opening conditions of the battle favour the PCs.

Though my version of Ulwai's got confusion, so if they roll badly on that things could go a little haywire.

- Saph

Starbuck_II
2008-12-07, 10:56 AM
By the rules I think they're supposed to lose it, but that doesn't make much sense, so I counted that as cultural. He also didn't get the mental stat changes.

As a result, the Wizard, with his 18 Intelligence, is now probably the smartest Half-Orc on the planet.
- Saph

Well, reincarnate mentions you don't get mental changes. He is probably the Strongest non-gish Wizard in that valley at the least.

The pirate-Ninja should have been okay with Fireball due to evasion.

Does the team have much in Energy protects? Rings of energy Resist?

How goes the Wealth of Magic items anyhow?
Do they usually focus on armor class or nifty gadgets?

Saph
2008-12-07, 11:41 AM
The pirate-Ninja should have been okay with Fireball due to evasion.

Evasion doesn't work on a failed save, and doesn't help much against a wyvern's sting, either. The 10 Constitution damage pretty much took him out of the battle.

Of course, it was his own decision to run past the wyvern and hit the dragon, so it's not like he didn't bring it on himself.


Does the team have much in Energy protects? Rings of energy Resist?

How goes the Wealth of Magic items anyhow?
Do they usually focus on armor class or nifty gadgets?

Pretty much standard WBL, though uneven due to treasure distribution. Mostly they have the standard magic items - ability boosts, AC and weapon enhancements, cloaks of resist, etc. A Ring of Energy Resistance is well outside their price range, though.

- Saph

Stupendous_Man
2008-12-07, 12:34 PM
But one thing I've noticed by now is that at low-mid levels, against the PCs, fireball is one of the most dangerous spells out there. Each casting of fireball did in between 49d6 and 28d6 damage shared out equally, which comes to 100-170ish total. That's way more deadly than most melee monsters, even with the save for half.

Your typical fireball cast at low mid levels is not going to be 49d6...

Lemur
2008-12-07, 12:53 PM
Your typical fireball cast at low mid levels is not going to be 49d6...

I think Saph means in total. The damage dealt by an AoE spell increases for each member caught in the target area. So if a 7th level casters shoots a fireball that hits 7 people, it's going to do 7d6*7 damage with a save for half. Saying 49d6 may not be the most eloquent way of saying it, but that's more or less its effect.

kjones
2008-12-08, 01:51 PM
Saph, I'm having a hard time figuring this out - is the campaign really so lethal, or are your players just idiots? (I imagine the drinking didn't help either... :smalltongue: We once had a houserule that when you fumble, you drink - we rescinded it after a nasty row of one's that would have left my players unconscious.)

And that behir - man, I'm not gonna leave that up to chance. He's going up against my party no matter what.

kamikasei
2008-12-08, 01:53 PM
Saph, I'm having a hard time figuring this out - is the campaign really so lethal, or are your players just idiots?

I'm inclined to guess that the combination of making the enemies tougher and playing the key NPCs intelligently is making them doubly more difficult than the base.

Starbuck_II
2008-12-08, 02:00 PM
I think Saph means in total. The damage dealt by an AoE spell increases for each member caught in the target area. So if a 7th level casters shoots a fireball that hits 7 people, it's going to do 7d6*7 damage with a save for half. Saying 49d6 may not be the most eloquent way of saying it, but that's more or less its effect.

One should hope that in Saph's game a typical fireball doesn't deal 49d6: or everyone in her game is a Power gamer even the enemies. :smallbiggrin:

CountD
2008-12-08, 05:08 PM
I chuckled when I read about the underwater submarine attack idea.

It's actually physically impossible. The amount of force needed to keep the air trapped between the bottom of the boat and where the waterline at the bottom of a lake would be would be thousands upon thousands of pounds of pressure more than all of the characters together would be able to provide.

Don't believe it? Go to any pool with a soccer ball. Try to hold it underwater and keep it below the waterline.

It's not as easy as it sounds, even though Will Turner and Captain Jack did it Pirates of the Carribean. :smallbiggrin:

Regards,
CountD:smallsmile:

Lemur
2008-12-08, 05:15 PM
I chuckled when I read about the underwater submarine attack idea.

It's actually physically impossible. The amount of force needed to keep the air trapped between the bottom of the boat and where the waterline at the bottom of a lake would be would be thousands upon thousands of pounds of pressure more than all of the characters together would be able to provide.

Don't believe it? Go to any pool with a soccer ball. Try to hold it underwater and keep it below the waterline.

It's not as easy as it sounds, even though Will Turner and Captain Jack did it Pirates of the Carribean. :smallbiggrin:

Regards,
CountD:smallsmile:

I don't think the PCs were trying to keep any air inside the boats. They cast water breathing, so they could easily get the boats underwater without holding any air in them.

Doomsy
2008-12-08, 05:41 PM
If I remember an early post, the Tiefling is actually more roleplay oriented than anything, and she seems to have seriously picked up a knack for surviving over the rest of the party. I find that really amusing.

Does she just have good luck, Saph, or is she actually playing intelligently while the others have a combination of bad ideas and bad luck?

Saph
2008-12-09, 09:17 AM
I'm inclined to guess that the combination of making the enemies tougher and playing the key NPCs intelligently is making them doubly more difficult than the base.

That, and the fact that I'm a fairly ruthless DM. I always make sure to give the PCs a chance, but if they try to kill an NPC, the NPC is going to do its absolute best to either escape or kill them back.


I don't think the PCs were trying to keep any air inside the boats. They cast water breathing, so they could easily get the boats underwater without holding any air in them.

Yup.

Of course, once they reached their destination, they then found they couldn't make the boats surface. So having carefully carried the boats underwater to the Rhest Town Hall, they left them there and forgot about them. :)


If I remember an early post, the Tiefling is actually more roleplay oriented than anything, and she seems to have seriously picked up a knack for surviving over the rest of the party. I find that really amusing.

Does she just have good luck, Saph, or is she actually playing intelligently while the others have a combination of bad ideas and bad luck?

It's hard to say. Some of it is good luck, some of it is playing smart, and some of it is just having a high HP total (83 HP at level 7 lets you soak up a lot).

She came very close to being killed in the Koth battle (hit by two fireballs, two scorching rays, an acid breath, and a full attack from the wyvern) but was just saved by her fire resistance 5 and due to being shielded by the duskblade.

- Saph

KillianHawkeye
2008-12-10, 09:29 AM
I really have to congratulate you, Saph. You are doing a MUCH better job of challenging your players than I did with this adventure. Of course, I blame it on being my first time in the DM's chair. Most of my players really enjoyed it regardless of the lack of difficulty, since the menace always seemed far more dangerous than it really was.

For example, a few of my players wanted to take a crack at killing the Ghost Lord, and probably would have succeeded through sheer strength of numbers (8 PCs), but I managed to intimidate them into walking out with their tails between their legs after returning the Ghost Lord's rightful property. :smallwink:

KKL
2008-12-10, 09:38 AM
Looking forward to the Duskblade's use of transcend mortality. Should be interesting if he doens't bollocks it up.

Ethdred
2008-12-10, 10:10 AM
I put her up from level 9 to level 10 and changed her spell selection, giving her confusion. I wonder how the PCs will do against her?

OMIGOD!!!! Have you considered selling tickets for that session??? :)

Another great write up. This is being a really amusing and entertaining journal. I can't wait to run this for my group.

Saph
2008-12-10, 12:23 PM
For example, a few of my players wanted to take a crack at killing the Ghost Lord, and probably would have succeeded through sheer strength of numbers (8 PCs), but I managed to intimidate them into walking out with their tails between their legs after returning the Ghost Lord's rightful property. :smallwink:

Heh, yeah, there's a huge variance between how tough many of the encounters are supposed to be, and how tough they actually are. The Ghostlord has a huge leadup and is CR 13, but as written he can be taken down easily by anyone who knows lich weaknesses. (He doesn't have that many HP and has no real way of attacking an entire party at once, so the PCs can just swarm him.)

On the other hand, Varanthian, who's supposed to be only CR 10, is almost guaranteed to kill two PCs just by charging in and going bite-swallow-cleave.

- Saph

KillianHawkeye
2008-12-10, 10:21 PM
Yeah, I was really expecting her to kill a couple people, but my Cleric player sat back and buffed himself for a couple rounds, then charged in and got a lucky crit and took her out. And I somehow utterly failed to hit the Monk and Swashbuckler in melee. :smallfrown:

Anyway, I learned a lot, and my players had fun, so I'll call that a win. :smallamused:

Saph
2008-12-13, 08:32 PM
Session 9

Straight into the action this week!

PCs:

• 6th-level duskblade (alive but on a ticking clock, reincarnated as a half-elf)
• 6th-level shapeshift druid (newly reincarnated as a halfling)
• 6th-level diviner wizard (newly reincarnated as a half-orc)
• 7th-level tiefling fighter (bastard sword spec)
• 7th-level human cleric (original player, but still green)
• 7th-level human druid (fond of reincarnating party members - did you notice?)

Opposition:

• Two 3rd-level Doom Hand clerics
• Three 4th-level Doom Hand monks
• Wyrmlord Ulwai Stormcaller, 5th-level bard/5th-level stormsinger (arrived round 2)
• Three more 4th-level Doom Hand monks (arrived round 3)

Fight Club

Although the PCs didn't actually get a surprise round, they achieved strategic surprise, preventing the hobgoblins from setting up defences.

The start of this battle felt almost like a mirror match. The PC fighters (the duskblade and the tiefling) fought the enemy fighters (the three monks). The cleric and the wizard buffed the PCs with bless and haste; the hobgoblin spellcasters buffed the hobgoblins with bless and haste. The shapeshift druid summoned a storm elemental into the back of the hobgoblins; the hobgoblins summoned hell hounds into the back of the PCs. When the second wave of monks arrived from upstairs, the other druid took them on with her bear companion, while Ulwai used her bardic music and cast greater invisibility.

The tiefling killed two of the monks, but in the end it was the arcane spellcasters on both sides who really swung the battle. The wizard maneuvered around until he had a clear shot and put two fireballs into the room, killing everyone but Ulwai. In response, Ulwai hit the entire party with two confusions. The tiefling, the shapeshift druid, and the duskblade all failed their saves.

Suddenly, the party weren't so much in danger from the hobgoblins as from each other.

Teamkilling for Fun and Profit

The shapeshift druid rolled an 86 on the confusion table and attacked the tiefling. The tiefling replied in kind and the two PCs started enthusiastically hacking each other to bits.

Meanwhile, the wizard and the druid tried to hunt down Ulwai with the aid of a listening lorecall. Ulwai responded by thunderstriking the wizard, deafening him and disrupting his blindsense, but she was forced out of the room and up the steps towards the exit.

Nearby, the tiefling was beating the crap out of both the shapeshift druid and the cleric, who had unwisely intervened to try and break up the fight. After her final volley of attacks, the cleric was reduced to 3 HP and the druid to 10 HP. The cleric withdrew to 10 feet away, and it was the tiefling's turn.

Me: "Okay, roll on the confusion table."
Tiefling: *sigh* "High again. Attack nearest, I know. I get a . . . (rolls) (winces)"
Tiefling: "Um . . ."
Druid: "You just killed me, didn't you?"
Tiefling: "I'm sorry! The second one's a 20. Roll to confirm . . . oh. An 18."
Druid: "Yeah, I'm dead. The minimum damage will-"
Me: "Wait, wait, wait. Do them in order."
Tiefling: "Okay, the first one does 18 damage . . ."
Druid: " . . . aaaand I'm bleeding to death."
Me: "Okay. Since he's down, you now take a 5-foot step and the critical goes on the next nearest creature. Which would be-"
Cleric: "What? No!"
Me: "Should have moved away further."
Cleric: "I did! Okay, I'm taking that back, I want to have moved to-"

The game was held up at this point while the cleric's player tried to claim a) that he would have moved away further, b) that he wanted to take his last action back, and c) that the tiefling's player should reroll the critical. After 5 minutes of arguing everyone else lost patience with him and made it clear that the answers to his requests were no, no, and no (in that order). The critical put him to -30.

Ulwai by this point was at half HP and had just seen the tiefling kill and almost-kill two people in an eyeblink. With only three rounds left on her greater invisibility, she decided not to push her luck and withdrew up the stairs. The remaining party members also fled from the tiefling, leaving her alone to babble aimlessly amidst a pile of bodies. Ulwai made her escape via the Lion's Mouth, and the rest of the party, one by one, cautiously crept back to check whether it was safe.

Picking Up the Pieces (again)

The party slowly reassambled. A storm was raging outside, so they made camp for the rest of the day and the night in the guest quarters, and levelled up. Next day, the druid cast reincarnate (yet again), reincarnating the cleric as a female gnome. After some experimentation with the shaft in the dissection chamber, the PCs headed onwards.

The bonedrinker encounter took a while, but wasn't actually too difficult. The cleric had cast undead bane weapon on the tiefling's bastard sword, meaning that she was dealing about 25 damage per hit. The bonedrinkers managed to deal her a total of 10 constitution damage over as many rounds, but the duskblade and druid joined in and finished off the Ghostlord's creations.

The party were now left in what appeared to be a dead end with the pool of paralysing liquid (complete with paralysed dire lion), the undead-creating artifact in the other room, and not much else. Being PCs, they naturally decided on the exact opposite course of action than the module predicts; rescue the dire lion!

I'd thought that the paralysing poison would slow them down, but it didn't. Within a few minutes the PCs had gotten the lion out, given it a bath and a medical check-up, made several wild empathy checks, and decided that they were going to carry it out with them and nurse it back to health. Finally they got around to searching for secret doors, and found the one leading into the Ghostlord's private room.

The Ghostlord

Roleplaying the Ghostlord was a lot of fun. I knew that the players could probably take him if it came to a fight - but they didn't, and after the number of times I've killed them by now, they knew that I was not going to go easy on them if they made the wrong decision. And with the combination of the atmosphere in the tomb, the creepy music playing in the background, and all the build-up that we'd gone through . . . well, let's just say that the mood worked. :)

I did everything I could in the following conversation to make the Ghostlord come across as ancient, terrifying, close to insane, and psychotically obsessed with his missing phylactery, sort of like a cross between Emperor Palpatine and Gollum. All the time, though, I was keeping an eye on the duskblade, to see which item he was going to pull out - the scroll or the phylactery.

Finally the duskblade made his decision, and pulled out . . . the phylactery. He handed it to the Ghostlord, who turned away, his eyes lifted up to it, cackling madly. The players beat a swift retreat.

Finishing Up

The players withdrew out into the Thornwaste. A random nighttime encounter with a pair of hieracosphinxes was only a mild distraction (round 1, hieracosphinxes pounce, round 1, players blast them down to less than half HP, round 2, hieracosphinxes flee, battle over)

The PCs transported the dire lion out of the Thornwaste and the cleric healed it with a restoration. It accompanied them a little way, then left to return to its home hills.

The duskblade had thought very hard about using the scroll and attacking the Ghostlord, but finally decided to put Brindol's safety above his desire to destroy the lich for good. In the end, he delivered a parting speech to the rest of the party, handed them the scroll with instructions to take it to the temple of Kelemvor and be kept until such time that the Ghostlord ever threatened Brindol, asked them to bury some token of him beneath his family's manor, and faded away to the next life, Star Wars style.

The angel of Kelemvor was disappointed, but not really all that surprised. The duskblade went on to the Outer Planes, and the player started working on a new character. (He's thinking either a wiz/duskblade/abjurant champion, or a bard.)

Thoughts

In the end a successful outcome, even though the party really would have liked to see the Ghostlord destroyed. But they broke the alliance and got the victory points.

Two weeks ago, the characters of this party consisted of 5 humans and 1 tiefling. Much deaths and spellcasting later, the characters were all the same, but were now six different races - 1 half-elf, 1 half-orc, 1 halfling, 1 gnome, and the original human and tiefling. Heavy use of reincarnate leads to weird visual results.

It's now day 38, and the PCs are 5 days away from Brindol - and the horde is going to reach the city in almost exactly the same amount of time. The next session is going to be the PCs breaking through the encircling horde to reach the besieged city. I might do a Lord of the Rings-style horseback chase for the city gates, with dragons instead of Fellbeast-riding Nazgul. :)

Overall, a very fun session, with a lot of stuff resolved. Games are likely to be irregular over the Christmas period, but we'll probably get another session at some point over the next few weeks.

- Saph

Matthew
2008-12-13, 08:40 PM
Sounds like another great session. I like that the Tiefling fighter killed both the party druid and cleric. Warms the cockles of my icy heart... :smallbiggrin:

evil-frosty
2008-12-13, 08:44 PM
your party doesnt like killing wyrmlords do they? they always escaped. good job roleplaying the ghostlord. wish i was in the group sounds like a lot of fun

Saph
2008-12-13, 08:46 PM
Sounds like another great session. I like that the Tiefling fighter killed both the party druid and cleric. Warms the cockles of my icy heart... :smallbiggrin:

Just the cleric. The halfling druid went down to -9 and was then healed up by the female human druid.

Pity she forgot about the confusion.

Two rounds later, the human druid was hiding with her bear in Ulwai's bedroom, holding the door shut while the gibbering halfling tried to force it open and eat her.

- Saph

Doomsy
2008-12-13, 08:50 PM
I'm pretty sure death has a special revolving door waiting room for the rest of the party at this point. The Tiefling really should get a special Hardened Survivor merit badge or something, though.

Eldariel
2008-12-13, 08:55 PM
This is why it's often a bad idea to have party members with poor Will-saves :) (although since the Halfling failed the save too, mayhap even great saves wouldn't have worked as a salvation there). Also, Half-Orc Wizard is at the very least ironic :P

Saph
2008-12-13, 09:01 PM
This is why it's often a bad idea to have party members with poor Will-saves :) (although since the Halfling failed the save too, mayhap even great saves wouldn't have worked as a salvation there).

The party's Will saves are actually all in a pretty narrow band. The lowest are the tiefling and the wizard with +5 each, and the highest are the druid and cleric with about +10. Ulwai's confusion had a DC of 18, so with two castings odds were that around half to two-thirds of the PCs were going to get hit by it.


Also, Half-Orc Wizard is at the very least ironic :P

The really amusing thing is that it doesn't penalise him at all (well, except for 1 skill point per level-up, which is more than made up for by the free darkvision).

- Saph

Matthew
2008-12-13, 09:09 PM
Just the cleric. The halfling druid went down to -9 and was then healed up by the female human druid.

Yeah, I knew that, just the wrong choice of word. Lucky for the druid that the Tiefling didn't roll "attack nearest enemy" again, I suppose.



Pity she forgot about the confusion.

Two rounds later, the human druid was hiding with her bear in Ulwai's bedroom, holding the door shut while the gibbering halfling tried to force it open and eat her.

Heh, heh; confusion is a pain in the arse of a spell.

Mushroom Ninja
2008-12-13, 09:39 PM
As a DM, there's nothing quite as satisfying as PC deaths stemming from confusion... :smallbiggrin:

Coidzor
2008-12-13, 09:44 PM
So he rolled to attack the first one he dropped twice, but then you made the second roll apply to a different character than the character that the roll had been made against?

Matthew
2008-12-13, 09:53 PM
So he rolled to attack the first one he dropped twice, but then you made the second roll apply to a different character than the character that the roll had been made against?

It was probably done that way for speed of play. Technically you cannot roll iterative attacks simultaneously, so "attack, move 5', attack" was correct.

KillianHawkeye
2008-12-13, 10:54 PM
sort of like a cross between Emperor Palpatine and Gollum

:smallamused: Funniest description ever! :smallamused:

ericgrau
2008-12-13, 11:35 PM
Quite amusing. Making me consider RHoD even more, not just b/c of the OP but b/c of comments others made.

Trying to restrain self from commenting on the blaster mage and SAB fighter. I told ya so in other threads. Oops :(
OTOH both the PCs and monsters really need to learn to cast their fire protection early. After all it does have a long duration.

AslanCross
2008-12-13, 11:44 PM
This is awesome. Reading this journal has become part of my weekend ritual. I wish my players would make our campaign as interesting.

I was slightly disappointed to see the duskblade give up the scroll, but at least he was RPing and passed up the temptation to open up the supernova on the Ghostlord.

And I agree with the above posts. That tiefling is badass.

Blood_Lord
2008-12-14, 01:25 AM
OTOH both the PCs and monsters really need to learn to cast their fire protection early. After all it does have a long duration.

I think you mean: At all.

Number of mentioned Fireballs: 13
Number of mentioned Lightning bolts: 7
Number of mentioned Scintillating Spheres: 3
Number of times they have fought a Dragon who's color they knew several minutes to several days before fighting who has used breath weapons on them: 2

Number of mentioned Resist Energies: 0
Number of mentioned Protection from Energies: 0

Rocket Science this isn't. If you keep getting AoEd, it's probably time to memorize a spell that will reduce that damage to like 2 or nothing or whatever.

Saph
2008-12-14, 07:14 AM
Number of mentioned Resist Energies: 0
Number of mentioned Protection from Energies: 0

The druid does have mass resist energy, and prepares it every day. The problem is that he suffers from something I've noticed a lot in D&D spellcasters, the "I don't want to waste a spell" syndrome. So he waits until the last minute before combat starts before casting it, and sometimes he waits a bit too long.

Also, a lot of players seem to prefer attack spells to resistance ones. I'm the other way around when I play, but I'm in the minority, I think.

The tiefling's now got 93 HP, which is a good part of why she's the only one of the original group still inhabiting the same body.

- Saph

Saph
2008-12-20, 07:11 PM
Christmas Break

No Red Hand of Doom this week, due to 3 out of the 6 players being away on various Christmas things.

In the week since last session, the two Druids have collectively come up with a plan to chase after Ulwai, using their flying/running forms to track her down and try and assassinate her. Ulwai has a two day head start on them, so originally I was just going to say "no, you can't catch her", but they were having such fun planning out spell combos that I've relented and decided that they'll find something to keep them interested . . . even if it's not what they're expecting. If they go ahead with the plan, I think I'll have the rest of the party run into an encounter of their own at the same time.

We should have 4-5 players for next Saturday, so if all goes to plan we'll do the next session then. That'll take the party back to Brindol, and the end of chapter 3. The next Saturday (the 3rd) we're also unlikely to have enough players, so it'll be the second Saturday of 2009 before we start Chapter 4, "Enemy at the Gates".

But for today we just played Settlers of Catan and Munchkin. Still had a good time. :)

- Saph

Blood_Lord
2008-12-20, 07:45 PM
Christmas Break

No Red Hand of Doom this week, due to 3 out of the 6 players being away on various Christmas things.

In the week since last session, the two Druids have collectively come up with a plan to chase after Ulwai, using their flying/running forms to track her down and try and assassinate her. Ulwai has a two day head start on them, so originally I was just going to say "no, you can't catch her", but they were having such fun planning out spell combos that I've relented and decided that they'll find something to keep them interested . . . even if it's not what they're expecting. If they go ahead with the plan, I think I'll have the rest of the party run into an encounter of their own at the same time.

We should have 4-5 players for next Saturday, so if all goes to plan we'll do the next session then. That'll take the party back to Brindol, and the end of chapter 3. The next Saturday (the 3rd) we're also unlikely to have enough players, so it'll be the second Saturday of 2009 before we start Chapter 4, "Enemy at the Gates".

But for today we just played Settlers of Catan and Munchkin. Still had a good time. :)

Wow, where are you from. That's our fallback when half the D&D group isn't in town. Well, that an Axis and Allies.

Matthew
2008-12-20, 08:38 PM
That is the good thing about a short break, it allows for more thinking time! Settlers of Catan, Munchkin, or Zombies!!! are also our usual recourse when there aren't enough players available. Probably pretty standard, I reckon. :smallwink:

Hzurr
2008-12-22, 12:22 PM
Also, the game "Bang!" is a great "break from d&d" game. It, along with Munchkin, Catan, and Carcassonne is what we play instead of d&d

Saph
2008-12-27, 06:51 PM
Session 10

Two players away this session, four present, which was enough to play. This week was mostly an interim and setup session filling the gap between the Ghostlord and the assault on Brindol. Of course, the party still managed to get into trouble - they're PCs, what do you expect?

Characters present this week:

• 8th-level tiefling fighter
• 8th-level human druid (bear companion)
• 7th-level halfling shapeshift druid
• 7th-level gnome cleric (still getting used to her new body)

Road Trip

The two druids put their track-down-Ulwai plan into action, using wolf and flying forms to outpace the fighter and cleric. After a day's travel, the party was split into two pairs.

The druids almost caught up with Ulwai, but finally ran out of endurance just before reaching the abandoned hamlet she'd holed up in. The next day they approached the hamlet in animal form, but Ulwai had left. The Red Hand unit she'd set to hunt down the PCs was still there, though. At the same time, the fighter and cleric ran into one of the Red Hand's manticores.

The two druids did very badly against the hobgoblins, largely because the Red Hand, after several chapters, had finally caught onto the 'wildshaped spy' tactic. The two druids were riddled with arrows (bird ACs aren't very good) and forced to flee. The fighter and cleric did better, shooting down the manticore with the spells and bows.

The druids headed back down the trail while the fighter and cleric advanced up it, and the party reunited. A couple of hours later, the hobgoblins who'd been pursuing the druids met up with them, too.

Barghest Raid

This was the 'Barghest Reavers' encounter from Chapter 2, modified slightly. There were a dozen hobgobs and three barghests. The hobgoblins weren't much more than a speedbump, but the barghests made a real nuisance of themselves.

Something I've noticed in the past is that monsters with a few SLAs are way more dangerous than ones without. The barghests' blink ability made them frustratingly difficult to hit, and their full attacks, striking as if invisible, were effective even against the heavily armoured PCs.

One barghest went for the shapeshift druid in combination with the hobgobs, and after a short, vicious battle, took him down to negatives. This led to the following dialogue:

Me: "Okay, the three goblin-wolf things (the barghests) go. The first one full attacks you, Jeremy. Hits twice for 11 damage."
Jeremy (the cleric): "Ok."
Me: "The second one moves behind the tree and disappears . . . aaand the third one stands over you (the halfing druid) and starts eating your soul."
Jaan (the other druid): "It's doing what?"
Me: "Eating his soul."
Halfling druid: "Oh, cool. I know what these things are now."
Jaan: "We should probably stop it before it finishes."
Me: "Yes. Yes, you should."

In the meantime, the second barghest charmed the druid's bear companion, and the third barghest, having been wounded, circled round and went for the horses.

The other PCs managed to prevent the druid's soul being eaten, and even healed him up, but in the meantime the charmed bear came in and, under instruction from the barghest, started trying to rip apart the tiefling. However, by this time most of the hobgoblins and one of the barghests were dead (lightning spells from the druid, attacks from the fighter, and a hypothermia spell from the halfling) and the remaining Red Hand forces withdrew, leaving the tiefling and the bear to fight it out for several rounds before the druid finally succeeded on her opposed Charisma check to get the bear back under control. Upon backtracking they found all the horses had been killed and had their souls eaten by the third barghest.

Rather discouraged, the PCs found a spot to camp.

Long Distance

Sellyria had been contacting the PCs every morning with scrying and message spells, keeping them up to date on the horde's progress and the defence of Brindol. The druids decided to do another scry on Ulwai.

Ulwai failed her save, and the PCs got a vision of her just after she'd arrived in the horde. The PCs got to see her giving a detailed description of all of them to the black dragon Regiarix, who was very interested to learn that they were heading back (and still carrying his looted treasure). The PCs gave up on Ulwai and headed into the final leg of their journey back, knowing they'd have to break through the outlying elements of the horde to reach Brindol.

They reached the Brindol area on day 43 of the timeline, easily breaking through some goblin worg riders and a manticore on the way through. As they came within sight of the city, though, something more dangerous appeared. Regiarix had come to get his treasure back.

Regiarix: The Re-Rematch

The PCs legged it. Regiarix made a pass with his breath weapon. The PCs scattered, running in different directions at different speeds. The two druids took animal form and quickly outdistanced the fighter and cleric. Unfortunately, it was the fighter and cleric who were holding the most easily recognisable bits of Regarix's horde: the +2 shield and full plate with the lion symbols.

Regiarix landed in front of the tiefling and made a 'come on' gesture to her.

Tiefling: "Okay, he's in front of me, right?"
Me: "Yup."
Tiefling: "And he wants my shield?"
Me: "You would guess so."
Tiefling: "Okay, I'm going to run forward, throwing my shield at him as I run, and then while he's distracted, take a running jump over his head."
Me: "Oooookay. Jump check."
Tiefling: "Um . . . 15."
Me: "Just enough. Regiarix uses his AoO to grab the shield. You fly over him and just come down on the other side-"
Tiefling: "What? No. I want to land on his back."
Me: "What?"
Tiefling: "I'm going to come down on his back and grab on."
Me: "Um . . . okay, you're now hanging on to Regiarix's back. Again."
Druid: "What is it with you and jumping onto dragons?"
Me: "Regiarix's turn. You know, since his scales are so thick, I'm going to say he can't feel you. He takes off, heading towards Jeremy (the cleric), carrying you with him."

Dragon Mugging

The ensuing battle was entertaining. 'Battle' is probably the wrong word, since both the druids flew to the city walls and took no real part except for firing a couple of ineffective spells at Regiarix. Having gotten back his shield, Regiarix went after the next item; the armour. Unfortunately, this was a little harder to remove, being currently worn by the gnome. Regiarix solved this problem by landing in front of the gnome, grabbing her, and lifting off with her, still carrying the tiefling on his back.

Regiarix: "Armour off. Now."
Jeremy: "I can't!"
Regiarix: "Do you need some extra motivation?"
Jeremy: "I can't get it off while you're holding me like this!"
Regiarix: "Try harder."

At this point the tiefling, still hanging on to Regiarix's back, drank a potion of fly and tried to crawl up his neck and drive her sword into his eye. Regiarix did a barrel roll and threw her off. The tiefling and the shapeshift druid pursued, but with a speed of 150 feet Regiarix quickly left them behind, even slowed down by the gnome. The tiefling and the druid gave up and let Regiarix fly off.

The gnome cleric did a quick analysis of her options and took the armour off, fast. Regiarix landed and kept a close eye on her as she stripped off. The cleric offered to shine it up with prestidigitation, and, combined with several excellent Diplomacy checks, actually managed to get Regiarix's attitude up to indifferent. I had been planning to have Regiarix drop the cleric onto Brindol from 500 feet as a goodbye present, but the cleric's grovelling appeased him enough that he had her carry a message for him instead - that he'd be back for the rest of his hoard. He then gathered up the (newly shined!) shield and armour, and flew off. The cleric fainted.

Probably the best summary was provided by the druid, as she made the trek back out to carry the cleric into Brindol: "We just got mugged by a dragon, didn't we?"

Finishing Up

Having lost his shield, the tiefling went around in a bad temper hitting things, while the druids sold off all the stuff they'd accumulated from their trek. Meanwhile the gnome woke up and went to get some clothes. (Since she was reincarnated into her new body, none of his/her old clothes fit, so she's been wearing not much except a big shirt - which was one of the reasons she was so unwilling to take off the armour.)

The PCs were welcomed by Sellyria and invited to the meeting of Brindol's Defence Council. As they arrived in the Great Hall, the Council of Brindol were there, along with the leaders of Drellin's Ferry, the elves from Starsong Hill, and two retired PCs. At this point I ended the session, as a new character was going to be introduced here and I wanted everyone there for the battle planning.

Victory Point Tally - End of Chapter 3

As we go into Chapter 4, it's day 43 of the timeline and the PCs are on 27 Victory Points. Considering they only need 40 to succeed in protecting Brindol, this is pretty good going.

Side-notes

The cleric's full plate armour proved to be such a nuisance over the session (sleeping, watches, getting across rivers, manouvering in combat) that the other players were actually glad to see him lose it.

The tiefling's foul mood after losing her shield was hilarious to watch. PCs get so possessive about 'their' equipment - especially when they got it by stealing it.

I was trying to make the session relatively low-key this week, as I wanted a quieter interlude before the bloodbath that's going to be the Battle of Brindol. Since for the first time in a month there were no PC deaths, I guess I succeeded.

The druid's finally gotten to a power level where I'm starting to ban spells. This week's casualty was spikes, as she does insane damage already. I think I'll be banning bite of the weretiger as well once she hits level 9.

All PCs are level 8 now for the upcoming Siege of Brindol. We won't be playing next week due to player absences, so the big battle will start on the 10th. Just need to wait till then . . . which is hard, since I'm looking forward to it now! The LotR-style siege is going to be lots of fun to play out. :)

- Saph

Blood_Lord
2008-12-27, 08:17 PM
The druid's finally gotten to a power level where I'm starting to ban spells. This week's casualty was spikes, as she does insane damage already. I think I'll be banning bite of the weretiger as well once she hits level 9.

So your level 7.5 party pisses their pants at a CR 9 challenge and your solution is to ban spells?

That seems counter productive. If they can't even beat the encounters they were supposed to beat 15 days ago, how the hell are they going to do anything?

Saph
2008-12-27, 08:22 PM
So your level 7.5 party pisses their pants at a CR 9 challenge and your solution is to ban spells?

When did I say I was looking for a 'solution'? I'm quite happy with the way today's session went, thanks.

- Saph

Username
2008-12-27, 08:26 PM
All these campaign journals make tRHoD sound so awesome, makes me want to play it.

Blood_Lord
2008-12-27, 08:48 PM
When did I say I was looking for a 'solution'? I'm quite happy with the way today's session went, thanks.

And I'm sure everyone will be highly entertained when your party begs for Azar Kel to just enslave them and not kill them too.

Matthew
2008-12-27, 09:10 PM
Seems like things are still going well, Saph. It sounds like you have a good grasp of what is reasonable within your own campaign.

arguskos
2008-12-27, 09:24 PM
It sounds like you have a good grasp of what is reasonable within your own campaign.
Amazingly, most DM's do, to the consternation and amazement of others. :smallwink:

Tehnar
2008-12-27, 09:42 PM
Hmm spikes is quite reasonable since it was toned down in the spell compendium to a duration of 1rnd/lvl.

Unless of course the PCs are wildshaping into apes and then using quaterstaffs with spikes.

But that is just my opinion.



Must compliment you on a well written adventure synopsis. It sounds very fun to play.

Raum
2008-12-27, 09:45 PM
Probably the best summary was provided by the druid, as she made the trek back out to carry the cleric into Brindol: "We just got mugged by a dragon, didn't we?"Hehe, very amusing! Keep it up, sounds like everyone is having fun.

Saph
2008-12-27, 09:53 PM
Hmm spikes is quite reasonable since it was toned down in the spell compendium to a duration of 1rnd/lvl.

Unless of course the PCs are wildshaping into apes and then using quaterstaffs with spikes.

But that is just my opinion.

Yeah, the spell isn't really broken or anything. It's just that the druid's pushing the level now where any more upgrades, even quite small ones, are going to push her over the limit.

Druids are possibly the hardest class in the game to balance. Most casters need good spell selection to be really effective, but the Druid has so much pure power that it's quite hard not to make an overpowered Druid past a certain level.


Must compliment you on a well written adventure synopsis. It sounds very fun to play.

Glad you liked it! :)

- Saph

kjones
2008-12-28, 10:04 AM
Mugged by a dragon... this is the stuff of which legends are made.

I would expand your statement about balancing druids to cover all full casters, though. The flexibility of having access to any spell is so powerful that one must be constantly vigilant for imbalance. Ironically, the shapeshifter druid is one of the least effective characters in my party, since he likes to shift into predator form and bite things. This isn't completely worthless, but it's pretty close. Other than that, he just casts healing spells, since his previous character was a healbot cleric and he's having trouble breaking out of his mold.

It's these later parts of the module that concern me more than anything else, because they're so open-ended. This isn't a fault with the module - I'm just concerned about my own ability to come up with stuff off-the-cuff, like you did in today's session, without screwing up the overall progression of the module.

Matthew
2008-12-28, 11:24 AM
Don't be afraid to call for a time out if the players throw you a curve ball you feel you cannot deal with straight away, Kjones. Take fifteen minutes out to consider how best to deal with it, and then proceed. The more curve balls you get thrown at you, the better you get at catching them, but sometimes you just need some time to think.

Sir Giacomo
2008-12-28, 05:48 PM
Dear Saph,

I must say, that this is the most entertaining and best-written summary of an actually played 3.5. campaign that I have ever read. So far, my favourite was Oakspar77777 on the WoTC boards describing his experiences with .
solo adventures with his girlfriend (newbie player) and his zombie sessions (http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=471897)

But your description of session 8 alone left me gasping for air with laughter. And the discussion plus deal with the angel in heaven- will I ever recover?

On a more technical level, your description of the game showcases a lot imo that shows how much fun can be had in 3.5-ish fantasy campaigns for ALL kind of characters, and that typical assumptions that "reflex save spells are no good" and "fighters will never contribute" are not the norm. Plus, that grappling stunt by the tiefling fighter against the dragon highlo...er wyrmlord :smallbiggrin: was priceless! As was the fainting reincarnated gnome female cleric after diplomacy'ing the dragon to leave him/her alone...:smallcool:

Thanks a million! And I am looking forward to a grand finale!

- Giacomo

Saph
2008-12-28, 05:54 PM
It depends on the players, really. I've gotten into the habit of allowing pretty much everything the shifter druid asks for without thinking twice, because he goes for flavour first and power second (even though he could probably build the strongest character in the group if he really wanted to). Likewise, the Cleric's a full caster, but he's new and doesn't know how to really push the limits.

I find with the later parts it's not so much that they're open-ended, as that you need to modify them for all the stuff that's happened before - Koth, Ozyrrandion, Regiarix, and Ulwai still running around, for instance.

Anyway, some more:

Session Highlights (and funny quotes)

Me: "The wolf-thing (barghest) stares at you and concentrates. Make a Will save. (Crushing Despair.)"
Tiefling: "13."
Me: "You feel a wave of great despair and sadness. You feel the urge to sit alone in your room and write poems about how nobody loves you while listening to songs by Linkin Park. You take a -2 to everything."
Druid: "Oh, no! It's the Curse of the Emo!"
Me: "And your horse is affected too. Its ears droop."
Other Druid: "So now we've got an emo fighter on a terminally depressed horse?"

Human Druid: "Okay, we're going to go scrying on Ulwai."
Cleric: "Can we come too?"
Halfling Druid: "Sure, you can watch it in the pool."
Tiefling: "We can watch it! Cool! I settle down and get comfortable."
Cleric: "I bring some popcorn."
Tiefling: "What other channels can you get?"

Druid: "Okay, we're agreed. We'll swim the river and approach Brindol from the other side."
Cleric: "But I can't."
Druid: "Why not?"
Cleric: "Well, I can't swim in my armour."
Druid: "Take it off, then."
Cleric: "I can't."
Druid: "Why not?"
Cleric: "Well, I don't have any clothes that fit this new body . . ."
Druid: "So?"
Cleric: "So if I took my armour off, I'll have nothing else to wear."
Druid: "So what?"
Cleric: "Well, I don't want to go swimming naked."
Druid: "We've got a dragon after us. Deal with it."
Cleric: "But I won't have any clothes."
Druid: "I don't freaking care!"
Cleric: "But-"
Me (to the other players): "You know, it's kind of amusing that your plan for getting back into Brindol is turning on the female gnome's opinions about clothing."

*Approaching Brindol*
Me: "So, your party looks like, um . . . Well, there's a semi-demonic human with a big sword (tiefling), a female gnome wearing a human-sized shirt and not much else (reincarnated cleric), who's riding a large brown bear (first druid), who's also being followed by a small polar bear (animal companion), and then there's a big black crow flying around the rest of the group in circles and cawing occasionally (other druid)."
Druid: "We should so take a picture of this."

*Scene: On the fields outside Brindol, Regiarix has just swooped to attack the cleric, with the tiefling hanging onto his back. The human druid swoops down towards the walls of Brindol in eagle form, lands next to the guards, and wildshapes out.*
Guard: "Aah!"
Druid: "Open the gates, quickly!"
Guard: "Who are you?"
Druid: "I'm Jaan. Sellyria should have told you about us. We need you to get the gates open."
Guard: "What's the password?"
Druid: "What?"
Guard: "The password."
Druid: "I don't know the password."
Guard: "Not supposed to let you in without the password."
Druid: "We've been out of the city for two freaking weeks! How the hell would we know the password!"
Guard: "So you don't know the password?"
Druid: "NO! Open the damn gate already!"
Guard: "For the ones out there?"
Druid: "YES!"
Guard: "Do they know the password?"
*Three rounds later*
Druid (losing her temper by now): " . . . and that's who we are. Now open the damn gate!"
Guard: "Um, for who?"
Druid: "For the rest of my party!"
Guard: "I know, but . . . um, no-one's there."
*Druid turns around to see that the other druid has already flown into Brindol, the tiefling and the cleric are currently being carried aloft by Regiarix in the opposite direction, and no-one's left on the ground.*
Druid: " . . . Crap."

- Saph

Sir Giacomo
2008-12-28, 06:07 PM
As I said, priceless!

- Giacomo

Saph
2008-12-28, 06:15 PM
Dear Saph,

I must say, that this is the most entertaining and best-written summary of an actually played 3.5. campaign that I have ever read.

...

Thanks a million! And I am looking forward to a grand finale!

Cool, glad you like it so much!

I've been really enjoying running the game ever since session 3. I'm expecting the climactic battle for Brindol to take most of the next two sessions.

I think the PCs will succeed eventually, but I'll be surprised if they don't take a few casualties. Some of the encounters in Chapter 4 are pretty brutal, and the PCs have to do about six or seven of them in a single day, which will really drain the resources of the casters. I'll make sure they have some backups in case of a disaster in the early stages (the red dragon, for instance).

- Saph

kjones
2008-12-29, 10:10 AM
Just out of curiosity, what was the password?
My guess? "Swordfish"...

ericgrau
2008-12-29, 10:51 AM
Just out of curiosity, what was the password?
My guess? "Swordfish"...

But what if her players come online and read it?

Saph
2008-12-29, 11:18 AM
Just out of curiosity, what was the password?
My guess? "Swordfish"...

Oh, there wasn't one. I just stole the dialogue from Halo 3.

- Saph

Epic_Wizard
2008-12-30, 04:38 AM
Oh, there wasn't one. I just stole the dialogue from Halo 3.

- Saph

Lol and win XD

Also I agree with you about Druids in general. IMO most classes power scales fairly linearly as you add in rule books (or groups of rule books in the case of things like the Complete __________ series). Druids on the other hand scale exponentially. At the start they are eclipsed by the casters and characters like rogues but when you get past like 6th level their ability to take things like your Black Dragon and turn them into a greasy spot is almost unmatched.

(in a quick 20th level roll up dungeon crawl I used Transmute Rock to Lava to one shot a Wyrm (I think) Black Dragon)

kjones
2009-01-02, 05:06 PM
I'm coming up on the Battle of Rhest, so I stole your modifications (warrior levels to the ogres and ettin, boosting Saarvith by two levels and making Regiarax a young adult) for my seven- or eight-character party whole cloth. (Didn't realize how close they were until I started re-reading the sections likely to come up tonight... still, I'd be a little surprised if they make it that far.) We'll see how this goes. I'll probably be a little more lenient - I'll try not to TPK unless they're really asking for it.

Saph
2009-01-02, 05:31 PM
I'm coming up on the Battle of Rhest, so I stole your modifications (warrior levels to the ogres and ettin, boosting Saarvith by two levels and making Regiarax a young adult) for my seven- or eight-character party whole cloth. (Didn't realize how close they were until I started re-reading the sections likely to come up tonight... still, I'd be a little surprised if they make it that far.) We'll see how this goes. I'll probably be a little more lenient - I'll try not to TPK unless they're really asking for it.

Ah, they'll be okay unless they decide to fight every enemy in Rhest at once. Although that's exactly the kind of thing that PC parties do with depressing regularity, probably because they assume the DM will set things up so that they won't lose. :) But with 7-8 PCs, you'll need the boost.

Don't forget to have Regiarix use his Darkness and Hide/Move Silently abilities. I had lots of fun with that.

"How the **** could I not see the dragon? He's the size of the ****ing room! What is he, a ninja?"

- Saph

Saph
2009-01-10, 08:10 PM
Session 11

A break last week while people got back from their New Year vacations. Today we got back to the game (and are likely to keep going for a few weeks to come).

Today's party:

• 8th-level tiefling fighter
• 8th-level shapeshift druid, reincarnated as a halfling
• 8th-level diviner wizard, reincarnated as a half-orc
• 8th-level cleric of Tyr, reincarnated as a female gnome
• 8th-level human druid, bear companion, not reincarnated as anything (yet).

They were also joined by the duskblade's player, whose new character was a Duskblade 3 / Wizard 4 / Abjurant Champion 1. So from a pre-made Duskblade to a DIY Duskblade.

Plans and Preparations

The first couple hours of the game was taken up with the audience with the Brindol Council and subsequent planning. The players did a decent job with the war plans, and the introductions and recaps helped refresh everyone's memory, but it still dragged. There's really no way to do heavy planning and groundwork without some players in the group getting bored.

The six PCs formed one strike group. There were enough ex-PCs and significant NPCs around to form a second strike group as well. The telepathic bonds were doled out, and everyone prepared for war.

Just when the group had finally agreed on everything, they found out about the 5,000 gp of potions, wands, and scrolls they were going to get. The ensuing shopping list took another half an hour. While the players were busy shopping, the horde showed up, camped for two days, and attacked.

Battle of Brindol Part 1: Save the Walls

The battle opened with the unit of four hill giants bombarding the walls. Since there were six PCs, I added Wyrmlord Koth in as a commander, pushing the ECL of the encounter to a tad over 11.

The PCs spotted the giants, gathered together, buffed, held hands, and the wizard used a wand of invisibility on everyone and then scroll of dimension door to teleport them right on top of the giants. At least, that was the plan. Since he didn't read the fine print on the spell, he didn't realise that he could only bring two people along with him. I rolled randomly and the two characters who got teleported were the (invisible) tiefling and the (invisible, and now highly confused) bear. The duskblade figured out what had happened a second later and also used a scroll of dimension door and also miscalculated the numbers, splitting the party again. The party appeared around the giants, all invisible, not knowing each other's locations, in three groups. Hilarity ensued.

The resulting battle was fast-paced and extremely entertaining. Highlights included:

• The tiefling soloing two of the giants and killing one before being forced to retreat.
• The confused and invisible bear wandering around the battlefield trying to figure out where its mistress had gone and which side was which.
• The shapeshift druid casting a Murderous Mist spell on the other two giants and, due to careless targeting, hitting the cleric as well, permanently blinding all three.
• The wizard and Koth playing an aerial game of hide-and-seek in the dark with darkvision, readied actions, ray attacks, and invisibility spells.
• The two druids both turning into cats and mauling the blinded giants.
• The wizard jumping in front of Koth's last fireball and taking the hit, preventing the spell from killing the badly wounded tiefling and druid.

At last the giants were killed and Koth was forced to fly away (yet again). The exasperated party tried to pursue Koth into the enemy lines. Bad idea. After running into several hundred hobgoblin warriors they beat a hasty retreat. Once back inside the walls, they found through the telepathic bond that the second strike group had been ambushed by Regiarix and forced to fall back, leading to a wall breach. Before they could do anything about it, though, the southern part of Brindol was lit up in flames.

Battle for Brindol Part 2: Abithriax's Rampage

While the bulk of the Red Hand pushed through the breach on the other side of the city, the juvenile red dragon Abithriax started turning southern Brindol into an inferno. The PCs approached, buffed, and attacked.

It was late by the time we got to this battle, and it was both faster and much more brutal than the last one. The PCs attacked Abithriax with all their most powerful spells, but they also made the mistake of getting into melee range, and Abithriax's full attacks shredded them. While the two arcanists were eventually able to kill Abithriax with blasting spells, the other six party members were mauled. The halfling druid was dropped to negatives but survived, but the tiefling, the other druid, and the cleric were all killed. I was sorry to see the tiefling die after surviving so long, but it was her own fault - when you've just been healed up to 6 HP and are lying on your back underneath a red dragon which is currently ignoring you, full attacking the dragon is not a smart move.

Last Breath spells reincarnated the tiefling and the human druid into new bodies (a halfling and a goblin, respectively), but the cleric was dead for good. The PCs then put out the fires and had just enough time to get across to the Dawn Way as the lead elements of the Red Hand started to push into the city. At that point it was 10:30, so we ended the session.

Next week, the PCs will be starting the third encounter of the Battle of Brindol, 'Streets of Blood', where they'll come face to face with the horde itself.

Thoughts

- The PCs really got hammered in the dragon battle. The problem was that they just kept standing around in full attack range, and as PCs went down, other PCs came in to try and heal them, providing the dragon with a constant supply inviting full attack targets. The 'heal injured PCs in the middle of combat and have them keep fighting' approach has worked against weaker enemies and spellcasters, but it was disastrous against the red dragon with its 29 Strength and six natural weapons. The tanking did eventually allow the arcanists to blast the dragon to death, but at a high cost.

- The cleric used a Lesser Planar Ally spell before the battle to summon a hound archon. The agreement was that the hound archon would help protect Brindol, in exchange for the cleric promising to destroy the Ghostlord after the Red Hand had been defeated (which they were planning to do anyway). Seemed fair, so I went along with it. Now that the cleric's dead, the player will be playing the hound archon until he can be reincarnated - if he can be reincarnated at all.

- The players have been burning through their spells way too fast. They're almost completely out of high-level magic, and the battle for Brindol isn't even half finished. After the dragon battle, the wizard told Immerstal and Jarmaath through the telepathic link that they couldn't do much more without a rest and were almost tapped out. The response was "Well, the horde isn't! And if we don't hold the Dawn Way you aren't going to have a city to rest in!"

- With hindsight, the PCs would probably have been better off with less casters. They've gotten used to only having a couple of encounters per day and spending their high-level spells carelessly, and it's really going to hurt them now. Luckily the first couple rounds of 'Streets of Blood' aren't too tough.

- Every single player in the party has now had their character reincarnated. The halfing druid was absolutely gleeful about getting a chance to cast Last Breath on the human druid - ever since he was reincarnated as a halfling he's been praying for a chance to return the favour. The first roll was actually a troglodyte, which I vetoed on grounds that it would just be too crippling. The second roll was a goblin, which was at least playable. Oh, and both the tiefling and the human druid also had their genders switched in the process. You know, just in case it's not bizarre enough already.

Next week should be very interesting.

- Saph

Eldariel
2009-01-10, 08:44 PM
So the tactical problems keep on mounting. That's the prime problem with PC blasting; it takes a huge toll on their spell reserve as you tend to need more than few spells to kill big things. Will be interesting to see whether they can pull something out of their rear to save the city; it seems pretty bad right at this moment. At least they got their first real Dragon kill now. This one didn't even get to escape!

I'm going to run RHoD to a small bunch soon (3 players), so reading this is really interesting, just to see the kinds of sitiuations other players have faced and how they have coped with the odds presented to them. I'm wondering if mine can manage to avoid character deaths; at the present, they have exactly 0 spellcasters in the party so it's going to be tough, especially since I have a tendency to optimize monsters a bit.


Did the party pick any offensively usable Wands (especially thinking of stuff like Seeking Ray here)? That's the easiest means of keeping up the caster endurance.

evil-frosty
2009-01-10, 08:46 PM
ya duking it out with a dragon not a great idea. But they killed him at least it would have been worse if after all the resources the party used to try to kill him if he then got away, to haunt the party i am sure. Sounds like a great session. one question though did the druid get her bear back or is the bear lost?

Now i really want to DM RHoD. Thank You for the story Saph.:smallbiggrin::smallbiggrin:

kamikasei
2009-01-10, 08:50 PM
Awww, sad to see the tiefling go down, especially right after the highly concentrated awesome implied by your mention of the wizard saving the other two from the fireball. We can only hope Halfling Man will kick near so much ass.

metagaia
2009-01-10, 08:57 PM
*Halfling* fighter!? ouch...

Just out of interest, how did your party deal with the quenching of the fires? By the sound of it they would have some difficulty. (with Ulwai not helping one bit)

Fax Celestis
2009-01-10, 08:59 PM
Yeah, if your casters are burning through spells so quickly, it may be prudent to have them happen across a shipment of arms to the front lines--say, some scrolls of blasty offensive magic and some wands of weaker blasty stuff--just so that your casters aren't left totally SOL.

Sure, they'll have to stomp some mundanes for it, but they can do it. It'll help morale after such a tough fight too to stomp on some mooks.

AslanCross
2009-01-10, 09:39 PM
It's pretty sad to see the tiefling die now of all times. Mobbing a dragon isn't very...smart at all, let alone is full-attacking something that is ignoring you.

How did they fare against the breath weapon? In my PCs' experiences with dragons, it's the breath weapon they dread the most.

kjones
2009-01-11, 12:23 AM
How are they doing on victory points, Saph? Are they almost there, or will they have to kill a lot of wyrmlords/dragons to pull this off?

Matthew
2009-01-11, 10:12 AM
Sounds like another good session; perhaps the part will learn to adapt its tactics in the wake of such heavy losses, perhaps not. I was also sorry to see the demise of the Tiefling Fighter, but all things considered, dying in toe to toe combat with a dragon is a pretty good way to go out, given the name of the game. Using your last ounce of strength to strike at the enemy seems pretty heroic to me, being reincarnated as a halfling fighter of the opposite sex, not so much, but it is all in good fun.

Looking forward to the next installment!

Sir Giacomo
2009-01-11, 12:22 PM
Saph,

your journal contintues to be both full of suspense and funny (the confused bear alone was, again, priceless). And there is sooo much imo to be learnt here for the 3,5 game in general...but I guess I'll keep my comments until after the grand finale of the adventure, or even in a separate thread.

- Giacomo

Saph
2009-01-11, 12:44 PM
Wand-wise, the party don't have much. They've done a good job with keeping themselves supplied with healing wands, but haven't gone in for repeatable attack effects - which is kind of what you need when you're a spellcaster facing an army. Seeking Ray would have been exactly what they needed, but the wand the Wizard decided to take at character creation was a fully charged wand of invisibility instead . . . which I think has been a lot less useful on the whole.

The invisible bear did eventually reunite with its mistress, although it then needed to climb the walls to get away from the army of hobgoblins. Luckily bears have quite a respectable Climb score.

The Wizard does have the Fiery Burst reserve feat . . . but then cast all his Fireball spells during the first two encounters, even shooting the last one at the dragon via a metamagic energy substitution rod. That made me facepalm a little. Okay, sure, it hurt the dragon, but he'd have done a lot better keeping it to blast waves of hobgoblins with later (which they all know are coming).

The fires were no challenge at all, even with Ulwai Stormcaller doubling the number of fires from five to ten and with the two arcanists flying off on a wild-goose chase looking for her. It's only a DC 20 check to put one fire out and both druids have Survival modifiers of +19 or so.

Surprisingly, the red dragon's breath weapon didn't affect the combat much. Partly that was due to the druid's mass resist energy, partly it was because when you can do the better part of 100 damage with a full attack and PCs keep ending their turns next to you, there's not much incentive to breathe.

The tiefling, now halfing, should hopefully be okay. I'm lenient with the sizing rules, so she can use her bastard sword as a halfling-sized greatsword - yeah, I know, she's technically supposed to get a -4, but I think getting reincarnated as a halfing is enough to deal with. The most confusing part is going to be her gender. See, the tiefling was a male character, but the player's female. So now we've got a female player playing a male character who's been reincarnated in a female body. In addition, the human druid is a male player playing a female character who's now been reincarnated in a male body. The rest of the group was already having trouble getting their pronouns right with those two, now it's just going to be hopeless.

Victory-point wise, though, the PCs are doing great. Their current score is:

27 VP (from before)
+2 VP (from achievements in the Defence Council meeting)
+2 VP (from killing the hill giants)
+4 VP (from killing Abithriax)
+2 VP (from extinguishing the fires).

37 total, and the threshold number is 40. So if they can kill Kharn, they'll break the horde and save Brindol. That's a big if, though!

- Saph

Lord Lorac Silvanos
2009-01-11, 01:19 PM
Sounds like another good session

Indeed. :smallsmile:


dying in toe to toe combat with a dragon is a pretty good way to go out, given the name of the game.

Dying from thirst after being imprisoned in a dungeon, not so much, despite the name of the game. :smallamused:

Zenos
2009-01-11, 01:24 PM
The tiefling, now halfing, should hopefully be okay. I'm lenient with the sizing rules, so she can use her bastard sword as a halfling-sized greatsword - yeah, I know, she's technically supposed to get a -4, but I think getting reincarnated as a halfing is enough to deal with. The most confusing part is going to be her gender. See, the tiefling was a male character, but the player's female. So now we've got a female player playing a male character who's been reincarnated in a female body. In addition, the human druid is a male player playing a female character who's now been reincarnated in a male body. The rest of the group was already having trouble getting their pronouns right with those two, now it's just going to be hopeless.


Empathic dice, I am sure of it.

Matthew
2009-01-11, 01:47 PM
Dying from thirst after being imprisoned in a dungeon, not so much, despite the name of the game. :smallamused:

Well, ideally you die fighting a dragon in a dungeon... of course, dying of thirst in a dungeon after having been captured and horribly tortured by a dragon could make for a good adventure hook for the next party of would be heroes, somewhere along the line. :smallbiggrin:

Lord Lorac Silvanos
2009-01-11, 02:30 PM
Well, ideally you die fighting a dragon in a dungeon... of course, dying of thirst in a dungeon after having been captured and horribly tortured by a dragon could make for a good adventure hook for the next party of would be heroes, somewhere along the line. :smallbiggrin:

What's with all this positive spinning.:smalltongue:

Imagine a party in a dungeon losing to bunch of outnumbered kobolds and then, after having their will broken, committing unspeakable evil acts and other depraved atrocities in a pitiful and shameful attempt to save their hides, being sliced, marinated and skewered before being served as shish kebabs to a red dragon they did not even knew existed.

Sorry for the derailment, but Matt's spirit was a bit too positive for the new year. :smalltongue:

Matthew
2009-01-11, 03:05 PM
Hey, I said "ideally"; I don't want to put any would be sliced and skewered shish kebabs adventurers off entering the dungeon. :smallbiggrin:

KillianHawkeye
2009-01-11, 05:21 PM
It's so nice to read about this adventure being done in the way it's "supposed" to be played. (By this point, my players were suffering from major campaign fatigue, and were majorly overleveled to boot.)

Thanks again, Saph, for sharing your campaign with all of us. I'm loving every minute of it. :smallsmile:

Saph
2009-01-12, 02:13 PM
Glad you like it!

I think next session's going to be interesting. The spellcasters in the party (and nearly all of them are spellcasters) have gotten into the habit of blasting away with their highest-level spells every encounter. They've been getting away with it up to now because they've always been able to avoid having more than a couple of encounters per day, but this is going to be a new thing for them. Might teach them to conserve resources in future. :)

- Saph

Epic_Wizard
2009-01-13, 12:30 AM
Glad you like it!

I think next session's going to be interesting. The spellcasters in the party (and nearly all of them are spellcasters) have gotten into the habit of blasting away with their highest-level spells every encounter. They've been getting away with it up to now because they've always been able to avoid having more than a couple of encounters per day, but this is going to be a new thing for them. Might teach them to conserve resources in future. :)

- Saph

if they have a future >.>

I might suggest throwing them some sort of bone as far as resources go (a wand or two of Magic Missile or something of the sort) but they DO need to learn to conserve resources.

metagaia
2009-01-14, 07:34 PM
Hmm, will most of their resources gone, they are going to have a very hard time with the final battle, especially since Koth and Ulwai are still alive (though Koth probably does not have much left in the tank, he can still be a wand user).

I suppose the final battle could be made easier by sacrificing Immerstal. Have him charge in before the PCs, attempting to save the city himself after seeing the condition of the PCs. The red hand thus waste some resources on him before brushing him aside (fatally) forcing the PCs to join the fray, but thus making the opponents a touch easier.

Epic_Wizard
2009-01-14, 08:12 PM
Hmm, will most of their resources gone, they are going to have a very hard time with the final battle, especially since Koth and Ulwai are still alive (though Koth probably does not have much left in the tank, he can still be a wand user).

I suppose the final battle could be made easier by sacrificing Immerstal. Have him charge in before the PCs, attempting to save the city himself after seeing the condition of the PCs. The red hand thus waste some resources on him before brushing him aside (fatally) forcing the PCs to join the fray, but thus making the opponents a touch easier.

Nah if the PC's screw up like that then if the DM is going to cut them any slack it should come from THEIR pound of flesh so to speak. One potential way to make things easier but still take a pound of flesh for it is to drop something like a scroll of Summon Planar Ally in their lap and make it request a substantial reward for their services.

Or even better: Have it summon something with a bone to pick with the enemies you are facing. It will drive off the enemy army but in return the PC's have to hunt down Koth and/or Ulwai in payment.

metagaia
2009-01-14, 08:23 PM
Actually, thinking about it, they still have the scroll of transcend mortality don't they? In that case, they should easily be able to wipe out the generals of the Horde, for the price of 1 PC. So it should not so much pound of flesh as about 50-200lb depending on race. :smallbiggrin:

Blood_Lord
2009-01-14, 09:04 PM
I may be a minority, but when PCs are unable to effectively deal with the enemies they are required to facing, making them lose levels and money seems like a very poor method of helping them out.

metagaia
2009-01-14, 09:36 PM
I may be a minority, but when PCs are unable to effectively deal with the enemies they are required to facing, making them lose levels and money seems like a very poor method of helping them out.

Well Saph doesn't punish players with a loss of level IIRC, she puts them on the level of the player with the lowest XP (I am sure she will correct me if I am wrong though).

However, addressing the actual point, there should be some consequence for their actions, and blowing all their spells too early will eventually catch up with them, ie now. The PCs have to have some fear of death/failure or the adventure is just terminally dull to play.

None of this suggestions are mandatory, (or will be taken, since the PCs probably don't read this) but they are hypothetical ways of ensuring victory, which at this point of the adventure, is very very vital.

I do not think you are in the minority though, far from it. I don't like punishing players for deaths not caused by foolishness, and often waive the level penalty requirement when that is so (similar in thinking to an atonement spell)

Saph
2009-01-15, 08:36 AM
Well Saph doesn't punish players with a loss of level IIRC, she puts them on the level of the player with the lowest XP (I am sure she will correct me if I am wrong though).

I do give them a level loss, but then I give them bonus XP to make up for it. After one full session they catch up halfway, and after two full sessions they're back to the same XP as everyone else. Frankly, the threat of the reincarnation-happy druid bringing them back as a kobold probably scares them much more than the XP speedbump.

I'm still not sure whether to give the PCs a few items. On the one hand I don't want them to be too crippled, but on the other hand I really do want to get them out of the habit of being so wasteful with resources. I think I'll leave them as is for the Streets of Blood encounter, and maybe then have them retrieve some magical items on the bodies of the enemy casters in the Sniper Attack event - that's much more satisfying than just getting handed stuff.

Koth is out of the fight due to wounds and having blown all his spells, but Ulwai is still around, and will probably be making another appearance.

- Saph

Charity
2009-01-15, 08:54 AM
I do give them a level loss, but then I give them bonus XP to make up for it. After one full session they catch up halfway, and after two full sessions they're back to the same XP as everyone else. Frankly, the threat of the reincarnation-happy druid bringing them back as a kobold probably scares them much more than the XP speedbump.

I'm still not sure whether to give the PCs a few items. On the one hand I don't want them to be too crippled, but on the other hand I really do want to get them out of the habit of being so wasteful with resources. I think I'll leave them as is for the Streets of Blood encounter, and maybe then have them retrieve some magical items on the bodies of the enemy casters in the Sniper Attack event - that's much more satisfying than just getting handed stuff.

Koth is out of the fight due to wounds and having blown all his spells, but Ulwai is still around, and will probably be making another appearance.

- Saph
I found the streets of blood encounter was pretty grueling for my players (they eventually ended up hiding on the roof tops and watching the hobbos stream past)

Saph
2009-01-15, 08:56 AM
I found the streets of blood encounter was pretty grueling for my players (they eventually ended up hiding on the roof tops and watching the hobbos stream past)

Really? Which part caused the problems? I've been finding that normal hobgoblins are pretty much cannon fodder for my PCs.

- Saph

mikej
2009-01-15, 10:01 AM
love the confused bear part.

you're doing a great job in summary of gaming events, makes me want to post our current Ebberon campaign.

how are you gonna handle the druids as they move up in levels ? ( if they get there ), certainly they're going to maul things to death soon.

Saph
2009-01-15, 11:59 AM
how are you gonna handle the druids as they move up in levels ? ( if they get there ), certainly they're going to maul things to death soon.

At the moment both druids have their level 8 power boost and are good at mauling, but not quite as good as the fighter. RHoD only goes up to level 10 or so (though I think a few might hit 11 by the end), so I think it'll be okay.

If I was running the campaign much longer, though, I'd have to modify things a bit - probably having the fighter-types trade up to ToB classes would be the easiest way.

- Saph

Saph
2009-01-17, 09:08 PM
Session 12

Into the Battle for Brindol. PCs present this week:

• 8th-level goblin druid (black bear companion)
• 8th-level halfling shapeshift druid
• 8th-level halfling fighter (bastard sword spec)
• 8th-level half-orc diviner wizard
• 8th-level human duskblade/wiz/abjurant champion (the only one in the party not yet reincarnated).

The fighter wasn't present for a lot of the session and had to leave early due to not feeling well, but was run as an NPC for the last battle. Other NPCs aiding the party in the Streets of Blood encounter were:

• Captain Soranna Anitah (6th-level fighter)
• Hound Archon
• Four 2nd-level wild elf rangers
• Ten 1st-level human warriors.

All PCs were short on spells, having expended between 50% and 75% of their high-level magic and a lot of scrolls and potions. We jumped straight into the action with the first part of Streets of Blood. The PCs and their allies were set up behind a barricade and on the rooftops, aiming to hold off the Red Hand attack for as long as possible.

Battle of Brindol, Part 3: Streets of Blood (First Wave)

The first wave was a couple dozen hobgoblins and two manticores. The halfing druid dropped an entangle spell on the area and the allied forces shredded the hobgoblins with arrows and melee attacks as they struggled through. Not a single hobgoblin made it to the barricade, and the only losses were two humans and an elf to manticore spikes.

Battle of Brindol, Part 3: Streets of Blood (Second Wave)

The Red Hand's second wave were eight Blood Ghost berserkers (2nd-level bugbear barbarians). Although they didn't accomplish much against the PCs, losses among the NPCs were high, most of the remaining warriors and the Hound Archon being killed when the bugbears broke through one flank of the barricade. The bugbears' high HP score kept them going a while, but after a few rounds of furious fighting they were all wiped out.

The PCs weren't ever in serious danger in either of these two battles. However, in an ominous sign, the spellcasters continued to go through their spells and scrolls at a fast clip.

Battle of Brindol, Part 3: Streets of Blood (Third Wave)

This was the point at which the PCs failure to conserve resources really came back to bite them. They ran out of high-level spells just as the last and most dangerous wave arrived; five goblin riders mounted on five bluespawn thunderlizards.

Each thunderlizard could fire a lightning bolt as an at-will action, and they proceeded to plod steadily forward, blasting the rapidly dwindling survivors behind the barricade over and over again. The PCs were forced back and scattered between the buildings. The thunderlizards smashed the barricade and were only a turn away from moving through, but the PCs kept fighting back and forth, running out into the street to attack and then fleeing, hiding, and getting knocked to negatives as their HP dropped. The battle broke up into a series of one-on-one and two-on-one fights.

What swung the battle for the PCs in the end was two things; the mass resist energy the druid cast from a scroll, giving the party resist 10 electricity, and the fact that on Soranna's urging, the PCs killed the goblin riders with ranged attacks first. Without their riders to guide them, the thunderlizards were powerful but stupid, and the PCs were able to take them down one at a time. It was very, very close, though, and every single PC plus Soranna came within a single roll of dying. The only PC who was mostly safe was the wizard, who by this point had run out of spells and was using his wand of invisibility over and over again.

But by the end of the battle, every enemy was dead and every PC was alive. Out of the NPC allies, the only survivors were Soranna and two of the elven rangers. The PCs regrouped and were alerted through the telepathic link that Jaarmath had gone down. With the battle for Brindol still raging, they headed for Cathedral Square.

Battle of Brindol, Part 4: Sniper Attack

The PCs reached Cathedral Square to find Jarmaath down and the allied troops hiding. They were given a status report and set out to track down the sniper - Skather, a blackspawn raider with 6 ninja levels, and two 6th-level hobgoblin sorcerers.

By this point the PCs were pretty much tapped on resources. The casters were down to their last few spells, and they'd gone through most of their potions and scrolls as well. This wouldn't have been a problem if they'd worked as a team and used good tactics. Unfortunately, they didn't.

The PCs located Skather's building by casting invisibility on most of the party and sending a couple of high-AC PCs out to act as bait. Although this led to the duskblade soaking a couple of poisoned arrows, it worked. Here, however, the PCs committed one of the cardinal sins of D&D - they split the party. The duskblade flew up in avariel form, landed on Skather's building, and started hacking his way in through the roof, while the rest of the party left the druid's animal companion behind and broke into the ground floor invisibly. They ran into the invisible and mirror imaged sorcerers, while the duskblade, already wounded from the arrows, broke into the first floor to fight Skather on his own.

The following fight could quite easily have been a TPK. I played the sorcerers as being more concerned with staying alive than killing the PCs, which probably stopped the party from being totally wiped out. The two druids were knocked into negatives a total of 5 times between them, but survived - just. The duskblade wasn't so lucky. After three rounds against Skather, he was left on 10 HP, with nothing but 1st-level spells, and two doses of poison in his body. Skather ducked around a corner and out of sight, and the duskblade was left with a choice between escaping downstairs, or chasing after Skather. He chased after Skather. Skather killed him.

Meanwhile, downstairs, the wizard came up with a solution to a building filled with stealthed enemies; burn the building down. He chucked alchemist's fire everywhere until the ground floor was alight, and the surviving PCs escaped as the entire building began to go up.

Skather and the sorcerers moved up to the roof, and the PCs had the opportunity to pull back (three out of four of them were on single-digit HP by this point). They elected instead for the climbers and flyers among them to go up onto the roof and continue attacking - effectively splitting the party again. As a result, the final skirmish of the evening was Skather and the two flying and mirror imaged sorcerers against the halfling fighter, the shapeshift druid, and the druid's bear companion.

The druid was killed, the bear was knocked down to 1 HP before fleeing, and the fighter finally got the message and jumped off the roof as the roof caught fire and Soranna and a group of guards arrived to blanket the rooftop with crossbow bolts. Low on spells and HP, Skather and the sorcerers withdrew, and the battered PCs regrouped.

The surviving PCs assembled with the surviving defenders of Brindol as Captain Ulverth came galloping in, bringing the news that Wyrmlord Kharn was right on his tail . . . and that was where we ended the session.

Thoughts

- The PCs took two deaths this week, but it could easily have been twice that number. I've been telling them over and over again not to split the party and chase after retreating enemies, but they just never learn, and this time it finally proved fatal. The druid had some excuse as he was the only PC left who could fly and didn't want to leave the fighter on the roof by herself, but the duskblade chasing after Skather when he was on 10 HP was just stupid. The player's explanation afterwards was that a) he thought that as a rogue-type, Skather wouldn't be any threat without cover or concealment, and b) he thought that since Skather was retreating he must be on his last legs. Unfortunately, he was wrong on both counts.

- This section is probably the most lethal in all of Red Hand of Doom. I was actually trying not to kill any of the PCs, and on several occasions had the enemies use defensive abilities or pull back rather than make an attack that might have killed someone. In the final encounter, though, there was just no way to justify it anymore.

- The shapeshift druid went to negatives more times today than I've ever seen. Five times he went down to negatives, and five times he was healed up again. Unfortunately, the sixth time took him down to exactly -10.

- A PC with a wand of invisibility plays very differently from one without. The wizard ran out of spells during the thunderlizard battle, and thereafter went around making the other characters invisible over and over again. He spent more time invisible than visible, and burnt through about 20 charges over the course of the session. Well, he's getting his money's worth, anyway.

- Battles where one side is making extensive use of invisibility and stealth are a real pain to adjudicate. Battles where both sides are making extensive use of invisibility and stealth are even worse.

Next Week

Next week is going to be the conclusion of the Battle of Brindol. The PCs are going to have a bunch of NPC allies on their side, but will be facing Kharn, Ulwai, Ozyrrandion, and a metric ton of enemy troops.

The two PCs killed this week are going to be bringing in new characters. I'm going to have to do some work to explain where a couple of 8th-level characters are going to be springing from, seeing that the PCs have now met just about every high-level character in Brindol, but the players in question have got some ideas.

Seven straight hours of combat is very gruelling to DM. I was pretty drained by the end of the session.

- Saph

Matthew
2009-01-17, 09:18 PM
Dear me. Splitting the party is almost always a disaster, and yet I see it happen time and time again. Never mind, it certainly could have been worse. As an aside, whatever happened to that player who couldn't keep a character alive from session to session? He would have been right at home here. :smallbiggrin:

Fax Celestis
2009-01-17, 09:24 PM
Maybe the players who are bringing in new characters are bringing in people who used to be low-level city inhabitants but, who through a matter of luck, skill, and talent, have not only managed to survive but kill off a bunch of the opposing forces and as such have gained enough experience to gain a couple levels?

Saph
2009-01-18, 05:39 AM
Dear me. Splitting the party is almost always a disaster, and yet I see it happen time and time again. Never mind, it certainly could have been worse. As an aside, whatever happened to that player who couldn't keep a character alive from session to session? He would have been right at home here. :smallbiggrin:

Vanished a few sessions ago. I didn't really mind, as I'd been slightly overloaded with the player numbers and a party of six is much easier to run than a party of seven.

Now we've got six players, of which an average of five make it to each session, which is more or less my ideal size.

Fax: it's an idea! The druid player already has a secondary character ready, a Master of Shrouds, and has an idea for a backstory where his cult has been hiding beneath Brindol and debating what to do before finally joining the battle. Not sure what the duskblade's coming back as.

- Saph

Starbuck_II
2009-01-18, 11:12 AM
Maybe Mercenaries have come from afar after hearing news of the war/battles?

Someone still alive would pay them well if they helped.

kjones
2009-01-18, 11:14 AM
I've heard that the Battle for Brindol is brutal if not done carefully, and I'm glad to hear this confirmed. Here's hoping for an opportunity to add more skulls to my DM screen...

If you don't like any of the ideas already posted for introducing new characters, maybe the new guys are the only survivors of an adventuring party from Dennovar, or the North, or something, that only arrived just before the battle.

Epic_Wizard
2009-01-18, 12:05 PM
If either of them are bringing in a Paladin or Cleric the obvious explanation is that they received a portent from their god that they would be needed here.

Druid a possible explanation was that he's been living in the woods near Brindol but didn't really know about the battle until he found some of the army in his forest killing animals. He slew them and came to find the ones responsible for their presence there after one of the soldiers said they were ordered to go out and hunt for food.

The same thing works for a Ranger as for the Druid.

The cult idea works well for the Master of Shrouds. For maximum effect introduce him as popping out from invisibility/a disguise right next to the PC's. Just make sure that it's not going to get him killed...

A Rogue the obvious explanation is that they haven't met him because he's, well, a Rogue and hence doesn't WANT to be found. He can show up with a couple of trash Hobo's on his tail or something (have them be at like 10HP or less each and exhausted or some such). The Rogue's friends have been killed and he's looking to take it out on the enemy.

A Fighter would be a bit of a stretch but you could probably manage to have him show up with a message (something irrelevant like a trade agreement for a merchant in the city or a to little to late warning about the attack on the city). Or just make him a merc type.

Barbarian is probably the easiest. He stumbled across the battle and wants to kill stuff. This also works for anyone of half a dozen PRC's.

Hope some of this helps =D

(Oh yeah and inform your players that the fact that they are allowed Reserve Feats means that none of them should have been out of spells. Like EVER...)

Eldariel
2009-01-18, 12:40 PM
It's a pretty good time to put the Rhest-road, and the clearing of the blockade to a good use and have these new PCs be a part of a mercenary company that was arriving from that direction.

kjones
2009-01-18, 01:08 PM
If you're going to have new characters joining the group for the final showdown, try to figure out some way so that they don't come into the battle with full HPs, spells, equipment, etc. If you have the chance, run the new characters through a few battles that they had to fight through to make it to the cathedral. If you don't have time for that, just take 33% off the top or something like that.

Will the new characters start at party level, or below? I generally bring in new characters at one level below party level.

Saph
2009-01-18, 01:12 PM
If you're going to have new characters joining the group for the final showdown, try to figure out some way so that they don't come into the battle with full HPs, spells, equipment, etc. If you have the chance, run the new characters through a few battles that they had to fight through to make it to the cathedral. If you don't have time for that, just take 33% off the top or something like that.

Will the new characters start at party level, or below? I generally bring in new characters at one level below party level.

I'll probably have them start at about 1/3 of their daily resources. So they won't be helpless, but they won't be on full strength either.

For this campaign I've been bringing in new characters with XP equal to the lowest party member, meaning they usually come in at average party level. However, I have them start with slightly less than full WBL.

- Saph

Eldariel
2009-01-18, 01:15 PM
Hmm, in what world does RHoD take place? I can't seem to place it in any of the existing campaign settings. I know Forgotten Realms has a place called Golden Plains, but the surroundings are nothing like the vale. Is it stated anywhere? Or is it left up to the DM?

Matthew
2009-01-18, 01:37 PM
Hmm, in what world does RHoD take place? I can't seem to place it in any of the existing campaign settings. I know Forgotten Realms has a place called Golden Plains, but the surroundings are nothing like the vale. Is it stated anywhere? Or is it left up to the DM?

It is slated as a generic module, but notes are provided for fitting it into Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms or Eberron. Given that "everything defaults to Greyhawk" it is probably easiest to fit it into that campaign setting, but I haven't examined it closely enough to be sure.

Blood_Lord
2009-01-18, 02:05 PM
Hmm, in what world does RHoD take place? I can't seem to place it in any of the existing campaign settings. I know Forgotten Realms has a place called Golden Plains, but the surroundings are nothing like the vale. Is it stated anywhere? Or is it left up to the DM?

It's designed to be added to different worlds, and tells you where to put it.



As for new PCs, I have a controversial suggestion. Why not bring them in at full resources so your party doesn't actually TPK.

Starbuck_II
2009-01-18, 02:36 PM
It's designed to be added to different worlds, and tells you where to put it.



As for new PCs, I have a controversial suggestion. Why not bring them in at full resources so your party doesn't actually TPK.

I think Saph does that because the PCs could sell some of the dead PCs gear to help the new guy's wealth per level.
But this is only a guess.

kjones
2009-01-18, 04:21 PM
As for new PCs, I have a controversial suggestion. Why not bring them in at full resources so your party doesn't actually TPK.

Bringing them in at full resources just doesn't make sense in the context of the battle. What have they been doing all this time? Sitting at home, twiddling their thumbs, as the battle rages around them? It's bad enough that you're going to have two high-level people jumping out of the woodwork to join the party - there's no need to strain verisimilitude further.

Besides, the final battle won't be that challenging, though I would probably be a little more forgiving than Saph and give them 1/2 daily resources or so.

Here's my unrelated question: How are you going to swing it if they hold the cathedral but don't have enough victory points to win the battle?

Saph
2009-01-18, 06:43 PM
Hmm, in what world does RHoD take place? I can't seem to place it in any of the existing campaign settings. I know Forgotten Realms has a place called Golden Plains, but the surroundings are nothing like the vale. Is it stated anywhere? Or is it left up to the DM?

The RHoD book suggests that if you're setting the campaign in Forgotten Realms, you put Elsir Vale in the eastern Realms, between Halruaa and the Shaar, which is what I've done.

Pretty much no-one seems to know anything about that area. All the famous FR games and novels are set around the western coast and the Dalelands. That's the thing I like about FR, it's so huge that you can always find a new set of countries to play in.

The only slight issue with playing it in FR is that you have to change all the Pelor references to something else.


Besides, the final battle won't be that challenging, though I would probably be a little more forgiving than Saph and give them 1/2 daily resources or so.

Here's my unrelated question: How are you going to swing it if they hold the cathedral but don't have enough victory points to win the battle?

The final battle is fairly nasty, but they'll have a lot of help and really, there's a finite number of spells you can cast in a single combat. Even at 1/3 resources, I'll be surprised if they go through everything.

Victory-point wise, the PCs have already won! Winning the Streets of Blood encounter put them up to 41, over the threshold. If they win this encounter, they win the battle.

- Saph

kjones
2009-01-18, 09:11 PM
Ok, so what happens if they lose?

EDIT: I know you did this a little while ago, but would you mind posting a breakdown of where their VPs are coming from? I'm curious to see where they succeeded (and where they failed)...

Charity
2009-01-19, 06:11 AM
Really? Which part caused the problems? I've been finding that normal hobgoblins are pretty much cannon fodder for my PCs.

- Saph

Blood Ghost berserkers managed to charge onto the map and catch several of the weaker party members with their initial charge, a couple of crits later and it was going south... due to the afore mentioned lots of HP's they were still around (I had added a few due to my large party size... seemed reasonable at the time) when the thunder lizards arrived, that was messy. It left the party in poor shape for the sniper, all in all leaving half the party on their backs wearing fashionable new shouds.

Saph
2009-01-19, 12:14 PM
EDIT: I know you did this a little while ago, but would you mind posting a breakdown of where their VPs are coming from? I'm curious to see where they succeeded (and where they failed)...

2 VP - destroying Skull Gorge Bridge
1 VP - getting help from Warklegnaw
3 VP - evacuating Drellin's Ferry
2 VP - blockade busting
5 VP - Tiri Kitor alliance
2 VP - destroying the razorfiend hatchery
5 VP - breaking the Ghostlord alliance
1 VP - Defence Council, bringing up the subject of losing the walls
1 VP - Defence Council, telepathic bonding Lars Ulverth
2 VP - winning the Save the Walls encounter
2 VP - putting out the fires
4 VP - holding the Dawn Way in Streets of Blood
4 VP - killing Saarvith
4 VP - killing Abithriax
3 VP - killing Varanthian

Total: 41. Plus Wyrmlord Kharn is worth 8 if they kill him (and it's them or him).


Ok, so what happens if they lose?

They all die and Brindol gets burnt to the ground. :P

- Saph

Starbuck_II
2009-01-19, 01:20 PM
They all die and Brindol gets burnt to the ground. :P

- Saph

I know it would be cowardly, but can't they run and come back another day?

Then they don't die but Brindol gets burnt to the ground :smallbiggrin:

kjones
2009-01-19, 01:23 PM
I know it would be cowardly, but can't they run and come back another day?

Then they don't die but Brindol gets burnt to the ground :smallbiggrin:

That's actually what I was thinking... if they lose the cathedral, but manage to escape, I would have them "lose" regardless of their VP total, and run things from there.

But maybe rub their noses in it a little first... Sorrana turns her back on them, the townsfolk curse them, etc.

Saph
2009-01-19, 01:47 PM
I know it would be cowardly, but can't they run and come back another day?

Then they don't die but Brindol gets burnt to the ground :smallbiggrin:

Oh, they could escape easily enough - but then pretty much everyone in Brindol would be dead, and the PCs would be on their own and on the run. I guess they could still go after Azarr Kul in the Fane of Tiamat, but it would be much more difficult, as they'll no longer have any support and will have missed out on all the treasure recovered from the battlefield.

It's unlikely to happen, though. All the PCs and their NPC allies have gathered to join in for the last battle against Kharn, and I'm expecting the battle to end with either his death or theirs.

- Saph

Epic_Wizard
2009-01-19, 05:32 PM
Just one point on the new PC's. Odds are good that they would actually have full health but not full resources since if they are on their own they would have potions and if they are in a group they would have a healer.

kjones
2009-01-19, 07:15 PM
Just one point on the new PC's. Odds are good that they would actually have full health but not full resources since if they are on their own they would have potions and if they are in a group they would have a healer.

That's a good point. If they're not at full health, well, they're level 9 (right?), healing up to full out of combat isn't a serious problem.

Ethdred
2009-01-20, 06:59 AM
Oh, they could escape easily enough - but then pretty much everyone in Brindol would be dead, and the PCs would be on their own and on the run. I guess they could still go after Azarr Kul in the Fane of Tiamat, but it would be much more difficult, as they'll no longer have any support and will have missed out on all the treasure recovered from the battlefield.

It's unlikely to happen, though. All the PCs and their NPC allies have gathered to join in for the last battle against Kharn, and I'm expecting the battle to end with either his death or theirs.

- Saph

And given the way things have gone with your party so far, I can't see them choosing the 'discretion is the better part of valouor' route any time soon :)

metagaia
2009-01-20, 07:04 AM
The fate of this battle will probably be decided in round one. That is, depending on the results of Ulwai's confusion spell :smalleek:

kjones
2009-01-20, 07:50 AM
The fate of this battle will probably be decided in round one. That is, depending on the results of Ulwai's confusion spell :smalleek:

Honestly, in the context of this battle, it might be a good idea to not have her cast confusion. If the party isn't ready for it, they're done.

Or have her cast it on some NPC's. That'll be fun.

Saph
2009-01-20, 08:42 AM
Just one point on the new PC's. Odds are good that they would actually have full health but not full resources since if they are on their own they would have potions and if they are in a group they would have a healer.

Oh, they'll be on full HP. The PCs have access to wands of cure light and lesser vigour, so there's no reason for them ever to be on less than full health at the start of an encounter.


The fate of this battle will probably be decided in round one. That is, depending on the results of Ulwai's confusion spell :smalleek:

Ah, but Ulwai and Kharn have been fighting all the way into the city. So they're low on spells too. :)

Besides, I don't really want any PC to be taken out for the final battle. I'll probably have Ulwai use her last 3rd-level spell on haste, then have her stand back and fire thunderstrikes.

- Saph

metagaia
2009-01-20, 09:49 AM
Ah, but Ulwai and Kharn have been fighting all the way into the city. So they're low on spells too. :)

Besides, I don't really want any PC to be taken out for the final battle. I'll probably have Ulwai use her last 3rd-level spell on haste, then have her stand back and fire thunderstrikes.

- Saph
Haste is deadly enough when the targets are things like hill giants :smallwink:

I hope you do manage to not kill anyone, but I do think this battle is trickier for the DM than it is for the players!