Scales of War – All sorts of updates

So, I should really have posted this a lot earlier than now. Sorry everyone. 🙁 Graham posting again finally guilted me into posting.

ps. this is going to be long.

Anyways, things have changed since I last put up a DM Log; mainly that after we finished Rescue at Rivenroar, Graham took back the helm. He is now DMing, and I am back to playing.

The decision was made for 2 reasons: first, I was running into some mental blocks in trying to run a pre-written adventure. I write, so the main draw of DMing for me is, and always has been, the world-building and plotting aspects. I found that working with someone else’s story was sapping my creativity, both in-game and in my other endeavours. Long story short, my writing was suffering (ie. not happening at all), so I decided to drop the DMing to concentrate on the rest.

I do hope to DM again in the future. I found 4e was so much easier to work with mechanics-wise. Once we’ve had more experience with this edition, I want to run my own stories. For now, it falls to Graham to lead us.

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Scales of War 4 & 5 – Catching up!

Session 4 – Finding Prisoners

Present:

• Alabaster, Tiefling Cleric
• Ralia, Elf Druid
• Rouge, Half-Elf Rogue
• Porth-OS, Warforged Swordmage

Upon returning to the dungeon, the players make their way to the next room, once again choosing the left option. This is a crypt, with skeletons in alcoves along the walls. There is some concern among the group that they will animate and attack, but they don’t. Instead, as the group reach the centre of the room, the door to the north swings open for no apparent reason. Nothing comes through them, but 2 magma claws appear and attack. Apparently, I was unclear in my description here, because there was some confusion about whether the claws or the gnome skulk that also attacked came from the passage. (The gnome was hiding beside the door, and he was the one who opened it.) This fight wasn’t too difficult, for one thing the tiefling cleric was reminded that he has resistance 5 to fire damage. 👿

After the battle, we take a short break to level. Normally, I’d wait until before or after a session, but I knew they had enough XP now, and we all wanted to be out of level 1.

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Scales of War 2 & 3 – My god, she’s actually writing!

So, yeah… sorry for the delays everybody. As Graham mentioned earlier, real life kinda got away from us for a while. Therefore the goal here is to get caught up before I run yet another session tomorrow.

Session 2 – Getting to the Dungeon

Present: everyone

This session started after the fight with the ogre. The characters got a chance to rest and the next day were invited to speak to a town councilman, Eoffram Troyas. He introduced himself and told the five of them that he summoned the “four of them” (with a look of disgust at the Gully Dwarf :p ) to ask them a favour. It turned out that during the raid, several townspeople were kidnapped and several of the town’s treasures were stolen (nothing of any monetary value – they were trophies of the Red Hand’s defeat ten years ago and therefore important to both the town and the raiders).

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Starting a new game, new system & new DM… back in September…

So I guess the first thing you’ve learned about me is that I’m a terrible procrastinator. So players, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to hassle me if I’m taking too long to post anything. :annoyed:

So I’m the new and fairly novice DM. I played Nox in Graham’s campaign and am his fiancée. Hi. We’re playing the “Scales of War” Adventure Path from Dungeon magazine.

Our tale begins in the Antler & Thistle tavern (of course) in the small town of Brindol. About 10 years ago, this was the site of an attack by a goblin army known as the Red Hand. They were attacked and sent into retreat by adventurers, and the area has known relative peace since then.

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Pathfinder 26 – One month after the fact.

First some news!

I will be out at Game Knight DMing for (or playing in) Weekend in the Realms this Saturday. As in tomorrow, Oct 25. This is despite the fact that this is supposedly an RPGA event, and I have no idea how RPGA events are supposed to work. But if you’re free, come on down. There are definitely some people around her I’d love to game with again. The event starts around 10:00 am, and is supposed to last up to 8 hours (6 pm), but you can probably come/leave as you need.

Oh, and there are no real pregens for this game. They expect people to bring their own level 1 characters. But I’m going to bring a stack of pregen sheets anyways, just so we can get started faster if we want to.

Alrighty.

So, about a month ago, we finished the Pathfinder game. It was one session after the last post, but then university decided to kick my ass for a while, so I’m just posting about it now.

We shortened the final dungeon for three reasons.

1. We didn’t want the characters to be too drained going into the final battle.
2. A fair amount of the final dungeon battles were repetitive “hey, look, more giants” battles (seriously, like 30-40 storm and cloud giants). Which would have pleased Thorbar and his Giantbane axe, but even still.
3. I wanted to finish the game before school kicked my ass. It seems I got it done just in time.

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Pathfinder 24-25 – Speed Run!

Alright, not much time to write this stuff up, so we’re going at turbo speed today!

Session 24:

Started book 6.  Needed to figure out how to get to Mhar Massif, where Karzoug is in the city of Xin Shalast.  Went back to Sandpoint, talked to the historian dude (Brodert Quink/Gune) to get more info.  Apparently it’s fucking impossible to reach, but two dwarf brothers may have.  Went to find them up near the mountains.

Both Dwarves are dead, one a cannibal ghost.  Yeah.  Creepy house, haunts, missing notebook pages, beat up a ghost.  Get the lost notes from the brothers.

Battle in book: Wendigo

Not ran.

Wendigo has 1 or 2 actual interesting abilities, all of which are 100% negated by the party’s nice new weapons.  Wendigo becomes a flying bite/claw/claw monster.  Yawn.

Session 25:

Followed directions in notes.  Followed river up to icy lake.  Found naked ice chick (nymph) who just happens to be the cousin of the nymph we saved before.  Yay coincidence!  Naked ice chick gives the party a safe haven in her little ice lake.  Warns against going north, but casts spells to help group anyways.

According to directions, party fasts and takes starvation damage, and halucinates a ghostly river.  The dwarves really never should have found this out, if they weren’t retarded.  Yay starvation!

Following halucinations!  Seems like as good idea as any.

Hey look, a city!  Fought some birdy men, helped a creepy, ugly dude to free his people, beat up an invisible demon to do so.  Found a ring with the Sihedron rune (seven pointed star).

Original creature they were supposed to fight:

Advanced dread vampire decapus sorcerer 10

Ring of invisibility, plus Greater Invisibility spell.  Plus reach, and 10 tentacle attacks each round.  Oh yeah, and energy drain!

Yeah… that one didn’t stay in the game.

Ugly dude that they helped showed them a faster way through the city, and a tunnel to further up the mountain in thanks.  Fought an evil ice witch (originally ice devil and wights, but this lady (Frostwind Virago) was just too much fun).  Another similar ring, and a +4 icy burst returning spear.

Lessons learned:

• School takes too much time.
• Campaign almost over.
• News about the convergence of those two items will come soon.

Pathfinder 22-23 – Many options, obvious choice

Phew!  Two sessions to report on this time.  Both took place in the same dungeon.

I said last time that I post faster if I have things to rant about.  That holds true, as the last two weeks were quite good.

If you remember, last time, the party stood at the mouth of a swirling portal, about to enter the demiplane of Runeforge.

Present for session 22:

• Nonnie, Halfling Sorcerer
• Reza, Dwarf Cleric
• Thorbar, Dwarf Barbarian
• Eretri, Aasimar Warlock

The group stepped through the swirling vortex and emerged in a hallway.  The portal closed behind them, leaving no sign of an entrance of any sort, and no visible way of getting back.

I’ll note that for this dungeon, you are supposed to assign each PC a primary sin.  They then gain bonuses when in that sin’s area, and take penalties in the areas belonging to opposed sins.

This was in-fucking-credibly easy for our group!

• Nox – Greed (“Lewtz!”)
• Thorbar – Wrath (Barbarian who likes to smash things.)
• Nonnie – Pride (If you aren’t sure about this one, wait for the pride section below and it will be clear.)
• Eretri – Gluttony (Also includes lust for power.  Greed and wrath were also possible, but both of those, for Eretri, are in the search for personal power.  Also, Warlock.)
• Ristan – Lust (Bard.  ‘Nuff said.)
• Reza – Envy (This one was difficult, as Reza was actually fairly virtuous, or at least not exceptionally sinful.  Especially not in any one specific way.  But I then ran it by the other players once Reza’s player left during session 22, and we decided on envy, due to, well, comments like this one. 😆 )

They followed the hall to a central room with seven statues in front of seven hallways and a bubbling pool of prismatic liquid in the center.  Thorbar pulled a rat out of his bag of tricks and shoved into into the pool, splashing some of the scalding hot liquid onto himself.  The rat screamed in pain and skittered off once released.  Nonnie’s further examination revealed that the pool was used for enchanting items.  On this, Eretri dipped his mace in, getting splashed with burningly cold liquid, with little other effect.

Hot… cold… sufficiently confused, the group turned their attention to the statues and hallways.

The seven hallways each are valid options from the players’ points of view, and of course they pick the ones that I had spent the least amount of time prepping.  The seven rooms take up 2/3 of the adventure in this book, however, so it’s difficult to adequately prepare.

That said, the hall they chose should really have been obvious.

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Pathfinder 18-21 – Fuck, it’s been a while

Yeah… so it seems that “a day or two” translates to a month, when I’m working 10 hour days.

So, we’ve had 4 sessions in that time.  I’ll go through them as if they were one, and I’ll be fairly quick about it.

One thing I noticed, though, is that I blog much faster when the module really pisses me off, which it hasn’t been doing as much recently.  Huh.  I wonder what that says about me.

When we last left our intrepid heroes, they had finished off an annoying part of Book 4, and were continuing on after a room of zombies.

From there, they entered a hallway with a big inscribed (locked) door at one end.  They ignored it, assuming it to be Mokmurian (Stone Giant leader), and went the other way first.

(I should note, if you haven’t figured it out yet, that my players tend to play D&D like Diablo or NWN.  Perhaps a comparison to WoW raids could be made, but I’m not the one to do it.  Explore and loot everything before hitting the boss to end the dungeon.  This will possibly change once we’re playing 4e and they realise how treasure works in that edition, though that’s doubtful.  ^_^   (Note for my players who read this, most enemies don’t have magical treasure in 4e.  You won’t walk out of a dungeon with 50 +1 rapiers to sell.  You’ll walk out with a smaller number of more useful items instead.))

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Pathfinder 16 & 17 – Good sections, but…

Hey look!  I’m not dead!

That’s right, this writeup will include two sessions.  This is for two reasons.  First, it will get us up to date.  Second, the last session was rather short.

Present for both of these sessions:

• Nox, Changeling Swordsage
• Reza, Dwarf Cleric
• Nonnie, Halfling Sorcerer
• Eretri, Aasimar Warlock

So, we teleport as close as we can get to the destination.  This means the giant landmark at the base of the Storval Plateau, the Storval Stair.

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Pathfinder 15 – Holy fuck, it’s a dragon!

Now that we’re finished with Book 3 of the adventure path, I want to make my feelings about this campaign series clear. Book 2, as anyone who reads the site regularly knows, had some serious issues, both in the writing and in the monster balance. Some of these were to the point that I was almost ready to give up on the adventure path altogether.

And then we hit Book 3, the Hook Mountain Massacre. Though it isn’t the type of adventure I’d run regularly (it’s a bit too… disturbing at times), this book saved the path for me. It’s creepy, flavourful, fun, and just plain awesome. The writing is great, the monsters are great (including the second Lamia Matriarch), and Nicolas Logue is one warped writer.

As such, the game is still going strong. Book 4 looks to be pretty solid as well. We should be done it this weekend, and aside from one minor issue (which I’ll go into next post), I have yet to see any major problems.

Present this session:

• Nox, Changeling Swordsage
• Nonnie, Halfling Sorcerer
• Reza, Dwarven Cleric
• Thorbar, Dwarven Barbarian
• Eretri, Aasimar Warlock

The party had decided to stay in Fort Prefect, their new home.  The winter passes, cold but enjoyable.  They enjoy their much-deserved downtime.

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