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.

Which brings me to the second reason: simply put, Graham has decided that he prefers DMing to playing (much though he likes creating wacky characters ). So he’s been more than happy to take over now that school has settled down this semester (relatively speaking )

As I mentioned above, we finished off Rivenroar (in mid-November I believe), and moved into the next adventure: “Siege at Bordrin’s Watch”. We’ve already finished that as well without ever blogging about it (a combination of me being too lazy to make my “no-longer-DMing” post and Graham being far busier in January than he expected to be). So I will take some time here to point out a few highlights from that adventure, then we can start fresh with Graham posting more detailed DM Logs starting from the third part – “The Shadow Rift of Umbraforge”.

First off of course, we said farewell to our faithful Warforged Swordmage Porth-OS to make way for my character. At the same time, the player that was unable to join us for the first adventure due to school finished that, and returned to play again.

He joined in as a Tiefling Infernal Pact Warlock named Wagmonger (shortened to Wag)

I decided to play a Shifter Ranger with the archer fighting style. Her name is Daciana, but Graham has taken to calling her “Bitey”

The adventure was fairly standard, with 2 separate dungeons to work our way through. Each had quite a memorable boss fight to contend with. In the first, the group got knocked around quite a bit, and three of us were unconscious. One was the warlord, so there went some healing, and the cleric was across the room and none too healthy himself (something like 1 hit point and no healing surges left ). But luck was on our side that day: either all three of the dying characters, or two of the three managed to roll a natural 20 death save! Which got us back to enough power to finish out the fight. (Having 3 Tieflings in a room full of spreading fire doesn’t hurt either )

The second boss fight was interesting for… different reasons. The objective was to flood the hundred-foot room to block the path of the orc-army advancing through the mountains. Of course, we had to deal with the advance guard. The encounter happened in a large room, with a catwalk running up around the walls and leading to the central pillar & a mechanism to flood the lower levels (our goal). We fought our way up, with some choosing to race up and ignore the lower enemies while others fought a rear-guard action.

By the time we were all at the top, we had a tough boss to face with low party resources. The idea at this point was to set off the machine and make our escape. Those of us with the appropriate skills worked on the machine, while the others distracted the boss, mostly trying to push him off the 70 foot ledge.

The machine was activated fairly quickly. The pushing, on the other hand…. didn’t work too well. Y’see, our various powers kept hitting the boss… but Graham’s damned DM dice don’t ever seem to want to roll a failed save… so the guy would just fall prone at the edge… over and over and over. That is, at least, until we were almost able to make a break for it anyways. This was when he was finally actually pushed off of the ledge into the very hot, rapidly rising water. And there was much rejoicing.

Well, that catches us up somewhat on the game. I’m going to make another post tomorrow to talk about a few other things.

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.

They search the alcoves, finding the first treasure of the game: an Orb of Unlucky Exchanges (1/day, when you hit, switches an effect from an ally to the target), 2 potions of healing, and gold. They then head through the north door, which leads to a jail with a couple of cells, one of which is occupied. This is Sertanian, the castellan of the town’s Hall of Great Valor (where the stolen artifacts were kept). He, while glad to be free, is rather stoic and brushes off his captivity with ease. At a mention of hobgoblins however, he goes off on a tirade about how horrible they are, and they all deserve to die, etc. It turns out he was a soldier during the original Red Hand’s attacks.

A minor aside: I am terrible at pronouncing written names. Just ask Graham about how I used to pronounce Sephiroth, so this guy quickly became “Serotonin”. Yeah, I know.

Anyways, he tags along with a war pick grabbed from the dead gnome, and we move on from the crypt to the next room. Here we meet some ettercaps, which make things tricky (ie. sticky ). The reduced movement frustrates Rouge’s attempts to flank the enemy. Most of the battle is fought right at the entrance to the room, which limits movement even more. It also means that Sertanian doesn’t see the webbed body in the corner until after the fight, at which point, he identifies him as Kartenix – the guard captain from town, and father to a young boy who is also prisoner. The group collects the body to take back to town, and while looking around te rest of the room, find a Frost Fullblade. Porth-OS now has an even bigger-ass sword.

There are two choices here: a stairway up, or a door to the north. The general rule of thumb for our group is to finish one dungeon-level before taking any stairs. So they head through the door to the north, and enter a passage bearing right with a Hobgoblin at the end in front of a spiral staircase. He charges, and is joined a couple of rounds later by hobgoblin minions and archers from the stairs. The fight is won handily, and the session is over.

Session 5 – Hoo boy…

You’ll see what I mean by that later

Present:

• Alabaster, Tiefling Cleric
• Ralia, Elf Druid
• Rouge, Half-Elf Rogue
• Seisha, Tiefling Warlord

Porth-OS, Warforged Swordmage, showed up for supper and the last encounter.

After going back to the jail to rest (Three whole battles without an extended rest, woo! It’s getting easier!) and returning, the party climbs the stairs and finds another crypt. This one has a couple of altars to Bane (re-dedicated from being altars to Vecna) and four sarcophagi. After some effort, the lids are removed and the party finds more treasure, including an Amulet of Resolution (+1 to Ref, Fort, & Will defences [and yes, I still want to type "saves" there] and 1/day re-roll a saving throw).

The party goes through the south door, which brings them to a room with a woman chained to an altar and 4 displacer beast statues with glowing eyes. Despite the glowiness the statues do nothing, but there are dire rats and a couple of gnome skulks who try to sneak around behind the party. One is spotted before he gets into position and is dealt with. The other starts causing trouble for Alabaster – as in, knocks him to dying once. He recovers though, and the battle is won, but not before Seisha and Rouge are diseased. They both fail their initial save, so we get to deal with another new mechanic. As a note: our group did not like 3.5 disease mechanics, and so it just never got used. 4e improved this immensely in my opinion with the disease track.

The altar is very familiar to Alabaster – being dedicated to the Raven Queen. Of more immediate concern though is the woman, whom Sertanian identifies as Mirtala, a cook. She is chained by the arms, her face contorted in fear. Our group being who they are, this degenerates quite quickly. We eventually get back on track, unlock the woman, and since she is still catatonic, try to get her to speak. This requires a skill challenge, which the players unfortunately fail. Even Sertanian can’t do anything for her. She will follow them anyways since they are obviously rescuers (earlier comments notwithstanding). Alabaster prays to his god, which I decide gives him a +2 on rolls for the next encounter, and they return to the crypt.

There is another passage to the west which turns south. However, this leads back to the pits which caused so much trouble before. Being understandably leery of crossing them again themselves, not to mention the rescued townsfolk, they decide to go the long way around. They return to the entrance hall, send the freed prisoners home, and have 2 doors to choose from. They go left (group rule #1), but this leads to a stair down, so they go to the other door (rule #2, which tends to override #1).

This leads to a third crypt, its walls full of empty alcoves and a 4×4 square in the middle of the room with a glowing rune in each. A gnome skulk attacks from the side, although he is spotted and so loses his stealth advantages. A Needlefang Drake Swarm also attacks from the other side of the room. This is a slight mistake on my part, as the players had stopped at the end of the hallway and they aren’t supposed to attack until someone actually steps into the room. So I reverse the attack, and Rouge moves in on his next round, causing the proper attack. Alabaster gets into some trouble again and uses up his healing surges (the missing defender is missed). But the battle is won. Everyone was careful not to step onto the runes during it, correctly assuming that they would hurt. After investigating for a bit and learning basically nothing (an Arcana check only reveals that they spell out “Von Jallach” [a family name], but nothing about their nature), Alabaster – being typically reckless (remember Nonnie?) – steps onto the closest. Suspicions confirmed, it does in fact hurt.

There is one door to the east, which leads them to a room with a fountain and an injured dwarf shackled to the wall. They unlock him, he introduces himself as Adronsius, and describes (in a bad Scottish accent, naturally) exact directions to find another prisoner, Jalissa. He had been taken, blindfolded, to a room on the upper level to be interrogated where he saw her, and – being a dwarf – remembers the way.

The group tries to get him to come with them, but he leaves them in the entryway as he understandably wants to get home, he’s no adventurer. The group discusses whether to rest for the cleric’s sake, but he’s good to keep going, and we break for dinner.

After dinner, during which Graham got home, we had time for one more encounter. So the group follows the dwarf’s directions to the upper level via the staircase in the ettercaps’ chamber. At the top of the stairs they enter yet another crypt with two low sarcophagi in the floor (these don’t impede movement in any way) and 4 hobgoblin minions and 2 spitting drakes to deal with. During the second round, a goblin enters from the southern room (Jalissa’s by the directions) and casts a cloud (burst area 3) which causes a -2 penalty to enemies’ attacks while within it, and concealment for him and his allies. The group moves out of the zone rather quickly and continue the fight. On his next turn, he moves it back over some of them. This ends up bugging Rouge, as it keeps following him while he tries to get behind the goblin to flank. The goblin also causes Porth-OS some difficulties, as he keeps hexing him. Luckily for Porth-OS, he makes his saves pretty handily.

Meanwhile, Ralia and Seisha take on one of the drakes after the minions are dispatched, while Alabaster – without any healing surges – takes the other himself. He manages to do quite a bit of damage, but of course takes quite a bit himself. At this point, his player has to leave. He tells us that he doesn’t care if Alabaster dies, but at this point the rest of the group have dealt with their foes, and manage to save him.

They search the sarcophagi, finding a bunch of gold and silver and a healing potion. Then they enter the room where they know Jalissa is being held. I’m going to post a part of her description in its entirety (emphasis added):

She hysterically clings to whichever PC comes through the door from room 15 first.

For us, this was Porth-OS. The players dissolve in laughter, and it only gets better:

She does anything that PC says without question, and she looks for approval from that PC if someone else tries to give her even an innocuous order.

Uh oh.

Porth-OS: *giggling madly* “You know, mon cherie, I do not need to sleep.”

Oh. Dear. Lord. Our warforged has a concubine (his words). He’s a warforged FFS, he has no genitalia! But Porth-OS won’t admit that, even to himself. In fact, he considers himself to be the greatest lover in the world (the same way he’s the greatest duelist). Oy vey. Naturally, we were all dying of laughter by this point. On this note, the session was over.

A couple of other things:

Rouge the rogue has had an interesting character progression: he started out trying to be the real cloak-and-dagger stealthy type, blending in wherever he goes. Then he joined up with his current companions and quickly discovered that this was pretty hopeless. So he morphed into a flashy, flamboyant walking stereotype. At some point, the inevitable happened, and he “came out”. So yeah.

I had thought of using an image of webs for the fight with the ettercaps, but I remembered in time what an image search for that would be like. Y’see I am very arachnophobic. That would have been a bad idea.

Hey look, I’m caught up!

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 ) 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).

Naturally, the party accepted the quest after promise of a suitable reward, and are told that there is a hobgoblin being held captive in the town square. After cajoling and intimidating the prisoner (aka a skill challenge), he tells them that their leader, Sinruth, wants to raise an army and take some lands for his own, the prisoners were taken to give to the undead that guard part of the goblins’ lair, the location of the lair (Rivenroar Castle), and that Sinruth didn’t say anything to the others about taking the treasures. History checks also revealed that the raiders have no real connection to the old Red Hand (the fact that they were displaying the Red Hand symbol upside-down was a big hint)

Another skill challenge to travel through the wilderness and a fight with a nest of kruthiks later, the PCs reached the castle. Upon entering, they were faced by two hobgoblin soldiers and two goblin sharpshooters. One of sharpshooters opened the door he was standing beside, which set off the other feature in the room: two braziers on either side of the room started to move (ka-chunk), and every turn would shoot a gout of flame from one to the other. As the players fought, they tried out some of the powers that would force movement to try to place the goblins in the flames’ path. After the battle was over, we left off with a choice of three directions to travel further into the dungeon…

Session 3 – In Which Things Get Deadly

Present:

• Seisha, Teifling Warlord
• Ralia, Elf Druid
• Rouge, Half-Elf Rogue
• Gah, Gully Dwarf Paladin

The players decide, as is traditional with our group, to go left (I may have started it, I’m left-handed ). This brings them to the living quarters of some hobgoblins. Now here’s where things got a little hairy. The hobgoblins in the room were dealt with easily enough… but from the hallway to the north start flying crossbow bolts. More sharpshooters.

As a quick aside, by this point Graham had decided that Gah’s sense of self-preservation would be taking a backseat. He figured that Gah wasn’t likely to survive (he had started the session with no healing surges), had a new character in the wings, and decided to hasten the process a little.

So what does he do? Runs at them hammer and rat-flail a-blazin’, just barely noticing the pit in front of them on time. There were two ways to get over it: an Athletics check to jump, or an Acrobatics check to swing over on a rope hanging into it. Gah’s chances at either were exactly the same, so he picked one and went for it. He failed. He fell. He landed in front of two rage drakes in a new room. He was dropped to below zero HP and started failing death saves.

Then the rogue tried to jump. Aaaaand fails his skill check. And falls right on top of the unconscious dwarf, killing him instantly. And is facing two rage drakes, alone. One swats him, and he falls unconscious. Yeek! Fortunately, the Warlord is now near enough to heal him, and he manages to climb up the rope fast enough to escape.

The battle finally ends, and the group decides it’s time to rest. They hike back out to the forest and meet a rather flamboyantly-dressed metal man with a big freaking sword. In an outrageous french accent he addresses them: “I see you are in need of a fighter”… and so Porth-OS, the Warforged Swordmage who thinks he’s the greatest duelist in the world, joins the party.

They head back into the dungeon, and return to the last room. They go left (again) and enter an empty room with a big flickering image of a castle in front of the north wall. Porth-OS, who’s self-preservation instincts are apparently about as good as Gah’s, walks right up to it and spends a minute studying it, at which point an ochre jelly slithers out. They fight it and two specters who float out a couple of rounds later. This proves to be another tough battle, and the party ends up feeling like they need to rest again, so back to the woods they go. Hmm.

That ends this session, and I’m worried. Graham reminds me that he, at least, is likely to die a whole lot because of his rather reckless style of play, and that character gen is one of his favourite parts of playing. Whether one is the result of the other is up to him to say. He also notes that the cleric was absent, and the two tactical players, the Warlord and the Defender, were distracted by homework.

Thus reassured, I’m ready to tackle the next session… but that write-up will have to wait since its 4:00am and I have a game to run tomorrow.

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.

With one exception, our PCs have not yet met each other, they just all happen to be there tonight.  So scattered around the tavern we have:

• Rouge the Half-Elf Rogue – yes the name came up when the player spelled Rogue that way.
• Seisha the glaive(-glaive-glaive-guisarme-glaive)-wielding Tiefling Warlord
• Ralia the Elven Druid – a re-flavoured wizard. For example, her Magic Missile is called Thornburst.
• Alabaster the Tiefling Cleric of the Raven Queen – played by our old friend Nonnie, but isn’t pure, unadulterated evil this time *sigh of relief*
• Aaaaand… Gah, the Gully Dwarf Paladin who you have already met. He is the faithful companion of tags along with Alabaster.

Question: Does our group ever play humans? Answer: Not usually, no.

As the PCs (minus Ralia, who had to miss the first session) and other patrons are enjoying a quiet drink, the front door flies off its hinges, knocking one of the nearest patrons to the floor, and in rush four Hobgoblins who attack and kill a couple of the nearby townsfolk. The PCs attack, and a couple of the Hobgoblins fall (gotta love minions). As they are mopping up the last couple (or so they think), another 3 Hobgoblins and a Goblin Blackblade come in.

Now here’s where my first mistake starts rearing its head. For some reason, the minis I picked were the opposite size as what they should have been, ie. the medium-sized Grunts were small minis and the small Goblins were medium minis *facepalm*. I think my brain went “tougher enemies should be bigger, duur” :p. So, being a very visual person, things like the Hobgoblins charging under tables were happening. Lesson learned.

So anyways, the Grunts attack and the Blackblade throws his bitumen torch at the bottles behind the bar, hits them, and sets a square behind the bar on fire. The bartender naturally takes his next turn to start escaping (NPCs are doing random things like running, quivering in fear, or attacking with improvised weapons).

As the fight progresses, 2 more Grunts, then 1 more Grunt and another Blackblade enter the fray. The second torch is thrown at the back corner of the room, where 3 NPCs are zealously guarding their table, as they were playing cards and there’s 30 gp sitting there (naturally, the rogue started near this table too ). Understandably, they now abandon their stuff in favour of, y’know, staying alive.

The creatures are fairly easily dispatched, but not without an example of the new-found coolness of 4e fights, which tend to lend themselves well to what I shall call “improvisational techniques”.

At this point, the entire area behind the bar is on fire, one of the Blackblades is on the other side of the bar, and Rouge is nearby. So he decides that instead of just attacking the goblin, he’s going to toss him over the bar and into the fire, in true bar-brawl tradition. Grapple attempt succeeds, strength check succeeds, and we have one crispy fried Goblin.

Win for 4e: even as a wet-behind-the-ears DM (and I never could get the hang of running 3.5), I was able to adjudicate this scenario fairly easily. I did get some help from Graham with getting exact numbers, but it still felt really straightforward.

Fight over, the PCs move outside to find out what’s going on, and after discussion with some nearby citizens (which counts as a short rest ) an ogre rounds the next corner pulling a cart full of casks and ridden by 2 hobgoblin archers. The ogre throws the cask in his hand, which hits a wall nowhere near the PCs (really bad aim – I basically decide where he is trying to hit, roll a d8 to determine direction and a d4-1 to determine the distance from that spot, which is what he actually hits. It breaks apart and causes a small explosion (burst 1), lighting the target square on fire.

The PCs start moving up and the fight starts in earnest.

One of the hobgoblins fires an arrow, while the other hands off another lit pitch cask to the ogre. The PCs naturally concentrate their attacks on the ogre, who throws the next cask and starts fighting back in melee.

The cleric though, sees potential elsewhere. So he move forward, and uses one of his powers to hit the cart with fire :evil:. So the pile of casks starts to explode (burst 3 each round from one of the 4 squares in the back of the cart). The hobgoblins, caught in the initial explosion, jump off of the cart and they and the ogre start to remove the ogre from his harness attaching him to the cart. This occupies them for the next 2 rounds, giving the PCs some breathing room.

Once they get free, but before the ogre gets a chance to move, Gah gets an interesting idea: push the cart at the ogre :D. He does so, crushing the ogre between it and the wall. This does enough damage (ruled using the DMs best friend: DMG page 42) to kill him! Heh… it seems to be a tradition with Graham’s Gully Dwarf characters to kill monsters in unexpected ways… maybe someday he’ll have enough time to tell the story behind that.

So that fight ends, and so does session 1. Sessions 2 & 3 to come throughout the week. There is not going to be a game tomorrow (boo work and school), so I will be caught up then. Yays!

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.

So, as a quick summary, we started off with a battle with giants, which I thought was boring, but at least some of the players had a lot of fun with. The giants were huge sacks of hit points that took forever to kill, and they nearly killed a few party members. In a random inconsequential battle! Bah!

Defeating them, we moved inwards. There may have been a fight here with Khalib, Karzoug’s apprentice, but I don’t remember. We then fought a slightly modified battle against three lamia harridans (cat-centaurs), including Most High Ceoptra. This battle was actually somewhat fun, once I removed the Wis drain. Ceoptra’s timely casting of Heal on herself aggravated the party just enough to be fun.

In the room with the harridans was also a large crystal, pointing at a sarcophagus carved in the shape of Karzoug. The group decided they needed to do something about this crystal.

So they try moving it, making knowledge checks, etc.

Until someone gets fed up and says “Fuck this, I hit it with my weapon!”

*Poof!* they disappear.

And the party is nervous as fuck!

Someone else tries. *Poof!*

Eventually everyone does it and I actually describe what happened. It turns out that hitting the crystal opened up a bit of a tear in reality, into a pocket dimension.

A pocket dimension containing Karzoug, a giant floating gem, and a runewell.

The group laughs, and rolls initiative against the floating Karzoug.

Karzoug wins initiative, and opens up with a Meteor Swarm, Quickened Time Stop, Wall of Force, Globe of Invulnerability, and True Seeing.

The party stops laughing.

I’ll note that I decided to play Karzoud exactly as written, no fudging SR or anything. The only thing I did was change save-or-die spells. This last battle was to be an example of what high-level 3.Xe combat was really like.

Spells are cast. Some fail against SR. Reza casts the surprisingly useful Holy Aura, giving the entire party a higher SR than Karzoug even has, plus other stuff. Thorbar gets frustrated because he needs Karzoug to be in melee.

Nox attempts, round after round, to leap up (teleport) and grab Karzoug, to bring him down. She is unsuccessful.

Ristan gets the picture and summons a giant celestial eagle/owl to try the same tactic.

Thorbar shoots his bow, which isn’t that effective.

Nonnie uses his metamagic rod and fires off a maximized Disintegrate.

Bypasses SR.

Rolls to hit… critical hit! (fails save)

32*6 damage = 192 damage! Woot!

Someone casts Wind Walk on Thorbar. This not only lets him get up to Karzoug, it lets him charge!

Thorbar runs up and tackles Karzoug, bringing him falling to the ground, with a Dwarf Barbarian on top.

One final hit from Nox, and he’s finished.

So, altogether, a pretty good encounter. Reza felt a little useless, since most of her abilities are melee or close range. Thorbar was incredulous at the fact they defeated him, and he never even used his axe! As well as the fact that they never used their Runeforged weapons to damage him.

With the big boss destroyed, I go into epilogue mode, and the group gets to go through the final “what do you do now” parts. I won’t go into those in detail in this post. Maybe another day.

And, a couple weeks later, we started in on 4e.

With Nox DMing!

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.

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.

Heading down the hallway behind the statue of the voluptuous naked woman… the party enters a large chamber with pillars carved like nude women, cages mostly holding dead bodies, and a large pavillion of silk sheets in the middle.

As they enter, four winged, horned women (alu-demons) take note and fly over.  They keep their distance, making lewd comments and guesses as to the sexuality of the party members.

There is a sidebar in this section entitled “Soft-core’s not for everyone”, which advises you to know your players’ limits.  Well, we’re all (physically) adults around here, and have discussed sex and related topics in the past.  We’ve also included the topic in our RPGs in the past, though usually in an immature or light-hearted way.  As such, as you’ll be able to tell from the rest of this post, I played this section up a fair amount, though it always stayed fairly light in tone.

So much fun to roleplay, though!

After some flirting (and casually getting brushed off) with the alu-demons, an angry female voice starts talking in the heads of the party, questioning what they’re doing there, and who sent them.  Seeming to get nowhere talking to it, the group starts to approach the pavillion in the center.  The demons suddenly become serious, and land in front of them, stating that the party doesn’t have permission for that.  Realising the telepathic voice is who will grant permission, they ask for it, mentioning their quest to stop the return of Karzoug, which intrigues the owner of the voice.  She invites them into the pavillion.

Inside, we meet the owner, a succubus named Delvahine.  With more talking, and more innuendo, they ask for her help.  She doesn’t know how to help them, however, but sends them off to visit an ally of hers, Vraxeris, leader of the Pride area of Runeforge.  She believes he was working on a method to defeat Karzoug and his follower, though she isn’t sure how far he got in his planning.

(By the way, if you hadn’t guessed yet, yeah, this is Lust.)

She asks them to return to her afterwards.  She hasn’t “seen” Vraxeris in some time (heh), and would like some news.

So, off to the Pride area.  As the group enters, they come to a T intersection, with a Mirror of Opposition at each end.  The barbarian entered first.  Fuck.  We now have two new Thorbars attacking us.  Fuck.

Technically, this encounter was supposed to be able to create two copies of whoever looked into the mirrors, while only giving a CR 14 XP award for the whole thing.  Obviously, they expected you to recognise that they were Mirrors of Opposition and destroy them before you have two full parties attacking you.  Considering that most of the players here are fairly new to the game, and definitely not incredibly well-versed in obscure magic items, I played this one easier than that, making only Thorbar affected.

It had to be the guy with the most hp, didn’t it?

But this was a great battle.  Everyone piles down into the T section of the hall, and Thorbar, Nonnie, and Eretri blast and smack at one, dealing some good damage.  Reza is caught on the other side of Thorbar, however, 10 feet away from that clone.  It’s the clones’ turns before her, anyways, though.  The one by Thorbar goes, power attacks, and kicks Thorbar’s hp down significantly.  The one by Reza charges and hits her for a decent amount, too.

Pissed off, Reza turns around, looks at the clone funny, and touches it.  Harm.  That’ll be 130 damage, if he fails his save, which is a nice chunk of his hp.

Touch attack: natural 20… confirmed… failed save…

Huh.  260 damage.  The clone has… 156 hp.

Clone shrivels, implodes, and leaves behind little more than a puff of dust.

Reza is happy.  They smash the mirrors.

Next room has 4 clones of Vraxeris, lord of Pride (narcisim much?) and a giant illusory peacock (indubitably).  Following that, they enter the back room to find Vraxeris slumped over his desk.  Apparently he had been achieving “immortality” through the use of over 200 clones over the years.  The party reads through his journal, and loots his stuff.

Vraxeris is in posession of one piece of treasure that, to the “expected” party composition would be useless, only there to sell.

We, however, have a rather… unique party.  Or, more to the point, a rather unique party member.

The item?

A Robe of the Archmagi.  Evil aligned.

To say Nonnie was pleased would be the understatement of the campaign.

So, Nonnie puts on his new robe, and continues reading through the (draconic) journal.  Every so often, he stops to admire his new clothes.  Eventually, he gets tired or standing and decides to sit.  Despite there being other chairs around, he pushes Vraxeris’ slumped body out of the head chair and sits there.

So, yeah, pride.

Anyways, they find out that Vraxeris suspected Karzoug was returning, and was planning on using the runeforge pool in the central area to forge Domineering weapons.  Made of a combination of Illusion (Pride) and Enchantment (Lust) magic, they are anathema to Transmuters and those who follow Greed, which includes Karzoug himself.  To forge these, they require elements of runeforge infused with those magical schools.  Vraxeris recommends shards of the (already smashed, conveniently) mirrors from his entry hall, and states in his journal that “Delvahine’s… equipment… should suffice for enchantment, although one might be wise to cleanse them before they are handled.”  He also mentions a way to escape from Runeforge, though a “master circle” built into the halls of Wrath.

So, the party rests and heads back to Lust to talk to Delvahine.

She laughs at the news of Vraxeris’ death, as she had always suspected his precious clones would fail him at some point.  She is happy to give them some of her “jewel-encrusted dominatrix toys” (yes, really), though.  But she wants payment for them.  Specifically, a few minutes alone… with the halfling.  (Highest cha, and [I correctly predicted] the most interesting reaction. )

Nonnie spends a while wrestling with the moral dillema of whether sex with a succubus was worth likely getting level drained to death.  After about 20 minutes (real time) of deliberation, he (reluctantly) asks if there’s any other payment they could offer.  She accepts a number of expensive and beautiful magic items instead, though she seems disappointed.

Using the mirror shards and “toys”, they dip their weapons into the pool, where they glow brightly as Thassilonian runes are etched into them.

With this, the statue of Karzoug in front of the Greed hallway begins to move, and speaks with Karzoug’s voice, threatening them.

Despite the statue being a CR 16 golem, the battle is over in only a few rounds.  Thorbar’s attacks against it slice through its DR like butter, as the new runes on the weapon glow brightly, and Nonnie and Eretri take it down further with acid spells.  (Reza had to leave by this point.)

The group prepares to enter the Wrath area (remember, they play like Diablo, and will rarely leave before everything is done) and leaves off for the session.

For session 22, we have everyone there.

• Nonnie, Halfling Sorcerer
• Reza, Dwarf Cleric
• Thorbar, Dwarf Barbarian
• Eretri, Aasimar Warlock
• Nox, Changeling Swordsage
• Ristan, Half-Elf Bard

The halls of wrath were fun.  Getting around involved teleportation circles.  When the first set was discovered (one red, one blue), Thorbar tossed animals onto each circle.  The cat landed on the red circle, with nothing happening.  It moved into the blue one, and poof!  So Thorbar threw a badger into the blue one.  Poof!

Getting impatient, Nonnie ran into the blue one, and poofed!  The rest followed, and appeared on a n identical red circle beside a likewise identical blue one.  Testing revealed that the blue one took them back to the first red one.  Nonnie began running in circles, from the red one to the blue, poof, red to blue, poof, etc.

The idea of standing on the red circle and peeing into the blue one came up, thinking that you would make a spiral as it keps teleporting in an arc.

Yeah.

Anyways, fight, fight, fight.  We come to a choice of directions, and take the one leading to the boss of that area.  After a difficult fight between her and her demon servant, Nonnie finishes off the gargantuan demon with the spell “Extract Water Elemental” (Spell Compendium), and now has a giant water elemental at his command for a minute or so.

So he sends it off to the other direction choice, to kill all the minions over there for them.  Fun!

The final blow on the boss, however, was struck by Nox.  As the boss dies, the tattoo she had on her forehead fades, and appears on Nox’s.  Nox, of course, panics.

Until they identify it as beneficial, as well as marking her as the ruler of this area of Runeforge now.

Blah blah, loot loot.  On to Greed.

On entry, there is a hall full of mist.  The group attempts to move through it.  Eretri fails her save, turns into a goldfish, and is teleported away (to be found later in a pool of water).

Seriously, book 5?  Fucking awesome!

Fighting mephits, encounter with a mage whose skin has been transformed into mithril, loot.

After the mage, the party discovers a pool of liquid, with magical lightning and fire dancing across the top.  On analysis, they determine that it is charged with energy, and could potentially be used to recharge magic items.  It makes all but Nox nauseous, however, so they leave the room.

Not wanting to pass this up, though, they leave their charged items for Nox to play with.  Some end up glowing like a torch with no other effects, most regain 1d10 charges.  One gets fully charged, and glows twice as bright as a torch.  Eretri’s Wand of Fear gets a Supercharge, meaning that not only does it glow twice as bright as a torch permanently and become fully charged, it replenished all charges every 7 days!  Sweet!

Somewhere in there, however, Nox tried with Eretri’s wand of Cure Light Wounds… and rolled a 3 on the d%.

A 3 means explosion.  1d6 damage per charge left in the item, of a random energy type, in a large burst, reflex half, item is destroyed.

So, we check how many charges it has left.

39.

Thus continues the trend of Nox setting off a giant explosion by accident, making her reflex save (only DC 15), and thanking the gods that she has Evasion!

Just to note, here, the Envy wing was destroyed in a battle a few years back, and Sloth fell into ruin hundreds of years earlier.  Gluttony was a longer dungeon crawl without much interesting in it, so since I’m currently trying to speed the game up a bit because I return to university soon, its fate was determined to be similar.

Lessons Learned:

• Don’t let Nox near things that go boom.
• If I ever want to influence a path choice, place a naked statue at the entrance.

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.))

This direction let to an odd-looking cavern.  It looked vaguely natural, but all edges were smoothed and rounded.  Here, I threw them up against a Spawn of Juiblex (see picture), the “architect” of the cave.  Neat battle, surprised the group with the Spawn’s ability to “flow”, or move without AoOs.  Brought Nonnie into negative hit points, too, so that was fun.

Rant time.

Okay, this room was originally supposed to be home to a few Hourds of Tindalos.  These are Cthulhuian monsters that can teleport all over the place, at will, as long as they start and end by an angle.  Mokmurian had smoothed this room down to keep them from teleporting.

Now, ignoring the fact that even a rounded edge has angles, and this may or may not have made the engineers in the group have fits, this is a stupid encounter.  I can imagine the discussion.

Guy 1: “Hey, let’s put these stupidly weak (CR 6) Lovecraft monsters here, because they’re cool and unique.  They have a great backstory and this uber-neat ability.”

Guy 2: “Okay.  Sounds awesome.  But make sure that they don’t tie into the story at all, and that the players have no way to get any of the cool background information.  Oh, and let’s arrange the room just right so that the creatures have no chance to use their super-cool-and-unique ability.”

And thus, the Hounds of Tindalos became, in this adventure, ugly dog things with nothing special about them.

Sigh.

Anyways, one near-death experience later, and they continued through the room.

By the way, there are only 3 people here this week.  Thorbar, Nonnie and Nox.  So, a striker, a blaster sorcerer, and a meat-shield who’s very good against giants.  No healer present, but they were healed up by the cleric and bard between battles.

Upon opening the door, they find themselves in an arcane laboratory of sorts.  Papers are strewn about, and two giants are working, while another sits on a throne on a raised section.  The giant on the throne calls to the others, as wind begins to swirl around him.  The two down below turn to look, one erupts into flame, and the other hardens like rock.

Second rant.

A level 14 wizard is a CR 14 creature.

A stone giant is a CR 8 creature.

A stone giant with 14 levels of Wizard is a CR 15 creature.

…yeah, no.

Look, I know the whole “class levels that don’t play to a monster’s strengths add 1/2 CR” rule.

But when you have 14 levels of wizard, Wizard is now your strength!  “Stone Giant” is now the nonassociated part!  Reverse the fucking math.

14 + (8/2) = 18.  So make him a level 11 Wizard, and 11 + (8/2) = 15.  Or something.

But I didn’t want to redo the boss, and I hate playing high-level casters as enemies anyways, so I dropped him, and replaced him with the three Elemental Magi from the Monster Manual 5.

Like you’d catch Monkurian alone anyways…

So, good battle.  Nox got beaten up pretty good.  Thorbar got to use his new Giant Bane-Blind armour, which made him happy.

Upon killing Mokmurian, he froze in the air, as if gripped by giant hands, turned clumsily to face the party, and spoke in a voice that wasn’t his own.  The group knew the voice, though.  Runelord Karzoug, who they had heard speaking way back in the goblin fort (book 1) in an endless loop.

So, villainous taunting, etc etc.

They find a key and a map, with a mark over Sandpoint (as well as a few out to sea) and a reference to a place called Runeforge.  Apparently, the coastline used to be a mountain range inland, but something happened to sink half the continent… or something.  The key opens the door from before, leading to a huge library with a robot librarian.

Yeah.  Awesome.

The library is used for tons of plot exposition, as the group researches all it can think of about the Runelords and the ancient empire they ruled over.  Whee!

Runeforge, they discover, was a magical demiplane, neutral to all the runelords, where magical research was conducted.  If found, it could awaken Karzoug, and bad stuff would happen.

Conna the Stone Giant Elder hasn’t wasted any time, during this, and is reclaiming power as they research.  The giant tribes around the fort have already started to dissipate.

So everyone goes to the cave up in the mountains to fight a dragon.  Woot!  Dragon fight!  Red dragon breath weapon hurts like a bitch.  Dragon dies, horde is looted.

From the map, and the stuff they dug up about Runeforge, they decide to return to Sandpoint.  They teleport to the Rusty Dragon Inn, directly beside their regular table.

…and are greeted enthusiastically!  More so than usual, even.  Something about a sinkhole…

…which apparently appeared in the center of town a couple nights earlier, has weird howling sounds coming from it, and swallowed up a team of guards that went to investigate.

Yeah.  This stuff just keeps happening, doesn’t it.

And down into the sinkhole they go.  In there, they are greeted by a disembodied voice, who calls himself…

The Scribbler

Laughter ensues.

Sounds like a B-list Batman villain.

Anyways, The Scribbler is actually a divine servant of Lamashtu, charged with guarding the shrine they’re entering, and has been there since the fall of Thassilon.  He questions them, to learn of what has occurred over the past 1000 years, and they question him back.  The party asks about Runeforge, and he tells them that the way to Runeforge is among the scribblings on the walls in the temple.  (The temple walls are covered with writing.)  The party enters further.

Blah blah, fight a demon, fight some dog things.

Eventually, they ended up encountering The Scribbler himself.  This was a neat fight.  The Scribbler made timely use of the Heal spell, which pissed everyone off.

They find all the appropriate writings on the wall, arrange them appropriately, and (with some good knowledge checks) take off towards their destination, Lake Stormunder, and Rimeskull.

Once there, they need to solve a small puzzle.  There were 7 runelords, each with dominion over a specific school of magic.  Here, there are 7 stone heads in a circle.  You need to cast the appropriate magic in front of each one in order to get it to cough up a key.

The Warlock’s at-will Detect Magic makes quick work of this.

Another dragon fight!  A huge white dragon swoops down, breathing frost on everyone.  Next turn, it dives in, and grabs the Sorcerer in its jaws, snatching him up and dropping him into negative hit points.

“Fuck!” says everyone, and the most damaging attacks available are unleashed asap.  Reza rushes over and drops the dragon with a Harm.  Hell yeah!

Keys in hand, the groups ascends the stairs up the cliff.  Everyone is wearing a Sihedron medallion (7-pointed star), which is good, because if they weren’t, they would have been attacked by a bunch of huge earth elementals with the Awesome Blow (teeheehee) feat, and knocked 200 feet off the cliff.

Fun.

Horde is looted again.  Keys are placed in the appropriate spots in the dragon’s lair.  A portal forms.

And we end for the day week month.

Playing tomorrow.  Shouldn’t be this long again.

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.

Note to self, when you have 4 players, one can fly at will, one can levitate at will, and one can spider climb at will, having giants send a “landslide”-type attack down a staircase at them is, well, ineffective to say the least.

The four giants at the stair dealt with, the party makes the final hike (about a day, rather than two weeks) to the Iron Peaks and Jorgenfist.

On reaching the valley, they sent the invisible-and-flying-at-will Warlock to scout ahead.  He found a guard tower, and a whole crapload of giants camped around the fortress.  He also managed to spot a small group of harpies guarding the front gate, occasionally flying out over the cliff to the southeast.

As such, he decided to explore said cliff, finding that it dropped down to a river below.  Two cave entrances led into the cliff face.

As he returned to the party, they spotted something else as well.  The dragon that they had left back in Sandpoint flew by overhead, completing his own journey back.  It landed in a cave up in the mountains, north of the fort.  It was decided that they would deal with him later.

I’ll note here that, while the fortress is excruciatingly detailed, and full of creatures and rooms, there is virtually nothing on methods of infiltrating the fort, and/or what the creatures do when you attempt this (including the masses of giants around the outer wall).

The group decided to explore the caves in the cliff face, suspecting they led into the fortress.  Judicious use of Invisibility Sphere allowed them safe passage to the cliff face.  They explored the first cave…

…and were attacked by three drakes.

Got some good treasure out of it, though.

The second cave proved to be what they were looking for, however, as it led deeper into the cliff.

Aside: this second cave was supposed to have an encounter in it.  The encounter was against 3 level 6 creatures, and should have been easy (PCs are level 11 at this point).

But I didn’t run the encounter.  Why, you might ask?  Well, because this is the cave.

Not a problem, right?  Tight spaces, but easy for a party of 4 to fight 3 enemies.

Well, these enemies are Gargantuan size.

And you can’t even fit one of them in the cave without squeezing rules!

So, yeah.  Fight ignored for sake of sanity.

In the caves, the party fights some Redcaps.  Little reason is given for this, but they’re sufficiently vicious.  After Reza performs some healing, and the redcaps recoil, the group manages to drive them all off by waving around her holy symbol.  Neat.

As they get to the end of the caves, they come out into a small natural cavern.  In here is a Kobold.  Kobold level 12 Barbarian, actually.  It roars and gets ready for a fight.

Nox wins initiative, and runs around the kobold with her new Ring of Fire maneuver.  Fire explodes around her.

This is when I notice something in the Kobold’s equipment list.

Necklace of Fireballs.  Type IV.

Now, for those who don’t have the 3.5e rulebooks memorized, a necklace of fireballs is an interesting item.

You see, when a necklace of fireballs is worn by someone who fails their save against a magical fire attack (close enough), it also must make a reflex save (save bonus of +7).

On a failed save, every bead on the necklace explodes simultaneously.

Kobold: fails save.

Necklace: fails save.

At this point, Nox is panicking.  She’s about to be caught in who knows how many fireballs!

She panics.  Until she realises she has evasion.

So, a type IV necklace contains nine spheres, with the following damage:

• 1 – 8d6
• 2 – 6d6
• 2 – 4d6
• 4 – 2d6

Nox makes all but one of the saves, and takes 6d6 damage.\

Our kobold friend, however… well, she has 9 fireballs going off on her neck.  Yeah, no save there.

36d6 damage later, and we have one charred kobold.  “As the fire clears, you see the charred remains of a kobold standing there, black except for the eyes.  Its eyes blink twice, and then it crumbles to ash, Wile E. Coyote style.”

Nox is very proud.

So, after looting the Kobold’s +3 Shortspear ( ), we continue.  We once again send the warlock out scouting.  He finds a group of ogres, a couple stone giants, and 9 imprisoned dwarves to the east, and a small group of stone giants, a concerned female stone giant elder, and a secret door to the north.

First things first, the party decides to rescue the dwarves.  The ogres all fall with a single acid ball, and the stone giants don’t put up much of a fight.  Nox still finds herself missing having the Barbarian meat shield, though.  Reza is beginning to run low on healing.

The dwarves are thankful and eager to help, but the group sends them back through the redcap tunnels to the cave in the cliff.  They give the dwarves a couple of holy symbols to drive the redcaps off with.

The path still continues east, but with this done, the group heads to the secret door to the north.

And they find a boss-type stone giant.  He’s big and tough, but he goes down eventually.  Resources are getting low.

The small room they fought this battle in open up to a pit in the middle of the fort.  From across the pit, they hear someone calling.  It’s the stone giant elder that Eretri had spotted before.  She beckons for them.

Flying and spider-climbing, the group crosses the pit.  The elder (Conna) leads them to a side room, an altar currently haunted by her dead husband’s spirit.  The other giants rarely come here.

She asks the party what their purpose is.  Of course, their answer is to destroy Mokmurian.  This is what she wanted to hear, and offers her aid.  While she can not oppose him directly, she tells the group how to find him (and the easiest route to get there), and offers to cast some spells for them.

All the party wants now, however, is a safe place to rest.  The small room behind the secret door is determined safe enough, and the party rests.

Just before this point, I began to realise something.

This dungeon is long.

I mean, we skipped the vast majority of encounters, we aren’t yet halfway through the encounters that are left, and the party has exhausted most of its resources.

Look, Wolfgang Baur, if you read this, I enjoy your writing.  I think you make some interesting encounters, and fun story.  And I love most of your monster design.

But not every room needs a combat encounter.

And especially not a tough combat encounter.

And when the fortress is this tightly packed with encounters, yet there is no information on what happens if you kill some and an alarm is raised, the adventure is missing something.  Seriously, take out one or two of the encounters, and add in some detail.

(And, just so nobody thinks I’m exagerating, if you were to fight every encounter in this area [by taking the direct route through the front gates and then pissing off Conna and getting lost and wandering inside], you would fight 31 battles, including 2 red dragons and a Stone Giant with 15 levels of Wizard, yet not including the redcaps, drakes, the “3 gargantuan monsters in a tiny cave bettle”, red dragon from Sandpoint, or the librarian.  Yeah.  That’s a lot, when the system is built for 4 encounters per day.)

In any case, that’s where we stopped game 16.  Before game 17, here’s a hickory smoked intermission (strong language, almost definitely NSFW).

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

With the party rested up, they backtracked to follow the path Conna had laid out for them.  As they came to the room where the dwarves were rescued from, they spotted two stone giants holding a group of dwarves prisoner.

Wait… didn’t we do this before?

Nox and Eretri sneak in to see if it’s the same ones, and soon realise that the forge fires aren’t giving off heat.

Illusions!  Conna has apparently been busy during the night.  The bodies of the giants and the ogres in the next room are gone, as well.  Not even blood stains remain.

4 sleeping giants are easily dispatched in the next room, and they come to a hallway leading south.  On each side of the hall is a troll, behind a stone wall, stabbing at the party through cracks in the wall as they walk by.  Fight, death, woo!  Nonnie manages to catch nobody but himself in an acid ball, as he attempts to fore it through a slit in the wall.

And they get to the stairs down.

In the lower level, the walls smooth out, looking now like worked stone.  This is no natural cave.  But things also get weird now.

The first room has weird shimmery walls that make it impossible to judge distance.  It also manages to reduce whoever fails a save to one size category lower.  And there’s a giant in here.

Two or three hits destroys the giant, and everyone gets back to normal, moving on to the next room, which is full or acrid smoke coming from a mysterious cauldron.

Sigh.  I seem to be ranting a lot about this dungeon.

This smoke is evil.  It requires a Fort save every round that you’re in it, or you’re blinded and nauseated for as long as you stay in, and 1d6 rounds afterwards.

It also only affects good creatures, which means only 2 of our party, but most of a normal one.

And you’re supposed to have a fight in here against a CR 11 Stone Golem.

Yeah, a fight where most of the party can be useless based on a single save, which you need to make every round so you will eventually fail.  That’s great encounter design there.  at least there’s a bit of a hallway between this and the reduce person room, so you can retreat for a couple rounds.

Admittedly, there is another way to pass by the golem, but it is highly unlikely that the party would currently be disguised as giants.

And we end off with a room full of zombies.  Four hill giant zombies and a special headless zombie lord.

The headless lord didn’t even get to attack.  When the regular zombies have 183 hit points, you would think their far stronger leader would have more than 74.  He died in one round.

Lessons Learned

• It is very easy to overdo things.  Number of encounters, viciousness of hazards in an encounter.  Moderation is great.  Keep this in mind while designing next campaign.

Next game is Sunday, finishing off Book 4, and continuing on.

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.

The denizens of Turtleback Ferry are very happy to have their new heroes staying close by.  The schoolteacher that they saved has even gotten into the habit of sending pies up to the fort every week.

Eventually, spring comes.  It’s been almost a year since the Swallowtail Festival, back in Sandpoint.  With the pies, one week, a package comes from Mayor Deverin.  Inside, the mayor invites the party to return to Sandpoint for a new festival, entitled Goblin Day, in honour of the defeat of the Thistletop goblins one year prior.  She hopes they will come and regale the townsfolk with stories of the battles on that day.

The group thinks this is just fantastic, and prepares for their journey.

Upon arriving, there is much partying.  Some go to visit old friends, including Ameiko and Elias.  Thorbar drinks at the Hagfish.  Nonnie turns in early.

Waking up early as well, Nonnie heads out to the woods on the edge of town.  Nox, suspicious, follows.  Once out of sight of town, Nonnie removes his family ring.

You see, Nonnie is currently at a bit of a crossroads, and is roleplaying it well.  He has some choices to make with regards to character development, and time will tell what path he chooses.

I mention this because the ring is what hides his draconic heritage.  As he removes it, his skin darkens and toughens into an almost scaly sheen.  His eyes narrow slightly, and he becomes a rather imposing figure, for a 3-foot halfling.

What followed was a fun little bit of RP, with Nox gasping and questioning the situation, and Nonnie, surprised, trying to cover up what happened.  It was amusing and very enjoyable.

As they stopped to come back into town, however, they noticed a group of silhouettes over the hills to the east.

“Shit!  Giants!”

Nox bolts back to town, pulling Nonnie on the way, and they rush to wake their teammates.  As everyone makes it outside, moving to alert the sheriff, they hear a huge crash from the north.

The giants they saw were to the east.

Shit.  Well, at least the sheriff knows now.

Moving north, there are three stone giants past the north gate.  They are just standing there, throwing taunts.  One had tossed a boulder, which cause the previous crash.

Battle ensues.  These three are quickly dispatched, due to having three general high-damage-output characters and a giant-bane dwarf.

The flying Warlock and levitating halfling look to the east, to spot some more giants coming over the bridge into town, accompanied by three dire bears.  A round or two later, and they face off against this second party.

Once this group is dispatched, the party hears a shriek up above, and they look skyward.

Dragon.  Fuck.

A red dragon swoops over town, breathing fire on a couple of buildings, and then heading towards the Old Light (ruined lighthouse-thing) on the west side of town.  The two fliers start to follow it, but are called back by the rest of the party, so as to not face the dragon until it’s closer to the ground.  Additionally, another group of giants are approaching from the east, one of whom is blowing a large horn.

The one with the horn looks to obviously be a war leader, so the group attacks.  This battle isn’t quite so fast, but the party is once again victorious.  They fell the leader just as the dragon flies back.  It glances at the downed giant, scowls, blasts the group with fire (8d10 damage, dropping everyone close to death, and Nonnie into negative hp), and flies off to the east.  Dragons are tough bastards.

They heal a bit, and move south once again, weakened.  There, they find a group of giants retreating now that they don’t hear the war horn, and two others attacking the brewery.  One is bowled over into the river by falling beer barrels and knocked unconscious.  The PCs take him prisoner for some interrogation, though a couple group members object strongly, saying they should just kill him.

As a note, this sequence is highly scripted, with certain events happening on certain rounds.  It seems, from my retelling, that things happened right as the PCs completed their previous task.  These events are actually supposed to be able to happen while the party is busy concentrating on another task, but we always managed to finish the current task just before the next event occurs.  Neat.

In any case, the giant wakes and sneers at the party, but offers information in exchange for his safe release.  He’s cocky enough that he doesn’t think the PCs would be able to stop his lord (Mokmurian) anyways, and doesn’t want to be shamed by death at the hands of these tiny beings.

We find out the location where Mokmurian is gathering his army (Jorgenfist, in the Iron Peaks), and other various information (Mokmurian has apparently mastered the “magic of the Ancient Lords”).

The Iron Peaks are over two weeks away by foot, at least a week by horse.  Additionally, we want to get there before the retreating forces do.

The cleric prepares Teleport.

What the players liked:

• Big running battles like this are always fun.  From the sounds of it, 4e will make things like this more feasible, so I’m looking forward to that part.
• Despite the game being primarily combat, we still managed to get in some good RP time.
• Dragons!  Whee!
• Level 11!

What the players disliked:

• Reza has a number of powers that key off of evil enemies.  Stone Giants are neutral, meaning she isn’t at full effectiveness against them.  She’s still decently effective, though.
• Dragons!  Fuck!

Lessons learned:

• With this party, if I want to have something interrupt a combat, I need to have it come in fairly early.
• Prisoners and what to do with them is a contentious issue, it seems.