The Valley #13

I keep trying to think of ways to improve 4E.

In other words, I think 4E can be saved from itself.

What I would like to do is remove certain aspects of 4E that waste time, seem pointless, or are needlessly complicated.

First: temporary effects that target anyone but the creator of the effect. This is on top of the list for good reason; I’ve seen it waste so much time for so little gain. One or two of these don’t mean much, but once you add in multiple such effects and effects that change from round to round, it gets old fast. Computers can easily and near instantaneously deal with things like this, we cannot.

Example I’ve seen: The first young black dragon fight I ran in this campaign.
Every round everyone had to determine what attack modifiers were in effect. And I’m not kidding when I say every person, every round.
The dragon had multiple penalties to its defenses, but only if the cleric or rogue had hit with their attack and the dragon had multiple penalties to its attacks depending on whether it had been marked by the paladin or the cleric had hit with a different power. Oh and don’t forget concealment from an ally, second wind defense bonuses, darkness effects, and so on.

Solution: There is no simple solution as each power would have to be looked at individually, but a simple attack or defense bonus for the user of the effect would be fast and simple, maybe with a further bonus to make up for any meta-changes to the power (like reducing your target’s AC).

Example: Griffon’s Wrath (level 7 fighter encounter power); it’s a standard strength attack for 2 dice of damage + str mod (and others) and the target takes -2 to AC until the end of your next turn.
How about we change it to a strength attack + 3 and no penalty to AC?

Exception: Powers that last the entire combat. Since they are not conditional and they are persistent, remembering your +1 to attack from Bless is much easier.

Second: Marking.
First off, the DM is the brain of the monsters. He should be able to decide what a monster would do based off of its experience, intelligence, and role-playing qualities and not be forced to attack the “defender” or be faced with a ton of penalties.
This is a tabletop RPG, not an MMO.

Solution: Marking has to go. It causes way too many slow downs and conditional effects.
Unfortunately marking is incredible ingrained into the system that pulling it out may not be so easy.

My current thought is to take every class with marking built into it and replace the marking with something flavored to the class but gives an all-combat-long effect.
A paladin would lose his ability to mark and all powers associated with it, but would gain an encounter power (maybe daily) that would give his allies a +2 to defenses (not himself) for the combat while the paladin gained vulnerability 2 (or 5). This would make the other targets less appealing, and make him more appealing to monsters. To me, this fits in with the classical flavor of the paladin sacrificing himself for others.

Third: Ongoing damage and “beginning of your turn” damage.
I don’t hate ongoing damage, but I’m not a fan of it. I have had way too many BBEG’s get totally slaughtered thanks to standing next to something or someone (a fighter using Reign of Steel, or a Flaming Sphere) and then getting pounded with ongoing damage attacks. These are all from daily powers that the party saves until needed for a big fight, which is what they were meant for, but it goes over the top (IMO). The issues swings against the party as well when they’re taking ongoing damage that will drop them unless they save, which they fail over and over again.

Solution: Give a bonus to the initial damage, but only have it affect one time and without ongoing damage. This, like all the others, may have to be looked at on a case-by-case basis as to make sure a simple little at-will power doesn’t turn into something more powerful than a level 10 daily.
A side-effect of this may be that leaders may be giving more temporary hp rather than free saves, but kind of means the same thing.

Example #1: Flaming Sphere (level 1 wizard daily power); anyone starting their turn next to it takes 1d4 + int mod damage.
Wouldn’t it be easier just to say 2 + int mod damage?

Will changes like this be worth it?
I certainly think so and so long as we’re only changing the constant and pointless interruptive powers, we’re still rolling plenty of dice for our attacks and healing.
They make take some of the glory out of the combats, but level 1 combats should not take 2 hours, even against the BBEG.

Has someone already done this work?
If so, let me know.

If you have anything to add, let me know.
I love to read the comments I get.
Knowing that people read this blog helps to keep me writing.

Now the session was a special one.

‘Twas the night before Halloween and I felt that such a night needed something a bit more than my usual setup.

Our cast:
Admon (Scott); level 6 human war wizard
Duncan (Justin); level 6 Silverhome dwarven cleric of Moradin
Edward (Aaron); level 6 human paladin of Brekaneth
Kergan (Mike); level 6 Silverhome dwarven rogue

We had jumped ahead a few days and wrote Ander out of the story for this session with a reasonable excuse of him having gone back to the Valley to let Polaris and the others know what happened in the Shadowfell.

The party had stayed behind a few days in the town of Two River’s Rest, and Pehr’All had not shown his bony white visage,

The party was chatting with some friends they had made recently who were also adventurers:
Bjorn, a typical headstrong dwarf warrior who prefers to fight first and ask questions later
Norris, an elven archer, whose skill with a bow is overpowered by the yellow streak going down his back
Valance, a brave human warrior whose heroic nature will some day lead him to greatness or death
Norbert, a halfling who loves money almost as much as Troy McClure loves fish, and would gladly sell out his mother for a gold piece
Grinder, a wild and crazy human whose giant muscles draw much needed oxygen away from his brain
Jaycee, the group’s wizard and brain trust, and a bit of gold opportunist herself

Now we have the cast of a bad zombie movie, and all we need are zombies.

The two groups are exchanging war stories before heading on their separate ways on the porch of the Tavern of the Dancing Wyvern when they screams coming from multiple places.

The next thing they know zombies begin charging down the street attacking every living humanoid in sight.

That is how this one and a half hour long combat began.

Every round for the entire combat 20 zombie rotters and 2 zombies would come in from the multiple entry points on the map. On the third round and all subsequent rounds a modified flaming skeleton would enter as well (modified = replace all fire effect with disease/poison).

For several rounds the party tore through the zombies, killing the zombies almost as fast as they were entering.

But like all zombie movies, that wouldn’t last.

At first they were cocky and were using encounter and daily powers in a near wasteful manner, but they had no expectation that this horde had infinite numbers at the time.

The NPC combatants did as their personalities dictated.

Bjorn and Grinder charged in and started hacking away. Bjorn chose his targets a bit more carefully while Grinder just mowed down whatever was in front of him.

Soon Grinder was surrounded and had to begin hacking his way back to the porch of the inn while Bjorn was able to maintain a position near Edward.

Norris shot at everything that was closest to him. But he was quickly surrounded and unable to get back to the group.

Valance chose to protect Duncan, who ran off to fight off one side of the zombies almost alone.

Norbert quickly saw where this was going and he fled into the Inn with the rest of the staff and then upstairs to safety.

Jaycee had stayed close to the door of the inn and ran inside when the zombies started getting too close for comfort, but unlike Norbert, she still attacked targets. When the situation got worse, she was going to run upstairs, but found that Norbert had nailed the door shut.

Kergan was having a rough time with this combat as his talents went to a lot of waste with the number of minions present. But he did serve a valuable purpose in blocking off an alley that was rapidly filling with undead.

And the star of the session was Admon, the not-so-controlling wizard with multiple burst and blast spells and could only miss a zombie on a roll of a natural 1. His job didn’t really change much for this combat, which was kill as many zombies as possible, as fast as possible, and occasionally make room for the rest of the party to maneuver.

Now the zombies had other things going for them, and none of them would become apparent until someone was bloodied.

This was guaranteed to happen once you were bloodied and you had taken any damage from an undead. At the end of your round make a saving throw or you lose a healing surge, or take a healing surge in damage if you have no surges left. Repeat this until dead.

The only way to save someone is 3 DC30 healing checks in succession.

When someone dies, they immediately join the initiative of whatever creature type they are part of (zombie rotters for NPC’s, and zombies for PC’s).

So when Norris and Valance dropped and Edward and Duncan healed them, the damage continued.

When the party noticed this happening (specifically, Norris healing above bloodied, and then inexplicably dropping back to bloodied at the end of his turn) and still see no end to the undead supply, they went from a casual “let’s get back to the inn” to an “everyone back to the inn now!”

Over the next couple of rounds the party made back to the inn, facing up to 5 opportunity attacks each. And this includes picking up their fallen allies Norris, Grinder, and Valance.

Unfortunately those allies are about dead and Norris and Grinder eventually turn, and are then “put down”.

But Duncan is able to save Valance by making the three healing checks and using his clerical healing spells to keep him up when failed (he couldn’t help but like a guy who refused to leave before him when faced impossible odds).

Justin: “He’s like Lt. Dan from Forrest Gump. He did everything he could to die in this combat and he still couldn’t do it.”

So we fast-forwarded to the next bit as the fight ended up taking a lot longer than I expected.

The party boarded up the windows and doors, helped or killed their friends and then made it upstairs where we glossed over whether or not they got revenge against Norbert.

They got on the roof and looked out at the devastation from undead horde, which was still going on.

They saw what appeared to be a ring of death spreading out from a central point; a Temple of Thirus (god of adventurers) that was flying a new flag. The flag was white with red blood dripping from it, the symbol of Nazuel (god of undeath).

Unlike in the movies, the party could not wait this out as ghouls were batting clean up. Ghouls are not mindless zombies and they can climb. So the party had to act then and there.

They gathered what material they could and traveled from rooftop to rooftop as fast as they could.

This was a skill challenge of sorts, where each poor roll or failure added more zombies to their next fight. And for each natural 1 they rolled, a ghoul was added.

Edward, who has no athletics or stealth training, was pretty bad at this.

But as they fell off the last roof (a build in bad need of repair), the pair of ghouls and handful of zombie rotters were only a minor impediment.

Soon they were inside the incredibly dark and quiet temple, now defiled to Nazuel.

They find absolutely nothing in the entire place until they reach the chapel, where they find a very dark and barren room with lone man standing in the center.

“Thank you for coming. I was afraid we were going to be left alone all day. I was hoping to have company for dinner.”

His barely seen fangs and pale skin gave his origins away.

The party is not interested in playing verbal games at this point, so they attack. And so do the dozen vampire spawn that have been clinging to the walls above.

This combat went pretty fast in comparison to the others during the night.

There was also a special mechanism in the place that involved a series of mirrors to focus light and move it about the room, but the party didn’t get that far. The fight was easier on the party then the DM expected.

Vampire Lords are dangerous when they have combat advantage, and their healing abilities are powerful (regeneration, second wind, blood drain).

For several rounds this guy kept bouncing back and forth from being bloodied to not.

The party was not as lucky as he was able to dominate Edward for a round (who beat on Duncan) and he dominated Kergan a few rounds later (who later apologized to Admon for the welt).

But thanks to Admon’s minion sweeping powers, the vampire was soon out of flanking partners and the party wore him down slowly until Admon critted the vampire to exactly 0hp.

At which point it looked at Admon and laughed as it turned to dust.

Then Admon woke up with the sound of the Pehr’All’s laughing still in his ears.

But it was ok. He was safe and in his bed and it all was just a nightmare.

The Valley #11-12

I just realized that I haven’t given WotC a penny since the MM2 came out.

Out of the 8 books I have of this edition, I’ve bought 5 (core 3, PHB2, MM2), and the others are presents.

I have zero reason or interest in buying anything else, which is sad since I was voraciously buying books when 3E came out.

Other players in the group have bought a small variety of books, but nothing much recently. For some of us the reason is that we have no spare money. For others the reason is lack of interest in paying $35 for a book that might have a dozen pages of information we’ll use.

The cruel irony – WotC sold out to Hasbro, but we’re paying the price.

I’m not 100% sure, but I believe the last person in the group to buy a book was Mike. It was the Complete Divine, and I think Justin gets more use out of that book than Mike has.

(Several powers in that book, specifically the cleric powers, look like porn titles too. Hello…Stream of Life, Astral Seal, Moment of Glory, etc.)

For our sessions, I continue doing my best to take the good bits of 4E and use them as best as I can.

Examples:
I use minions as often as I reasonably can.
I try to hand out magic items that have passive abilities or work without interrupting combat flow.
I use monster templates and other modifications to make the standard ones more interesting rather than to use the same base creatures over and over.
I use skill challenges, but not always as written. Sometimes I alter skill challenges to be less of an encounter, but to rather modify an upcoming encounter. This makes sure that all skills will be useful at some point but doesn’t guarantee a giant fail if the party is missing one.
I make sure that I hand out the right amount of treasure without being blatantly predictable on how the party gets it (as in “kill a monster, take its treasure, rinse, repeat”). This vaguely follows the treasure suggestions the core rules give (though I use monster levels instead of party level).

Ok, on to the sessions before I start with the 4E hate yet again.

Session #11

Our cast:
Admon (Scott); level 6 human war wizard
Ander (Dale); level 4 halfling storm sorcerer (slacker XP gain)
Duncan (Justin); level 6 Silverhome dwarven cleric of Moradin
Edward (Aaron); level 6 human paladin of Brekaneth
Kergan (Mike); level 6 Silverhome dwarven rogue

The party returned to town with the Annesius children safely with them, to much fanfare (and some rewards of course).

Several people actually went out of town to grab the dragons’ bodies, threw them on a cart, and paraded them through town.

This made the party a bit uncomfortable, but it certainly helped spread the word of their deeds. Not to mention it may have swayed a couple of the council members to see Duncan and his cause in a better light.

We jumped to 9pm the next night when a robed man showed up at the Silverblade compound, asking to see Admon.
“Admon Silverblade?”
“Yes”
“Come with me”
“Who are you?”
“I am an assistant of Polaris.”

So Admon quickly gathered his gear and followed the robed man while Duncan, Edward, and Kergan joined.

An hour or so later and they’ve all gathered at Silver Lake, plus nearly a dozen sorcerers, including Ander.

While gathering up members for the cabal, Ander unknowingly added a silver dragon to their ranks, specifically, Polaris’s mate. That led him and the rest of the cabal to the current situation.

She explained to the party and cabal that the reasons the dragons attacked last night was because there was an active portal into the Shadowfell and it needed to be closed before anything really dangerous snuck on to this plane.

She and Polaris had scouted out the area of the portal and gathered what information they could, surmising that the Herollus family was possibly behind this.

The dragons and sorcerers were going to distract and destroy the black dragon defenses while the party had their own special job of destroying the defenses directly at the portal and to “calm” the portal with a ritual (skill challenge) to prevent any other creatures from entering this plane from the Shadowfell.

After the battle, the party was to enter the Shadowfell to permanently destroy the portal from that side while the dragons did the same from this side (also using a skill challenge ritual).

“How do we get back?”
At that point Polaris walks out of the water and hands the party several polished black stones with silver streaks.
“When you are calm, hold a stone in your hand and concentrate on me. The stone will bring you to me.”

For the record, “calm” means not in combat or other peril.

Five minutes later and the entire group were landing on the treacherous and rocky area that makes up the walls of the Valley.

Shortly after that the two silver dragons attacked the flight of black dragons, followed up by attacks from nearly a dozen sorcerers who concentrated their fire on one dragon at a time.

This gave the party to sneak into an exposed half-cave where a thin violet film shimmered in the background guarded by a floating and flaming skull and giant zombie that was swarming with rats.

As combat began, all the rats poured out of the zombie, making two swarms that the party just loves to deal with.

The party was doing quite well when a specter walked out of the portal and began harassing them.

When Admon was finally able to begin the ritual, the portal appeared to become more frantic in its shimmering, and another specter appeared.

In the end, 3 specters had appeared before the ritual was complete and the portal became calm.

At that point several of the party went to help the rest of their combatants (read as I allowed good-aligned party members to sacrifice up to two healing surges for 25XP each).

Once the dust settled and the party rested up, it was time for them to enter the portal.

They entered into a very dark room where they could barely half as well as usual (half normal vision, and everything had normal concealment), and walking around felt like they were swimming through mud.

Unfortunately, the change in the portal was seen on both sides, so several shadar-kai were ready for the party and attacked them upon entry. They also recognized Admon Silverblade immediately, and occasionally paid special attention to him.

But as usual, the party dealt with them and continued about their business.

As Admon was going about permanently closing the portal, the rest of the party could hear fighting going on somewhere else in the building they were in.

Moments after the ritual had been finished, several humans rushed into the room.

They wanted to know what happened to portal, and were very upset about it being closed as it was the only way they were going to be able to get back home to the real world.

These humans were at one time employed by the Herollus family and quit after a time, but were refused access to the main portal the family had. This left them stranded in the Shadowfell, and they were forced into hiding and banditry when they could (not everything is dark and evil in the Shadowfell, just most of it), eventually taking on aspects of the realm (the shadowborn stalker template).

They had heard that this small fort had a new portal opened and they intended upon using it, only to find the party had just destroyed it.

Since the silver stones only transfer one person, the party could not in good conscious (well some of the party) leave these people stranded.

So after much role-playing, and an opportunity to hurt the Herollus family added to the till for Admon, the party came up with a plan.

Session #12

Our cast:
Admon (Scott); level 6 human war wizard
Ander (NPC); around for appearances only
Duncan (Justin); level 6 Silverhome dwarven cleric of Moradin
Edward (Aaron); level 6 human paladin of Brekaneth
Kergan (Mike); level 6 Silverhome dwarven rogue

Using uniforms from other, now deceased, ex-employees of the family, the party dressed up as those ex-employees (even Ander).

Except for Ander, he was “captured” and would be turned over to the Herollus family and be allowed to return home.

But the real plan was for the party to distract the household and the “guardian of the portal” long enough for their new allies and themselves to escape through the portal in the basement of the mansion.

The walk from the fort to the mansion was short, not even a quarter-mile, but they couldn’t clearly see the place until they were almost upon it.

It was your standard gothic-style mansion, with a dim, stationary blue bubble surrounding it.

This “bubble” was to keep the Shadowfell and it’s effects out, allowing the mansion and its residents to continue on with business as normal.

The leader of the exiles chatted with the lead guard on duty. Once Admon’s face was shown, the guard went to immediately get his boss, Pehr’All Herollus.

Pehr’All gave an evil smile, and agreed to let the exiles return to their home plane when morning came, while a pair of guards followed Pehr’All back to his study with Admon in tow.

The exiled guards and the employed guards began chatting with one another, several of them still friendly with each other apparently. Ander and a couple of other exiles snuck off to scout around. And the rest of the party began discussing potential strategies.

First was the idea that the center of the protective bubble surrounding the mansion could be destroyed and the ensuing chaos would be a good distraction to escape under.

Then we jumped to Admon and Pehr’All having a nice chat in the study.
Pehr’All makes it known that he knows the party’s intent, but that’s okay, he’s willing to let them go if Admon is willing to cooperate.

He gives the standard spiel of the quick and painless death or the long slow death, but then adds another deal – no death.

But that particular plan is unpalatable as it requires Admon to give Pehr’All every last detail of his family, and to not intervene as the Herollus family destroys every shred of the Silverblade family.

Admon declines and says, “Don’t underestimate me, my friends, or my family.”

So in disgust, Pehr’All tells his guards to take Admon back to his friends; presumably to wait for their execution.

About that time Ander came back with some scouting news and confirmed some things the party had speculated on. He had found the room where he believes the shield is being emitted from (but it’s locked), and the news from the around the house is that the guardian of the portal is being held prisoner by that same shield and the shield gets some of its energy from the guardian. So if the shield is destroyed, chaos will erupt as the Shadowfell will no longer be held at bay, and the guardian may want to get some revenge for its captivity.

Thus several of the guards, exiles, and Ander created a diversion while the party snuck off to the shield room.

On their way they ran into the guards and Admon, and were able to get him away from them (not a combat, just a convenient and fast way to get Admon back with the main group for a fight).

First the party had to get the door to the room unlocked, requiring 3 successful skill checks to get it open, with each fail giving the guardians of the shield room a round to prepare.

The room was large with a bridge in the center. Under the bridge was dark blackness the oozed evil and the party just knew that falling into that meant instant death. On the bridge was a pedestal, and on the pedestal was a brightly glowing gem.

Floating about the room was three more flaming skulls.

What the party didn’t know was that each round, one of the skulls had to spend an action to maintain the shield by blasting it with some of its own energy. If this didn’t happen, the shield would become unstable and if this happened five times, the shield would collapse.

Also, a skull could spend an action and turn on the shield’s other defenses, specifically a ray that struck two random enemy targets every round (merely +6 vs. Reflex, but for 2d8+3 damage), and some runes that appeared on the floor (that the party avoided). And when I say random, I mean that Admon and Kergan took 75% of those attacks (my d4’s kept rolling 2’s and 3’)s.

In spite of all that, the party did most of the damage to themselves. If someone attacked the gem on the pedestal in any way, they would be automatically hit by 1d8+10 necrotic damage and 10 more ongoing necrotic damage (save ends).

As each flaming skull died, the remaining ones would get more defensive.

But eventually the skulls were destroyed and the shield became obviously unstable, appearing as though it were going to explode.

So the party fled the room before that happened, and closed the door, only to hear a barely audible pop and the sound of stone cracking.

They returned to the room to find the bridge and everything on it had collapsed into the blackness below.

And, of course, all hell began to break loose, initiate by a loud growl from beneath the mansion, followed by panic spreading throughout the place.

The party rushed to the basement hoping to get as many people out of the place as fast as possible.

But the basement was crowded:
- All four PC’s, plus 1 exile that each player controlled and acted right after the PC
- Pehr’All Herollus and shield guardian
- Pehr’All two sons (no names, and it doesn’t matter – they die) – both human mages
- 4 human guards
- 12 flunkies (minions)
- and 12 humans that sought to escape, with more coming each round. One third of these human were helpful to the party (offering flanking and could be moved through), one third was hurtful to the party (accounts as flanking against the party, and can not be moved through), and one third that were neutral (cannot be moved through)
- The guardian, a Thief of Life, a.k.a. a vampiric dragon

Each time an escaping human made it through the portal, the party got 10XP, even a hurtful one.

Pehr’All was quite aware of the party’s presence but he was preoccupied by the guardian.

“All life will pay for the pain you’ve inflicted upon me.”

That comment didn’t settle well with the party, so they did what they could to clear a path to the portal while steering clear of the two titans fighting one another.

The party was tearing through their main focus of enemies and the dragon was putting a hurt on the shield guardian.

Pehr’All could not hurt the dragon, and the dragon could barely hurt Pehr’All as they both had very good regeneration. So Pehr’All occasionally tossed one of his powers to hurt the party (such as a 5x5 field that does 10 damage a round and slows movement).

Once the shield guardian dropped the dragon attacked Pehr’All directly and in spite of his regeneration, it became obvious to all that he was a lich and he couldn’t take on the dragon directly. Sor Pehr’All searched on the ground for his phylactery (the gem in the shield room), and fled through the portal.

Now the party did take a couple of shots at the dragon and the lich, but when a rolled 18 missed they decided not to push their luck and fled through the portal as soon as everyone else was out of the room.

In moments they were all back on the Prime Material Plane and finding themselves surrounded by a multitude of people that would be best described as friendly, with Pehr’All nowhere in sight.

The Valley #9-10

Ok, yeah, I’ve not posted a blog entry in a while.
And yeah, I’ll be a session behind after this is posted.

It’s a matter of priorities, and while I enjoy posting, a blog entry takes a fair amount of time.

First I have to type it out from notes and/or memory. Then I have to half-ass-proofread it. Then I post it.

I don’t have pictures like I used to. It’s a hassle to deal with. I know it takes away from the reading when there’s not a visual aid, but oh well.

I don’t post the minutiae of what happens in the game. I’m not a novel writer (obviously); I’m a gamer who believes that recording what happens in his group is entertaining and possibly helpful to others.

Game-wise, things are going pretty well.

Dale makes it to about half the sessions, adding fire power to the group.

Scott consistently has shown that a “boom wizard”, while not optimal, is certainly a viable damage class – until the DM screws with you (read on).

Mike enjoys the time Kergan spends getting the role-playing he does, but will soon be forced to taking a back seat as the storyline shifts to other PC’s for a time.

Aaron is playing his paladin well, in combat and out. As a “tank” class, he’s pretty solid at defending the “squishies” of the group. (We don’t bother saying defender or leader anymore – we say tank and healer. We do say striker and not DPR though. That crosses the line into MMO territory. )

Justin is also doing his job well in combat, but he has a lot of backup with the paladin’s Lay on Hands and Kergan’s clerical multiclass ability. Like Kergan, Duncan has received a good portion of the role-playing. Unlike Duncan, for the near-future, I expect this to not change.

The large amount of healing we seem to get in our group has me wondering; is healing really that needed beyond one dedicated healer in the group?

In the first fight of the day, assuming we had everyone at the session, we have 6 healing minor action abilities available for use. This does not count Second Winds or other powers that the PC’s have taken that give healing of temporary hit points.

Let’s say we keep our cleric, but dump the paladin in favor of a different tank type (that controls better or deals more damage), and Kergan picks a feat that increases his damage a few points in the combat.

Will the combat results change?
I’m betting they’ll change cosmetically, but not overall.
The increased damage dealt or increased control will compensate the loss of healing by ending the combat sooner (damage) or suppressing/directing the monsters’ attacks better (control) thus ending with less damage dealt to the PC’s.

This is all conjecture, as it seems the lessons of 3E haunt 4E with the ever-present fear of lack of healing meaning TPK.

I’ll bet you that a group of 5 healers with a variety of abilities will do similarly to a group of 5 strikers with a variety of abilities if the combat is well-rounded and not setup to advantage or disadvantage either side. The same goes for 5 tanks.

The difference would be the amount of time a combat takes to finish.

The strikers would bring down their opponents fast, though there would be a lot of movement. And if they didn’t drop their targets fast, tragedy may result.
The healers would take a good chunk of time, as they would get beat on harshly, but then heal up easily. All the while their opposition is slowly worn down.
The tanks would take just as long as the healers. They would get hit less often, but would hit often enough to do small amounts of damage, nickel-and-diming their targets to death.
I shudder to think of what 5 controllers would do in a combat. They’d probably lock it down to a standstill.

All of this conjecture assumes that everyone rolls average and are all of an equal competency level.

As for the actual story information, here we go…

Session #9

Our cast:
Admon (Scott); level 5 human war wizard
Ander (Dale); level 3 halfling storm sorcerer (slacker XP gain)
Duncan (Justin); level 5 Silverhome dwarven cleric of Moradin
Edward (Aaron); level 4 human paladin of Brekaneth
Kergan (Mike); level 5 Silverhome dwarven rogue

Ander and Bobby McDonaldson became friends during the period of time the rest of the group was dealing with the dwarves.

Ander finally convinced Bobby to aid him in creating his cabal of sorcerers, so long as it’s done secretly.

The next day Bobby introduced Ander to a couple of sorcerers he knew:
Fiermach – a human wild mage with a far away stare who seemed barely grounded in reality with several burn scars on his body
Morgrim – an elf that reminded Ander of Sibylline Tarn, dark and prone to anger

Fiermach, when lucid enough to respond, agreed to join the cabal.

Morgrim wanted something more, a show of good will.

He wanted the head of a wizard named Infersidia. She had been doing “unnatural” things by warping nature and life, but Morgrim did not clarify, and helped in no other way. To get a group together to do this task was Ander’s responsibility.

Ander was able to get the group to go, but it took a lot of convincing and research work.

Their research did find them Infersidia’s location, a guard tower that the city sold to her. She was also not a member of the Wizards’ Guild.

When they found the tower it was definitely in disrepair. But that didn’t stop the door from being trapped (I like it when rogues miss traps).

After a stunning glyph blasted and stunned half the party, a pair of carrion crawlers crawled out of the ground while a spellfiend vine horror pulled itself off the side of the tower.

The fight was quick, though not exactly easy (read as: nothing really interesting or exciting happened), and next they had opened the door to the tower and found a magical field at the threshold that seemed warp the appearance of the inside of the tower.

When they entered they found that the field made the tower much larger on the inside, with the walls looking paper thin.

They also found a large grey dragon chained to the floor with 6 chains, and a trio of half-white half-grey dragon wyrmlings also chained, but just at the neck.

I wanted to have a tough fight with multiple dragons, but knew it was going to be too much for the party to handle. So I had each wyrmling have to use a move action to make a strength check to break the chain while the large dragon had to break each chain in order to use its abilities specific to that limb, neck, or tail.

Well I rolled poorly, but so did the party, which made the fight challenging without going overboard; though poor rolling all around makes fights take forever.

The next fight contained Infersidia and her minions, but I goofed and the fight was about a fifth as difficult as I meant it to be. It was over before I could modify it on the fly.

Soon Ander had her head (the group was not pleased by this fact), and thus a sorcerer’s cabal was born.

Session #10

Our cast:
Admon (Scott); level 6 human war wizard
Duncan (Justin); level 5 Silverhome dwarven cleric of Moradin
Edward (Aaron); level 5 human paladin of Brekaneth
Kergan (Mike); level 5 Silverhome dwarven rogue

In game time we jumped ahead a week, to the night of the party that Duncan was going to attend, to both sway the minds of the city council to adding another seat to the council meant for Silverhome and to establish himself as an up and coming person in the political circles.

The party had originally been intended as a small dinner party, but due to the recent issues the city has been having the invitation list was expanded.

The hosts, the Annesius family (merchants), had rented out a large ball-room (or the fantasy medieval equivalent), balcony and all.

Kergan was outside with some guild associates, working their thieving skills on people entering and leaving the place. Due to Mike’s rolling, he failed in his task. No harm done other than lost time.

Duncan’s goal was to get 4 of the 7 current council members to see things his way, and to rub elbows and impress a number of people (diplomacy checks).

The council members each had a DC number (secretly chosen by the DM) that Kergan had to achieve. The results would be modified later based upon the events that occurred later in the evening.

Admon and Edward were also at the party; Edward as a representative of the church and Admon as a representative of his family and their business.

Edward and his paladin superior made small digs at each other all night, and both successfully deflected each other’s verbal skills and neither came out looking worse.

Admon’s only job is to not make his family look bad. It turned out to be a difficult task for him. A diplomacy score of 1 and poor rolling will do that to you.

To keep one person from dominating the spot light for a long period of time, I had each player do some of the role-playing they needed to do or I that I pushed upon them (I’ve got to seed in future plot lines at some point in time).

We started with Duncan; the lion’s share of the role-playing tonight.

First he chatted with council member Hilfan Tryst and was able to push her mind in the right direction, but just a little.

Then there was Father Jason Adrek, head of the Church of Brekaneth, and council member. Duncan is in the rare position of being a non-church member that Adrek actually may like. While Duncan tries to get Jason to agree to Silverhome being added to the council, Jason tries to convert Duncan over to Brekaneth. Both decline, but in a polite manner that leaves options open for later.

Edward was spending his time trying to get a read on how the attendees viewed the competency of the city’s defenses – the answer was that the city has done a decent job and a lot of faith is put into the forces defending the city.

He also chatted with Zenith, the half-elf who is second in command of the Perceptors. It was like talking to a half-elf fighter/wizard version of Edward.

Tonus, a powerful wizard, and friend to all children (not in a Michael Jackson way), sat down next to Admon and chatted with him.

Tonus spends his time saying he’s heard some good things about Admon’s skill as a war wizard.
“I’ve seen wizards like you. I’ve lived centuries. I’ve seen people like you. You’re destined for a short burn; short but intense.”

He then says that wars and other such bloodshed can be avoided with clever manipulations.

Some of the group thought I was getting on Scott’s case about being a war wizard rather than a controller. This was not a correct interpretation of what happened. The role-playing I did was something Tonus would say.

Back to Duncan; next on his list was Thlyria Isara (Thleer-ee-uh Iz-ar-uh). She was sympathetic to his cause, but simply had too many other things she felt were more pressing.

Then there was Aegris Zahn. This was an “oops” for Justin, as he meant to pick someone else, but oh well.
Zahn is a corrupt politician who has used a lot of dirty tricks to get into the political scene, but no one has been able to prove anything.
He had no interest in what Duncan wanted, but he could think of 10,000 things that could get him to change his mind. Duncan got this obvious request for a bribe and moved on.

After Tonus was done entertaining the younger people with his magic, he pointed Edward in the direction of Terras Villium IV.

Terras was looking for some assistance in finding a place for the relocation of his family’s mercantile business to somewhere in the Valley. This was both a seeding of a future plot hook, and to bait something in front of Aaron; a potential magic store in the Valley.

Next was rapid-fire role-playing for Duncan (it was getting late and we hadn’t had a combat yet).

Horgred Gorn had no interest in talking to Duncan, but his uncle Dhryveg did. They were nice and polite and even a bit of charisma in all of all that, but there was no chance of any changes.

Brandon Accord, the life of the party, is the shining example of good on the council, and is whole-heartedly on Silverhome’s admission to the council.

Ilustaria Joron’s catering to the non-human vote made it relatively easy for Duncan to convince her of his case.

Then the party was over as a party member was killed by a shadowy blade going through his torso and his wife screaming about it.

For the record, Scott absolutely hated this combat because of my special additions to it:
500 bonus XP, -25XP per innocent killed (or all XP if a PC killed them), and -10XP for each square damaged by a PC (like a boom spell).

The room was full of party-goers (minions, who are neither ally nor enemy) and four shadow creatures teleported onto the balcony. They killed any party-goers in their way until forced to stop by a PC.

For several rounds the exit out of the room was packed, as panic set in and everyone tried to get out of the room at the same time.

The only person in the party who was equipped for a fight was Kergan, and he and his “friends” had to climb the balcony to join the fight.

Admon could cast his spells, but was limited to Magic Missile, and missed quite often (though he did roll and unnaturally high amount of natural 20’s).

But that is ok; at the end of each round one of the PC’s had their equipment magically placed on them by Tonus (who had left the party an hour or so prior).

Three of the attackers were taken out in the usual manner, but the last one, a dark stalker, had such high defenses that the party fought him for at least 10 rounds alone. But he did eventually drop and it was a very close fight.

(At this point the thieves, including Kergan, rob the place of any quick-to-grab items of value – like paintings.)

All the treasure the attackers had on them was a drawing of Admon.

As the crowd was picking up the pieces of what had just happened, they hear the sounds of the roof being torn apart, followed by screams of terror, then followed by screams of “they took the children!”

Next the party is running after a trio of dark draconic shapes flying in the black night with children in their claws. Once again Tonus helps them by illuminating the dragons’ flight to their destination.

Since the party had to run hard, I forced them to make athletics skill checks (DC16) to push some fatigue on them.

Six skill checks later:
Admon – 1 failure, -1 healing surge
Kergan – 3 failures, -2 healing surges, -1 to attacks
Duncan and Edward – 4 failures, -2 healing surges, -1 to attacks, -1 movement
This all had a enough of a difference on the combat to make me think it was just about right, as Edward had only 1 healing surge remaining, and the movement hit came into play just often enough to hurt.

The irony was that the group’s wizard did the best, and the two most athletic members did the worst.

The dragons landed in a clear area a short distance from the city wall, and unlit (save for Tonus’s lighting).

They had followed three black dragons, a young and 2 wyrmling, and waiting in the clearing was an adult black.

He was amused by the party, until he saw Admon and thought “2 birds, 1 stone” (referring to black dragons working for the Herollus family in some capacity).

As he was about to strike at the party a silver streak crashed into the dragon.

That’s when combat began.
The party had to face the two black wyrmlings, and young black dragon while Polaris, the silver dragon, took on this adult black dragon.
At the end of every round some minor effect from the two big dragons fighting would spill over into the party’s fight, in the form of some acid or cold damage.

The two children ran as fast as they could as the party and dragons only paid attention to each other.

Note for anyone wanting to run black dragons: don’t. They have high defenses, high hit points, low attacks, and low damage; meaning that a black dragon fight will take forever.

The party won, but the effects of the fatigue jog earlier (the athletics checks) hurt the party as most of them only had a healing surge to last the whole fight.

Admon: “I’m bloodied again.”
Kergan: “Wizard, heal thy self.”
Edward: “You’re on your own.”

The adult black fled from Polaris, giving a perfect opportunity for him to talk to the party.

The party was honored greatly, even though Polaris is a bit more scarred than most silver dragons his age, and also a slight bit less patient than his brethren as well.

And Polaris apparently knew/knows Edward’s grandfather.

After only a few minutes Polaris had to leave, though he walked rather than flew.

The party returned to the city and as heroes to the Annesius family.

The Valley #8

My last month has been busy and full of stress, hence my lack of updates on the blog. By the time I get this posted I’ll be 2 weeks behind.

As for ranting against WotC, nothing much new comes to mind.
That probably means I haven’t paid attention and missed something other than the standard batch of books I’m not going to spend any money on.
I think the ranting has turned to apathy.

Our cast:
Admon (Scott); level 5 human war wizard
Duncan (Justin); level 4 Silverhome dwarven cleric of Moradin
Edward (Aaron); level 4 human paladin of Brekaneth
Kergan (Mike); level 4 Silverhome dwarven rogue

We last stopped with Duncan having died while saving Ander from a revenge-seeking quickling.

But thanks to Duncan’s lack of greed and good standing within the church of Brekaneth, the party was able to get him raised for free.

Father Jason Adrek personally performed the ritual (in private) and made sure the first thing Kergan heard when he returned was “Keep your secret and we’re even”

Afterwards everyone went about their business.

Since this was Kergan’s last day to give the Thieves’ Guild the 2000gp they said he owed them, he planned for the worst, though he did have the money.

He sent a sealed letter to Lord Rushgar Hammersmith, with instructions to not be opened until later that night.

Oddly enough, another messenger, from the church of Moradin, found him to say that Agramarr Flamehammer was looking for him.

Next Kergan went to the money changers to convert all of his coin to silver and copper, just to be irritating (only slightly). Then he met with his new contact from Thieves’ Guild at the Roaring Bull Inn.

Their conversation was calm to the outside observer, but quite belligerent.

Kergan made it clear that Marko was incompetent and stupid and his boss agreed, but Kergan’s new “handler” made it plainly clear that Kergan’s current status in the guild was of his own making, especially by denying the guild information about Silverhome.
“Silverhome is off the table. That’s been clear from the beginning.”
“You don’t tell us what is off the table. We are the ones in charge of this town, not the mayor, not the council.”
The conversation went on this manner for a short while, but in the end Kergan was no longer on the outs with the Guild and would be getting jobs again shortly.

Kergan then returned to Silverhome and headed straight to Lord Hammersmith, mostly to let him know he’s still alive and explain the reasoning for the letter.

His note read
“Lord Hammersmith, my family is now likely in danger. Please spare what dwarves and resources you can to protect them. Long live Silverhome Kergan”

At that point Kergan’s family was protected for a little while, and his mother would be receiving a personal bodyguard for a few days.

Conveniently, Agramarr Flamehammer was with Rushgar at the time, making it easier for the DM to lay out the plot hook for the night.

For the past week Flamehammer had been searching the records for any mention of Kergan’s platinum pick being a key or something.

It wasn’t until Agramarr read into a personal family journal dated back to the end of the last Silverhome did he find anything.

When Silverhome was being abandoned, a small squad of dwarves lured a large force of goblins away from the last of the dwarves fleeing to the city. They led the goblins into a killing zone, one that would neutralize the numbers advantage the goblins had. Unfortunately the goblins were able to get help from dark sources (something unheard of during the time of the Silver Veil).

When it was obvious there was no longer a chance of winning, all but one of the dwarves fled. One of the surviving dwarves to flee to city was Kergan’s great grandfather. The one who stayed was Darniv Flamehammer, a great uncle of Agramarr.

Kergan promises to investigate and bring back Darniv’s body for a proper burial.

The next morning Duncan and Kergan discussed ways of getting Silverhome representation in the city council over breakfast. So far they’ve come up with nothing.

At that same time Edward visits Girvan Torl and asks for more duties, only to be coldly told that the only job he qualified for is to “look pretty”.

So he decided to just patrol the Crags. That resulted in any crime to move elsewhere.

But in the end everyone just gathered up to follow the plot hook the DM set up for the night.

The location of the last stand of Darniv Silverhome is supposed to have been in a cave in the wooded area between the elven section of the city and the region of Silverhome.

In spite of the lack of biodiversity in the Valley, the elves have done a nice job of keeping the trees in their area strong, healthy, and thriving.

Her diligence in protecting this area is why the elven woman Mavath’riel saw the party long before they found the cave they were looking for.

She introduced (from a distance) herself and questioned the party about their plans.

When they told her of their plans, she informed them that entering the cave would not be a good idea as the cave is the home to the only two mated bears within the Valley, and they would not take kindly to such an intrusion into their home.

She then states that she could assist the party by luring the bears away for a short time, but first they would have to prove to her that they know a little something of nature in the Valley and therefore are not mindless destroyers of the land.

Unluckily for the party, none of them took Nature as a skill during character creation. Luckily for the party I knew that and increased the DC’s needed and allowed for other skills to be used.

I won’t list the questions, as they’re actually pointless questions only meant to facilitate role-playing and had no actual answers as the answers were supplied by skill check rolls, which the party answered correctly with no need to resort to threats or other forms of bribery.

(I did have another out, a dear carcass to lure the bears from their cave for a time. But since there are no dear in the Valley, they would have had to hire someone to leave the Valley, hunt a dear somewhere else, and then bring it back. That would have cost at least a couple of days and 250gp.)

Mavath’riel told them that they had 2 hours to take care of their business in the cave.

At the back of the cave they found an old but sturdy door that showed signs of something beating on it from the inside long ago.

They find no locks, only an indentation that perfectly fit the platinum pick of Kergan’s.

The old door opened slowly, revealing a room with an eerie green light and several devilish creatures and skeletons ready for battle.

The party took care of them with relative ease thanks to the DM not being ready for a level 5 war wizard who readily threw in his brand new Fireball to clear out the minions the DM placed in the room. The rogue did take a beating, but that was his own fault for running to the back lines of a fight all on his own without an easy form of escape.

The only exit from this room was another door just like the last one.

The new room revealed was one light by hidden yellow and white lights but with two identical vaults built into the back corners, and standing guard was a trio of mechanical dwarves, one of them riding a mechanical boar.

The dwarves never moved until the party entered the room. Neither did the pendulums.

The Kergan failed in missing the trigger plates for the pendulum blades that swung across the room at varying locations (on a rotation that monsters in the room knew, but not the PC’s, but they could determine which one was next with a minor action).

The dwarves gave the party a nice but manageable fight, and the pendulums did nothing more than force the party to dance a little.

But the second trap of the room caught the group off guard.

I decided that having one trap was quaint, easily manageable, and predictable.

Players expect a pit trap in spots. But they don’t expect an additional trap at the bottom of the trap and on the other side of the trap.

This time there was a pair of fire spitting nozzles, one guarding each vault. Once someone got near the vaults, they’d activate and start blasting.

One vault had the control panels to disarm the traps in the room. The other had the treasure spoken of.

The beating the party had taken from the dwarves and fires left them a bit weakened, so after the dwarves were down they took a rest, and eventually so did the traps which made it easy on Kergan to disarm.

Kergan also gave the party the coin treasure, but kept the item treasure to be given directly to Agramarr.

Once they were back in Silverhome, Agramarr returned most of the treasure to the party, keeping only a trinket for himself and Darniv’s book (which described the sacrifices many dwarves made so that the rest of them could flee to city, and that he made the mechanical protectors to carry for him when he passed).

It was considered odd that they never found Darniv’s body, but not odd enough to warrant further investigation.

Quests completed:
Kergan – The Platinum Key [Level: Unknown (4). Reward: Unknown (175XP). Find the long lost cache of treasure that your father told you that your miniature platinum pick would be the key to.]

The Valley #7

Have any of you heard any rumors about 5E being worked on?
If so, have you heard anything about it being dice-less?

If that happens, I guarantee you that I will drop D&D immediately.
No hesitation.
No regrets.
Hackmaster here I come.

Personally I think Dale will love Hackmaster, due to its joking references to AD&D 1E.
The rest of the group probably not so much as none of them have played much of anything before 2E.

Why would I give up a game I love over the removal of little plastic polyhedrons?
Because it would be just another step in removing what makes D&D into D&D.

At this session we discussed how D&D could be made dice-less, and we could only come up with something very similar to Magic: the Gathering.
Each round you gain X amount of a power, let’s call it mana, and you use that power to perform certain special actions, like spells.
You can add certain mechanics to make it different, but it looks, walks, and quacks like a duck named M:tG.

I’d rather be an anachronism than play that.

I just hope those rumors are just rumors or a joke.

There’s been a running joke in group – one day we’ll have to buy new PHB’s every couple of years, and if we’re lucky we’ll get the one with the rare fighter class in it.

Yeah I know; it’s only a matter of time before I just say “Screw this game! I’m done with it!” unless WotC/Hasbro cuts the crap.

This session consisted of a decent amount of role-playing followed by one long fight and one average length fight, both of which were very tough.

Our cast:
Admon (Scott); level 4 human war wizard
Ander (Dale); level 3 halfling sorcerer
Duncan (Justin); level 4 Silverhome dwarven cleric of Moradin
Edward (Aaron); level 4 human paladin of Brekaneth
Kergan (Mike); level 4 Silverhome dwarven rogue

Ander, finding that all of his friends had disappeared on him and still feeling under the weather (hangover), chose to sleep in a full day. Then on the morning that the rest of the group found the Voice of Brekaneth and returned with it, Ander began a search for other sorcerers in the Valley.

But sorcerers aren’t exactly on a list (anymore), and he has no contacts with the rogue’s guild, so he decides to head to the Valley’s newest dive-bar.

So he gets relatively naked and brings only 2gp with him and heads to an open-air bar in the Crag area of town.

The place’s name is Hellcrag’s Diner, but the only food served there is low quality cheese.
Of course the bartender was neither nice nor helpful, especially not for two gold pieces.
As is required with a stereotypical dive bar, several less-than-savory characters decided to take out their mommy issues on the halfling sorcerer.

That’s when Bobby McDonaldson showed up.
With a few words, none with any kind of obvious malice, the thugs left.
Bobby, a dark haired halfling, with a pleasant smile and demeanor immediately befriended Ander. According to him, it never hurts to have friends of Ander’s sort.

When Ander filled him on his idea of creating a group or sorcerers, Bobby let him know that it was not the best of ideas to create a sorcerers’ cabal in the Valley, but he’d try to get in contact with some other sorcerer friends of his.

They made plans to meet at the Roaring Bull Inn the next day and Bobby would bring some of his friends.

The other four members of the group had returned to the city with the Voice of Brekaneth hidden under Admon’s robes.

After reporting in what they’d found about the destroyed goblin encampment, Kergan and Duncan headed back to Silverhome (for some relatively sundry role-playing) while Admon and Edward took the Voice directly to the Grand Temple of Brekaneth.

Upon walking into the temple Edward had a vision of him leading a troop of men into battle while he wore gleaming armor and wielded his sword that now had alternating bands of steel and onyx on its blade.

They first showed Girvan Torl the Voice, who then takes it to Father Jason Adrek.

Adrek is quite shocked and pleased to have the Voice back, but when he hears that those who don’t revere Brekaneth were involved in its reclamation, he sent someone to summon Kergan and Duncan immediately.

When the two dwarves were arrived, Adrek almost bluntly asked “What do we need to do to keep you quiet about this?”

Kergan had some requests at the ready – he wants information about the platinum pick his father gave him and he wants to know about someone in the Thieves’ Guild named “Sam”.

Duncan asked for nothing more than to aid the church without betraying his own loyalties to Moradin. Adrek is pleased by this response (because Justin rolled a 30 on his diplomacy check).

Admon asked for information about the Herollus family.

Edward is not asked, but sought nothing either as it was his duty.

Later that day Ander goes to report his activities to the ever-unpleasant Sibylline Tarn.
After berating Ander for something insignificant he states/asks him “You don’t smell it do you?”
“Smell what?”
“That’s what I thought.”

The next day Bobby and Ander meet at the Roaring Bull Inn but Bobby sadly responds that none of his sorcerer friends seem to be available for anything. Ander fails to add 2 and 2, and it gets him killed.

That evening the whole group is back together relaxing at the inn. Everyone around them seems to be irritated as if it was a hot and oppressive summer’s day.

While just chatting away, Ander is yanked out of his chair and through the door of the inn (breaking it) into the area outside of the inn that has been recently converted to a small grove of trees. All was done by some unseen force.

When he moves to run back into the inn, he is hit by a blast from a multi-colored point of light that coalesces out thin air. That same point of light pulls a woman from out of another building and disintegrates her on the spot and then it shoots out a red, black, blue, and green bolt of energy that form into a fiery harpy and a black, blue, and green humanoid dragon creatures. None of them look like they want to play Twister.

The party immediately rushed into action.

This combat beat the hell out of the party with almost everyone dropping at least once. The fire harpy did 5 fire damage to everyone on their round and the dragon-men did poison, acid, and lightning damage to the party in addition to dazing them.

If anything, this combat showed me the upper limits of the party’s abilities as the plethora of healing and damage prevention the party had was pushed beyond it limits.

The most interesting tweak to this combat was the “Chaos Spark”, the multi-colored point of light that started the whole thing. After a few rounds Admon and Ander realized that they (“they” meaning those with arcane abilities) could possibly take control of the Chaos Spark to prevent it from randomly striking out at the party (2 attacks per round and +8 vs. AC for 2d8+3 damage). By using a standard action they could make a DC17 Arcana check to force the Chaos Spark to include the party’s opponents in its random attacks. On a DC27 Arcana check, they could force the Chaos Spark to shoot only at their opponents, and on a natural 20 (still DC27) they could force the spark to attack specific targets.

This control must be done every round, so Admon was pretty much relegated to spark duty for the rest of combat. This was arguably the most important job in the party at the time, if anything just to keep the Chaos Spark from attacking the party.

On the second to last action of the combat, Ander died due to the ongoing fire damage.
On the last action of the combat, Kergan got a critical hit on the harpy, killing her and ending the combat.

But before they had the opportunity to mourn him, everything that the Chaos Spark spit out got sucked back into it while everything that had happened during the combat was put back together (in a reverse action like in bad sci-fi movies). When that was complete the spark spit out some items and turned into a gem, then fell to the ground.

Then the officials showed up to ask questions.
The lady who was disintegrated was back together, but she was hysterical for quite a while.

Then the sorcerers began showing up, and all were upset (or worse) that they had missed it.

Even Sibylline arrived, and was quite irritated that Ander was the lucky one who was gifted with the appearance of the Chaos Spark.

Ander, after the usual berating from Sibylline was done, got a little uppity with Sibylline. Ander was rewarded with being thrown into the wall with a flick of Tarn’s wrist.

The officials nearby did nothing to help.

The next morning Bobby shows up at Ander’s home and rapidly tells him that he was finally able to contact a couple of his sorcerer friends. And although Ander doesn’t quite trust him, he follows Bobby.

An hour later Duncan, Edward, Kergan, and Admon each received a letter stating something like “If you ever want to see Ander alive again…”

A short while later they all had gathered together outside the warehouse they had all met at.

They knew it was an ambush, and they discussed whether or not saving the halfling was worth it, but at least one person in the group has a good alignment so they went in.

Inside they found the warehouse slightly cleaner than the last time they saw it, but it had a pair of unconscious halflings hanging upside down from the ceiling.

On the ledge was “Evil Bobby” laughing at the party and talking rapidly.
“Hi! Remember me? Kill them!”

With that Evil Bobby laughed and turned into the quickling from the last session, plus a displacer beast and owlbear appeared.

Ander wakes up early in the combat, and is cut loose by Kergan, but that doesn’t help the party much.

Instead of this simply being a tough fight, the party made some bad decisions, and later that night they knew it.

Early in the fight they focus on the displacer beast, but once he’s bloodied they ignored him and started going after Evil Bobby and the owlbear. This means that for several rounds longer than it should have the displacer beast was able to rip into the party.

When they finally started focusing on one target at a time, the combat ended fast, but not before Duncan died from failing three death saves.

Lucky for him he didn’t ask for anything from the church earlier in the session.

Quests completed:
Starting quest – Your First Steps [Level: 1. Reward: 100XP. Use the Ritual of the Younger to enchant the Armor and Sword of the Younger to at least a +1 status.]

New quests:
None

The Valley #5 & #6

Ok, these past few weeks have left me with very little free time, hence the lack of blog entries.

My options are to either spend my time making a half-way decent module for game night, or to make a blog entry.

With that said, let’s jump right into sessions #5 & #6, with a bit less information than what I usually give.

Mike and Justin couldn’t make it for session #5, and Dale had to skip session #6 (after the next session he’s going to miss a lot more too).

Our cast:
Admon (Scott); level 3-4 human war wizard
Duncan (Justin); level 3 Silverhome dwarven cleric of Moradin
Edward (Aaron); level 3 human paladin of Brekaneth
Kergan (Mike); level 3 Silverhome dwarven rogue
Ander (Dale); level 3 halfling sorcerer

We last stopped where only Edward and Admon had been told of the Voice of Brekaneth being a fake, the original had been taken by a misguided fanatic of Brekaneth, while the town went on alert and Silverhome shut its doors due to warnings of a goblin attack.

Edward, given the way the facts appeared to him, did not believe that the Broken Bone goblin clan had the Voice. He considered it more likely that something else snatched it from the thief on his way into Broken Bone territory.

So he and Admon began researching for information about the Voice of Brekaneth and the person who took it.

During this time Ander is on a personal quest for a new home in the Valley and the DM successfully drains his coffers of nearly 100gp. He is also instructed by Sibylline Tarn to spy on the church, but he pretty much ignores that and mostly just hangs out at the church with Edward during his search for information.

When he sleeps his first night in his new place he has weird dreams that he is either really small or the trees are really tall and he is terrified and running during a storm. He has these dreams more than once throughout the night.

Their research and interviewing gives them plenty of information, but nothing that concretely tells them where to go, but a rough idea.
- The thief’s name was Valendorn Desh, an unassuming sergeant in the military wing of the church with some friends that had dreams of adventuring.
- The Voice of Brekaneth is an onyx-headed mace that was either gifted-to or created by the high priest Kretack during the purging of the other human religions early in the Valley’s history. In the hands of a believer of Brekaneth it is stronger and can be imbued with divine power.

While all of this is going on there are occasional hit and run attacks by goblins throughout the area outside the city walls, but nothing large; attacking guard towers for just a couple of javelin throws before running off, killing farmers and/or stealing livestock, or just simply making itself known and running away.

All of these actions have no obvious pattern, but they succeed in keeping the city’s defense off-guard.

One particular night the goblins finally attack. The main focus of their attack is the Grand Temple of Brekaneth, but a few attacks occur throughout the rest of the city.

While walking home from the Roaring Bull Inn, and very drunk (-3 to all attack/skill rolls, but +1 to damage and 3 temporary hit points) Ander is the target of one of those random goblin attacks.

He survives the small attack (4 goblin minions & 1 stormclaw scorpion), but is nearly killed. When that’s done with, he resumes his walk home and passes out on his new bed.

Admon had to deal with a similar situation where he needed to get up to a guard tower near the church to aid in controlling the waves of goblins. He simply had to run 100’ through a gauntlet of variable goblin minions and a fire beetle to get to a door, open it, get inside, and then close it. He succeeds while nearly dying in the process.

Edward is put in charge of guarding the main church, where the fake Voice is located. He surmised correctly that they were going to try to come get the Voice with this attack. Each round more friendly guards or not-so-friendly goblins would appear. To simplify the combat if one of those were to move into the square of the other they would both disappear. Edward’s biggest target of issue was a stronger goblin with the intent of taking the Voice and leaving.

Dale: “He can die defending a fake?”
Yes he can (but he didn’t).

The next morning, after resting and some “hair of the dog” they interviewed the last person to have seen Valendorn Desh alive, a man named John Grey who works for the Silverblade family as a guard.

But he gave very little information. Desh and his friend headed out of the main gate of the city and headed in the direction of the Broken Bone clan.

Given that Crater Lake lies along that path, they figure they have a long shot chance that the Voice will be somewhere in the lake or its vicinity.

- End of Session #5 / Beginning of Session #6 -

During the lockdown of Silverhome Kergan begins learning more about the church of Moradin, setting up a role-playing reason for him to multi-class into cleric.

Once the lockdown was lifted Duncan immediately went to see Mayor Ryan. After the usual small talk, Duncan was told that the party he was invited to was cancelled for the time being, so no chance to schmooze with the other council members and influential people in the Valley.

He also filled in Duncan on a little information – the city council asked Silverhome for help, but Silverhome refused, citing the council’s refusal to help them when they asked. There was also an unofficial report that Silverhome has no representation in the City Council and was unlikely to get it handed to them without playing hardball.

The mayor understood and agreed with that sentiment, and he intended to remedy it, but was unsure how.

Duncan tried to think of a multitude of ways to do this, but nothing that was workable. The only ways are to totally change the city council or get them to see that having a Silverhome representative would be best for all.

As per what’s becoming the group’s standard, they meet up at the Roaring Bull Inn.

While there Kergan receives some signals from someone in the Thieves’ Guild to come have a chat. He is told in calm and clear tones that he owes the guild 2000gp and it must be paid within 3 days or he’ll become pudding-bait.

He asked about Sam, the purported trap-smith Kergan’s been looking for. He was told “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stop asking.”

He knows that this is his only way to get back good with the guild.

He also begins looking for ways to scrounge every last bit of money he can get. Too bad he gave Rushgar Hammersmith his dwarven plate +1 just a few days prior.

Wouldn’t you know it, the city is still on alert and has all of its guards protecting the city and its main interested. So they have offered money for independent scout to search through various areas; including an area for Crater Lake.

So the party set out to scout for the city with an extra task just for them.

Their first encounter consisted of an attacked goblin supply post. They found several goblin skeletons stripped clean by rats. What they didn’t find until afterwards was one goblin body was still intact and had dozens of small knife wounds all over him, all done by a quickling.

While attempting to scout, Mike botched Kergan’s stealth roll. Then they heard rats and some evil giggling.

Word of warning, quicklings can be one giant pain to a party that can’t pen them in. Add in a rat swarm and a vine horror and you have a party irritated at you (I’m used to it).

In 4E, the fastest way to piss the party off is to stun, immobilize, or daze them.

The vine horror and rat swarm didn’t last long, but the quickling just kept slicing at the party round after round. No until they got him to 25% of his hit points did it run away.

Next they began searching around the circumference of Crater Lake (which indeed looks like a weather worn crater with several fast-flowing rivulets converging on it).

They stumbled across, literally, a hole in the ground made out of fresh webbing and camouflaged to appear like the ground. Peering down below they saw a 30’ drop with a webbing net at the bottom to catch them (how thoughtful).

A couple minutes later and all of the webbing they saw was burned away, and after the smoke cleared they lowered themselves down the pit, expecting a fight.

The trio of ettercaps and deathjump spider didn’t disappoint them.

The fight took a good chunk of time and no side had a clear advantage for the longest time.

And to make it more entertaining, Admon used a Flaming Sphere. The webbing smoldered and fire and smoke spread, giving ground hazard and the potential for obscured vision and suffocation (but it didn’t happen).

Eventually the party won, but it was definitely not a simple and easy win (poison + webbing + poor player rolls = fun but long fight).

After putting out the remaining smoldering fires and collecting their loot (lots and lots of copper pieces) they found another concealed pit, this time blocked off rather than a trap. When they listened they could hear the faintest electrical hum.

The room only contained five bodies that had been dragged here and not much more. The bodies had only a little webbing on them, and the party did not notice that the bodies had not been drained of fluids as you would usually expect from spider attacks.

They started searching the bodies one at a time, Kergan began with searching the body that looked kind of roguish (dressed in leather armor and daggers).

When Duncan touched the front and center body of what they thought might be the priest of the group (chain armor, no shield) he was blasted with radiant damage and then the spirits of all 5 rose.

The spirit of priest spoke “Keep your hands off of me you damned, dirty dwarf!”

The priest had in his hands a ghostly version of the Voice of Brekaneth, so Edward attempted to rationalize with him.

But the spiritual version of Valendorn Desh had no interest in handing over the holiest gift of Brekaneth over to someone who is friends of a believer of Moradin.

“If you want the Voice, come claim it!” (He was a warrior-priest after all.)

Instead of 5 ghostly apparitions to face, they faced 5 flesh and blood opponents, each with a little magic item (if just to say to the players “How do you like it?”).

But the party kicked ass. They burned action points and dailies early in the first round, targeting Desh almost exclusively.

In short term they had possession of the Voice of Brekaneth.

And that’s where we stopped.

Quests completed:
Ander – On Your Own [Level: 1. Reward: 100XP. Obtain new living quarters and spend 25gp on furnishing it.]
Edward & Admon – The Holiest Gift [Level: 3. Reward: 150XP. Find information leading to the whereabouts of the Voice of Brekaneth.]

New quests:
None

The Valley #4

If you want to mess with your players’ heads, pull out some extra miniatures when prepping for the game.
Whenever I do it one player always takes notice and makes comment like Aaron, “I just noticed what you’re doing and I don’t like what I’m seeing.”

Speaking of Aaron, he didn’t like the revisions to the paladin’s marking ability, so he went back to the PHB version. He didn’t like that the only penalty for a marked target not coming after him was a -2 to attack. I certainly understand, though I feel the pulling effect makes up for it and I’m not a fan of marking when it causes a break in the flow of combat.

Ah, do you remember the good old days when all you had to do was attack once or twice, and then roll damage, and you never had to check for modifiers each round?

Oh early D&D, how I miss thee.
Though I just know if I was in a 1E AD&D game I’d find something screwy there that I totally forgot about (hush THAC0 haters).

This session went well, though the group almost didn’t do what I expected which meant I would have had to drastically change my plans.

Luckily I was able to make the path I wanted them to go all nice and shiny so they’d be attracted to it. Hopefully I wasn’t too blatant about it.

Our cast:
Admon (Scott); level 2 human war wizard
Duncan (Justin); level 2 Silverhome dwarven cleric of Moradin
Edward (Aaron); level 2 human paladin of Brekaneth
Kergan (Mike); level 2 Silverhome dwarven rogue
Ander (Dale); level 2 halfling sorcerer

As usual we started off with role-playing.

Kergan is almost desperately trying to get in contact with the Thieves’ Guild, but no one is talking to him, and he’s getting the feeling that he’s a pariah to the guild.

Not letting that stand in his way, he has other business he wanted to check into.
Kergan asked Duncan to get a temple historian to check into something for him. The best historian the temple has is Duncan’s superior, Agramarr Flamehammer

Before he died, Kergan’s father had given Kergan a tiny platinum pick. This pick supposedly is the key to some great treasure in the Valley.

Agramarr said he knew nothing but would research into it. And in a sign of trust I did not thing someone playing a rogue could do, he left the key in Agramarr’s care while he researched.

Ander had a different dilemma; he had murdered a captured goblin , and some of the people in this group he was with didn’t exactly act in an honorable manner.

So he talked to the only person he felt he could chat with, Sibylline Tarn.
Unfortunately Sibylline isn’t exactly the best person to ask questions on morality. His responses were in his normal blunt and scathing manner “Killing goblins is not something to cry about.” “Killing someone who has tried to kill you is what you are supposed to do.” “Honor is just a bunch of rules that your adversaries can use to kill you with.”

Mr. Tarn is not exactly a nice elf.

After other role-playing, we jumped right into initiative.

Encounter #1 was against yet more goblins. Initially the party didn’t exactly know why they were fighting the goblins. That would be explained over the first three combat rounds, in addition to something that wouldn’t happen until much later in the session.

The combat was setup next to a cave, with several goblins in and out of the cave and a tangler beetle, with four human guards being forced to mine for gems inside the cave.

As usual the party had no real trouble overall, but one thing for your own use – goblin sharpshooters are dangerous. Just ask Ander. In two different fights he’s been blasted unconscious by them.

Read to Admon and Edward over the span of the first three rounds before their action:

Round 1
Admon, why is it that every time you take a job from the city, you get into worse trouble than the pay is worth?

Edward, just a few hours ago you were doing your duty. Now you’re filled with confusion and rage. And worse, you can’t even kill this “thing”, this goblin.

Round 2:
Admon: All they said you had to do was make rounds to several of the guard towers, and you would each get 5 gold. Apparently the number 7 is not your lucky number.

Edward: You hear their voices behind you, telling you that you can’t do it. This wretched creature deserves to die for its blasphemy, but doing so means you and your comrades-in-arms die also.

Round 3:
Admon: Save the captured guards from the goblins became your new task. Then it turned into a hit-and-run attack. And now you have to stop a paladin from getting you and your friends killed.

Edward: With the grace of Brekaneth you calm yourself. You now have to let this piece of filth live or face a couple hundred goblins that have you pinned in here. But now it will have to answer why there’s a drawing of Brekaneth’s holiest gift on the table.

When combat was over the guards thanked them and told them that they’d been forced to mine for gems, even though this cave was no longer viable as a gem source.

They also found a map on the lead goblin. Edward, who’s learning the goblin language could make out some of the writing, but to ensure they missed nothing Admon cast Comprehend Languages.

It showed a simple map from a hilly area to the cave they were in. The hilly area had a spot marked “talk cave” and this cave was marked as “gem cave”. The writing read “The Dead Dwarves are dead and gone. We need more treasure to convince the Cracked Shields to join us. With them on our side we can destroy the human’s city.”

Given the two options of going back to the city or investigating the area of the “talk cave”, thankfully they chose to scout the cave.

The location of the talk caves had several small hills, perfect for hiding from a distance, but also perfect to sneak up on. This made it possible for the party to get to the near top of one of the hills and then for Kergan to do scouting of the staging area of the talks.

With a natural 20 perception roll, I gave Kergan all the information he needed, and a little extra to get the party to actually go and interrupt the talks.

Kergan determined that the talks were under way, both groups had set up camps and were doing regular patrols, both were around 300 strong, and there was a lone door on the side of a hill flanked by one goblin from each of the two clans (Broken Bone and Cracked Shield). But most importantly he noticed a pattern to the patrols; one he could exploit to sneak up on the door with only the two guards to protect it.

After much discussion (and another discussion about how plate armor had a mere -2 to move silent checks), the group decided to take out the two guards and ruin the talks.

The only possible snags would be not being able to take out both guards before they were able to blow a warning signal with their horns, to open the door before any of the guard patrols showed up, and to do it all quietly.

Another snag they wouldn’t see until it was too late was that the door was magically locked and required some skilled lock picking to get opened. What the DM didn’t know was that DC16 was entirely too low of a difficulty for Kergan.

The entire group made their move silent checks (though just barely), they took out the guards with their surprise round and normal round, Kergan got the lock open with Admon’s arcane assistance.

They were noticed by a guard patrol, but it was too late for the party to be swarmed. They got everyone in the door and closed it, and the door relocked itself, giving the party time to do some damage to the talks.

After barring the door additionally, they got a quick rest in and checked the next door.

That’s when I found out that Edward only has a strength score of 13. The door to the talks was jammed shut and if the party wanted to get a surprise round they had to bust it open with a DC16 strength check on the first try.

That was a failure until around the tenth try.

The room was relatively small (3x5) with a large stone table in the center. On the table was a suit of plate armor, a pile of good, and a piece of paper.

Two goblins from each of the two clans were on the long side of the table.

The party now knows that they need to capture a leader goblin to get out alive as there are no other exits from the cave.

Admon uses his first action to use Mage Hand to grab the paper, seeing that it is only the drawing of a mace (bye-bye action point).

The party then let loose with their daily powers, thrashing the goblins pretty hard while taking a good beating from the goblins.

In the end they decided to subdue both goblin leaders as an insurance policy.

Then they take a closer look at the drawing of the mace and recognize it as the Voice of Brekaneth – the holiest weapon the church has. Now insert the part where Edward wants to kill one of the goblins from the first encounter.

The leader of the Cracked Shield contingent knows that he won’t be killed so he just laughs at the party while the leader of the Broken Bone contingent much more easily believes the party’s threats, so he spills his guts.

The extermination of the Dead Dwarf goblin clan terrified the Broken Bone goblin clan, as they see themselves next in line (being closest to Silverhome and the city). So they are trying to create a truce with the Cracked Shield goblin clan and unite to make they aren’t exterminated too.

So they brought money and magical armor to the talks, but the Cracked Shields wanted the mace on the paper and they believe the Broken Bones have it.

That’s when the party barged in, but the goblin claims to have never seen that mace.

In the end the party succeeded in escaping intact by holding the goblins hostage, letting them go at the right time, and then running for their lives directly to the city to warn them.

Once back in town Duncan warns the mayor, who in turn sends warning to the appropriate people.

Ander talks to Sibylline, who is very short with him for wasting his time while he should be defending the city. Out of spite Ander leaves out the bit about the Voice of Brekaneth.

Kergan heads to Silverhome to warn Agramarr Flamehammer.

Duncan meets up with Kergan and Agramarr and all three warn Rushgar Hammersmith, including the information about the Dead Dwarf clan’s extermination starting all of this. Rushgar sounds the alarm while being amazed that the goblins would bother uniting at all.

And finally Edward and Admon go warn the high priest of Brekaneth, Father Jason Adrek and Girvan Torl, of the situation.

Note: Jason Adrek is not a fan of wizards, sorcerers, and their ilk, so he’s not exactly friendly to Admon, though he’s not as openly irritated when he finds out that Admon is a follower of Brekaneth.

Edward fills them in on the situation, with an emphasis on the Voice.

Adrek points out that the Voice is “right over there”, on the wall behind the altar.

Long story short, that Voice was a fake.

According to Father Adrek, several years back, after “I gave a particularly amazing speech” a sergeant in the church became filled with delusions of glory and stole the real Voice of Brekaneth. Then he gathered some friends and headed off to destroy the goblin clans.

Neither he nor any of his group were seen ever since.

On a rumor that the Voice fell into the hands of the Broken Bone clan, a force of loyal soldiers of the church attacked the clan. But Brekaneth was not with them, and they were slaughtered.

So a fake was made to hide the church’s shame.

And that is where we ended.

Quests completed:
Kergan: Goblins! [Level: 1. Reward: 100XP. Kill 10 goblin minions.]
Edward: Proven Superiority [Level: 1. Reward: 100XP. Be the only one of your group to be bloodied during a combat equal to greater than your level.]

New quests:
Edward – The Holiest Gift [Level: 3. Reward: 150XP. Find information leading to the whereabouts of the Voice of Brekaneth.]
Admon – The Holiest Gift [Level: 3. Reward: 150XP. Find information leading to the whereabouts of the Voice of Brekaneth.]

Next session: No Justin and no Mike.