Sean's Campaign - Session #7
I am a crotchety old gamer.
At least that’s what everyone says I am.
They say I hate anything new. Dale and Allen were picking on me because I endlessly bitch, whine, and complain about some of the stuff that WotC prints.
I say bullsmurf!
I have my own personal definition of what D&D is. There are campaigns and world settings out there that use the D&D classes and rules, but they are not D&D to me.
And I explicitly mean they are not D&D “to me” for a reason.
I’m not calling anyone else’s games “not D&D”. As long as you’re having fun, then I’m happy for you. I make no assumption that what I do is “right” and what you are doing is “wrong”.
But don’t go calling me close minded when I say that Eberron is not D&D. It’s anime.
Don’t say that I don’t know what I’m talking about when I say that the Ravenloft Campaign Setting is not a good campaign world for D&D. The setting is too dark and harsh. If the players can’t win, what’s the point of trying? (This does not include the module I6: Ravenloft.)
Darksun is another too harsh world that is not D&D. I loved reading the Prism Pentad, but I would never play in that world unless I had a pad of disposable character sheets.
Spelljammer! What was T$R smoking when they thought up this setting?
Now lest you think I hate every campaign setting that is printed, there are several I like.
Forgotten Realms is a full D&D world that has a rich history. It has enough information for it that will allow you to ignore anything that has happened to it in recent memory.
Kalamar is a D&D world through and through with amazing amounts of detail. If you’re looking for a pure swords & sorcery role-playing setting, this is it.
Mystara/The Known World was the game world that I started with. It is the equivalent of Greyhawk to many AD&D 1E gamers. It’s another interesting world with plenty of information and ideas that gets even more interesting when you add the Hollow World Setting to it.
Midnight is a dark and gritty world that is described as “what if Sauron had conquered middle earth?” Like Ravenloft it’s a harsh world where evil races hold power. But unlike Ravenloft, your actions have an effect.
Planescape was a good idea, but executed quite poorly. But you can ignore those parts (like the half-assed 1800’s English they swiped, and the factions) and use the setting to explore virtually anything in the D&D multiverse.
There are more game worlds out there, but I don’t think I need to list them all.
My argument is that I want my Fridays to be a swords & sorcery D&D night, not a robot-horror-why’d-we-bother-to-show-up night.
Now enough of my defensive ranting and let’s move on to the game.
And what a game it was.
Everyone showed up, everyone got to do something, and the main chunk of this adventure was completed.
Poor Aaron; he’s on his third PC and fourth PC death and he almost lost another one and a horse. Yet never once have I singled his characters out, it’s just how the game unfolds, where the dice land, and Aaron’s choosing to play heroic characters. Never once has Aaron complained and has taken it all in stride. Though this session he did something that was nothing close to what I expected.
Allen’s having a bit of a rough time now. He really enjoyed playing Caspar, but that didn’t end so well. Now he has chosen to play a monk. In our group’s experience; monks who dive head first into combat have a short lifespan. So now he has to play an auxiliary combat character. Like a rogue, a monk needs to have someone else tank for him or he won’t last long.
Dale is just loving Artillery…I mean Artemis. (Dale was originally going to call him Artillery but knew I’d shoot that down.) When they created the warmage, they had Dale in mind. He loves to play wizards, but always runs out of spells way too soon because it’s hard for him to “spectate” (our description for what a caster does when everything is under control and his spells aren’t needed). Now Dale has a class that has plenty of throw away spell slots and all kinds of boom spells.
Joy is having a little rougher time than her father is. She originally wanted to be an eldritch knight, but found out the hard way that in 3E, unlike previous editions, you can’t split yourself between a fighting and a casting class. She found that her character was very underpowered in both classes. So I allowed her to trade in one fighter level for one wizard level each time she leveled. Now she’s a level six wizard who splits her spells between combat, a little scouting, and a little buffing.
Brian I believe is having a lot of fun with his duskblade. The class is very useful in many respects, but it is not a tank class, at least not this early in the game. With its ability to buff and channel damage spells through its sword it’s quite versatile, but it has the weakness of low armor class and hit points. So like the monk, it needs a tank.
Justin is having a little more fun with his scout/rogue than he was before. He created his PC with the idea that Aaron’s character Ian would be the main rogue for the party, so Justin did not place his skill points in any redundant places. But then Ian died, leaving everyone expecting Justin’s PC to take over the rogue duties. So after a week of Justin’s complaints, I allowed him to redistribute skill points. Now I believe he likes his character more, but I think he wants to get back into hacking and slashing rather than running and shooting.
And finally there’s the DMPC Aarasilia. She’s fine because the DM can run her with a note card. But her name has to change. Several players have asked for Ari to heal them, when they meant Aarasilia. So after this session she will be known as Ysilia. I don’t like doing it after she’s been around for a month, but it’s just easier that way.
I believe everyone is happy now with the game itself, though I have thrown some stuff at them that is a bit rough to fight. But you know what? They’re adventurers damn it! You don’t go out to face the world and then run back to mommy when you get a bloody nose.
But I understand, there’s a level of trust that the players have to have in the DM so that he won’t throw anything at them that is over the top for them.
So for them to understand me a little better here’s an inside look at my decision making for encounters:
- If it’s an outdoor encounter; there are usually less of them in a row so they will tend to be tougher for the party because they can regenerate their resources much easier.
- If it’s a dungeon encounter; there are usually more of them so they will be of a lower encounter level unless it’s a boss type of monster. So they players will require some basic resource management.
But don’t go metagaming and think you can totally blow your resources in one combat if you’re outdoors. This DM plays fair, but not nice.
As for the game itself I think I’m balancing many things relatively well, but not perfectly.
The party is mostly sixth level and they have many disposable magic items and a few permanent ones. Which I believe is about right.
I need to place a few less potions a few more scrolls into the magic, but otherwise I think the setup I’ve made is working well.
Now for the synopsis:
The party stopped having gotten a long distance glimpse of the creatures that were taking care of what we decided to call the “vein” or the “fence” - which was the 1”-2” thick fleshy tube that had pulsed as if it had a heart beat and had some kind of thick fluid moving through it.
Since we “poofed” Lindo and Zelast back into the game, Lindo wanted a better look. The only thing new he noticed was a slight difference in color at a point. But he had no idea what that meant.
The group was still a little freaked out (I think I might have overdone the creepiness of it all) so they decided to take a second look at the ring of trash. It hadn’t changed.
So Sorra (yes I know Aaron stole that name from the PHB2) stood up on her horse to get a glimpse over the wall, but could see anything. Then a freshly stripped dwarf skeleton was thrown over the edge from inside the ring.
So Ari cast Fly and Invisibility and did some scouting from above. She saw a three-legged creature feeding itself bits of torn off flesh into its mouth. So she flew back down, told everyone and a combat with an otyugh began.
Soon it became a combat with 4 otyughs and 12 man-sized dire rats inside the ring of trash, so the ground was cluttered making combat hard for the Brightblades.
The combat lasted several rounds and the party survived with several scratches.
Then the party did what would best be described as dumpster diving on a grand scale. And they found quite a few trinkets, but they all need a bath now.
Next the party returned to their temporary hideout near the vein. Previously Artemis had cast a couple of Firetrap spells as a form of protection, but when they got near the house, they heard a couple of explosions and some chattering laughter coming from one of the things they had seen earlier. It taunted them a bit, but got away unscathed.
They did not follow it, but instead found another house to use as a base. But it made no difference.
During the night the mischievous critters made some alterations to the house.
The next morning, when everyone (including Sorra’s warhorse – which slept in the house) left the house, the creatures cause the roof of the porch to collapse down onto Sorra and the horse she rode in on (hah!).
Sorra was hurt, but the horse was in bad shape. But the party gave chase to the running creature.
Artemis somehow got an early lead and chased the creature as it ran around a corner, where 3 more of its siblings waited in ambush. Two of them gave Artemis a good scare while the other two ran after the members of the party who ran out the back door.
The party killed 3 of the things, and one got away. And they found out that the things have several energy resistances or immunities, and a high armor class.
But what they hadn’t found out was that these things were only the juveniles.
When the last one of them ran off, it was screeching like a kicked puppy. But while the party was thinking it was just yelling out a warning or a call for help, it was really yelling out for mommy and daddy.
Instead of the party running and hiding, they returned to the vein and decided to hack at it. They did, and it was indeed a tube of a whitish and pasty substance. Aaron, and I have no idea why he did this, decided to have Sorra taste it.
It tasted like chicken.
It didn’t take long for the parents of the juvenile critters to respond. As expected, they were much tougher than the juveniles.
What the party fought before were juvenile kythons, what they would be fighting now is 2 adult kythons and a single kython impaler – all from the Book of Vile Darkness.
And it was a tough fight.
Sorra and her horse both took a beating. At one point both were unconscious and one of the adult kythons was dragging her away for unknown reasons. The kythons’ high armor class (27 for the impaler) made it very hard to hit, so she fought mostly on the defensive, thus preventing as much damage as possible while the casters shaved off the kythons’ hit points.
Lindo and Trebor never stepped a foot into melee combat. They used ranged attacks 100% of the time. I don’t know if it was smart thinking or cowardice on their part.
Ysilia used every single spell she had to keep the melee fighters from falling. She had only level 0 spells and a wand of cure light wounds at the end of it.
Zelast was in just as bad of shape as Sorra, but with a worse armor class. It wasn’t until the last swing of combat, did he ever actually score a hit.
Ari did some buffing and some damage with spells, but she ran out of offensive spells before combat was over.
Artemis saved the day with the spell Hail of Stone. It’s a first level spell that does 1d4/level of falling rock damage (max 5d4) in a 10’ radius, but there is no save or spell resistance to it. In the hands of Artemis it does 5d4+6 damage and 50% more if he empowers it.
Its only downside is that it costs 5gp in jade per casting. In the situation this combat presented, it wasn’t an issue.
Of the nearly combined 200 hit points the 3 kythons had, Artemis probably took away 160 of them.
The party, being unsure if there were more of these things, or possibly even incorporeal undead, fled the city because they were took weak at this point.
This time when Sorra slept, she dreamt of the woman begging for help yet again.
At about 2 in the morning, a nasty storm descended upon them. Once the hail began they searched for shelter, but found nothing. They reluctantly returned to the city and slept in the cathedral.
(Yeah the dreams and the storm was a cheap GM’s tool, but I’d hate for the party to fight the big fight only to leave without any treasure or conclusion.)
When the storm ended, they heard the screeches again, but this time they sounded frantic and higher pitched. And when they looked outside, the northern half of the city had been blown apart from the storm. Because it hit the ring of trash, debris from it had scattered as well.
After some extra time for rest, the party returned to the vein. They found it in the condition it had been left, though areas next to the dead parts looked a little bit bruised.
Since some of the party were still a little weak from the kythons’ poison, the casters of the party decided to rain fire from above down onto the vein. Although fun, it produced nothing new.
The very next day, the party followed the veins to their center point, slowed by a kython booby trap or two.
- WARNING!!! Gross stuff coming up!
The veins led to a large open sewer pipe that opened up to the river. Inside the pipe they saw row after row of pustule-like eggs being fed the paste from the veins. When Trebor popped one of the pustules a tiny little kython fell to the floor – which was quickly crushed by Trebor’s shoe.
Then the party was attacked by 6 small kython broodlings - which were then killed by a single Hail of Stone spell from Ari.
Once that footnote of a fight was over, Trebor heard the faint sound of a person begging for help.
Farther back in the sewers was the kythons’ central area for feeding their eggs. Half a dozen humanoids, one of which was the woman from Sorra’s dream, were suspended from the ground.
They had no arms, no legs, and the lower half of their torso was open and exposed. Their intestines formed the large network that consisted of the vein. The kythons had been using people’s digestive tracks as incubators and feeders. They spread them throughout the town to collect moisture (it rains a lot), and to mark territory.
And as for what the people ate…
People taste like chicken.
Back when Aaron had Sorra eat some of the paste, I asked him if he was sure. He was.
Yep, the kythons had been feeding these people other people.
Hey they’re in the Book of Vile Darkness for a reason. And that book is stamped with an adults-only sticker. I’m pretty sure that cannibalism would be considered vile.
Some of the party searched around while others talked to the barely alive feeding machines to get the above information. They found the larder – 40 elves that had been captured and poisoned to 0 points of strength, and kept here for future use.
And on that lovely note, we stopped.
Next week Dale, Joy, & Brian will be out, but we’re still going to play. I just might have to do a side adventure.
At least that’s what everyone says I am.
They say I hate anything new. Dale and Allen were picking on me because I endlessly bitch, whine, and complain about some of the stuff that WotC prints.
I say bullsmurf!
I have my own personal definition of what D&D is. There are campaigns and world settings out there that use the D&D classes and rules, but they are not D&D to me.
And I explicitly mean they are not D&D “to me” for a reason.
I’m not calling anyone else’s games “not D&D”. As long as you’re having fun, then I’m happy for you. I make no assumption that what I do is “right” and what you are doing is “wrong”.
But don’t go calling me close minded when I say that Eberron is not D&D. It’s anime.
Don’t say that I don’t know what I’m talking about when I say that the Ravenloft Campaign Setting is not a good campaign world for D&D. The setting is too dark and harsh. If the players can’t win, what’s the point of trying? (This does not include the module I6: Ravenloft.)
Darksun is another too harsh world that is not D&D. I loved reading the Prism Pentad, but I would never play in that world unless I had a pad of disposable character sheets.
Spelljammer! What was T$R smoking when they thought up this setting?
Now lest you think I hate every campaign setting that is printed, there are several I like.
Forgotten Realms is a full D&D world that has a rich history. It has enough information for it that will allow you to ignore anything that has happened to it in recent memory.
Kalamar is a D&D world through and through with amazing amounts of detail. If you’re looking for a pure swords & sorcery role-playing setting, this is it.
Mystara/The Known World was the game world that I started with. It is the equivalent of Greyhawk to many AD&D 1E gamers. It’s another interesting world with plenty of information and ideas that gets even more interesting when you add the Hollow World Setting to it.
Midnight is a dark and gritty world that is described as “what if Sauron had conquered middle earth?” Like Ravenloft it’s a harsh world where evil races hold power. But unlike Ravenloft, your actions have an effect.
Planescape was a good idea, but executed quite poorly. But you can ignore those parts (like the half-assed 1800’s English they swiped, and the factions) and use the setting to explore virtually anything in the D&D multiverse.
There are more game worlds out there, but I don’t think I need to list them all.
My argument is that I want my Fridays to be a swords & sorcery D&D night, not a robot-horror-why’d-we-bother-to-show-up night.
Now enough of my defensive ranting and let’s move on to the game.
And what a game it was.
Everyone showed up, everyone got to do something, and the main chunk of this adventure was completed.
Poor Aaron; he’s on his third PC and fourth PC death and he almost lost another one and a horse. Yet never once have I singled his characters out, it’s just how the game unfolds, where the dice land, and Aaron’s choosing to play heroic characters. Never once has Aaron complained and has taken it all in stride. Though this session he did something that was nothing close to what I expected.
Allen’s having a bit of a rough time now. He really enjoyed playing Caspar, but that didn’t end so well. Now he has chosen to play a monk. In our group’s experience; monks who dive head first into combat have a short lifespan. So now he has to play an auxiliary combat character. Like a rogue, a monk needs to have someone else tank for him or he won’t last long.
Dale is just loving Artillery…I mean Artemis. (Dale was originally going to call him Artillery but knew I’d shoot that down.) When they created the warmage, they had Dale in mind. He loves to play wizards, but always runs out of spells way too soon because it’s hard for him to “spectate” (our description for what a caster does when everything is under control and his spells aren’t needed). Now Dale has a class that has plenty of throw away spell slots and all kinds of boom spells.
Joy is having a little rougher time than her father is. She originally wanted to be an eldritch knight, but found out the hard way that in 3E, unlike previous editions, you can’t split yourself between a fighting and a casting class. She found that her character was very underpowered in both classes. So I allowed her to trade in one fighter level for one wizard level each time she leveled. Now she’s a level six wizard who splits her spells between combat, a little scouting, and a little buffing.
Brian I believe is having a lot of fun with his duskblade. The class is very useful in many respects, but it is not a tank class, at least not this early in the game. With its ability to buff and channel damage spells through its sword it’s quite versatile, but it has the weakness of low armor class and hit points. So like the monk, it needs a tank.
Justin is having a little more fun with his scout/rogue than he was before. He created his PC with the idea that Aaron’s character Ian would be the main rogue for the party, so Justin did not place his skill points in any redundant places. But then Ian died, leaving everyone expecting Justin’s PC to take over the rogue duties. So after a week of Justin’s complaints, I allowed him to redistribute skill points. Now I believe he likes his character more, but I think he wants to get back into hacking and slashing rather than running and shooting.
And finally there’s the DMPC Aarasilia. She’s fine because the DM can run her with a note card. But her name has to change. Several players have asked for Ari to heal them, when they meant Aarasilia. So after this session she will be known as Ysilia. I don’t like doing it after she’s been around for a month, but it’s just easier that way.
I believe everyone is happy now with the game itself, though I have thrown some stuff at them that is a bit rough to fight. But you know what? They’re adventurers damn it! You don’t go out to face the world and then run back to mommy when you get a bloody nose.
But I understand, there’s a level of trust that the players have to have in the DM so that he won’t throw anything at them that is over the top for them.
So for them to understand me a little better here’s an inside look at my decision making for encounters:
- If it’s an outdoor encounter; there are usually less of them in a row so they will tend to be tougher for the party because they can regenerate their resources much easier.
- If it’s a dungeon encounter; there are usually more of them so they will be of a lower encounter level unless it’s a boss type of monster. So they players will require some basic resource management.
But don’t go metagaming and think you can totally blow your resources in one combat if you’re outdoors. This DM plays fair, but not nice.
As for the game itself I think I’m balancing many things relatively well, but not perfectly.
The party is mostly sixth level and they have many disposable magic items and a few permanent ones. Which I believe is about right.
I need to place a few less potions a few more scrolls into the magic, but otherwise I think the setup I’ve made is working well.
Now for the synopsis:
The party stopped having gotten a long distance glimpse of the creatures that were taking care of what we decided to call the “vein” or the “fence” - which was the 1”-2” thick fleshy tube that had pulsed as if it had a heart beat and had some kind of thick fluid moving through it.
Since we “poofed” Lindo and Zelast back into the game, Lindo wanted a better look. The only thing new he noticed was a slight difference in color at a point. But he had no idea what that meant.
The group was still a little freaked out (I think I might have overdone the creepiness of it all) so they decided to take a second look at the ring of trash. It hadn’t changed.
So Sorra (yes I know Aaron stole that name from the PHB2) stood up on her horse to get a glimpse over the wall, but could see anything. Then a freshly stripped dwarf skeleton was thrown over the edge from inside the ring.
So Ari cast Fly and Invisibility and did some scouting from above. She saw a three-legged creature feeding itself bits of torn off flesh into its mouth. So she flew back down, told everyone and a combat with an otyugh began.
Soon it became a combat with 4 otyughs and 12 man-sized dire rats inside the ring of trash, so the ground was cluttered making combat hard for the Brightblades.
The combat lasted several rounds and the party survived with several scratches.
Then the party did what would best be described as dumpster diving on a grand scale. And they found quite a few trinkets, but they all need a bath now.
Next the party returned to their temporary hideout near the vein. Previously Artemis had cast a couple of Firetrap spells as a form of protection, but when they got near the house, they heard a couple of explosions and some chattering laughter coming from one of the things they had seen earlier. It taunted them a bit, but got away unscathed.
They did not follow it, but instead found another house to use as a base. But it made no difference.
During the night the mischievous critters made some alterations to the house.
The next morning, when everyone (including Sorra’s warhorse – which slept in the house) left the house, the creatures cause the roof of the porch to collapse down onto Sorra and the horse she rode in on (hah!).
Sorra was hurt, but the horse was in bad shape. But the party gave chase to the running creature.
Artemis somehow got an early lead and chased the creature as it ran around a corner, where 3 more of its siblings waited in ambush. Two of them gave Artemis a good scare while the other two ran after the members of the party who ran out the back door.
The party killed 3 of the things, and one got away. And they found out that the things have several energy resistances or immunities, and a high armor class.
But what they hadn’t found out was that these things were only the juveniles.
When the last one of them ran off, it was screeching like a kicked puppy. But while the party was thinking it was just yelling out a warning or a call for help, it was really yelling out for mommy and daddy.
Instead of the party running and hiding, they returned to the vein and decided to hack at it. They did, and it was indeed a tube of a whitish and pasty substance. Aaron, and I have no idea why he did this, decided to have Sorra taste it.
It tasted like chicken.
It didn’t take long for the parents of the juvenile critters to respond. As expected, they were much tougher than the juveniles.
What the party fought before were juvenile kythons, what they would be fighting now is 2 adult kythons and a single kython impaler – all from the Book of Vile Darkness.
And it was a tough fight.
Sorra and her horse both took a beating. At one point both were unconscious and one of the adult kythons was dragging her away for unknown reasons. The kythons’ high armor class (27 for the impaler) made it very hard to hit, so she fought mostly on the defensive, thus preventing as much damage as possible while the casters shaved off the kythons’ hit points.
Lindo and Trebor never stepped a foot into melee combat. They used ranged attacks 100% of the time. I don’t know if it was smart thinking or cowardice on their part.
Ysilia used every single spell she had to keep the melee fighters from falling. She had only level 0 spells and a wand of cure light wounds at the end of it.
Zelast was in just as bad of shape as Sorra, but with a worse armor class. It wasn’t until the last swing of combat, did he ever actually score a hit.
Ari did some buffing and some damage with spells, but she ran out of offensive spells before combat was over.
Artemis saved the day with the spell Hail of Stone. It’s a first level spell that does 1d4/level of falling rock damage (max 5d4) in a 10’ radius, but there is no save or spell resistance to it. In the hands of Artemis it does 5d4+6 damage and 50% more if he empowers it.
Its only downside is that it costs 5gp in jade per casting. In the situation this combat presented, it wasn’t an issue.
Of the nearly combined 200 hit points the 3 kythons had, Artemis probably took away 160 of them.
The party, being unsure if there were more of these things, or possibly even incorporeal undead, fled the city because they were took weak at this point.
This time when Sorra slept, she dreamt of the woman begging for help yet again.
At about 2 in the morning, a nasty storm descended upon them. Once the hail began they searched for shelter, but found nothing. They reluctantly returned to the city and slept in the cathedral.
(Yeah the dreams and the storm was a cheap GM’s tool, but I’d hate for the party to fight the big fight only to leave without any treasure or conclusion.)
When the storm ended, they heard the screeches again, but this time they sounded frantic and higher pitched. And when they looked outside, the northern half of the city had been blown apart from the storm. Because it hit the ring of trash, debris from it had scattered as well.
After some extra time for rest, the party returned to the vein. They found it in the condition it had been left, though areas next to the dead parts looked a little bit bruised.
Since some of the party were still a little weak from the kythons’ poison, the casters of the party decided to rain fire from above down onto the vein. Although fun, it produced nothing new.
The very next day, the party followed the veins to their center point, slowed by a kython booby trap or two.
- WARNING!!! Gross stuff coming up!
The veins led to a large open sewer pipe that opened up to the river. Inside the pipe they saw row after row of pustule-like eggs being fed the paste from the veins. When Trebor popped one of the pustules a tiny little kython fell to the floor – which was quickly crushed by Trebor’s shoe.
Then the party was attacked by 6 small kython broodlings - which were then killed by a single Hail of Stone spell from Ari.
Once that footnote of a fight was over, Trebor heard the faint sound of a person begging for help.
Farther back in the sewers was the kythons’ central area for feeding their eggs. Half a dozen humanoids, one of which was the woman from Sorra’s dream, were suspended from the ground.
They had no arms, no legs, and the lower half of their torso was open and exposed. Their intestines formed the large network that consisted of the vein. The kythons had been using people’s digestive tracks as incubators and feeders. They spread them throughout the town to collect moisture (it rains a lot), and to mark territory.
And as for what the people ate…
People taste like chicken.
Back when Aaron had Sorra eat some of the paste, I asked him if he was sure. He was.
Yep, the kythons had been feeding these people other people.
Hey they’re in the Book of Vile Darkness for a reason. And that book is stamped with an adults-only sticker. I’m pretty sure that cannibalism would be considered vile.
Some of the party searched around while others talked to the barely alive feeding machines to get the above information. They found the larder – 40 elves that had been captured and poisoned to 0 points of strength, and kept here for future use.
And on that lovely note, we stopped.
Next week Dale, Joy, & Brian will be out, but we’re still going to play. I just might have to do a side adventure.
posted by BlueBlackRed at 6:25 PM
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