Our Expedition to Castle Ravenloft

I like creating new PC’s for new campaigns. It can be a lot of fun, especially if it’s higher than level 1.
Though sometimes that fun ends when you actually play the PC and find out that it just plain blows.

But that’s ok because we’re going through the Expedition to Castle Ravenloft soon.
If that module is as tough as Dale claims it is, then having a crappy PC won’t be an issue because you’ll be handing over your character sheet to the DM so he can convert it to a zombie, or a skeleton, or maybe even a vampire. Or I guess you could just rip up the character sheet, but what kind of fun is that?

To put a positive spin on that, you’ll have plenty of chances to try out new PC concepts.

Dale has given us a list of books we’re allowed to use and what base classes are allowed, and all of the other usual character creation guidelines.

Obviously the core books are allowed, the “Complete” series of books, the Book Exalted Deeds, the Spell Compendium, the Forgotten Realms books (the campaign world), and a few feats from the Heroes of Horror and Ravenloft books. That gives us a large list of options for feats, spells, and prestige classes.

We’ll all be starting as your standard level 6 PC’s. Dale has only allowed the core base classes plus the duskblade, warmage, and knight. I believe he’s allowing those because he’s seen them in play and they probably will “work” in the module.

Our alignment options are no evil and no chaotic neutral. That just means the backstabbing people will all be controlled by the DM.

Stat generation is the standard 25 point buy with the standard level four stat boost. That’s low powered compared to what we’ve done recently, but certainly fair.

Starting money is standard level 6 money, which means 13,000gp. If I remember the rules correctly you can only spend 6500gp on any one item and can’t spend any more than 3250gp on all temporary items (scrolls potions). It’s enough money to make you say “Arg! It’s still not enough!” but it’s enough to buy your PC the basics.

As a group we’re going to be creating multiple PC’s a piece and then decide which ones we’re going to play.

What we might possibly create, listed in order of what is most likely to get played first according to the most recent e-mails:
Aaron is going to choose between a druid, a wizard, or a bard.
Allen will be going with a bard or a ranger.
Brian has been inspired by watching the movie 300, so he wants a defensive fighter type, with a cleric of Kelemvor as his backup.
Joy is giving a cleric another try, and I believe a paladin as her backup.
Justin is going to do a rogue/ranger. No backup option as of yet.
I’ve already half created four PC’s a lucky wild mage sorcerer (might change to a wizard version though), a cookie-cutter half-orc barbarian, an elf warmage, and a halfling cleric of Brandobaris.

The first three of my PC’s I expect to have a short lifespan, the fourth I believe may live a little longer. But who knows?

Speaking of life spans, Dale has made it clear that this module has a huge potential to be a meat-grinder.

Now let’s make one thing clear, I love it when Dale runs published modules. He does a much better job a bringing them to life than anyone else I’ve seen.

Plus this whole gothic horror thing is something Dale just can’t get enough of. Outside of this particular campaign I have always begged him not to use undead because he consistently overuses them. Not this time.

As far as I’m concerned, he can go to town with undead.

And from what little he’s told us, he’s going to. He might even mean literally.

He has also laid out some options, ground rules, and advice for this campaign:
- A balanced party is vital. A backup cleric is suggested.
- He’s running this module as is. No extra little gifts from the DM as magic items and such.
- He usually tries to avoid a potential TPK, but not this time.
- He will be using the taint rules. I don’t care for those particular rules, but for this campaign I don’t see a problem with it so long as he “let’s the dice fall where they may” and doesn’t pull the punches.
- Don’t expect access to Raise Dead and the like.
- No cohorts due to party size.
- The monsters might not be what you’re expecting. Meta-gaming might not work.
- Notes to and from the DM are to be kept secret.
- If you’ve played the original Ravenloft module, keep it to yourself. (I actually own at least two copies of the original I6 – one on loan to Dale – but I have never looked through it more than just skimming.)
- (Dale got this helpful suggestion from WotC’s D&D podcast.) Since this is supposed to be a horror campaign, once the game starts no jokes or side-stories. Nothing kills the mood of a horror game quicker than a joke. So smartass remarks, TV and movie quotes, jokes, and anything else that breaks the mood is forbidden.

Except for that part about not joking around, I welcome the challenge. (That humor thing I’m screwed on.)
I want Dale to not pull any punches.
If he gets a lucky crit and takes out my favorite character, so be it. I’ll just make another PC and dare him to try it again.
If he throws an EL15 encounter at us and we don’t run, and we die because of it, oh well. That would be our fault for not running.

I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for Friday.

Sean's Campaign - Session #22

Sorry for the big delay, the past few weeks have been a bit stressing.

We took off our last Friday because 4 of the 7 of us couldn’t play. Which I’m sure earned a few points for those of us who could play, but had wives.

And now this campaign is on a deadline. If you don’t know why, take a look at my wife’s blog.

On there, you’ll see why I’ll have to take a hiatus from gaming for a while.
In fact, several of us might be taking some time off.
Dale’s son’s school activities will be taking Dale away from the game again at the beginning of next school year.
Joy may be out as well at that time as she’ll be starting her final year of college.
Brian is usually pretty open in the summer, but when the fall begins he’s lucky to be around half the time.
Allen may be leaving us entirely once the summer begins.
That leaves Aaron and Justin with a free schedule for gaming.

So right now there is a good chance that from early September to late November we won’t get much gaming done.

I don’t think it could be much longer. I can’t go without gaming for that long. Every true gamer understands that.

I don’t want to rush this campaign, but I don’t want to stop on it either. This campaign is supposed to go up to level 30, with the levels averaging once per 3 sessions. The average level is 12 right now, meaning reaching level 30 will take over a year of steady gaming.

So right now I think we might put a pause on this game for a while and give Dale the chance to run his beloved The Return to Castle Ravenloft.

He’s been itching to run that thing since he bought several months ago.

There will be no podcast of this session, and once we go on hiatus, I doubt I’ll have time to do any more afterwards.

No Brian this week, so Allen took over Zelast.

Thanks to the PC’s efforts to aid the city of Lataan, the city was able to repel the hordes of General Takral.

The morning after the assault on the city was a beautiful early fall day. The city was in better shape than its citizens expected it to be.

To finish off this storyline, we had one last fight.

The scouts for the city reported that the enemy was in full retreat, and not in a very orderly manner.

So the knight captain called for one last assault against the horde before they could regroup and try again.

Instead of performing another giant melee, I had the party have its fight against a troupe of fire giant weapon-smiths and armor-smiths.

So it was the party (7 PC’s ranging from level 10 to 12) versus 4 fire giants (CR10) and a fire giant priest (level 10 cleric, CR15).

I started the group off in a kind of chaos to simulate the rest of the battle going on around them. Both sides were allowed to have cast all spells that had durations of 1 minute per level or longer. This gave both sides several good buffs.

As usual, Ari’s and Artemis’s early spells involved nuking while flying and invisible.
Zelast and an enlarged Sorra charged right at the entry area to the forge of the giants.
Lindo charged up to the wall, but only did so to get a good point to do some spring attacks.
Ysilia followed the fighters, but stayed away from melee distance.
Trebor moved and shot his bow.
The giants threw rocks on the party, but the DM couldn’t hit squat thanks to his usual pathetic rolling.
The priest cast combat buffing spells, including Righteous Might changing his size from large to huge.

The middle rounds were simple chaos.
The entry way to the forge area created a bottle neck, preventing the giants from getting more than a couple combatants on the field of battle.
Ari kept up her nuking, but Artemis held back after only a single Cone of Cold.
Lindo jumped into combat, hit a giant for a few points of damage, and then ran away. He really couldn’t take more than a hit or two from a giant before he was in bad shape, so it was no big surprise there.
Ysilia spent her time healing Sorra, Zelast, and Lindo using her ranged healing spells.
Zelast joined into the bottleneck and took on a giant and gain any hit points lost back by channeling Vampiric Touch.
Trebor safely fired from range, using all of his attacks to do moderate damage to the heavily armored giants.
Sorra was trading blows back and forth with one giant. After she dropped that giant, she received a free swing on the fire giant priest when he was casting another spell. Sorra critted, and did over 90 damage thanks to all of the buffs and her power attack. That made the priest really mad.
The response to the attack was a furious assault. After only two swings Sorra went from nearly max to -5 hit points.

That was a bit of a turning point for the fight.
Instead of using mass damage spells, Artemis opted to cast Greater Invisibility on Trebor so he could get his sneak attack damage against the giant. But what they didn’t know was that the priest had Invisibility Purge active – so it was all a waste of time.
Lindo got in one last spring attack before pulling back.
Zelast, not able to hold against multiple giants, and especially not that priest, did a fighting withdrawal. Eventually he did fall once the giants were able to flood onto the battlefield.
Ysilia was able to Revivify him, but he played dead afterwards because he still had giants nearby.

While two giants took on (and out) Zelast, another one went after Lindo and Ysilia. Lindo kept up the spring attacking. He was able to some damage while forcing the giant to move to attack him. This also forced the giant give up his extra attacks.

The giant priest headed straight to the casters once his Invisibility Purge found them. But they had backup spells – like Fly and Mirror Image. By the end he had too few hit points to be able to do anything. Once Trebor, Ari, and Artemis dropped him (and another giant) they all turned invisible when the purge dropped with him.

Now we come to the “Boohoo!” bit of the night.
While the casters were finishing off the priest, Lindo and Ysilia had to deal with their giant. The set up went something like this; the giant would run after Lindo and get a single swing in for about half his hit points, Lindo would take a single swing and run away or spring attack if possible, then Ysilia would heal him unless someone else needed it more.

On one particular round of this, Lindo failed a tumble check (because I don’t care what the rules say, a natural one on a tumble check is a failure). He ended up only having 11 hit points after getting away from the giant. But instead of being the valiant lawful good monk he’s supposed to be, he chose to leave Ysilia in a position where the giant would charge her instead of him. Literally, he stood (cowered) behind the non-combatant healer who would have healed him moments later.

So I had Allen make a charisma check (Lindo has an 8 charisma). He rolled a 2, which became a 1. Now had he rolled a natural 20, Ysilia would have taken the hit. Had he rolled around 11 or better, she would have simply gotten behind him and healed him, thus forcing him to take the hit. But a 1 caused Ysilia to show Lindo where he stood in the pecking order; she ran away from Lindo and got close to Zelast in order to heal him on the following round so he can get back in the fight.

The following round the two remaining giants had only 2 visible, standing targets - Ysilia and Lindo. One charged Lindo and critted him for over 70 points of damage, leaving him well under -50 hit points. The other giant came to say “hi” to Ysilia with a single swing with a full power attack. She was already damaged, and this attack left her with -15 hit points.

The following round, an invisible arrow and spell barrage dropped one of the two remaining giants. The last giant, not seeing anyone to hit, ran away.

Final body count – Lindo, Ysilia, and Zelast (for one round)

By the end of the night, the party rejoined back at the inn. The recently raised Lindo and Ysilia were not on speaking terms.

In fact poor, picked on Allen pouted for the next hour (he really hates it when things don’t go his way). He declared that Lindo will never rely on Ysilia for anything ever again. Oddly enough, he’s probably right, since at the time I hadn’t decided that the campaign would be taking a break for some months.

Later that night the new knight captain came and informed the party of the results. The previous knight captain had been disintegrated by a beam from “some floating round creature”. He also told the party that they should leave town early the next morning, because that is when he planned to tell the merchant houses about the deal that was made with the dragons. He was fairly sure that the houses would not be happy and they would probably be out for blood.

The party understood and left the next morning, but they would have to return within a couple of weeks to return the merchants who paid for a flight on Ari Airlines.

Fast forward nearly two weeks and you have three of the group who have signed up to be in the great tournament to fight for Princess Alena’s hand in marriage.

Note: I very regretfully had to put this part of the game on the fast track. Joy, who plays Ari, may not be around for three weeks or longer, so I needed to get the tournament done with by the end of this session. I don’t regret the actual fast tracking, but rather the extra role-playing and other opportunities for everyone else in the group to get to add to the game. Something that should have taken 4-6 hours of game time was concluded in less than 2. The weirdest part is that I usually want things concluded quickly.

The rules were simple enough:
- Only humans could compete (oddly enough there was not a “no women” rule)
- You can only come in with the clothes on your back and with no spells on you. All equipment would be provided for you (which usually were weapons and armor with a +1 enchantment).
- 100gp entry fee
- Betting was only allowed through the recently opened casino (imagine a casino that used divination spells instead of cameras)
- If you killed your opponent, you pay for the cost of his raising.
- The combats would be fights to unconsciousness, inability to continue, or death. You may not yield.
- You may not leave the fighting arena, nor can you fly more than 40’ above it.
- If you killed someone in the crowd, you would be held criminally accountable – so be careful with those ray spells.
- You would have two rounds to self-buff with any spells you might have.
- You can have a single coach near the ring (in other words, no one but the coach can help the player).
- The audience was safely 20’ away from the arena itself.
- The combatants would be placed into a set of single elimination brackets, with no more than 128 entrants into the brackets (excess entries would be trimmed down).

Note: Unofficially anyone was detected to be evil was not allowed either, but some other reason was given for the exclusion.

Lindo, Sorra, and Ari joined signed up for the tournament. I had planned this set up specifically for Ari, but had expected someone else in the group to try.

But what Allen and Aaron didn’t realize was that they were going to be made examples of (I could have handled things slightly differently, but I can only do so much when trying to rush things).

Day 1 – 128 combatants

Bet’s placed on this day to determine the winner would be paid 50 to 1 (1000gp max bet). Trebor bet 1000gp on Ari. Artemis bet 500gp on Sorra.

Ari would be fighting someone named Fry.
Sorra would be fighting someone named Crosar.
Lindo would be fighting someone named Umbra.

Lindo was up first (highest d20 roll went first).
Allen rolled poorly for initiative while I rolled high, so Umbra went first.
Umbra started off with a Quickened Ray of Enfeeblement. I rolled a nat 20 for the hit and confirmed the crit. Lindo lost 2d6 + 10 strength points. The rolled result was 16, Lindo’s natural strength.
Combat over. That didn’t help Allen’ pouting hehehe.

Next up was Sorra.
Sorra charged her opponent to try to prevent any free spell casting.
Crosar levitated straight up, and then proceeded to nuke Sorra from 20’ high with spells like Horrid Wilting.
Aaron conceded the fight.

Ari’s combat was much simpler.
She cast Fly and Greater Invisibility during her two buff rounds. Something she did for every fight thereafter.
Her opponent never had a chance.
She had to shell out 5000gp to raise Fry from the dead. Princess Alena reimbursed Ari for that cost, but only this one time.

Day 2 – 64 combatants remaining

Betting to declare the final winner would pay 10 to 1 now. Sorra put 1000gp on Ari.

Ari’s opponent was a violent, sexist man named Groyen.
He made several not-so-nice comments about what women should be doing.
Ari had to pay another 5000gp to have him raised.

Day 3 – 32 combatants remaining

No further betting was bothered with by the party.

Ari’s opponent this time was a well respected paladin named Portan. He was quite nice to Ari prior to the match.

Artemis used his charisma skills to gather information about the man the night before, and he simply found out that Portan was a stand up guy.

Ari killed him too. Artemis had to help her pay the money this time around to have him raised.

Day 4 – 16 combatants remaining

Ari had been given a new title; “the bloody princess”

Her opponent for this round was a monk named Twillen.
Ari didn’t kill him, but she won.
Her invisible flying was paying off heavily, making me regret allowing both to be used at the same time.

Day 5 – 8 combatants remaining

The Bloody Princess’s opponent this time was a man named Nevril.
Artemis’s information gathering turned up that Nevril was a priest who had seen more than one war in his day.

But his luck was only slightly better than those who had to fight Ari so far.
His defensive and healing spells gave him more time, his lack of maneuverability while in heavy and her invisible flying proved to be too much.
And once again she had to pay to have her opponent raised. She had to start borrowing a lot of money from her group-mates.

Day 6 – 4 combatants remaining

Ari vs. Umbra and Crosar vs. Verm

Artemis’s information gathering showed that Umbra had disintegrated or turned to stone all of his opponents except one (Lindo). His spells were simply all or nothing spells geared towards the weaknesses of his opponents.

The night before this match, Umbra visited her at the Roaring Bull Inn and offered her a bribe to take a dive. She wanted money up front, and he wouldn’t agree to that.

This fight was much more even, both of them are wizards after all.
Ari did her usual buff spells, and Umbra cast a couple of his own.
She cast her usual orb type spells or continuous damage spells.
Then he cast a third buff spell on himself.
Ari responded with a Dispel Magic on him. That stripped away his first two buff spells but left the third – See Invisible.
He cast Disintegrate at her and hit with the ray. She had to use a DM Bribe (Gummi-savers) and all 4 of her d20 re-rolls until she finally made that DC21 fortitude save.
She kept going with the damage spells.
He responded with a Baleful Polymorph spell. She had to save or be turned into a fluffy bunny. She saved.
Her last spell at him was an Orb of Cold.

She had to pay 5000gp to have him raised.

Day 7 – The Championship Match – The Bloody Princess vs. Crosar the Heartless

Artemis’s information basically told him that this guy was a powerful warmage with no guilt. He carelessly killed his opponents without a second thought. He freely used disintegrating spells, death spells, and damage spells with abandon.

Crosar came to talk to Ari at the inn and offered her a chance to quit or he would be forced to kill her. She laughed at him and more or less told him to kiss her ass.

Even the king showed up to Ari’s heavily protected room to make it clear that Ari had to win because he could not let his daughter marry someone like that, even if he did pass those Detect Evil spells. This fellow acted as though he had no soul.

Ari agreed, but of course she had to request some money to pay for some Raise Dead spells…

Seats to this event were sold at a premium price, and the place was packed.

On the north side of the circle was Crosar with Umbra as his coach.

On the southern side of the circle was Ari with Sorra as her coach.

Moments before the fight was to begin a man rushed into the area of the arena, with several guards trying to restrain him.

He yelled to Crosar and Umbra “They’ve found him!”

Moments later Crosar, Umbra, and the new man teleported away.

The king immediately stood up and declared Ari the winner and promised everyone their money back for the seats (to prevent a riot).

Ari had a nice payday. The princess saved the other princess and earned 50,000 gold in the process.
Sorra won 10,000 gold from her bet placed on Ari.
Trebor won 50,000 gold from his bet.

I’m sure all of that will go on to be converted to magic items.

Lindo got his Monk’s Belt created finally. At least something went right for him this session.

To be continued…eventually…

Sean's Campaign - Session #21

Well this session had a lot less screwing around, but very little in the way of role-playing. It was about 95% combat.

The big fight, which I expected to take an hour or so of time, took nearly three hours. I even simplified things and did a lot of prep-work and it still wasn’t enough. Instead of adding the temporary allies the group had gained, I didn’t include the allies and instead took out some combatants from the horde. The flight of dragons made sure that the chimeras and wyverns in the horde didn’t bother anyone. Less NPC’s on the initiative stack means quicker combat.

Or so I thought.

There will be no podcast of this session because it would be boring as hell to listen to 4 hours of dice-rolling and almost no role-playing.

Anyway, Brian skipped out on the game at the last minute because of a funeral. He won’t be around next week either. I forgot why.

Everyone else made it to the game though. To keep Justin awake we had him run Zelast, which back-fired on us. (It meant we had to wake him up twice as often.)

We started with the party unsure of what to do next. I suppose they were expecting to fast forward to the big fight, but I wasn’t about to do that.

First a wyvern, larger than the party had ever seen before, and its rider, a man covered in black full-plate armor, landed atop the tallest temple spire in Lataan. He announced himself as General Takral and told the city that it had until noon tomorrow to surrender or face destruction. They then flew off.

Lindo informed the party that Takral had tried to take over the city a couple years prior and failed. But he did have the mayor’s wife captured and assassinated (part of Caspar’s story).

The party checked around to see if anything special was being done. The city appeared to have no intention of surrender and were instead preparing for a big fight.

The party had been a thorn in the side of the enemy, so there was about to be an attempted assassination.

During the night a shadow demon snuck into Lindo’s room (randomly chosen) and tried to slit his throat. But (thanks to a d20 re-roll) the coup de grace save was made (it was a low DC thanks to the demon’s not so good damage). Lindo immediately sprang into action, yelled for help and flurried that demon hard. On the second round of full flurrying, Lindo hit the creature 4 out of 4 times even though it had the incorporeal 50% miss chance and a decent AC in the low 20’s.

But Lindo’s hit points leave something to be desired, and this thing could hit easily, just not very hard. But the cavalry arrived in time.

Artemis opened the door and convinced the demon to leave in his usual manner (magic missiles).

Afterwards the party got some rest, and Ysilia took Lindo to a sanctified temple so she could heal the demon’s vile damage or otherwise Lindo would have a maximum of 20 hit points for the big fight.

All that did was force the party to be a little more paranoid and sleep a little later to make up for lost sleep.

The next day we pretty much fast forwarded to the battle. I gave the party a chance to do something else, but they didn’t use the opportunity, so off to the big fight we went.

I gave the party the option of where they wanted to start, along the wall to fight the main force or at the docks to take a shot at the kraken when it appeared. They opted for the wall since they couldn’t guarantee anything against the kraken.

The horde of monsters, chimera, ettins, trolls, giants, juggernauts, orcs (plenty of them), ogres, athaches, and wyverns were about half a mile away. As expected, the kraken’s tentacles appeared and cast the spell to cover the area in dark clouds. At that point the horde charged.

There was no sign of red dragons anywhere. They were actually invisible and attacked a short while into the combat, further reducing the number of combatants the party would have to fight.

The party would be faced with 2 war trolls (who charged in first), 4 athaches (with 5 barbarian levels), 4 hill giants (also with 5 barbarian levels), a juggernaut (last appearing and slow moving), and 8 invisible gargoyles (with 5 rogue levels and already inside the perimeter and lurking near the party).

I also gave Ari and Artemis one-shot cards that were they NPC helpers doing something to aid (like 5 points of ranged damage, a 6d6 fire ball, give flanking for one attack, etc.) Those worked quite well might use something like that in the future.

The war-trolls charged in first to absorb the damage and regenerate.

Ari and Artemis filled the far edge of the battle map with a couple Walls of Fire to get some nice fire damage that everything charging in would have to pass through (free damage for all).

Next were the hill giants and athaches. But Artemis filled the center of the battle map with Evard’s Black Tentacles and an Ice Storm (or Sleet Storm or whatever). Amazingly the cold spell’s slipperiness took one of the athaches out of the fight entirely, and another several rounds due to extremely poor DM rolling for balance checks.

But the party didn’t have it as easy as it seems. When Ari, Artemis, and Ysilia cast a spell a gargoyle would attack them to disrupt the spell. No spell was ever disrupted by this, but it did force the party to split its attention.

Sorra moved a short distance away from the wall and did the knight’s Test of Mettle challenge, and over half of the gargoyles failed their save. This meant that they had to attack Sorra before anyone else in the fight. So within a round or two an enlarged (spell from Ari) Sorra was surrounded by all of the gargoyles who did sneak attack damage on the rare chance they hit her. This put Sorra in bad shape.

Lindo did his usual attack options (melee and run away, or shoot and stay away). At one point he decided to try to spring attack and trip a troll. That failed, and soon that troll and an athach were on him. Not much later he was at -9 hit points. But he was able to climb back up the wall so Ysilia could heal him. After that he ran away and shot his crossbow from a distance.

Ari did her usual casting while invisible. As did Artemis, but rather than deal with the gargoyles he worked on the horde charging the wall.

Trebor did his massive volleys of arrows again. He was hit by a few arrows and boulders, but otherwise he avoided melee. As usual he did a lot of damage for someone using a ranged weapon.

Zelast concentrated his efforts on the gargoyles for the early combat.

Ysilia had her attention put on healing the moment the gargoyles popped in and it didn’t end until the combat was over.

It took Sorra about 3 rounds longer than it should have, but eventually the gargoyles were taken down. After that she moved to take on the main horde face on, but only after Ysilia healed her (a lot).

Ari used a Solid Fog to virtually stop the juggernaut for several rounds. Otherwise she used her wands for damage.

Artemis kept up his usual nuking, but this time while on the battlefield. He was almost found by a hill giant, but got away after doing a sudden maximized, sudden empowered Fireburst. Afterwards he focused his spells on the juggernaut until it stopped moving.

Zelast joined in with Sorra for the melee fun.

Eventually the party took out everything, just like last time. But this time they were given a less friendly start to the fight.

They searched the bodies and found all kinds of magical armor and weapons, all large or huge in size. Heh.

Next session, the aftermath.