Ravenloft #11

I am getting pretty sick of Strahd.

I made that point to Dale during Session #10.

But now I think the issue is that we’ve seen Strahd way too often.

Every time we do something that hurts him, he’s there within moments. And Dale’s logic is impeccable; “You’re trying to hurt him, and he’s not going to sit on his ass while you’re ruining his plans.”

I agree with that logic 100%, but it has taken away from the game a bit on a suspense level. Kind of like how the scary monster in horror movies is pretty scary, until you see the monster. The creature was scarier in your mind than when you actually saw it because your imagination saw much more than what your eyes did.

Seeing Strahd show up to a fight should make our PC’s quake in their boots. And that did happen, the first time or two. Then we started making contingency plans for when Strahd showed up, and the horror lessened.

When we fought him in the Mountain Fane, we would have won had he not teleported away because we had used the terrain to our advantage. The other two terrains gave him the advantage.

That brings us to this session.

We last stopped with Strahd saying thanks for killing the “Shapeless Skin” (or whatever it was named).

For this session Mina was played by Aaron. Aaron’s new PC is named Numen, and he has a rat familiar, Alistair Snirdley.

Strahd told us that we had an option, leave the town unimpeded or face destruction.

I’m sure you can guess what our response was.

Even without the power of the fanes to boost him, Strahd was still pretty powerful. But we had not lost much of our resources in the fights we had so far. Well Tenbeers and Gortag were still under the Touch of Idiocy effects, but it’s not like those two really need a brain.

(Tenbeers had an intelligence of three and Gortag had a one, so Tenbeers was still normally playable while I put Gortag under a fight or flight setup where he looked to those he recognized as friends to guide his actions – Mina and Tenbeers.)

The disadvantage of making a new PC is that you start with less XP. But the bonus is that you get to design him with some knowledge about the game so far. In this case Aaron created Numen with an eye towards hurting Strahd by dispelling his many magicks.

Numen had Arcane Sight active when Strahd came to say hi, so he knew what we were facing. Within a few rounds Numen had removed all but one of Strahd’s buffs (a minor teleporting spell that allows him to jump 30’ per round as a move action) and had removed Gortag’s pesky intelligence problem.

But it did cost Numen his familiar, who blew up when Numen had to sacrifice him with a Bonded Familiar feat when Aaron botched a save versus a Lightning Bolt which would have killed him.

In the end we actually put Strahd in the negatives. Then we followed his slow moving gaseous form as it headed back to his sanctum (I presume) to regenerate.

We were careful not to follow too blindly for fear of being led into a trap.

That didn’t matter as he just led us to a wall with a small hole in it.

Well our undead hunter, Hannibal, who has many points in Knowledge – Religion, told us that it would take Strahd and hour to reform and haunt us again. So we took this as an opportunity to freely search the premises.

We searched around, found some spiral stairs up, took them to the next flight (hoping to find the church) and found nothing but bare wall (out of game we knew there were secret doors, but the lack of a good searcher bit us on that). So we took the next flight up which led us to the parapets and other rooms.

In there we found an ancient wedding cake that was mostly dust now, with only a groom at the top. And we found Gertruda after fighting a minor apparition undead for half a round.

She had been romantically swept off her feet by the count and was thoroughly enamored (possibly charmed) with him. But we convinced her to come back to town with us because her mother missed her.

We dropped her off at her mom’s, which in retrospect might have been a bad idea had she been turned into a vamp…

On our way back to the castle Hannibal really wanted Gortag’s cloak (of charisma +2) that Gortag took from Brian’s previous PC after Gortag spent the night in the water on the watch for Strahd.

Now I understand the need to optimize characters, but I have issues with just handing over equipment from PC X just because PC Y would get better use from it. On a role-playing level this is PC X’s stuff. He earned it. So if PC Y wants it, the player of PC Y should give a good role-playing reason why.

I tortured Brian for a good ten minutes before he finally came up with a role-playing reason. He kept coming up with mechanical and efficiency reasons, but it wasn’t until he finally pulled the brother card (Hannibal is Deimos’s brother) that Gortag handed the cloak over.

Oh well, back to a 7 charisma.

Once we were back to the castle we resumed looking up near where we found Gertruda. We fought a group of wights that didn’t last a round, and received some help from an incorporeal person from the Order of the Raven.

She (I think) told us that the temple was on the first floor, only one doorway from where we entered (doh!).

Inside we found a dead cleric, the crystalline blade of the sun sword, and a pure-silver raven idol.

While everyone was investigating the idol, Gortag pocketed the blade and the mace off the dead cleric (of an evil god).

We stopped there.
Gortag is minus one cloak, but he’s plus an unholy mace +2, and a big piece of a good artifact.

Yay Gortag!

Next week he dies because I said that.

Ravenloft #10

Today I want to talk to you about idiots.

We have way too many in this country.

Idiots cause more problems than they’re worth.

Please deport them, or at least remove the warning stickers from hairdryers, lawn mowers, toasters, and the like so that they may remove themselves from the gene pool in the usual manner.

I would prefer that happen prior to them breeding.

Thank you.

That is the closest I think I’m going to get to a PSA.
Well, unless I run for office as a member of the Anti-Idiot and Nutbar political party.

For Allen’s last game this session was non-productive at best. We started playing after more than an hour of screwing around. It was just one of those nights.

Brian wasn’t around this session. I believe Joy played Hannibal.

We last stopped with us having just stripped Strahd of his control over the three holy fanes of the land.

So we started off by heading back to town to re-supply and unless something interesting happened, move on to Castle Ravenloft.

While killing time in the village Tenbeers and Gortag went to the tavern, but that’s no big surprise. But this time Gortag confronted the usual three Vistani that always seemed to be there. First he asked them about the treacherous Madame Eva and told them what she did. They didn’t seem to care so he told them, under threat of death, that they were leave town and never return.

Tenbeers never said a thing during this time, but he was hoping there would be a fight.

Later, when the group was leaving town on the trail to the castle, we could still see Vistani tracking us. Either their days, or Gortag’s days are numbered.

It was a long and twisting road that slowly rose above the rest of the Barovian lands until it was at least a thousand feet up. We could have climbed the cliff-face and saved ourselves some trouble, but I don’t think we would have gotten as far.

Once we made it to the outer keep of the castle we made it past the drawbridge, single file and no one closer than 15’ to one another. Then we easily cleared the courtyard to enter the tall, gothic, and creepy castle.

Then we were finally attacked. A group of 4 gargoyles and a couple of “stone dragons” surprised us. Because we were still pretty separated it took us a round or two longer than it should have before we dropped them.

With a few minor scratches, we moved on in.

The first room after the door/entry area had a high ceiling that was cloaked in shadow. We talked of casting a fireball (from Aaron’s new PC whose name I have forgotten), just to make sure, but our two best spotters saw nothing, so we conserved resources and continued on our way.

The room gave us several options of where to go in the form of hallways, stairs, and doors. Gortag scouted as best he could, as we had no scouts, rogues, or brave rangers. So if there were a trap, he’d be a trap-springer, not a trap-finder.

We opted for the path of some stairways that led up, as we sought the temple of the castle because we thing that the sunsword is hidden there.

Up we went and found a room with a large wooden table and throne. Sitting upon the throne was some large amorphous thing that started coming right for us, joined by a duo of gibbering mouthers as well.

Tenbeers and Gortag fought down one side of the table, Mina and Hannibal fought down the other, while the rest of the group split their attacks until both of the mouthers were down.

But the big boss thing was a nasty creature that used its songs to confuse us, and then Gortag and Tenbeers both lost 1d6 intelligence, wisdom, and charisma to the things attacks. None of those could they afford to lose.

With a one intelligence, the same IQ as most reptilians and insects, the two fighters just kept up what they were doing without anything special – hacking the thing that was hitting them until it was done. (Yes, technically I know that the “flight” instinct would probably have taken over or we would have attacked with our bare hands with an intelligence of one, but eh.)

Once the thing stopped moving, Gortag kept hacking at it.

A few moments after the thing was gone, our old buddy Strahd showed up and thanked us for getting rid of that nuisance for him.

Oops.

And on that cliffhanger we stopped.

Ravenloft #9

As I read through the Rappan Athuk module, I become more impressed with module.

The writers of it are just plain evil for some of the traps and tricks. I won’t mention any specifics just in case, but wow.

Most of the levels I’ve read so far are good for mini-adventures. They’re not like Ravenloft’s one room side-quests, but I think that most of them can be solved in a single session or two. Nor are they like the World’s Largest Dungeon levels with room after room after room that takes 7+ sessions to get through and a lot of repetitive fights.

I will run this module one day, and the goal will be to see how far the party can go at a time without a fatality. I’m betting that can be measured in hours and not sessions.

Hey if this group can survive the multiple PC deaths per player in Ravenloft, I think they can handle a little more of it.

I know I’m still having fun after 1 PC death.

Allen has lost one PC, and he’s leaving the group after this next session. As far as I can tell he’s still having fun. (Note: no Allen this session, Justin played Mortimer.)

Aaron has lost one PC. He seems to be enjoying himself.

Brian is on his third PC, and he’s not complaining. Though this session ticked him off as his dice turned on him. Being a melee type PC and missing 75% of your attack rolls tends to make the night suck.

And the opposite of what I expected, the two people who we thought would be on their second or third PC are still on their first. Justin and Joy haven’t lost a PC yet, in spite of the DM constantly gunning for one of them.

We didn’t do much this session other than make Strahd really, really mad.

After we returned to the village of Barovia, we met Brian’s new PC, a paladin named Hannibal, rested during the afternoon, and went to the underground Mountain Fane to get there around 6pm.

But Strahd had been occasionally scrying on us, so he knew where we were going. But he still had no clue we were using an earth elemental to steal his power away.

We set ourselves up close enough to each other to be able to help in a round or two, but not so close that more than a couple of us couldn’t be caught in a spell blast. Plus we had prepared ourselves to cast protective spells (Protection from Evil on the big hitters and Mass align weapon for everyone) and use single-use items (Silversheen).

So when Strahd showed up around 1am, he did his best to separate us. First he had cast Greater Invisibility on himself, but we knew he was around because he always travels with his fog. Then he cast Wall of Force to separate Ian and Mortimer from the rest of us and teleported near enough to disrupt our false-praying at the shrine with his usual attack spells.

We had chosen the Mountain Fane for a reason; it’s a lot harder to fly away when there’s a roof over your head. Being invisible doesn’t guarantee immunity from attacks, nor does turning require you to see the undead you’re trying to blast. Flying hurt us bad before.

We had him outgunned and surrounded when Ian and Mortimer were able to take the long route around to the battle, and Mina was able to cast Invisibility Purge and a Dispel Magic right at him.

So as is his usual tactic he teleported away, but not far away. He jumped to the entrance and covered it with a Wall of Stone, blocking us in.

It also kept everything else out, so it was a good thing to us.

By the next morning we had been given a good opportunity for rest, and our friendly neighborhood earth elemental succeeded in stealing another portion of Strahd’s power.

At that point we said “why wait another day?” and went straight to the Forest Fane to repeat this thing one more time.

So off to the Forest Fane we went, and just in case you’re wondering we always kept the elemental out of site. He broke us free of the Wall of Stone, but he didn’t do the last bit of destroying it. When he travels with us, he travels underground.

We were pretty much thrown straight into another fight, and Strahd brought some buddies with him again; seven werewolves, a corrupted nymph (or some other kind of corrupted fey), and a trio of vampire spawn – all surrounding us.

Things started off bad for us, then became worse. First the monsters, including Strahd, went early in initiative. Then the entirety of the land was covered in dense plant growth or rubble, so most of us were at half speed. And finally Strahd blasted Mina and Gortag with a Fireball the first round and a Lightning Bolt the next round, and leaving Mina in the negatives and Gortag with a single hit point (plus his raging hit points).

On the plus side, between Mina’s local blasting and Strahd’s nukes, several of our enemies had been fried.

Mortimer, in a rare display of prowess rolled three hits with his bow shots at the nymph, ending her time in the battle before she had a real chance to cause some charm-chaos.

Ian was in bad shape because he was in a location far from anyone else, and was surrounded by a couple of werewolves. He eventually was able to get away from them join up with...

Tenbeers and Hannibal were both terribly slow, a 20’ speed normally, plus being cut in half made them slow moving tanks. But the unfortunate vampire spawns and werewolves they came upon were doomed.

While that was going on Gortag picked up Mina and ran for cover from Strahd so he could heal himself up with potions. (Gortag almost left her there because he’s, well, he’s neutral.) Mortimer, being unable to harm Strahd with his bow, spent the next several rounds healing Mina with a wand of cure light wounds. But Justin’s dice rolling was pathetic (2, 1, 1, 1) and the combat was effectively over by the time she staggered up with a single hit point.

Once Gortag made it to respectable hit points again, he moved back to face Strahd.

Strahd had been busy dealing with Ian during this time. Ian had drunk a potion of Enlarge Person and finished off the remaining werewolves while also taking the blasts from Strahd, leaving him pretty low on the hit points.

When Gortag made it to Strahd, Tenbeers and Hannibal had finally reached about where Ian was. And all of them were grouped nicely for Strahd’s next spell.

He cast it defensively, so Gortag could do nothing to stop the swarm of black tentacles grabbing at the three warriors.

Tenbeers broke free of the things and moved to attack Strahd, so as expected, the coward ran.

But a couple of those rare “good damage rolls” from Dale meant bad news Ian and Hannibal as those two just could not break free and the healers couldn’t get there in time to help.

As Gortag finally reached Ian, he was at -9 hit points. Gortag had to free him and Ian had to stabilize or Ian would be dead for sure. No such luck. Add another body to the pile of character sheets building. Oh and make that two PC’s Aaron has lost.

Eventually, after much aid and healing, Hannibal was finally freed from the tentacles...one round before the spell ended.

But that’s ok, the next morning Strahd awoke with a third scream. The elemental had fulfilled his obligation to Mina, and stole the power of the three fanes from Strahd.

Next week, the castle. (Well I assume it’ll be the castle. I mean, what could be left to do outside of it?)

Ravenloft #8

Often when I’m doing something that doesn’t require much concentration (mowing the lawn, driving to work, and so on) I think about gaming campaigns in some form or another.

Recently I’ve been thinking about my most recent campaign and the things that went right and the things that went wrong.

Among things that went right – character histories meshing together were good, players enjoyed their PC’s for the most part, open ended planning on my part that allowed the group many options of where to take the campaign without derailing me (much), challenging combats that forced thinking and action.

And then there are the things that went wrong (which are the things I dwell upon) – formulaic planning, time-consuming preparation, little role-playing beyond the story at hand, and worst of all – higher level combats that took way too much time.

That last one drove me crazy at times. I did what I could to speed things up, but when there are seven people at the table it can be pretty easy for things to break down and slow down the flow of the game.

I could give several examples but I’d rather focus on what I could fix than rehashing.

I tried so hard to improve the speed of the game, but simply enough it was allowing a huge number of options that hurt the speed the most. This became more and more apparent at higher levels. And a high level game is what wanted!

Higher levels mean more choices. More choices mean more math. More math means more time drain. Then you throw in more options from all of the different books I allowed and you drag the game down even more. And you can’t forget the fact that six players wanting to do their own thing isn’t exactly a catalyst for speed.

Then you add the DM’s frustration with the whole thing not going “perfect”.

Enter the news of my impending twins and a solution presents itself; time for a DM break.

My game had plenty of ups and fun, but all-in-all my overarching plan of running the game to level 30 just was not going to happen without dragging the game out for 3 or more years.

So after a lot of thought, I don’t think that my campaign will return. It will be remembered for a few more months before it fades from memory.

Oh I’ll be running a game again; I can assure you of that. But I won’t be so foolish as to think I can do everything under the sun.

I’ll be returning to my DM “comfort zone” for any future campaigns I run.

Recently I’ve broken down and started reading my copy of Rappan Athuk Reloaded and it has triggered my first edition nostalgia. And if you think Ravenloft has a high potential for TPK then you would be in for a nasty shock with this module. While it’s certainly no Tomb of Horrors, it is still among the deadliest dungeons I’ve seen.

But I’m not quite ready to run yet. I enjoy playing D&D too.

Plus Brian and Justin have expressed interest in running campaigns of their own.

Brian has run a campaign before, but it only lasted for about 3 or 4 weeks before he realized how much work it took to prep for a game. But since summer is coming and he’s a public school teacher, he’ll have plenty of time to read and run a module for the next three months.

Justin I’m not so sure about. He’s never run a campaign until a few weeks ago with his friends from work. There are some other issues I’m concerned with (like him disappearing off the face of the planet for several weeks at a time) and then there’s the fact us long-experienced players just might eat him alive as a DM.

You can’t say you’ve never done it.

But anyway…

Our heads were back into the game this time around.

Last session we had started an overnight prayer-vigil at the Swamp Fane when we stopped so Dale could prep up for the occasion.

When I say “prep up”, I mean that Dale wanted to make some changes to Strahd’s spell choices and so he could bring in some backup.

So we started off with a combat at the Swamp Fane at 10pm while Deimos and Mina were in their fourth hour of praying.

The fog popped in and we tried to scatter but he started off with a Cloudkill spell right on top of the fane. Deimos and Mina had to cease their vigil and move out of the effect or face 1d4 Con damage every round plus face the other attacks that Strahd and his minions would deliver.

Strahd did all of this while flying just above the swampy water, forcing the warriors of the group to come to him. And as those warriors approached him, he summoned in four vampire spawn helpers (2 of them classed) to further complicate things and to take our attentions from him.

During all of this time, Strahd still kept blasting at the clerics (especially Mina) with his assortment of nuke spells.

When finally we had dispatched his vampire spawns, we headed out to him. But he chose to fly a little higher out of our reach. We even had Tenbeers tying a rope to his grappling hook to try and pull Strahd down, but that failed.

End result – Strahd succeeded in his mission of ruining the prayer vigil. When he ran out of spells, he disappeared. We had nothing to show for it either as the spawns disappeared when they were dropped. Sure we had dealt over 60 damage to Strahd, but nothing ever came of that.

We were not at all pleased with ourselves there. Our fighters could do nothing to get to Strahd as no one could fly. Sure we could easily beat Strahd’s chumps, but that doesn’t exactly make us feel better.

What we needed was a plan, and a good one.

I wasn’t in on this plan nor do I know who made it because I was in the kitchen making my twin-pregnant wife some Spaghettios. But the plan was good.

We returned to town to rest up for a couple of days as we didn’t want Strahd to learn of the cave we’ve used before (more days of us resting there means a bigger chance of him finding us).

After we had fully rested Mina cast Lesser Planar Ally and summoned an earth elemental. We had to give it quite a bit of money and tell it that it would get powerful from what we asked it to do.

Earth elementals have the ability called Earth Glide, which pretty much means that it can “swim” through natural rock.

We intended to take this elemental to the Swamp Fane, have him go directly beneath the fane and begin praying to his own god.

If it worked, then the elemental would get some power and Strahd would lose some.

If not, then we’re out of ideas and head to the castle for a good old fashioned Total Party Kill.

We returned to the Swamp Fane.
Mina’s earthen buddy went underground and began praying around 6pm (like last time).
The area began responding positively.
At 10pm Strahd showed up and began blasting the clerics again, this time with near abandon.

But this time things were a little bit worse. Strahd was totally invisible and flying over 10’ above the water.

Within just a few rounds nearly everyone ran off the battlefield.

All save for Deimos and Gortag.

Brian had failed some crucial saves versus Strahd’s spell blasts and Deimos died as a result.

Gortag on the other hand dove into the stagnant swamp water and pulled out his masterwork longspear. When it was his turn he jumped up and jabbed at the air where he thought Strahd was and then he would return to just barely having his head out of water (enough to breathe).

(I kind of picture him as a swamp frog; eyes and nose barely sticking out of the water, green skin, and a mean strike – just not with a tongue.)

Strahd had used most of his offensive spells taking care of the clerics (he was aiming for Mina, but he’ll take Deimos as a consolation prize I guess), and I don’t think he thought highly of getting into melee with a relatively fresh barbarian who had Protection from Evil cast on him.

So Strahd left just a few minutes after he showed. But since he was invisible the entire time, Gortag wasn’t sure if he left or not. So Gortag stayed in the swamp for several hours.

When he was sure that Strahd was gone, he did the “survivalist” thing. He found treasure…on Deimos’s body.

With his big, fat, water-wrinkled, half-orc hands he took Deimos’s money, Cloak of Charisma +2, his Amulet of Health +2, and all of the potions. He left the rest for the party to worry about.

When the party returned and the sun came up, we heard a loud anguished yell coming from Castle Ravenloft.

Shortly afterwards the earth elemental rose from the ground and reported to Mina of its success (it looked a little buff too). A quick Detect Evil spell showed that the Swamp Fane was no longer tainted by evil.

One fane down, two to go.

And that is where we stopped.

Next session Brian will be bringing in a third Necrophontes brother, a paladin.