Ravenloft #12
Well I’ve taken a look at WotC’s newest hardback module, The Expedition to Undermountain.
From what I’ve read in it and heard about it, it’s a poorly done module. A good gamer friend of mine was actually pretty ticked off about the poor design of the Undermountain module; huge maps printed on half of the 8.5” x 11” page, Halaster’s death driving the start of the plot, and a CR11 golem as the big challenge in the end.
More and more of WotC’s releases and decisions haven been pretty disappointing lately. I hope it’s just a temporary phase and not the dreaded return of T$R.
I liked Ravenloft early on, but as it progressed it just kind of felt flat, and I do not blame the DM. Dale also has a pretty sizeable complaint about the dark pages making it hard for his “old man eyes” to read the print and something about the maps being hard to follow.
Complete Champion was worthless unless you reworked the class or used the Greyhawk deities. As I looked through it when it was new I found a few useful spells and feats. A few useful spells and feats aren’t worth $30+ to me.
Magic Item Compendium I’ve heard was nice, but it’s something I can do without.
Fiendish Codex II – I already bought it the first time around when it was called Book of Vile Darkness.
Dungeon Tiles – We have several Lexan sheets with a 1” grid cut into the bottom. Those sheets were perhaps the best use of the group’s money. One Lexan sheet, which is about 15” x 24”, cost us $17 and is incredibly sturdy. One package of Dungeon Tiles is $12 and they are pretty much plastic reinforced paperboard. How sturdy is Lexan? If memory serves me correctly, Lexan is among the primary items in bulletproof glass. I’ve been told a hammer won’t scar it.
I can keep going, but I’ve got other stuff to write about, so just one more.
Cormyr, The Tearing of the Weave – I hope for Brian’s sake that it doesn’t suck. He doesn’t have much experience running games, so I hope they’ve done a good job on this one. If this module blows, then I’m done buying WotC modules entirely.
Ah, who am I kidding? I think the last WotC module I bought was The Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. I almost bought The Red Hand of Doom, but the $25 price tag was too much for me.
Ok, but anyway, this session was, um, interesting. I guess.
Dale realized during the week that he had made a boo-boo or two with running Strahd. Specifically he had Strahd using spells from schools of magic that he had given up on to specialize in necromancy. One school was a minor offense; abjuration – which covers spells like Shield and Dispel Magic. But the illusion school was the worst. Strahd had been hounding us while using Greater Invisibility, Blur, and Mirror Image. So to make up for it Dale gave us an extra 1000xp and hand-waved finding the other pieces of the sunsword, and a free night or two of resting in the castle where Strahd would have attacked us according to the book.
We last stopped in the chapel of Castle Ravenloft where we had recovered a pure silver idol of a raven and the sunsword of Strahd’s brother.
Mina and Hannibal, using their collective Knowledge – Religion skills were able to determine the powers of silver raven idol, the sunsword, and the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind would be once activated.
I don’t recall the specifics, but legacy items as written absolutely suck. You have to permanently give up things that are worth more than what you’re getting. In fact we were better off not activating the sunsword at all. The only reason we bothered with the other two were story items.
Add this to the above list – Weapons of Legacy, nice idea, pathetically poor execution.
By the end Tenbeers had the idol, Mina had the holy symbol, and Numen took the sword (even though he couldn’t use it as a weapon) because it glowed when undead were nearby.
All Gortag got was a hand of gold (5gp) for the sword.
Poor Gortag is losing magic items all the time now.
We did a variety of non-consequential things for the next hour or so of game play, but ironically the lack of a person in the group with good searching abilities paid off. Because we found only one secret door, we had nowhere else for our searches to take us. Every stairway we took, led us to somewhere we’d been before. Even the fights we had lasted less than a round.
Our only route left lay behind the stone wall that Strahd had fled through while in gaseous form last session.
According to the rules, it took Tenbeers less than a minute to hammer his way through that wall. So he did, and we went to the crypts below after buffing up a little.
We found a lot of crypts too, at least a couple dozen, plus some larger ones off in some side rooms. One was for Strahd’s parents, another for his brother Sergei, and one for Strahd himself. We saved that one for last.
We checked out a few crypts, but found nothing of interest that we could take (because Hannibal kept getting all jerky about stealing from the dead – that’s what adventurer’s do!).
So at last we headed to Strahd’s crypt.
Numen’s Arcane Sight spell showed a teleportation field, so he dispelled it, but the field came back in two rounds.
And on that note we were on initiative with Strahd as he was waiting for us within his crypt.
Early rounds:
Gortag sprinted into Strahd’s crypt, but couldn’t quite reach him.
Mina royally hurt Strahd with a sun domain empowered turn undead.
Strahd responded with an Evard’s Black Tentacles that trapped Mina, Numen, and Hannibal and slowed down Tenbeers for a round or two.
For the next several rounds Mina, Numen, and Hannibal would occasionally cast a spell while grappled, but usually tried to break free from the tentacles.
Gortag cut down Strahd with two power attack boosted swings from his axe.
Strahd turned gaseous and fled 5’ away to his coffin.
Middle Rounds:
Strahd’s “death” caused his golem to activate. It had two attacks and with each hit from its fists you had to make a DC17 will save or be stunned.
Gortag put a few dents in the golem, but eventually he was knocked unconscious with -5 hp. He stabilized two rounds later, but when his rage ended, he went to -15 hp.
Tenbeers didn’t fair much better. Justin couldn’t hit or make a save. Tenbeers was smashed to goo at -15 hp.
One by one the rest of the group broke free of the tentacles, but still had to deal with the teleportation field.
Final Rounds:
Numen tried again to dispel the field, but failed.
Mina, having a good Will save for the teleportation field decided to go through it. A roll of natural 1 teleported her to a crypt somewhere in the castle, where she was also nekked. Replacing her on the battlefield was a wight wearing all of her stuff (who was then killed by the tentacles). Mina eventually pushed the lid open off her crypt, and was then attacked by several undead. With no holy symbol of any kind, we effectively wrote her off.
Hannibal, after healing up Numen the best he could, entered the tentacle area again, and the teleportation field. After a couple of rounds in the tentacles (he failed the save then broke free) he jumped through the field and made the DC 20 Will save.
Numen transposed himself with Tenbeers’s corpse (not sure of the legality of that) and occupied the golem’s time.
The golem kept pounding away at Numen, killing only Mirror Images.
Hannibal cut off Strahd’s head and ran, followed by Numen.
They made it through the teleportation field, fled the castle and ran to the Tser Waterfalls where they immersed the head in the flowing water until it dissolved.
It was late, so we stopped there.
It was one of those victories that didn’t feel like one.
Campaign over, with a technical victory.
From what I’ve read in it and heard about it, it’s a poorly done module. A good gamer friend of mine was actually pretty ticked off about the poor design of the Undermountain module; huge maps printed on half of the 8.5” x 11” page, Halaster’s death driving the start of the plot, and a CR11 golem as the big challenge in the end.
More and more of WotC’s releases and decisions haven been pretty disappointing lately. I hope it’s just a temporary phase and not the dreaded return of T$R.
I liked Ravenloft early on, but as it progressed it just kind of felt flat, and I do not blame the DM. Dale also has a pretty sizeable complaint about the dark pages making it hard for his “old man eyes” to read the print and something about the maps being hard to follow.
Complete Champion was worthless unless you reworked the class or used the Greyhawk deities. As I looked through it when it was new I found a few useful spells and feats. A few useful spells and feats aren’t worth $30+ to me.
Magic Item Compendium I’ve heard was nice, but it’s something I can do without.
Fiendish Codex II – I already bought it the first time around when it was called Book of Vile Darkness.
Dungeon Tiles – We have several Lexan sheets with a 1” grid cut into the bottom. Those sheets were perhaps the best use of the group’s money. One Lexan sheet, which is about 15” x 24”, cost us $17 and is incredibly sturdy. One package of Dungeon Tiles is $12 and they are pretty much plastic reinforced paperboard. How sturdy is Lexan? If memory serves me correctly, Lexan is among the primary items in bulletproof glass. I’ve been told a hammer won’t scar it.
I can keep going, but I’ve got other stuff to write about, so just one more.
Cormyr, The Tearing of the Weave – I hope for Brian’s sake that it doesn’t suck. He doesn’t have much experience running games, so I hope they’ve done a good job on this one. If this module blows, then I’m done buying WotC modules entirely.
Ah, who am I kidding? I think the last WotC module I bought was The Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. I almost bought The Red Hand of Doom, but the $25 price tag was too much for me.
Ok, but anyway, this session was, um, interesting. I guess.
Dale realized during the week that he had made a boo-boo or two with running Strahd. Specifically he had Strahd using spells from schools of magic that he had given up on to specialize in necromancy. One school was a minor offense; abjuration – which covers spells like Shield and Dispel Magic. But the illusion school was the worst. Strahd had been hounding us while using Greater Invisibility, Blur, and Mirror Image. So to make up for it Dale gave us an extra 1000xp and hand-waved finding the other pieces of the sunsword, and a free night or two of resting in the castle where Strahd would have attacked us according to the book.
We last stopped in the chapel of Castle Ravenloft where we had recovered a pure silver idol of a raven and the sunsword of Strahd’s brother.
Mina and Hannibal, using their collective Knowledge – Religion skills were able to determine the powers of silver raven idol, the sunsword, and the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind would be once activated.
I don’t recall the specifics, but legacy items as written absolutely suck. You have to permanently give up things that are worth more than what you’re getting. In fact we were better off not activating the sunsword at all. The only reason we bothered with the other two were story items.
Add this to the above list – Weapons of Legacy, nice idea, pathetically poor execution.
By the end Tenbeers had the idol, Mina had the holy symbol, and Numen took the sword (even though he couldn’t use it as a weapon) because it glowed when undead were nearby.
All Gortag got was a hand of gold (5gp) for the sword.
Poor Gortag is losing magic items all the time now.
We did a variety of non-consequential things for the next hour or so of game play, but ironically the lack of a person in the group with good searching abilities paid off. Because we found only one secret door, we had nowhere else for our searches to take us. Every stairway we took, led us to somewhere we’d been before. Even the fights we had lasted less than a round.
Our only route left lay behind the stone wall that Strahd had fled through while in gaseous form last session.
According to the rules, it took Tenbeers less than a minute to hammer his way through that wall. So he did, and we went to the crypts below after buffing up a little.
We found a lot of crypts too, at least a couple dozen, plus some larger ones off in some side rooms. One was for Strahd’s parents, another for his brother Sergei, and one for Strahd himself. We saved that one for last.
We checked out a few crypts, but found nothing of interest that we could take (because Hannibal kept getting all jerky about stealing from the dead – that’s what adventurer’s do!).
So at last we headed to Strahd’s crypt.
Numen’s Arcane Sight spell showed a teleportation field, so he dispelled it, but the field came back in two rounds.
And on that note we were on initiative with Strahd as he was waiting for us within his crypt.
Early rounds:
Gortag sprinted into Strahd’s crypt, but couldn’t quite reach him.
Mina royally hurt Strahd with a sun domain empowered turn undead.
Strahd responded with an Evard’s Black Tentacles that trapped Mina, Numen, and Hannibal and slowed down Tenbeers for a round or two.
For the next several rounds Mina, Numen, and Hannibal would occasionally cast a spell while grappled, but usually tried to break free from the tentacles.
Gortag cut down Strahd with two power attack boosted swings from his axe.
Strahd turned gaseous and fled 5’ away to his coffin.
Middle Rounds:
Strahd’s “death” caused his golem to activate. It had two attacks and with each hit from its fists you had to make a DC17 will save or be stunned.
Gortag put a few dents in the golem, but eventually he was knocked unconscious with -5 hp. He stabilized two rounds later, but when his rage ended, he went to -15 hp.
Tenbeers didn’t fair much better. Justin couldn’t hit or make a save. Tenbeers was smashed to goo at -15 hp.
One by one the rest of the group broke free of the tentacles, but still had to deal with the teleportation field.
Final Rounds:
Numen tried again to dispel the field, but failed.
Mina, having a good Will save for the teleportation field decided to go through it. A roll of natural 1 teleported her to a crypt somewhere in the castle, where she was also nekked. Replacing her on the battlefield was a wight wearing all of her stuff (who was then killed by the tentacles). Mina eventually pushed the lid open off her crypt, and was then attacked by several undead. With no holy symbol of any kind, we effectively wrote her off.
Hannibal, after healing up Numen the best he could, entered the tentacle area again, and the teleportation field. After a couple of rounds in the tentacles (he failed the save then broke free) he jumped through the field and made the DC 20 Will save.
Numen transposed himself with Tenbeers’s corpse (not sure of the legality of that) and occupied the golem’s time.
The golem kept pounding away at Numen, killing only Mirror Images.
Hannibal cut off Strahd’s head and ran, followed by Numen.
They made it through the teleportation field, fled the castle and ran to the Tser Waterfalls where they immersed the head in the flowing water until it dissolved.
It was late, so we stopped there.
It was one of those victories that didn’t feel like one.
Campaign over, with a technical victory.
posted by BlueBlackRed at 11:07 PM
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