Rappan Athuk #11 - The Dark Warrior

4E is getting closer and I am still just as hopeful as when 4E was officially announced, but I am very anxious about other things that I’ve seen that could utterly ruin the whole edition for me.

I’m not talking about dragonborn, tieflings, and warlocks being included as part of the core. I can exclude those if I see fit.

I’m not talking about my opinions of the fluff of 4E. That’s the best part of fluff, it’s only story and stories can be changed or ignored.

I’m not talking about art. Hey, I’d love it if they went back to Elmore art or even the scribbles from the original AD&D books (paladin in hell, fighter afraid of rust monster, no honor amongst thieves, etc.).

I have two concerns that have my anxieties growling away.

Anxiety number one – a lot, but not all, of the special abilities require players to remember way too many things. What’s going to happen when players have to remember even more?

“My PC gives everyone +1 to hit.”
“Oh and don’t forget that we each can do Y now.”
“Don’t forget about those temporary hit points when I heal you.”
“And we all have +10’ of movement.”
“I’ve also trained all of the fighters to kill goblins, so that’s another +2 to damage against goblins.”
“Wait, what now?”

In my experience players forget things, all kinds of things. And these memory lapses usually come out as “Oh, my PC should have died in that last encounter”, or “Oh, I read the rules wrong. I guess my PC couldn’t have done that”, or my personal favorite “Oh wait, I had X so Y didn’t happen. Can we rewind back to a minute ago and fix it?”

DM’s do the same thing, but DM’s can write things like that off. Who cares if that goblin shouldn’t have died?
Player’s tend to get a bit irritated if their PC is barbecued and the DM says “Hey, you should have remembered your PC’s abilities. I’m the storyteller, not your nanny.”

Anxiety number two – could the expansion of the “sweet spot” just mean that all levels are now 100% equal and have all become the same thing just with larger numbers at higher levels?

In the current and all previous versions of D&D the lower levels (1-4) were about surviving to the middle levels, while the middle levels (5-9) were the sweet spot and tended to be the most fun, and the higher levels (10+) just weren’t as fun as either the paperwork became too cumbersome or the PC’s weren’t challenged enough or possibly the DM was burnt out, and so on.

What WotC has promised is that all the levels will be that sweet spot.

I hope so very much that they’ll deliver, but what if they deliver something that is so proportionately equal that level 1 feels identical to level 10?

I honestly don’t believe this will be as much of an issue as I do with the first one, but I’m concerned. Making everything equal doesn’t always mean better.

Enough of my rambling, let’s talk about Rappan Athuk and perhaps sing a few rounds of “Ding! Fries are done!”

There was no Brian this session, so Aaron’s Dargo (second incarnation) poofed in made a repeat appearance.

So for this session we had:
Saver – Dale’s level 6 favored soul/sorcerer
Gehei – Aaron’s level 6 favored soul/knight
Spotted Dragon – Justin’s level 6 monk/fighter
Dargo – Aaron’s level 5 scout/sorcerer

We last stopped with the party looking down into the familiar graveyard of Rappan Athuk.

Tonight they intended to begin the exploration of level 3 of the dungeon, but there was a small snag with that.

They didn’t have a map of the dungeon at all. They know they had found a way down, but did not remember specifically what room led down from level 2 into level 3.

What the DM thought would be a minor correction (making maps) ended up taking most of the night.

They re-explored the crazed barbarian’s room, then walked past some storage rooms (including one with the stairs down), and then decided to make a map.

After proving that they had on them something portable to write on and write with, they began mapping.

During their new explorations they encountered a trio of black-boned skeletons like the one they encountered back in the mausoleum long ago that nearly killed them right before the mausoleum trap nearly killed them.

But thanks to Spot’s magical fists and Saver’s Remove Fear spell, the combat was minor.

During this repeated exploration they come across an ebony door with gold trim and a lock that Javier was poisoned by long ago.

On the door was a kind of nausea inducing writing that used the celestial alphabet but used infernal words. GI’s magical helm showed it saying, “Saraseck, in life a deluded slave of blinding light, in death a dark warrior king.”

Refer to my above statement about players forgetting things.
At that time Aaron believed that scouts could look for traps but not disable them, but could pick locks.
If that is incorrect, then Aaron probably feels a little silly after all the trouble Dargo went through.

Nonetheless we spent probably 20 minutes of time while Aaron rolled to pick the lock while incessantly getting stabbed with a poison needle that did strength damage. Aaron needed to roll an 18 on a d20, while I only needed a 12 to hit Dargo for 1 damage then force a DC17 fortitude save to prevent 1d4/1d4 strength damage.

After that door was finally opened, they saw a 20’ hallway that showed an identical doorway that had to be picked as well.

Let’s just say there were a lot Lesser Restoration spells being cast, including burning some third level spell slots to cast them, even after giving a dodge bonus.

While Dargo was busy getting a swollen hand, the rest of the group saw the story of Saraseck while Saver filled in what the frescoes on the walls did not cover. Saraseck was once a paladin of Heironeous that chased the cult of Orcus to here, but he eventually fell to evil and is now entombed here in death.

When Dargo finally got the second door open everyone got to meet Saraseck in all of his undead glory.

He was fully ready for battle, because he heard the party coming (you can only get stung in the hand so many times by a needle before you start swearing up a storm).

The party refused to kneel before him and declare their allegiance to him, so a fight began.

What should have been a nasty fight turned out to be pretty one-sided.

Saraseck had a nice greatsword that hurt whoever he hit, but his AC was a pathetic 17 and he had no spell resistance. He did have damage reduction 10/magic and bludgeoning, but a monk gets past that.

Out of six attacks in 3 rounds, Saraseck only hit once. It was a good hit for 45 damage, but dealing 45 while taking over 120 from spells and a monk’s fist isn’t a fair trade.

I gave the party XP for a CR10 rather than CR12 because the fight was so one-sided, but that was till 1500xp, so they didn’t complain.

After searching around, they found plenty of magic items, including his sword, and a shield Saraseck could no longer use.

They holed up in this room (it has some nice protection with those doors) afterwards and used a scroll of identify on the shield (+2 as a shield and a weapon, blinding and holy).

After resting and leveling (Saver and GI are now level 7), they resumed mapping the nearly clear level.

They nuked a room full of baby dire rats and their moms (no XP, but they did find 2pp).

They found another room full of a variety of fungus. When some of it began shrieking and moving, they cleansed this room with fire and searched through what was left. (Rather than fighting I just had them mark off some spells.)

They were rewarded not with treasure, but with a hole that led up and out of the dungeon that was big enough for a human.

They made note of the hole on their map and went back to exploration and eventually found the stairs leading down to level 3.

They descended the stairs and at the bottom was a written warning in glowing green letters “Beware of purple worms. Signed Spiegel the Mage”

They are finally on level 3 and have found a huge natural cavern over 30’ in height and spreading farther out than their magical torches would shed light.

After they magically crossed a rapid-flowing river and searched a bit of the area we stopped for the evening.

Rappan Athuk #10 - The Shrine of Heironeous

I stopped awhile ago keeping track of 4E information leaked out to us players.

It was more of a chore trying to figure out what was real and what wasn’t, so I pay little attention to anything that isn’t directly released by WotC. Even then I just look at it enough to get the idea.

I just don’t have the time anymore.

Writing blog posts takes more than an hour to do (at least for my longwinded style), that’s why I’ve been getting behind a bit.

But I make sure to set aside the time to do it.

Last session we ended with the group having returned to town from another near-TPK, but most of them having made sixth level.

We fast-forwarded to the next morning as the party had nothing to take care of other than getting the magic ring they got off the babau demon identified (a simple Ring of Protection +1).

Ok, while I’m thinking about it:

Saver worships Farlanghn, a neutral deity.

Javier worships Corellon, a good deity.

Gehei worships Nerull, an evil deity.

Spot worships St. Cuthbert, a neutral deity (with good leanings).

I wrote that down wrong last week.

That comes in to play later, and I wrote it down wrong in last session’s write-up.

Last session (yesterday on the timeline) they had set out to find a shrine to Heironeous somewhere out in the hills to the north, but had not made it.

This morning they’re going to try again.

They were ambushed by a pair of ettins along the way, each attack from the sides while the party was traveling between a pair of hills.

The party seemed confused the first few rounds, with no communication going on, but after that the ettins were toast.

Justin did whine because he thought it was unrealistic for a two-headed creature to get more attacks than a head one-headed creature. I pointed out that he’s playing a game where dragons and magic exists, so don’t worry too much about realism.

Justin to Brian: “Since you took out an ettin, you get a cookie.” (Hands Brian a cookie.)

Sean: “So I get a cookie if I take a PC down?”

Justin: “Hell no! Well…unless it’s Brian.”

After healing up and the usual treasure grabbing, they started moving again, eventually coming to a rivulet whose water was cold and moving fast thanks to the still melting snow.

There had once been a bridge, but it had collapsed recently.

That left the party with option of jumping the bridge or finding another option.

Since the skill system makes jumping 15’ not too hard, they go for the long jump option.

Spot makes it with no problem, as does Javier.

Saver falls quite short of the needed 15 on the roll (he totaled a 5), and belly-flops into the 40 degree water.

Spot and Javier are holding a rope that is tied to Saver, but they botch their strength checks three times in a row and lose grasp of the rope.

At this point Saver is feeling some good hypothermia, and is possibly lost had GI not drunk a Potion of Fly (he got off the boss ogre Ambro) and flown down stream and saved Saver.

Once everyone is safely on the other side of the river they make a fire and set up a temporary camp so Saver can dry off and warm up.

An hour into it and Saver is feeling a bit better, so they prep up to move, and that’s when the random encounter roll comes up as 1, meaning a pair of scrags burst from the frigid water and attack.

The scrags’ rending ability tore the party up, and the regeneration just made the encounter that much riskier.

To add a little something to it, I gave Dale a 50/50 chance that his spell component pouch was still too waterlogged to use successfully each time. Saver’s first attempt at casting Fireball ended in a fizzle.

Saver proceeded to blast the scrags with the non-component fire spell Scorching Ray.

This combat was an uphill fight, but it does end eventually when both trolls are dropped within a couple rounds of each other (back into the water too) followed by GI pulling them out of the water with his scythe to be delivered a coup de grace right afterwards.

After that they spend another hour to make sure that Saver’s spell component pouch is nice and dry.

Rather than rest for the night (it’s only around 4pm) they move on, and in a couple of hours they spot an indent in one of the hills that turns out to be the shrine they’re looking for (the symbol of Heironeous and two carvings in the stone of the hill of full-plated warriors was the give-away).

Being paranoid they enter the place with buff spells cast, weapons out, and GI leading the way (he has an AC of 25).

First thing to happen is a Blade Barrier popping up in front of them, hitting GI, then a deep booming voice demands to know what they’re doing.

Long story short, inside the shrine are a pair of hound archons (Aurell and Duvrin) who had taken up temporary residence in the shrine to their god until they felt guided somewhere else. And it was revealed that the Blade Barrier trap was only triggered and only damages evil beings.

Everyone now knows that GI is evil, but everyone in the party still likes him and can vouch for him. But since neither archon can control the trap, GI has to spend the night outside (and luckily has no encounters).

The shrine itself was down quite a ways and was lit brightly by hidden sources, with a marble floor inlaid with gems and the symbol of Heironeous. Next to the altar was a set of bright shining full-plate armor on a stand. Of course there was an offering box, which the party lightened up on copper with.

The party left everything alone just in case it was animated or otherwise protected.

Everyone except GI rested in the shrine and the next morning they left, and for the heck of it they continued north along the faded trail until the hills ended and was replaced by plains.

At that end was another ruined guardhouse. This time it was completely abandoned, and they aren’t sure if it’s a stable building or not, though they certainly searched it inside and out.

So their next destination was the village of Lhend along the familiar to them faded road, then back to the dungeon.

They had to kill the two ettins again, but this time the ettins were skeletons. It was hardly a fight.

Back in Lhend they rested, restocked on supplies, and left.

Campaign Day #32

They decided that they were going to look for the ruined tower once again, which they expected to be quick, but poor rolling turned it into an all day affair.

When they finally found it, they found that a group of bugbears led by an ogre had moved in.

Thanks to fully functional Fireball spells, the fight was not exactly what you would call a challenge. Even giving them all maximum hit points didn’t do much, maybe just an extra round of combat for the DM to miss rolls on.

The party once again rested since it was late thanks to them getting lost.

The next morning they found the trail, had no encounters, and we stopped once they had made it to the precipice of the dungeon of Rappan Athuk.

Next week I believe should be level 3.

Rappan Athuk #9 - The Old Guardhouse

My wife’s parents went on vacation this past week to Italy and made a stop at the Vatican to attend a mass that the pope was going to give a blessing at. They wanted to know if my wife or I had anything we wanted to get blessed.

Much too late I thought about giving them some dice.

That leads to two questions:
#1) Does that make me a major gamer geek?
#2) Would those dice burn my skin whenever I touched them, or just roll 1’s all day long for me?

This session had a little bit of everything.

We had some pointless non-D&D discussions.
We had some D&D 4E discussions.
We had some role-playing.
We had some paperwork gaming.
We had a combat.

The non-D&D discussions were our usual messed-up stories or politics.

The 4E discussions were about the usual:
We will be playing 4E. If it ends up being worse, we’ll switch back to 3.5. But we are definitely going to give it a fair shot.

We will not be playing in the Forgotten Realms and probably not any WotC campaign worlds. They’ve gone from Tolkien fantasy to an anime and Warcraft.

Until I get some solid opinions from a trusted source that WotC is making good modules again, we will not use any WotC modules. Other companies’ modules I’ll keep an open mind about.

Dale is probably going to run the first 4E campaign, while I will prep up for another Valley campaign.
We will probably start it a few weeks after the release, which is about 2 months away.

Also, Joy will be on a hiatus for a while. She and many of her friends recently graduated college. So rather than skip every other week to go to some party until reality seeps in, she’s just leaving for awhile.

That also means we might be looking for someone new when we start 4E if she’s into returning.

Dale has kind of been looking around for new players, but so far he’s only turned up someone who will not be switching to 4E under any circumstances.

That sounds foolishly short-sighted and narrow-minded, but to each his own.

Remember:
4E crunch (to me) is looking good and gives me hope.
4E fluff (to me) is a pile of Dungie that will ruin FR.

As for Eberron, who gives a rat’s ass?

Now we move on to our game.

The coupons seem relatively popular. Instead of me keeping track of bonus rolls, all I do is hand out coupons at various times. So far the only drawbacks are people misplacing and losing their coupons or the inevitable “oh crap” moment where a coupon would have come in handy, but the player forgot about it.

I haven’t boosted that many monsters to counter the coupons yet. There simply has not been a need.

Once the gestalt power starts to kick in, then I might need to boost some monsters. But for now I’ve killed too many PC’s to make it a need.

In the past month we’ve somehow added PC’s, lost PC’s, and generally left them all over the dungeon.

So for my sanity’s sake, we just plopped everyone in the village of Lhend so they could buy, sell, and identify equipment as was needed.

For this session we had:
Gehei (GI), level 5 knight/favored soul (Nerull), played by Aaron
Saver, level 5 sorcerer/favored soul (Pelor), played by Dale
Javier, level 4 fighter/favored soul (Heironeous), played by Brian
Spotted Dragon (Spot), level 5 fighter/monk, played by Justin

I see a lot of fighting and healing power, but not much in the way of dealing with traps.
I’ll have to make a mental note of that for later.

After everyone sold off their gems and equipment they didn’t need, they wanted to upgrade their equipments.

Upgrading their non-magical equipment was relatively easy, and if it could be bought from Trake’s Armory the upgrades were decently priced.

But when they wanted to spend their newly gained thousands of gold on something magical, well they were in for sticker shock.

Tantagel’s Magic Emporium has plenty of items to choose from, but the list is limited, and quite simply a lot of things that adventurers want are usually bought quickly.

Then enters the laws of supply and demand…
If adventurers want it then the price increases.
If it’s hard to obtain, the price increases.

If an adventurer is lucky, he might find an item at merely double the standard cost.
If it’s something incredibly useful to an adventurer, then expect the price to be disgustingly high.

Do you want a wand of Cure Light Wounds?
They have one, but not at 750gp. Try 4000gp.

Would you like a pair of Gauntlets of Ogre Power?
They have a set of those as well, but it’s not 4000gp.
Shell out 25,000gp and it’s yours.

Could the players go somewhere else and buy the magic items there?
Absolutely, just create a new character while your current PC is out of the game for 2 weeks or so while he travels to the nearest city that sells that stuff.

Am I cheating the players out of the equipment they need to survive?
No, I’m just not supplying them with an easy access source of magic items.

But nonetheless the party deals with the situation presented to them quite well and manage to improve their equipment.

Indeed they even improve their situation when they go see the old potion lady to get some potions identified. Audrasa, as they find out her name, helps them quite eagerly.

The PC’s aren’t exactly thrilled with Tantagel and his magic emporium, but have no other options. They rediscover that Audrasa has no love for Tantagel after he killed her potion making business by selling potions for cheaper than she could make them and now she has to scrape by day to day.

The group decides to help her get back on her feet by fronting her 250gp she needs for replacement materials, and then they preorder several potions. She’s cautious about this arrangement because she fears that the same thing will happen as last time, but agrees to do it.

In all of this role-playing the party is able to get plenty of information from Audrasa. She is more than helpful to her new benefactors when it comes to this.

There are several rumors the group has heard about the dungeon and its surrounding areas which Audrasa sheds some light on and adds some wisdom to.

“The only mountain that is visible from the village is Blanguck’s Mountain. It’s named after a solitary giant who likes to knock intruders off his mountain to their deaths.”
Audrasa: “I’ve heard those rumors as well. You have skills in mountain climbing right?”
They don’t, so they scratch the plan to go to that mountain for now.

“A secret force of Heironeous’s faithful is gathering in a shrine nearby. They intend to cleanse the countryside then expunge the evil of the dungeon.”
Audrasa: “That rumor appears from time to time, and it is occasionally true.”
She reveals that she is a follower of Heironeous and confirms there is shrine, but can only give vague directions to the shrine.
“Head north along the faded road and at some point it to the west.”

The stone obelisk:
“That thing’s been appearing all over the place for the longest time, and no one knows why.”

Rappan Athuk:
She offers no conclusive help.

The ruined tower:
She heard some rumor about some insane wizard in his tower, but there’s always some insane wizard doing something.

Next on the party’s list: finding someone in town that knows anything about being bitten by a wererat and if anything can be done about it.

Campaign note: 7 days until the full moon at that time.

Jorgleen of the Temple of Wee Jas fills them in, from a distance. She is very cautious and keeps the party at reasonable distance once the subject is brought up.

When asked if she can cure it, she replies that she can’t but adds that if they can’t cure it before the full moon then they should make sure that anyone afflicted (never looking at Spot) should be “taken care of”.

Aaron: “Eh, we’re not likely to make it a week.”

Spot buys 30’ of chains so he can be tied up really well if things don’t work out.

Since I don’t want a TPK, I informed the group that going to level 3 might be suicide for the party, and that they should gain a little XP outside the dungeon.

Which is why they were asking about Blanguck’s Mountain and the shrine of Heironeous.

So off they marched along the worn and almost gone road leading out of town to the north, hoping to find the shrine of Heironeous.

They only rolled twice for random encounters, because there was a planned encounter.

Audrasa had mentioned something about old guardhouses on the old roads that might have something of value in them, and here up on a hill overlooking the old road was a dilapidated stone building that looked about to fall over from disrepair, complete with worn parapets, doors off the hinges, and a large hole in the wall.

The party walked up to the building and was greeted by a man-sized creature with blades growing out of its body (a bladeling).

Since the creature bothered to talk to the party, they decided to talk back.

But really, the bladeling was sporting for a fight.

The party decided ask him questions, he said “Sure, 100gp a question.”

After a few minutes of getting nowhere and having their manhood questioned multiple times, the party walked away.

With that, other bladelings came out of the guardhouse while the speaker demanded gold.

“Come get it.”

Now the 8 bladelings themselves were a footnote in this fight, it was the babau (horned) demons that made this fight a nasty one for the party.

Here is about how the fight went…

Saver starts of the fight by casting Sound Burst and taking out half the bladelings in a single spell.
That tells the babaus where they need to start, so they teleport into flanking positions around Saver.

Spot attacks a babau, hitting twice but only manages to total 4 points of damage thanks to their damage resistance 10/good or cold iron.

The rest of the party starts mopping up the remaining bladelings while the bladelings only manage to do damage with their razor storm ability.

Saver casts Magic Missile at the same Babau that Spot hit, and manages to break through its spell resistance.

But the babaus put an end to that pretty easily with their flanking and sneak attack abilities.

Saver is left a bloody mess on the ground, but luckily for him we’re using the new rules on death and dying.

Afterwards when the babaus can’t get flanking through movement, they’ll teleport into position so they can next round.

Teleport w/o Error at will is a nasty thing when combined with sneak attack.

One by one the party drops to the babau’s 2 claw attacks at +12 to hit and 1d6+5 damage and 2d6 sneak attack.

First it’s Saver, then it’s Spot, and then Javier.

The group had a brief discussion about running, but there’s no point when your opponents can teleport.

But by the time Javier drops, GI has healed Saver, who then casts Magic Missile every single round and amazingly never fails to beat spell resistance.

Had it not been for Javier getting a crit with a power attack, Saver would have done 90% of the damage to the babau rather than 50%.

After probably a dozen rounds of combat, the party finally dropped one babau.

The second babau decided that he couldn’t take out this party with the amount of healing that have, so he teleported away.

Everyone in the party had less than 20 hit points by this point, and were glad to see the demon leave.

At least they got some platinum and a magical ring for their trouble.

Brian: “I sure hope we got more than 150XP out of that.” (Saver was 150XP from level 5.)

That fight earned them over 2000xp, putting Javier at level 5, and Saver and GI at level 6.

Dale now has Fireball. Dale loves Fireball. Dale would marry Fireball if he could.

In addition to Fireball, Saver also now has Remove Curse, which can, with a little risk, remove lycanthropy.

Exhausted after one fight the party returned to Lhend.