Thunderspire Labyrinth #1

One thing about this new edition of D&D is that it is a lot easier to scale encounters to get them to the difficulty you’d like.

With 1E & 2E AD&D the game changed drastically when the casters in the group attained a new spell level. A level 4 magic-user usually paled in comparison to a level 5 magic-user with Fireball. This made tweaking encounters a bit more of a shot in the dark.

With 3E D&D, a single missing player or being 1 level off on encounter levels could turn an adequate combat into a TPK, or possibly an easy and forgettable encounter.

With 4E, scaling is as easy as adding or subtracting a single monster in an encounter. Or better yet, don’t bother changing the setup at all. 4E has done an excellent job of making sure encounters a few levels higher than the party are tougher, without as much of a risk of a TPK.

The “H” modules were meant for 5 PC’s, but tonight we only had 4, and they did quite well. I contemplated making changes to some encounters, but felt it wasn’t needed after all. In fact, I probably could have made them tougher. When all 6 players are around, I will probably have to make things harder.

As a DM, something I like about H2 is the quests they’ve added.

(Yeah, it’s definitely a bit like World of Warcraft. Really WoW took it from D&D and gave it a more defined format. But that’s not a bad thing.)

You can have major quests that get the action started, and minor quests that add a little more to the game and help nudge PC’s in the right direction or even to link two major quests together.

Since I’m a big proponent of tweaking modules to match your taste & style, I added a few little things to H2 that I felt it could use. Mainly I tweaked the quests to mesh module H1 with H2.

No Dale or Brian this week. Both have family things that had priority, so no XP for them.

Our lineup for this session:
Aaron, playing Valenae, the level 4 eladrin rogue
Justin, playing Stout, the level 4 dwarven fighter
Scott, playing Earl, the level 4 dragonborn paladin
Mike, playing Ander, the level 4 elf cleric (with some ranger multi-classing)

On that note: everyone misses Tornok the warlord, at least everyone but me. Everyone likes the guy who heals them, gives them a second chance at an attack, and allows a free save. But playing that guy, not as much fun. Next time I’m playing Faerel.

We started this session with the group having closed the portal to the Shadowfell and returned to Winterhaven only to be thrown a giant village-wide party as a giant thank you for lifting the darkness that was weighting them down.

They were heroes in the town, and of course there was more that needed to be done.

Several sessions ago the PC’s fought the blue slime and a letter to Kalorel from Chief Krand of the Bloodreavers. In it was Krand asking Kalorel to sell him any potential slaves he might come across and send them to Thunderspire.

Lord Padraig had learned from other leaders in the region that slavers had become a very real problem, though currently small one.

So after the celebration had died down, Padraig had a nightcap with the party and asked them to check into this before it became worse.

Since even rumors of slavers can have drastic effects on a region, he and other leaders of the region offered the party 1000gp for the head of Chief Krand and pointed them in the direction of Thunderspire Mountain. He told them that inside the place is a small and prosperous trading community, and they should start there.

The next morning the party bought provisions to set out to Fallcrest and then on to Thunderspire Mountain.

During that time Valenae accepted a task to take a package for Bairwin (a merchant in Winterhaven) to Gendar in the Seven Pillared Hall in Thunderspire. Bairwin had heard that the PC’s would be heading there, so he offered Valenae 400gp to be a simple courier of an ancient dagger and then bring back some special stones for him.

(FedEx quests are much less annoying when done this way aren’t they?)

It’s 3 full days by foot to Fallcrest, but on the third day an exhausted boy of no more than 12 ran up to the party begging for help. In his near delirious state, he told the party that goblins had raided his family’s farm.

Long story short – the party helped the boy with his exhaustion, then he lead them back to his house where they found the goblins robbed the place blind and there were no dead laying about, so the boy’s parents and 3 sisters had to be somewhere nearby.

With some excellent perception rolls and some help from the boy’s knowledge of the area, the party tracked the goblins down to some caves a few hours away.

The combat was a simple something I added to the module to drive the point home about the slavers. With relative ease the party took out the 10 goblins (6 minions, 2 sharpshooter, and 2 skullcleavers) and saved the family. A note was found on the lead goblin, offering gold for slaves, signed with the symbol for the Bloodreavers, a bloody axe held in a toothy, bear-like maw.

The party escorted the grateful family back to their home, and even assisted them in the recovery of livestock. They spent the night there before heading to Fallcrest a day later than expected.

Fallcrest was effectively just a pit stop for the party.

Aaron has gold burning a hole in Valenae’s pocket, and he’s itching to buy magic items, or at least the ritual to make magic items. Unfortunately this DM is not going to just hand over such a nice ritual at some village so easily. But I did give the party a chance.

The only person in Fallcrest who would have that ritual was a wizard known as Nimrozaran the Green, High Septarch of Fallcrest. But he’s an arrogant old man who won’t sell any rituals to someone not in the mage’s guild.

To join the mage’s guild you have to be able to prove you’re a wizard and you have to pay 500gp. The group could afford the 500gp, but they had no wizard. Ander (the group’s only ritual caster for this session) did try to bluff that part, but he failed miserably, so no ritual this night.

But I’m not a total jerk; I let the party buy simple +1 items from the city at a 25% markup from the Azaer Merchant House (450gp for a +1 weapon/armor/implement is still cheap).

When the pit stop was over they spent the rest of the day heading to the thundercloud-covered peak of Thunderspire Mountain.

The mountain is actually a hill, but it is single structure pushing up from the ground, with no other hills or mountains in the vicinity, making it appear to be taller than it is and the thundering clouds make the place more foreboding.

The party traveled the large and ancient cobblestone road up to and into what is called the Labyrinth. The road appears to be of dwarven make and there is plenty of lighting inside of the mountain through enchanted torches hanging on the wall.

Not far into the Labyrinth a small bit of road splits off and the party can hear some harsh voices yelling at a single not-so-harsh voice.

The party, spoiling for a fight, charged into the room and took on 5 hobgoblins (4 soldiers and a warcaster).

Stout took the brunt of this fight as he was stuck in a position that made him a target to all the hobgoblins.

Ander and Earl aided Stout while Valenae snuck behind (rather over and then behind) and took out the warcaster.

After the warcaster dropped, the soldiers dropped in due time.

The halfling is Rendill Halfmoon, a very cocky young halfling who had followed these hobgoblin Bloodreavers around to make sure they weren’t starting any trouble. That got him captured, and almost sold in slavery had the party not shown up.

He thanks the party profusely and as a reward Rendill buys them several drinks at his aunt’s inn at the trading post known as the Sever Pillared Hall. The inn is the Halfmoon Inn and the party now has free room and board as long as they want.

The Seven Pillared Hall itself is a huge and ancient cavern (about 800’ x 500’) of that houses many merchants and connects many roads together that lead into the labyrinth, the Underdark, and the surface.

Rendill also filled the party in on the little ins and outs of the Seven Pillared Hall:
The Mages of Saruun run the place and allow free trade in the Hall, for a cut
Several merchants make a nice living trading between the surface world and the Underdark
Don’t start problems in the Hall as punishment is usually swift and harsh
Don’t irritate Brugg or start any trouble for him – he works for the Mages of Saruun
If you’re looking to buy rituals, try the Grimmerzhul Trading Post or maybe Gendar’s Curios and Relics

And finally he gives them directions to the hideout of the Bloodreavers, a place known as The Chamber of Eyes.

While the party is drinking it up, Valenae sneaks off to Gendar’s to trade packages for Bairwin and try to buy ritual he so desperately wants.

Gendar, a drow (‘nuff said), throws a snag into the mix. He states that Bairwin left him in a bad situation last time, so he wants something done for him to make things straight.

He wants Valenae to find a magical silver box he had found in the labyrinth, but dropped it when he was ambushed by several zombie-like undead. In return he will honor the deal with Bairwin, get the ritual (if he can obtain it), and possibly have more work for Valenae in the future.

And wouldn’t you know it; the silver box is somewhere in the vicinity of the Bloodreaver’s abode.

The next morning Valenae filled the party in on their new task, and they headed that was as best they could. (Though the labyrinth has many marking, the lack of a skilled dungeoneer might cause problems for them later.)

Not far down the road they find the road leading to The Chamber of Eyes, and move on. They want the ritual more than the XP. I find that humorous.

Luckily for them I wasn’t making this quest that hard. An hour farther along the road, and without getting lost – no thanks to the many switchbacks along the down-sloping road, they find a small expansion that holds some old dwellings. Thanks to some good passive perception they notice something isn’t right, and don’t get surprised by the 4 rotwing zombies and deathlock wight.

As expected the zombies swarm the party, pinning them in, while the wight blasts them with its gravebolt.

One poor zombie was critted out of existence by Ander’s Turn undead, then was reanimated by the wight, only to be critted out of existence again by an attack from Earl.

When the party got too close for the wight he used his Horrific Visage to send them back into the waiting arms of the zombies.

Aaron likes to call that power the “Tell’em Large Marge sent ya.” move.

The undead did well, but were no match for the party.

Among the treasure was a silver box, exactly as Gendar described.

They took the box back to Gendar, but since it had only been 3 hours, he didn’t have the ritual just yet. He told them to come back tomorrow, he might have it then.

With that we stopped for the evening. I think it was a good start for the module, though the players thought the fights were a bit easy.

I can remedy that.

KotS #8

(Sorry for the lateness - I've had a cold. Mmmm, cold medications)

No quote this week. There were no notable comments that I can remember. Well, unless you want to count us mimicking stand-up comedy jokes or SNL Jeopardy skits.

This session was the final session for Keep on the Shadowfell.

For the most part, this module has been pretty well written. The majority of the challenges were done in a manner that we liked and the module appeared to be setup nicely that allowed for the DM to guide the players through the module without forcing them to follow the module.

As a group we have 2 complaints about the module.

#1 – Please stop using dark background images under the writing for the module. Way too many gamers have vision problems and you’re not helping by making parchment look a little too authentic.

Not for me though. My vision kicks ass. Yeah, that’s right. Suck it gamers.
(Just kidding)

#2 – We know that the D&D R&D team was looking for a way to make the non-combat aspects of the game a bit easier to run as a game mechanic, but what you came up with for non-combat challenges was just plain sad and unworkable. But, like I said in last week’s entry, it’s a start but it needs a lot of work.

Our lineup for this session:
Me, playing Tornok, the level 3 tiefling warlord
Aaron, playing Valenae, the level 3 eladrin rogue
Justin, playing Stout, the level 3 dwarven fighter
Scott, playing Earl, the level 3 dragonborn paladin
Brian, playing Hadarai, the level 2 wizard (I think)
Mike, playing Ander, the level 3 half-elf cleric

We last stopped in dungeon beneath the keep, and we jumped right into the game because we wanted to get this module over with before Dale had to start skipping sessions.

Pretty much Dale just shot-gunned the encounters at us, which was smart because we barely finished the final encounter before it was time to stop.

The first encounter was a large room irregular room with the center filled by a large column. It was full of zombie minions, a pair of zombies, a ghoul, and a clay scout homunculus.

In a strategy that kind of reminded me of the game Space Hulk, we formed up a line on one side of the split room while Earl ran off and held the other side by himself.

The zombies were slaughtered wholesale, the ghoul foolishly jumped into our midst – and was euthanized as a reward, and the clay scout tried to fly away but his escape was short-lived.

Next up was an altar to Orcus, with a nice open area for us to play in. Granted there was blood everywhere, but you tend to expect that with evil cults.

Our opponents was some kind of priest of Orcus, a pair of human barbarians, a dark creeper, and 5 vampire spawns.

What we thought was going to be a rough combat turned out to be a combat we outright owned.

The highlight of it was when Ander sent an unhurt dark creeper down a pit with a Command spell.

(Later we found out that this wasn’t as good as we had thought.)

When the last of those guys dropped we searched around and couldn’t find any other places, but we knew we weren’t done because we hadn’t fought Kalorel or closed the rift.

The only option was to climb down the blood-covered chains in the pit.

Four of the six of us failed that DC15 climb check and landed face-down in a large puddle of blood right next to a giant statue of Orcus.

Kalorel was chanting, trying to open the rift to the Shadowfell, but he stopped once he heard 4 large splashes.

Everyone (except Valenae and Tornok) took 3d10 points of damage from the fall, and was lying prone in the pool of blood.

Combat began immediately without the diatribe you usually get from evil villains.

Against us this time was the dark creeper from before, a pair of skeletal warriors, a deathlock wight, Kalorel, and some tentacles waving at us from the other side of a portal that really wanted out (its title was “Thing in the Portal”).

To make things even lovelier, they received a surprise round because of the dark creeper’s warning.

We were in a bad spot, but thanks to Earl and Ander, most of us were healed in the first round or two.

In fact, our daily abilities, magic item special powers, and action points were flying this combat. And healing surges were being uses left and right, even though some of us only had 1 or 2 left to use.

Kalorel immediately teleported to a magic circle near the Thing. Then he set about blasting us with his ranged attacks.

The Thing just kept waiting for something other than Kalorel to get near it. It was going to wait awhile because none of us were foolhardy enough to get near that thing. Or were we?

The skeleton warriors rushed up to us to keep us pinned in while the dark creeper tried to get some flanking attacks in.

The deathlock wight was harassing us with ranged attacks, and since we were all occupied with our other problems, he was pretty safe for awhile.

Once Stout dropped a skeletal warrior, he charged the deathlock wight. He refused to admit it, but he was afraid to go after Kalorel with the Thing right there behind him (and with a reach of 4).

Stout did accomplish something we didn’t realize. By staying on top of the deathlock, he prevented it from re-raising the skeletal warriors to give us even more grief. In fact when he tried to bulls’ rush the deathlock into a pit, some of us wondered what would happen if Kalorel was pushed into the portal.

Given no better targets and a daily ability that requires melee combat, Tornok decided to rush at Kalorel with his Lead the Attack daily ability.

I missed, by a lot.

Then I used an action point to attack him with Tornok’s Warlord’s Strike encounter power.

I missed, by more.

Note: A warlord’s highest stat must be strength. Too many of his abilities require hitting his target to get any effect.

Then the Thing smacked Tornok a square closer to the portal.

With some Knowledge – Religion checks, we were told that entering the portal would be very bad for a living person. We wondered if that included Kalorel.

As each of the group finished off their personal adversaries, they converged on Kalorel.

At first we began trying to hurt him, but the Thing began healing him.

Then we decided to try to knock him into the portal.
This was not as easy as you’d think.

We’d push him a square, but then he’d shift back.

One particular round Kalorel went nuts and once again Tornok took the brunt of it and was knocked to under 0hp. Next the Thing smacked Tornok with a crit, which killed him.

After that the Thing began pulling Tornok 1 square closer to the portal every round.

Then, finally, the combined efforts of everyone were able to knock Kalorel into the portal.

With that, Kalorel, the Thing, and the magic of portal all disappeared.

Anticlimactic huh? Oh well.

The group ransacked the area, grabbed Tornok’s body to give him a proper burial.

They didn’t feel like raising him from the dead this time, mainly since I’ll be running next week’s first session of Thunderspire Labyrinth.

KotS #7

Well this session confirmed one big thing I do not like about 4E – Skill Challenges.

It was awkward back when we used the skill challenge rules when role-playing with Sir Keegan. I didn’t like that encounter when done as written. We still “defeated” the encounter, but the rules felt a bit off.

When they were used this session they were downright pathetic and pretty much unusable to the point where it was just better for us to treat it like a combat challenge.

I think the rules can be salvaged if rewritten though; heavily rewritten. I almost expect to see alternate skill challenge rules in DDI or an upcoming book.

In spite of that, we’re still having fun with 4E. I remember some rules in 3E that made me say “WTF?!”, so I’m not going to slam 4E for an attempt at giving skills a bit more of a chance to shine.

Besides one of the best things about 2E was the rules were so pathetic that we threw so many out and pretty much just winged the game half the time.

This session was also the first session of our newest member Mike.

Mike so far looks like a team player and took human cleric as his class, with an eye towards being a buffing and assisting cleric, which is always helpful.

That brings me to my next topic, soon, when Dale has to start skipping sessions for family reasons, I will run module H2: Thunderspire Labyrinth (thankfully to be bought by Aaron).

My original concern was that the group would have no healing, but since Mike has made a cleric, it’s not an issue.

Maybe, just maybe, at some point our group might stabilize and we can play more than 2 sessions without a change in the party make-up.

Oh to dream.

Our lineup for this session:
Me, playing Tornok, the level 3 tiefling warlord
Aaron, playing Valenae, the level 3 eladrin rogue
Justin, playing Stout, the level 3 dwarven fighter
Scott, playing Earl, the level 3 dragonborn paladin (of Bahamut)
Mike, playing Ander, the level 3 human cleric (of Bahamut)

Dale offered, and strongly suggested, to let Justin bring in his wizard Berlin, but we declined. Five PC’s is plenty, and the controller job is arguably the easiest role to drop if need be. There’s no need to for one player to have a second PC when there are 4 other PC’s to help make up for the lack of a wizard.

We also are doing things much quicker now that Dale is having me keep track of damage to monsters and Justin or Aaron keeping track of the initiative. This allows Dale to deal with monster actions quickly and without having to wait for his “old eyes to focus”.

Last session we stopped at a point where we expected to be attacked from both sides in a pincer assault by the hobgoblins.

We started this session by pulling back out of the hallway and spiking the door we entered through shut.

Then we thought we could catch one pincer off guard so we traveled down the most likely hallway only to be stopped by a dropping portcullis.

What actually happened was that there was no pincer move and we had effectively alerted two separate groups of hobgoblins to our presence.

We pulled back to what we figured was our most defensive position, and waited.

Dale did not disappoint us when he dropped down 15 hobgoblin minis on the table; 8 minions, 4 soldiers, an archer, a warchief, and a warcaster, the combined forces of two separate encounters.

They came at us in a tight formation, which we couldn’t exploit because we had no wizard. We stood with our two tanks up front, the healers backing them up, and Valenae hiding around the corner – always trying to get a chance for a sneak attack.

Earl cleaned out each and every minion with his dragon breath.

Their archer and Valenae seemed to like shooting at one another.

The soldiers and the warchief stood toe-to-toe with Stout and Earl through the majority of the combat.

The worst opponent was the warcaster. Out of 4 attempts to gain back his special attack (Force Pulse – which did 2d8+4 or more in a burst 5, and knocked us down) Dale succeeded to roll 6 on three of those attempts. The first round he successfully blasted Earl and Tornok. The second round he blasted all of us (except Valenae) and 3 of his own soldiers.

His third blast on the fifth round killed an unconscious Tornok (he took a constant beating this combat, and I couldn’t connect with an attack roll for most of the combat).

Note: Make sure you have a high strength of you make a warlord. Damage doesn’t scale much at all in 4E, but attack bonuses and defenses scale evenly. That means the only you’re going to hit more often is through magic bonuses and your strength modifier. If I didn’t like the bonuses an 18 charisma warlord offers to the group, I’d have changed that long ago.

The final rounds was all of us in, all in bad shape (or dead), and the warcaster and archer.

The warcaster was swarmed, bringing us to the quote(s) of the week, when Aaron hits the warcaster who is supposed to be about to die:
Dale: “Do your worst.”
Aaron Rolls a 1
Sean: “He did his worst.”

After some discussion, the group decides to take Tornok back to town so see if anyone can resurrect him. Surprisingly there is, but it costs the group 500gp (still it’s cheaper than in 3E).

We rested the night in Winterhaven and then returned to the dungeon (we’re done with role-playing for this module – we’re ready to move on).

The next door we found had “Closed” scraped into it, so we opened it and went in.

We ended up getting attacked by a gelatinous cube and a pair of corruption corpse zombies.

Stout and Earl took on the tougher-than-expected gelatinous cube, Ander and Tornok took on the zombies, while Valenae split his attention.

The group taking on the gelatinous cube held their ground pretty well considering what could have happened to them. Gelatinous cubes are no longer 3HD creatures that can be killed as an afterthought.

Tornok got blasted once with an exploding zombie, but otherwise was fine. Ander did most of the damage to the undead while Tornok blocked.

The room was a dead end, so we went with our last option for doors, which must lead us to Kalorel.

That is after we got past the killer death trap with the ridiculous requirements for us to get past. Long story short, Valenae disabled a giant spinning titan statue while the rest of us were bashing on a group of smaller statues to prevent Earl from drowning in a magically walled off room that was filling with water, while two dragon statues were shooting Magic Missiles at us.

To stop a statue from attacking, Aaron had to roll 12 or better 4 times before failing twice. I’m no expert on probability, but figure that they could have said “if your rogue rolls a nat-20 on a d20, the statue turns off”. That’s not good design.

After all that a pair of double-doors is revealed.

We stopped there for the night.

And we’re skipping a week, so no update for nearly 2 weeks, and then I DM the campaign for a module.