The Valley #16

Aaron pointed out some flaws in my ideas to remove the speed bumps in 4E combat.

Unfortunately, his logic was solid.

If a clerical attack gives a penalty to a monsters defenses, then my idea of giving the cleric a bonus to the attack with the power rather than a penalty “until the end of the cleric’s next turn” will actually penalize the other PC’s attacking the target by denying the “bonuses” their leader usually supplies them.

So my new idea; set aside my previous idea, and replace it with something that is a little more and less powerful. Instead of giving a round-long penalty to a target’s defenses (which is really a bonus to the PC’s) that is -2, give the cleric a new special ability.

Whenever a cleric hits with a power that would penalize a target for a round, instead the cleric and his allies get one-half that penalty (rounded up to the PC’s favor) as an unnamed attack bonus that lasts until the end of the combat. If a stronger power increases it later, then the bonus increases.

This change almost guarantees a reworking of most of the clerical powers, but I’m ok with that. Now that I think about it, this could probably affect the other leader classes too. The downside is that some of the powers would become obsolete, and the classes could lose some of their “flavor”.

One day I’m going to have to sit down and look at all the powers and post something a bit more in-depth.

I would also like to reduce the chess level thinking that combat movement can become, though that may be more a player thing more than a rules thing.

Overall I like the ideas I’ve come up with, and the responses I’ve gotten back about them.

My actual biggest concern is WotC. While they’ve not quite entered T$R territory, their reigning-in of the SRD-type content, and the destruction of their PDF sales concerns me that they make take some issue with anything I post here that is a retyping of their rules.

Of course that could also just be my paranoia acting up again.

This session only had 3 players.

Not to worry though, we knew it was going to be that way, so I had planned for it.

Our cast:
Admon (Scott); level 7 human war wizard
Duncan (Justin); level 7 Silverhome dwarven cleric of Moradin
Edward (Aaron); level 7 human paladin of Brekaneth

We started back up just after the fey-crocodile and fey-choker fight.

(We also wrote off Ander and Kergan as having to go back to the Valley for an undisclosed reason.)

The party returned the silver chalice to the satyrs and thanked them for it. They also answered as many of the party’s questions as they could.

Several months back, many elves came through this area and their leader, Ivellios Galanodil, paid the toll required for the lot of them.

The satyrs helped the elves on their journey to a place called the Forest of Shadows.

The party asked for directions to the Forest of Shadows, and they were given three paths.

Path #1 – Hell’s Hand Swamp
The party wrote that one off immediately.

Path #2 –Short Mountain
That one didn’t sound all that lovely to the party either.

Path #3 – The Flittering Fields
The party liked the sound of that, but the satyrs warned them that the grass in the fields grows six feet tall and hides the numerous predators there (mainly large felines and canines).

Before the party left, the satyrs warned them that when the elves came, chaos followed them.

Rumor was that Ivellios had killed a green dragon that had controlled the nearby countryside, but the aftereffects were making life harder on the inhabitants of the land.

Their first encounter was when they attempted to cross the river at a bridge. It was guarded by a troll (I think I may be watching too much Dora with my kids).

The troll, in his gruff Eeyore-esque voice, offered to allow the party to pass for either a bucket of their blood (each), 100gp (each), or to fight him.

“No acid or fire! Them’s for keeps.”

In the end he settled for 50gp each.

By nightfall they made it to the edge of the Flittering Fields and they were almost too paranoid to rest.

They did rest, though they had the ever-present feeling that they were being watched. But they had that feeling the moment they entered this realm.

As they continued their travels through the fields, they heard tiny screams for help. After getting over their fear that this was a trap, they searched for the source of the screams as they grew more desperate and quieter.

They found a small clearing with four lizards with butterfly wings laying on the ground with a harpy to a trio of dire wolves ready to eat them.

The party started by beating the harpy senseless while getting chewed on by the wolves.

Now the wolves don’t move no more.

After being healed a bit, the fairy dragons became fast friends of the party and assisted them on their way to the Forest of Shadows.

The little dragons explained that a dragon, Greenfang, the son of the last dragon, had been trying to take over his father’s area, but wasn’t strong enough to maintain control.

This had resulted in no order in the lands, and old rivalries no longer being kept in check, and instead of helping, Greenfang only made things worse.

The party pretty much ignored every hook the DM threw at them, so the dragons led them to the edge of the Forest of Shadows.

The best part of the whole thing is that Dale, a big lover of fairy dragons, was not present this week. He most assuredly would have tried to befriend one and have loads of fun.

Denied!

Now this next bit was me having to rapidly throw stuff together as the party had totally ignored my hooks. The resulting story that came out of it was a mixing of things I had planned, and thinking on the fly. I believe the resulting story was better than one I would have made up with planning.

They enter the forest and feel even more eyes watching them.

Luckily the eyes belong to elves that do the usual shoot-in-front-of-the-party-to-get-their-attention.

Duncan did most of the talking and soon he was led to meet Ivellios Galanodil.

Where last he had seen Ivellios he was an elf that appeared to him as a human of maybe 60 years old, now he saw a feeble old elf who appeared to be on his death bed.

Duncan offered him any kind of aid to help him, but Ivellios told him there was nothing that could be done. This was simply time catching up to him.

Ivellios was there when the Valley was created. To him it was obvious early on that the dark tendencies of people would destroy any chance of survival in a land where resources were few.

So he used his magic to make every human, dwarf, and elf a little more accepting of others to make it easier for all to survive against the odds.

But it was dark magic, and it came with a price. Every elf in the Valley had his soul cursed and if he were to die of old age, he would rise again as a creature of darkness.

At the time he considered it a wise decision, but he expected only a few decades of imprisonment, not three centuries.

No elf could commit suicide, and elves could be sent off to fight in a hopeless battle and killed before his natural end.

But every decade or so an elf would die suddenly, for no obvious reason. That once-elf would be contained in an area where he could hurt nothing. Whether they could not be re-killed or were too powerful for that was not made clear.

Look three-hundred fifty years later in the future and you’ve got yourself a problem.

And this is the problem that Thlyria Isara has.

She told Duncan to relay to Ivellios, “Tell him that we are at the precipice of the abyss.”

And Ivellios has responded, there is nothing more he can do. Every middle-aged and older elf in the Valley has come to the Fey-realm to live out their lives where the curse does not seem to apply as it did on the prime plane. But now they age rapidly.

As the party thought about it, they looked around and saw no young elves here, and so few elves have been born in the Valley.

Ivellios made it clear that this was the best he could do. He desperately searched for a solution, and “re-finding” the Fey-realm was the best option he could attain.

Aaron: “So we need to gather up all the elves in the Valley, bring them here, and then…kill them.”

In the end Ivellios can only give them several of his books (quite precious really) so they can perform their own research and perhaps find something he could not.

They had one last question: what about the souls of the elves that died? To that Ivellios has no answer. Whether they are freed or trapped is beyond his knowledge.

The party has to return to the Valley, so they leave and on the way they kill Greenfang and his kobold underlings.

Not bad for a leader, defender, and controller.

The Valley #14-15

Starting at the beginning of the year Dale and I will be alternating DM’ing.

He’ll run his campaign for three weeks and then I’ll run my campaign for three weeks.

Now normally I loathe this idea, but considering how easy it is to get burned out on it (having seen and experienced it many, many times) it’s kind of a must.

Hey, it’s a better alternative than running a new campaign every 4 months. It also lets some players try out new things, especially if they’re the type of player who likes to play new PC’s a lot (cough-Mike-cough).

It will also give us DM’s a decent chance to refresh the creative ideas.

So I pulled out Wildeyes a few weeks ago and remade him…twice.

The first time I misread the rules for multiclassing, and pretty much redesigned him to not exploit critical hits. But then Mike and Aaron informed me of my mistake, so re-redesigned him, this time with an eye towards multiclassing into the rogue paragon path of Daggermaster.

I switched his short swords to daggers (+2 vicious), kept the same stats, and all but one power, so there will only be one swap required for feats and 50g for a couple of transfer enchantment rituals (and that’s only if Dale pushes a “by the rules” redesign – which he never does).

For the time being Wildeyes will do a little less damage than he did before (1d6 before versus 1d4 now), but there’s a gain in not having to swap out weapons for melee to range (short sword and sling to all daggers), so it may be a wash when versatility is factored in (ranger’s generally need their minor actions quite often).

And then you factor in the number of attacks he’ll be making, I’m hoping for more critical hits. The feat I swapped out is to take a rogue encounter power that allows a blast 5 ranged attack, and all of his other attacks tend to attack multiple times (or provide mobility, or mute a surprise attack on us).

When level 11 is attained, and Daggermaster kicks in, then he’ll be critting 3 times as often (Daggermasters crit on 18-20). I’ll be rolling so many damn dice…that I’ll be slowing the game down. But that’s ok, I’ve already prepared for that by having colored dice and by making a character sheet that shows average damage.

To brag further, a “going nova” round will be (assuming there are two targets, and the main target is quarried, and no crits are scored, but all attacks hit)
Ruffling Sting (minor action) = 1d4+7 + combat advantage granted for next melee attack
Hunter’s Quarry = 1d6
Jaws of the Wolf (standard action) = 4d4+14
Sneak Attack = 2d6
Quickhit Bracers = 1d6 extra damage
Quickhit Bracers (move action converted to minor action, daily) = 1d4+9
Jaws of the Wolf (action point) = 3d4+14 to primary target, 2d4+7 to secondary target
Total = 9d4+4d6+44 to primary target, and 2d4+7 to secondary target
Average total = 80.5 &12

I’m sure others have made PC’s that do a lot more, and I’m sure I could have made a bow ranger that does much more damage at similar levels, but I did that already.

Now to the actual sessions

Session #14’s cast:
Admon (Scott); level 7 human war wizard
Duncan (Justin); level 6 Silverhome dwarven cleric of Moradin
Edward (Aaron); level 7 human paladin of Brekaneth
Ander (Dale); level 4 halfling storm sorcerer (slacker XP gain of +30%)

Slacker XP means if someone is lagging 2 levels or more behind the highest level PC, they get +10% per level behind they are at the end of the night.

This makes sure that they don’t get a mass of free XP right off the bat and they don’t remain too fragile for too long. And since the PC has to be 2 levels behind, those who are in the lead don’t feel as though they’re being slapped in the face for actually showing up to the game consistently.

A few weeks had passed since the party’s previous exploits, and they were ready to find new adventure.

Admon was out looking for a money-paying adventuring job, but all he found was a poster of an 18 year old girl missing with no reward for her return, as she was from the Crags part of town.

Edward, acting on his own, patrolled the Crags. He finds the area quieter than usual, but a low roll on his Gather Information check only told him that there was a new group of people around causing the quietness.

Ander has found that the silver dragons have been guiding the cabal or sorcerers he founded more than he would prefer. He’s not a fan of that, but he knows he was never going to lead the cabal.

So he goes to find and chat with Bobby McDonaldson, only to find from the bartender at the Death’s Head Bar that Bobby is hiding. And if Bobby doesn’t want to be found, Bobby won’t be found.

The open-air dive-bar is virtually empty, the only other person there, a scary muscular man fills him and tells him that people are disappearing but no one knows where to or why. So Ander goes to find the only “cop” he knows; Edward.

Duncan would usually try to split his time between his clerical duties, his family, and toadying up to the mayor. But the mayor has been predisposed quite a bit as of late, with a new lady friend named Niyah. Mayor Ryan apologizes for his lack of free time, but the woman is quite beautiful, is a mage of no small skill, and has some links to royalty – which is a political gold mine to him.

Duncan, seeing this as a good idea as well, begins to look for a dwarven woman, but does not have much luck.

He also finds out that the current standings with the vote to allow Silverhome a council seat is currently 4 to 3 in favor. So at least something is going his way.

The first time Duncan meets Niyah, she and the mayor are asking for his help.

People have been going missing in the Crags, and she believes it has something to do with an item known as the Vial of the Damned.

If given a blood sacrifice it can summon demons, but if the Vial is returned and the proper ritual is performed the Vial can be destroyed, neutralized, or possibly even turned to good.

Around 5pm that night Ander finds Edward and fills him in on people going missing and Duncan meets up with Admon as they question the mother about her missing daughter (once again, no relevant information is found).

As the four of them are about to get together and compare notes, Duncan is confronted by a group of burly looking men who are talking up a party later that night and is told to bring as many friends as possible and there will be a band, women, drink, and plenty of spare rooms.

At that time it is 6pm, and the party starts at 9pm and since nothing happens without a reason in the strapped for time role-playing we have, the party immediately investigates.

They show up early, but are told to come back later by a pair of burly bouncers. So they decide to sneak in…without a rogue.

Admon casts Invisibility on himself and sneaks in. He finds a dilapidated warehouse in the process of getting cleaned up and hears a man talking behind a door, but doesn’t hear anyone else responding to the man.

He opens the door a tiny bit and sees the man giving a speech, almost a sermon, to some unseen person or people. The speech is something of a “this is your fault” or “you brought this on yourself” style.

When Admon attempts to open the door a little more to get a view of the audience, the speaker notices, and calls for a bouncer to make sure no one is around.

Admon decides it time to leave, and sneaks out when the band comes in.

(Think of the band as close to death metal as the medieval world was capable of getting to.)

He then reported to the group what he saw.

Over the next few hours the party did their best to cover up their equipment as best they could.

In spite of the number of penalties they had on the check to sneak in out in the open, they went in with the rest of the crowd of people waiting to go in, so the bouncers never noticed.

The party is going strong shortly on and our heroes are doing their best to blend in when a man comes out from the back room and gets the crowd riled up in the standard emcee fashion, then he tells everyone that the party is brought to them by the Church of the Crimson Host.

As he says this the front door is locked shut (the group notices) and the walls to back area begin sliding open, revealing a pristine white floor with a depressed area and several grooves leading to the depressed area.

Dale is correct in presuming that the grooves are there to allow the flow of blood into the depression to create a pool of blood.

Additionally, there are 8 people tied up and blinded in this room, and one man with a crazed look in his eyes (a berserker-priest).

One of these people is the girl that Admon is looking for.

The combat began almost immediately.

Instead of bonuses or penalties for protecting the “innocents” in the room, the party had a more compelling reason to not let them die.

When someone is bloodied or knocked to 0 hp, the pool of blood grows, creating a single “blood point” per such action.
When there were four blood points, a blood demon (carnage demons) would appear from the pool.
Each round the grooves and the pristine white marble of the back of the room expands a little bit, capturing any blood that was spilt.

As usual, the crowd panics and gets in the group’s way, making the group’s job harder, and their opponents’ job easier.

One half the group (I have to say group rather than party, because this combat took place at a party) works on getting the front door unblocked and then unlocked by killing the two guards at it while the other half of the party attacks the priest and his allies.

The priest and any summoned demons go on an innocent-killing rampage, making more demons and the priest releases a bladed top that randomly spins around the white area, indiscriminately attacking everything in its path.

The priest’s non-demon allies dropped fast, but that only added fuel to the fire as, in almost no time at all, there were 4 demons running around and putting a hurt on the group.

The group found out fast that it was best to not be bloodied, as that just doubled the number of attacks the demons got.

Soon the door was opened, and the innocents were slowly able to escape, including the quest-girl.

Once done the party escaped out the front door and killed the demons one at a time with the Conga-line-of-death, which they haven’t used in a long time.

This fight took forever, but it ended up being about 2 combat’s worth of XP. Plus it doesn’t help if your striker can’t roll above a 5 for 90% of his d20 attack rolls (yes, Dale rolled nothing above a 5 the entire fight).

When the last demon fell the room returned back to it’s old, dilapidated self, and the party was able to find the Vial of the Damned just barely buried at the bottom of the well area.

Admon returned the girl to her mother while Edward and Duncan take the Vial to Niyah.

Niyah informs them that she can perform the ritual the next day to cleanse the Vial of the Damned, but it will require blood from someone pure of heart.

Session #15

Our cast:
Admon (Scott); level 7 human war wizard
Duncan (Justin); level 7 Silverhome dwarven cleric of Moradin
Edward (Aaron); level 7 human paladin of Brekaneth
Kergan (Mike); level 7 Silverhome dwarven rogue
Ander (Dale); level 4 halfling storm sorcerer (slacker XP gain of +30%)
(I’m not 100% sure of that level information.)

We started at the next morning with Niyah about to cast the purification ritual and Edward making the blood sacrifice.

They moved the ritual casting to the outdoor area where city council meetings are held.

The ritual was going smoothly, as the vial changed from a sickly black to a pearly white, at least up until some evil giggling is heard, new blood is poured into the vial from and invisible source, and an invisible imp grabs the vial and flies a short ways away, summoning two devils in the process from the Vial.

Then the scenery of Hell begins to impose itself onto the battle area as lava bursts appear. They do little damage, but impose a cumulative movement penalty until saved against.

A cambion and inferno abishai appear. The cambion congratulates the imp on his actions while the abishai laughs at the party and makes them ouchy-sad.

The imp remained invisible, summoning 2 devils each round. The party didn’t realize the devils were minions rather than full out devils, so they were concerned for a little while.

First the cambion drops, then the party makes some miscalculations, as somehow Kergan becomes an impromptu tank as Edward is unable to get to the fight with the abishai fast enough.

Then Edward makes up for it by taking the imp down in one round when the imp foolishly appears for a round to make an attack on Admon. Edward then has the Vial, so the devils stop appearing.

At this point party is fighting the abishai alone, and they are taking a beating. Then Edward finally joins the group and then everything clicks together as the bloodied party focuses on Inferno the inferno abishai as suddenly sneak attack damage kicks in, marking kicks in, and clerics and wizards are able to do their job as the tank is doing his.

When Inferno is defeated, the Hell scenery reverts to normal and Niyah and Mayor Ryan return from the rocks they were hiding behind when the fight broke out.

And then the crowd applauded.

During the fight a large number of people had gathered, and watched the entertainment.

And the party’s popularity grows.

Niyah informs the party that she will have to gather new materials to repeat the ritual, but that will be tomorrow morning.

So they store the Vial of the Damned in Silverhome under lock and key and heavily armed guard while the party takes care of “paper-work gaming” (which, to 4E’s credit, does not take all night).

Not much later several of the party is being treated to some drinks at the Roaring Bull Inn when Duncan is approached by the councilwoman Thlyria Isara.

She is quite blunt with Duncan in her request for his aid. The vote currently stands 4 to 3 for Silverhome representation, but she could push it to 3 to 4 against unless he helped her, in which the vote would be 5 to 2 for.

Her request: she needs Ivellios Galanodil to return to the Valley, and Duncan has to find him and bring him back before the vote is held in 4 days.

She knows that he is no longer on this plane, and that he left to the fey realms (Feywild doesn’t sound right to me).

He has to bring Ivellios back, period.

“Tell him that we are at the precipice of the abyss.”

Meanwhile, Edward is being told that he will be performing several of Girvan Torl’s duties as Girvan will be spending more time with the mayor, as an unofficial bodyguard.

The next morning Niyah successfully performs the ritual, with no interruptions.

The Vial of the Damned is no longer. It is now pearly white, no longer needs blood, and generates a persistent Turn Undead effect.

Quickly afterwards the party goes to the elven section of the city, specifically Ivellios’s house, where Thlyria tells them the gate to the fey realms now is.

The house is almost covered in wild growth in greenery, which gets thicker the closer they get to the gate.

They pass through a shadowy archway, and walk for a large distance until they exit through the trunk of a large tree.

And then the Narnia jokes commenced, including those about Mr. Tumnus.

The land felt lush and green, with plenty of light, but most of it blocked by the canopy of trees. And always they felt as though they were being watched.

When an enthusiastic satyr showed up, the Narnia joke recommenced.

He stated that he was surprised there were no elves with them, but none-the-less, a toll to pass through was required.

Aaron: “We can agree to that. Lead us to your tollhouse”

Note to self – punch Aaron in the back of the head.

But the party refused to pay 250gp a person, to pass through an unknown distance of land in this realm.

There was mention of performing a deed for the satyr and his fellows, but the morality of taking a silver chalice back from someone, with no proof of an actual prior theft, left the party very skeptical of the situation.

This was quickly forgotten when Admon tired of the back and forth and attacked.

The party bloodied the lead satyr very fast, but felt bad about the way things had gotten and stopped fighting.

They healed the satyr and resumed talking until they were sure the satyr’s were not being deceptive.

A nasty choker had killed one of the satyr’s sons and stolen the family’s silver chalice. The choker had befriended a vicious crocodile, making it impossible for the satyrs to get the chalice back or get revenge.

The choker and croc lived in an area not far away, near a large thicket of huge trees adjacent to a huge, fast-moving river.

Not surprisingly, the fight began quickly and was immediately vicious.

The trees were large and perfect for the choker to maneuver and attack safely out of reach of melee weapons.

The croc was well hidden, but not well enough. Hiding is generally not an issue when you have as much brute force as the croc did.

Once the fight begins the croc grabs Admon in its jaw and begins to squeeze and bit him every round while moving back to the water. Admon is saved at nearly the last second by his teammate.

The choker doesn’t’ fair as well. He is quickly knocked out of the tree and focused on. He makes it back up to another tree, but it’s too late and is taken out quickly with ranged attacks.

The crocs high defenses and vicious attacks make it quite the scary combat, but the party finds its weakness (reflex of 21) and use that against it.

Just like the previous session, Dale can’t roll for squat.

His single digit rolling ends on the last attack of the night with a nat 20, which kills the croc.