Cincinnati D&D Group

Blogfade? Kinda...

2012-01-27T12:47:00.002-05:00

(I started writing this blog entry months ago. I would start, then stop, then restart and edit, wait and repeat. Now with a new edition of D&D being announced and worked on, maybe it’s time to take a few to write again.)

What has happened to the blog?

I’ve lost interest in playing D&D, especially 4E. I haven’t bought a book since the first year 4E came out. Actually I have only bought the first 3 books and 1 module. Any other 4E books I own were gifts.

That alone should be the one piece of information WotC would see (because I doubt they read this blog).

The Valley campaign went probably six or so sessions more than what I blogged.

It just became harder as time went along to get motivated to write about them.

(And if you’re wondering what happened to my campaign; we stopped at level 17 as things got on a larger scale, plot-wise, were opening up about great evils awakening and all that.)

I quit playing D&D entirely about 6 months ago.

In the end the socializing that came with the game just wasn’t enough to put the effort into making the campaign or even updating characters.

While I’m sure some would blame WoW, I don’t. I played EverQuest off and on for a while and I still played D&D.

To me the blame lies solely in the utter lack of fun I had with this iteration of D&D.

Updating my PC’s turned into a time-consuming chore.
Get a new magic item? Update your math.
Go up an even level? Update your math.

“Why not use their online character builder?”
To put it bluntly – fuck no.
WotC designed a game that has so many pieces that you need to either spend an hour checking your math or pay WotC money to help you with your PC. What a convenient racket.

My first desktop computer was a Packard Bell. And PB computers were junk. If you had a problem with one of their systems, because they were junk, you could call and have them help you. Then one day they wanted to start charging you for them helping with their piece of shit computers!

I’m not paying a company money to fix something they broke.

Then there is the encounter design process.
Ok, I kind of liked being able to design special things about encounters to make them unique.
That is one thing about 4E I’ll give credit for.

But when it comes down to it, combats were over complicated.

Combats should not take more than 15 minutes to complete unless it was designed to take that long.

I played Star Fleet Battles. That game is known for excessive rules and complications and combats taking 2 hours when it came to a 2 versus 2 ship fight. The rule books were thick…and they had nothing on D&D 4E.

If it takes so much effort to design an encounter…then you’re just setting yourself up for a railroad campaign.
If I spend 2+ hours making 2-3 combats, you can bet your ass I’m not wasting those encounters if I can avoid it.
So hello railroad campaign and goodbye random encounters.

But when 4E came out, and it doesn’t seem that long ago (that would be because it wasn’t), I was looking forward to it…a lot.

I was let down…a lot.

4E has earned its rightful place on the bottom of the D&D stack.
Yes, as much as I disliked AD&D 2E, 4E is a worse version.

When 4E was released a friend of mine claimed that they were borrowing too heavily from World of Warcraft to get young players into it.

I agree and disagree with him. The game isn’t totally like WoW, but there are some definite similarities that can not be ignored (everyone has special abilities, WoW’s cooldown abilities vs. 4E’s encounter/daily abilities, trash mobs called minions).

D&D has evolved over time to adapt to the gaming community, and MMO games and other computer/console RPG games have had an effect on D&D.

I don’t consider that a bad thing, but I think they’ve gone too far to mesh the technology into the tabletop pen and paper games.
Technology should be a help, not a requirement.

4E turned D&D into a D&D Miniatures game with more math and dice.
Role-playing became secondary. They even attempted that abortion of a concept of skill challenges…for role-playing, making actual role-playing pointless because what you said didn’t matter, only the roll you made when you shut your mouth.

D&D, in any of its incarnations, was never perfect. It always had tweaks that people felt were needed. It always had poorly designed aspects of it. But those were often easily dealt with by the wave of DM’s hand.

4E was such a disappointment that it has kind of put me off D&D entirely.
I haven’t played in six months and I don’t miss it.

I don’t want D&D to emulate online games.

I don’t want D&D to integrate a computer into the pen and paper.

I don’t want D&D to be a role-playing version of Magic: the Gathering. (How many of you used cards to represent what powers you used? When you used a power did you put the card in a pile or did you “tap” it?)

Maybe I’ll play 5E, but it would have to be something amazing and very different from 4E.

If I were the person in charge of 5E, there would be many staff replacements. I would suspect no one involved in original 4E design would have a job.

D&D4E was not D&D at all.
It was just an “ok” rpg with a D&D skin.
Ironically there were a lot of games like that in the early 90’s, until Magic: the Gathering came along and cleaned them off the game table.

If you want to contact me, my e-mail address is on this blog page somewhere.

Or if you’d like, you can talk with me on the Alleria server, horde-side.
Just do a “/who bobob” and you’ll probably find me…usually at the auction house making tons of gold for no reason other than to say I have tons of gold.

Ryan Dancey

2011-05-17T12:31:00.002-04:00

Ryan Dancey talks about things I consider important to D&D

Go there.
Read that.

I consider him to be one of the saviors of D&D from T$R.
His words mean something to me when it comes to my favorite RPG.

The Valley #36-39

2011-04-20T12:22:00.000-04:00

The more things change the more they stay the same.

We are currently down to Aaron, Dale, Scott, and me with a potential new member soon.

Glenn’s schedule just wasn’t stable enough so he had to move on.

It seems we go through a lot of players, but what can you do?

We debated taking a break, but we decided not to.

We discussed playing an online game, but we couldn’t agree which one. There are a lot of free ones, but those don’t appeal to me thanks to the kind of people that are attracted to free games and the fact that those games aren’t free. Instead of free, you get a broken or limited game that requires money to unlock certain things.

Then there’s the unavoidable fact that an online game will lose some of the role-playing aspect. Instead of talking to the DM, everyone is reading text for a quest. Then everyone has to go kill 10 foozles or bring back the head of the foozle king.

No thanks. It’s not even remotely the same.

As I’ve written about recently, we’ve discussed dumping 4E. But we can’t agree on what we’d rather play. So we’re not dumping 4E.

(I’m still going to bash together my own system from the best parts of other systems, but that is just me playing around.)

So for the next year or so, we’ll be playing 4E, hoping (probably in vane) that Hasbro pulls their collective heads out of their collective asses.

This entry I’ll be writing about 4 sessions of the Valley that occurred up to 5 months ago.

Please note that this is all from memory. If I miss something, oh well.

First I forgot to mention in the previous Valley entry that the sphinx told the party to “Return to the center of the beginning”. This they assumed was something the bronze disc was needed for.

They did a lot of research as to what the “center of the beginning” meant, and they believed that it was probably the place where the Valley was created so they focuses their research on the days Nafterran came to the Valley and where he cast his great spell to lift the curse of the Silver Veil.

They determined the location where the spell was cast was just north of Crater Lake (named because it looks like a crater - roughly round with a slight lip).

Now Crater Lake is not the most pleasant of places. It is where several of the rivers and rivulets join together, several from goblin territory which brought the lovely odors of that race’s stench.

For the most part, the lake is calm as no race claims it. Each time it has been claimed by the city or the goblins, or even the dwarves, that side tends to lose their claim in a bloody reprisal. So there is a truce of avoidance for all sides.

It is neither shallow, nor deep, and is moderately clean as it feeds a river that eventually goes underground.

The party’s search led to nothing, so they investigated the lake itself.

They made a raft and swam to the middle. There Adri’s elf eyes spotted the faintest abnormality as the bottom so the party sent their rogue (at the time) to investigate.

The moment he touched the seal a pair of water dragons (and other creatures) appeared and told the party to flee or face destruction.

So they fled.

Then Admon purchased a Water Breathing ritual and cast it the next morning.

Actions repeated but the dragons didn’t pause this time and attacked the party. The challenge was greatly reduced without the need for air. The biggest danger was posed to the party’s rogue who receive quite a few attacks and jolts of electricity.

At the bottom of the center of Crater Lake was a corroded and mostly covered over magical lock which the rogue focuses on and cleaned up enough for the bronze disc to be inserted.

It opened to an air-filled room that let not water in (well, just a trickle).

That room led to another that held an altar and a giant silver door.

When the party approached angels and demons appeared with a shout of “Protect the prison!”

Angels and demons working together concerned the party, but they won much more easily than I would have preferred (bad save rolls for the lead angel).

When the fight was over they opened the prison door after some debate and an appearance of an angelic creature who told them that the prisoner they were about to free brings trouble wherever he is.

Behind the door was a spherical silver room and single silver chair rising out of the floor.

The only non-silver thing inhabiting the room was Narxoom; a young human man.

He stretched and then hopped out of the silver room, animated thanked everyone present, and introduced himself as Narxoom before passing out.

They took him to Edward’s house where we remained stable but unconscious for a couple days.

During that time they researched the name Narxoom but found only that he was a bit of a reckless and powerful mage.

When Narxoom awoke Ander was there to greet him, alone.

Ander and Narxoom hit it off amazingly well. Narxoom was obviously smart and used his magic freely to do almost whatever he wanted. While he did nothing malicious, he was definitely not paying attention to the consequences of his actions.

The two exchanged stories and left the house so Narxoom could see what he, supposedly had caused.

Simply put, Narxoom cast the great spell the caused the Silver Veil to be created, thus “destroying” the lycanthropy that many people had been afflicted with. He remembers nothing but intense light and deep darkness after that moment. He is also 100% positive that his great spell did not cause the Ellicross Mountains to erupt from the ground.

As part of their back and forth stories, Narxoom also examined Ander. He determined that though he is a halfling in appearance, he is most definitely not one, though he is not quite sure what he is.

Much of the day involved Ander showing Narxoom around the city.

(Dale enjoyed this role-playing immensely as he loves having characters like Narxoom around when he runs. I think he does it to torture me.)

Eventually Edward and Admon found the two of them, hoping to contain any damage the two of them could cause to the already beleaguered denizens of the Valley.

At this point Narxoom was on a mission. He refused to believe he had created the Valley and was going to talk to someone with information.

They walked to a semi-deserted section of the Crags when Narxoom turned around and asked “Does anyone have a shovel? We need to dig right here I think.”

The party spent a few hundred gold on shovels and helpers and began digging through a good chunk of the day until a large stone was hit about 6’ down.

“Wake up! You’ve slept long enough! Now get and talk to me!” as Narxoom hit the rock with his shovel.

The ground rumbled and the workers scattered as from the ground stepped up a huge earth elemental almost as tall as the Valley wall.

The elemental bent down and yelled at Narxoom, who held his ground and yelled right back and mentioning that the elemental owed him after he saved the elementals sister from some horrible situation.

The party could only hear what questions Narxoom was asking since they couldn’t understand the language the elemental was using, but Narxoom filled them in when it was over.

When it was over the elemental was about to leave when he noticed the giant hole in the ground. So he grabbed the Death’s Head from its precarious position (about to fall down into the Crags) and broke it in half, shoving one half into the hole.

The other half he didn’t know what to do with, so he threw it over his shoulder. It flew out of sight of the city. He then climbed up the side the Valley wall, leaving a potentially usable trail in the future. He waved goodbye and left their sight.

Later they heard that it landed dead center in one of the goblin clans.

Narxoom relayed to the party that apparently he had made a deal with the elementals that he does not remember making. The earth elementals sent a huge amount of earth to this plane, the creating the Ellicross Mountain range. The air elementals were tasked with keeping all creatures away from the mountains. The water elementals were tasked with keeping the water flowing within the Valley. And the fire elementals were tasked with keeping the Valley warm through heating the land beneath the Valley.

Then Tonus showed up with an “I see you’ve been around for just a short time and already chaos follows you.”

Narxoom: “Tonus! You old gendarme, how have you been all these years.”

As he says that he gives Tonus a slap on the back and reality breaks lose.

The two men are thrown 60’ apart from one another with a tear in reality split between them.

On the other side is a bleak landscape where frog-like man-creatures are slaughtering spheroid and cube-shaped creatures. They turn and see this reality and begin marching to it and stepping into it.

The party sees nothing but malice in the creatures’ eyes, so they fight back to make sure nothing that gets through lives long enough to cause problems.

A few moments into it Tonus and Narxoom come to and realize they have to close the tear before the creatures swarm the Valley.

Each round a new creature steps through to attack the party.
Each round the tear is slowly shrunk by the two powerful magi.

In the end they find that the only way to close it forever is for one of them to be on each side of the tear. Narxoom volunteers and disappears behind the now closed tear.

That day Ander, and probably Dale, was quite sad.

Tonus was torn up as well, but there was nothing he could do or tell Ander that would fix it.

A week passed and there was a knock at Ander’s door. It was Iris, Polaris’s wife. She came to invite Ander and his friends to their lair for a dinner and apology.

Of course Ander said yes and soon the party was at the shores of Silver Lake entering a frozen sphere that would take them to the dragons’ lair somewhere under the water.

Long story short, the dragons had been busy trying to make the area around the Valley a much safer place because they were going to be leaving soon.

Why? Because they had a clutch of eggs and the lair and the Valley itself was not going to be enough “room” for them.

Then a purple (shadow) dragon and his minions burst into the room intent upon stealing some eggs. He had a spell that froze Polaris and Iris in place leaving the party to defend them and the silver dragon eggs.

In the fight the lair had become a bit damaged, leaving the dragons to repair it with their icy breath. Of course that’s when the fire elementals attacked.

I forget the exact reasons why, but it was something along the lines that the fire elementals are fracturing and some are for breaking their agreement with Narxoom and taking over the lands of the Valley. (Losing that jump drive really hurts.)

When it was all said and done the dragons were quite grateful and apologetic that they had to leave the party in the dark about their activities (such as taking over the sorcerers’ cabal).

Then Polaris hands over an odd-shaped crystal to Ander. “Centuries ago, a man named Narxoom gave this to me to give to you. There are two others like it and this crystal will lead you to them.”

Well the party researched the ring but found nothing (why would they, they barely found out anything about Narxoom when they looked for information on him).

In the end the party had to cast one of those “ask the gods questions” spells.

The response to their question was that the name of the completed piece was “Narxoom’s Ring of Histories” (though it was donut shaped and sized, not a small ring) and two conversations.

In the first conversation they heard Narxoom and Ivellios Gallanodil talking about a crystal. Narxoom said “Keep it safe until the right person comes to find it.”

The next conversation had Narxoom and three other men that the party didn’t recognize. Narxoom “The three of you owe me this. Keep this crystal safe until someone bearing an identical piece comes to claim it.”

Finding piece number two was so easy for the party that I think it concerned them. They just went and talked to the Thlyria Isara who handed the dusty piece of crystal over to the party, no questions asked.

Finding the other piece was not as easy.

When two of the pieces are joined, a daily power can be used to power the crystal to lead the wielder to the third piece. It led south. So they moved around a bit and triangulated the approximate location of the third piece.

They did some research, as expected, and rolled well for the history check.
They came up with an answer they did not like.
Three men, acting together, long ago, possible arcane powers, unexplored areas…they may now be the Dark Tribunal.

They are three liches who reside somewhere in the Valley. For the most part they bug no one, and no one bugs them.

The party was not too thrilled, but had to move on.

The next morning they snuck their way past the variety of potential monstrosities that could have ruined their day.

They eventually found a small pass in the mountainside and walked along the narrow passage until it opened up a bit.

There they found a cave and a large, dead, tree.

As expected the tree was not dead, nor was it a lone.

Ethereal type undead really suck in combat, regeneration and half damage makes for a long fight. Add in their draining abilities and it sucks for the party.

Now add in a tree with a threatening reach of 3, with rough terrain all around it, can trip a PC with relative ease, and hits for 15-20 damage a round, and you have a hell of a fight.

The party made a couple of bad calls and had some bad rolls and was forced to flee.

They returned and attempted to parlay with the dead tree. It worked!

Soon they were allowed into the cave.

When they were into the center they were told by three separate voices (and attitudes) to explain their presence. The party came clean about the crystals and the disembodied voices responded.

One voice “We should take their crystals for ourselves!”

Another voice “We made an agreement. We will honor it.”

A third voice “We should test reality; a trial of combat to see if things go as I expect them to. Survive this trial and you shall have your crystal.”

The fight was simple enough, random teleporters, plenty of ghoul minions, and a trio of boneclaws (ok, maybe the fight wasn’t that simple) were all out to ruin the party’s day.

But they still won and we stopped for the evening.

Scratchpad Ramblings

2011-04-08T12:38:00.001-04:00

I’m about 4 sessions behind on The Valley blog entries.

There are two reasons for that.

One, I got lazy. I just kept putting it off.

Two, I recently lost my jump drive with all of my information about The Valley. While I did have a backup, it’s about 6-9 months old.

So I will probably write something up for that eventually, with what happened compiled into a single entry. It will probably have something missing, but that’s not really a big issue.

As you’ve read, we’ve recently not been entirely happy with 4E.

It’s currently residing in an area of “don’t hate, but don’t like either”.

That has gotten my creative thoughts running amok.

What if we could combine some of the best aspects of each of the versions of D&D made so far?

We certainly can’t combine everything into some Doomsday Edition of D&D (vague Starfleet Battles reference there), but I’d like to think we could make something usable.

Even if we never play it, I’m going to knock about some ideas.

The ideas thoroughly thought through, but I think they’re a good start.

First, it has to be a simple and elegant design.
Adding too many options and restricting options will kill most games. Sometimes adding a new mechanic can kill a game. I want something that “just feels right”.

Simple:
Initiative does not change from round to round. Roll once and you’re done for the combat (a la 3E).

Unneeded:
Modifiers for the roll based on levels. How much threat could a kobold be to a level 10 rogue? At least give the poor guy a chance at going first, because you know he’s not likely to live long.

Elegant:
Remove all modifiers to initiative and make it a straight d20 roll and that is your initiative order.
Now each PC whose roll + dexterity modifier is 20 or higher gets to act in the surprise round.
Monsters may or may not get to act in the surprise round based off of the DM’s judgment or the encounter’s design.

It gives a simple mechanic, it keeps the value of a base stat, and gives everyone an equal chance to act rather than what we seem to have in 4E where it almost always ends up as PC’s act, and then monsters act.

Here’s something that is so simple I almost forgot it could be done this way:
The only time an attack of opportunity attack occurs is when you leave melee (as in stepping away from an opponent).

Go ahead and cast your spell or use your bow in melee.
It doesn’t seem quite realistic, but dragons and wizards aren’t real either.

I look at it like this. Spell interruptions just don’t seem fun in any edition. But if I remove that then casters can get into melee and cast away.

This a bit unfair to the bow users; why should they get shafted. Roughly a square is 5’x5. I’m pretty sure an arrow or slung rock can do some damage from 5’ away.

So I think that attacks of opportunity should only occur when you try to leave melee; not when you leave a square, not when you cast a spell, and not when you use a ranged weapon in melee.

Then there are things that many find clunky or unneeded, but I’m ok with them.

For example 1E alignments and the Vancian magic system.

I liked having the 9 alignments so long as they were a general guide to follow rather than a list of things you can do, can’t do, and must do.

Every PC can have their Chaotic Neutral “Wolverine” moment, but in the end they should still be the good guys.

It seems that a lot of people hated the Vancian setup for memorizing spells and then forgetting them once they’re cast.

I never truly hated it, but I certainly understood that a lot of spells were worthless the higher level you went.

Then came the 3.5’s Spell Compendium and voila, low level spells are worth something again by giving them a small effect but making them an instant cast.

Now that doesn’t help with the problem of “Oh no! Our thief failed his lock pick check and the wizard didn’t memorize his Knock spell today.”
4E fixed that with rituals.

So now casters no longer have to reserve spells for a “just in case” utility spell and our high level casters can put their low level spells to encounter use.

Of course you let them still cast basic cantrip type spells as an “at-will” and I’m also leaning to giving them a Magic Missile at-will attack as well, but I’m not that far ahead in my thinking.

Now one thing about all editions prior to 4E was that spellcasters were so much better than non-spellcasters at higher levels.

While it has most certainly been awhile since I’ve looked at it, the BECMI Master’s Set (and Rules Cyclopedia) had a tiered weapon skill setup that allowed players to do more with their weapons as they leveled up and specialized more in their weapons.

This I believe may keep a balance between the classes without giving fighter-types “spells” like they do in 4E.

Given that I’ve never been happy with 3E/4E combat speed, it should be no surprise that I would prefer the BECMI/1E/2E designs for most everything else, with reasonable modifications of course.

As much as THAC0 was irritating, I’m ok with keeping it.
One of the best things 3E did was replace it with the Base Attack Bonus design, but the BAB system broke down with…
I could redesign monsters and the armor class system to the 3E style, but then all the old modules that I’d like to use would have to be fixed before I used them.

Multi-classing the 1E way, yeah I’m all for keeping that too.
Naysayers scream that 1E’s multi-classing created broken characters and multi-classed PC’s never really lagged single-classed PC’s.

First off, creating a broken character is going to happen no matter what. It’s a simple reality with gamers. You either accept it and go with it, or you try to stop it until another exploit is found, then you try to stop that one, and repeat. The rules system can change, but exploits will always be found.

Unless something that is found it truly broken, don’t worry about it. Let the player have his day.

As for level-lagging, it’s there, especially at higher levels, but it’s not as pronounced as it was in early 3E.

In my opinion, they were pretty well balanced. Not necessarily perfectly, but I remember envying a straight-classed mage when I played a multi-classed one because they got the better spells faster.

Also, the need for a tank to be “sticky” is gone if you have a couple of PC’s who are fighters that can actually run some blockage to protect the casters. That is best attained through multi-classing.

Here is my recollection of a standard 6 PC group in1E AD&D; 1 fighter, 1 cleric, 1 thief, 1 magic-user, and 2 multi-classed with at least one of those being a fighter. And sometimes the thief was a fighter/thief. There are tons of combinations, but the general design was the same (2 healers, 2 warriors, 2 magi, 1 sneak, and more).

Another thing that I liked more in the earlier editions vs. is now is that permanent magic items meant something and they were not required (barring fighting a monster that needed a magic weapon to be hit).

In 3E, if you were high level and didn’t have magic items, you were in bad shape.
In 1E, if you had only 1 permanent magic item at level 7, your DM was a bit harsh, but you could most certainly survive fights.

Next: Random encounters

3E/4E’s overly long fights made the random encounters extinct. There was no time for a fight that wasn’t crucial to the story unless you had an eight hour long game session.

In the early editions if you didn’t have a random encounter it was because the DM chose to ignore them (usually because he was sick of them). Otherwise it only cost you 10-15 minutes of your time and prevented a 5 minute adventuring day.

Something else the early editions had going for them…you could level up reasonably fast.

In 4E, you usually have to recreate your whole PC if you got a new item or ability. Now one minor change is not big deal and you can probably not worry about it (like going from a simple +1 weapon or armor to +2), and swapping out a power won’t take too much time, and neither will an even level, or stat increase. But when you add all of those together…

But not everything from BECMI/1E/2E is usable, or preferable.

I like that gold value is based on 10.
AD&D 1E had (and I don’t think I’m recalling this correctly), 10cp = 1sp, 20sp=1gp, 2ep=1gp, 5gp=1pp

Save or die effects should definitely be gone from 95% of the effects. A bite from a tiny centipede should not kill a level 10 fighter outright because he rolled a nat 1.

Permanent level drains should not return; though a version of non-permanent level drain should exist (like save every day until you’re back to normal).

Rolling for hit points…not fun if you suck at rolling.

4E has minions. I loves me some minions. That can easily be implemented, even if just using a bunch of low level monsters (kobolds, goblins, etc.)

3E has easy conversions of cleric spells into healing. This can also be easily implemented.

4E has a clear setup of actions; standard, move, and minor. Earlier editions had only vague rules for it. This may be a bit harder to implement, but it could be winged for a while.

4E made critical hits more interesting and less lethal to the party while still making them hurt.

3E/4E gave wizards more spells with a higher intelligence. Also something easy to implement.

Then there’s the stuff that all the editions didn’t quite handle right.

Early editions made magic item creation too hard and taxing while 3E/4E made it almost a joke.

Early editions had limited options while later editions gave too many.

Secondary skills never felt right to me in any edition.
In my opinion PC’s are heroes; they don’t have much time to train for anything outside of their specialized skill-set. A fighter should probably know just enough for basic upkeep of his armor and weapons, but if he’s talented enough to make a magic sword then maybe he shouldn’t be an adventurer.
Return adventuring skills to judgment calls from the DM, usually as a d20 roll vs. a stat.

4E has hit points returning overnight, 1E/2E has 1 hit point returning per day, and 3E had 1 hit point per level returning.
My thought is a bit more complicated and is a decent compromise.
You have two sets of hit points, fatigue and bloodied. Each is 50% of your total hit points.
When you take damage it come from your fatigue hit points first.
When you get healing it replenishes your bloodied hit points first.
When you rest after a combat you get all of your fatigue hit points back.
When you rest overnight you get all of your fatigue hit points back, and a small number of bloodied hit points back.
It’s not quite elegant, so it’s still being worked on, but I like this.

I have other ideas, but they’re all quite nebulous and in need of more thought.

It was easy in earlier editions to not use a battlemap at all and just give a rough explanation of the area.
Unfortunately you have killer DM’s who place every monster on top of the mage even though the mage was being covered by your plethora of 1E fighters, or players who can magically be anywhere at once.
That kind of makes rules for a battlemap required.

And on that thought, while I think it’s a bit harder, I preferred 3E’s system for that (or, if you’re older, the gold-box 1E AD&D computer games); your movement cost is 1 per square or 1.5 for a diagonal and spell radii are measured in the same manner.

Plus some players like seeing a tactical setup.

As long as we don’t turn the game into D&D chess (a la 3E/4E), I’m cool with keeping a battlemap.

I liked 1E’s barbarian from Unearthed Arcana, but its role-playing requirement made it impossible to use unless you ignored them.

3E’s barbarian was more usable, but easily got bogged down in its own math (I made a spreadsheet for dealing with that). The whole fun of playing a barbarian is to not to have to think!

BECMI & 1E gave the party XP for each gold piece they looted.
I’m not sure if I want to keep that or dump it, but if I dump it, then each monster should have its XP increased by the average amount of gold it was designed to have.

1E required time and money for training up a level.
Should that return?

What about level limitations?
I’m against them, but if a race’s special abilities are that strong, then they need to have something going against them.
(It always struck as wrong that an elf could live for over a thousand years, but could never get to level 6 as a cleric – per the 1E rules.)

Some spells will need a redesign.
Should Haste still cost a year of a person’s life? If so, shouldn’t it cost dwarves and elves more?

Buff spells should be kept simple.
Why did 1E’s Bless need for you to not be in melee combat yet?

Should a thief’s backstab ability return? Should we stick with sneak attacks?

I know I’m not going to bring back specialized magic-user classes (illusionist, abjurer, etc.) and cleric domains aren’t needed.

Should we allow PC’s to build strongholds to attract followers?

You can kiss non-magical alchemical items goodbye.

PC’s should not have to babysit other PC’s who are more than a few levels lower than them.

No magic item should be disenchantable for “magic dust”.

Wands should have charges.

While I like action points, I’m not sure if I want to keep them.

There is no need for PC’s templates right?
It just seemed like an option designed specifically for munchkins.

Should metamagic spells be introduced?
I certainly see no reason why a higher spell slot could be used for a lower level spell and then allow that lower level spell to be counted as its new level for that casting.

There should be no racial modifiers that make you seem foolish for not playing a certain race/class combo.
“Oh you want to play a wizard? Then you want to be an eladrin. Bow-using ranger? Elf.”

What bout the odd 1E classes like monk, druid, and bard?
They level oddly, sometimes you have to kill someone to level, or you have to level up other classes first.
They will require some work.

A lot of things will require some work.
I think it’s doable if done in simple steps, the easiest ones first.

Pick One

2011-04-01T12:23:00.000-04:00

OD&D
D&D (BECMI)
AD&D 1E
AD&D 2E
D&D 3.5
D&D 4E
D&D Essentials
Hackmaster
Pathfinder
Homebrewed Rules Blend

To clarify, BECMI stands for Basic Expert Companion Master Immortals. To many I could say Basic D&D and they’ll know what I mean, but I’ll stick with BECMI.

Every version of D&D has its own advantages and disadvantages, and to some people a version’s advantages is a disadvantage.

Vancian magic, or the memorization of spells that go away once cast, is a big negative to many.

Dynamic combat versus simple combat; can you go back to a simple sword swing after getting used to the power of Reckless Strike in 4E?

Does the strive for balance of the later editions ruin the fun you had in AD&D or do you approve of the power of magic-users being kept in check better?

Do you view the incompleteness of the early rules systems as a positive thing or a glaring hole that needs to be filled?

Would you prefer a long combat with plenty of options and tactical decisions on a battle-map, or would you prefer multiple, faster fights that eschew the need for a physical layout entirely?

Let’s go through the list to pick from with pros and cons (from my point of view):

OD&D: Never played it. I assume BECMI is a refined version of it.

BECMI: It was my first D&D experience. It is fast and rules light
Pros – Simple to learn, fast to play, plenty of modules to use
Cons – Missing a lot rules, not many options (especially in the class/race area)

AD&D 1E:
Pros – Lends itself to house-ruling, having a magic item actually means something (and rarely is required), plenty of modules to use
Cons – Has a few too many rules, has a lot of rules holes, not very balanced class-wise, rules vary in interpretation.

AD&D 2E:
Pros – Cleans up a lot of AD&D 1E rules, began adding many PC options
Cons – Its core rules really don’t differentiate itself much from 1E + house-rules, a lot of poor products were released making it hard to tell what was worth using, modules began leaving the dungeons behind, much love for the game on the internet was crushed by TSR lawyers

D&D 3.5 (absorbing 3E into it):
Pros – Streamlined D&D (goodbye THAC0), introduced new ideas and options, began the attempts to keep classes balanced, open-sourced (SRD), the game-designers actively sought to improve the game (pre-Hasbro)
Cons – Too many options leading to munchkin/cheese players, combats slowed dramatically at higher levels, magic items are required

D&D 4E
Pros – Classes are balanced is better, rules were simplified and streamlined, spread some work around to the players
Cons – Combats are too long no matter the level, the rules are no longer open-sourced, players have to recreate their character sheets each time a new magic item or power is gained

D&D Essentials
Pros – Fixed some of the glaring issues found with 4E
Cons – That stuff wasn’t found out in play-testing? Couldn’t it have been fixed with errata?

Hackmaster (I’ve never played it, heard this from others)
Pros – Has its core with 1E rules, aims to bring back the original feel of 1E
Cons – Tries to make the game fun by marrying it to the ideals shown in the Knights of the Dinner Table comics thus placing the DM vs. the PC’s

Pathfinder (I’ve never played it, heard this from others)
Pros – Has its core with 3E rules and simplifies them
Cons – Combat speed not addressed (made it worse maybe)

Homebrewed Rules Blend:
Pros – Mix and match rules of your liking to a system of your liking.
Cons – Have you joined a group and thought “Son of a …” when you found out they used a lot of home-brew rules?

One game-style I read about on ENWorld, I believe it’s called E6, used the 3.5E rules, but maxxed out PC’s levels at 6. After level 6, every 5000xp granted you another feat. There is more to it, but the idea is that it drastically reduces munchkinism, combats never get that long due to the lack of giant buffs, and high level monsters remain scary as hell.

The adult red dragon that has ruled the country-side for a century is nothing for a group of 6 level 15 PC’s to take out.
But that same dragon versus 6 level 6 PC’s, even in the same gear, would be a bit different.

That system kind of reminds me of the Vampire game I played in (for about a month) where you gain power gradually rather than doubling in power every 2 levels.

After the discussion we had at the last game session we concluded that we cannot really agree on what version we want to play.

Roughly each of us would prefer:

Me: house-ruled 1E with things added from other editions, would prefer not to spend money or spend hours reading rules (again).

Dale: Essentials, but would be ok with 1E.

Aaron: would rather stick with 4E or possibly revert to 3.5, he’s also intrigued by E6.

Scott: Doesn’t want to spend money (that’s really about it).

But overall we’re not going to stop the campaigns we have at the moment, so we have plenty of time to think of alternatives.

Recent Fun and the Future

2011-03-18T16:47:00.002-04:00

The blog isn’t dead. I’m just behind and not feeling motivated.
(Being a World of Warcraft gold tycoon, and not too bad of a raider will do that to you.)

I’m here to just post something so that you all won’t think I’ve blog-faded.

We’re still playing our two 4E campaigns with a 3 weeks of mine then 3 weeks of Dale’s game.

We’re also down to just Dale, Aaron, Scott, and me.

Glenn is gone.

Joy’s work and social life left no room for D&D.

There are no decent prospects of new players either.

So at our last game we were in general agreement that D&D has a giant fractured and/or diluted player-base.
OD&D, Basic D&D, AD&D 1E, 2E, 2E + options, 3.5E (assuming 3E was absorbed into it), 4E, and finally 4E Essentials (which we believe is a new edition rather than more options), and all of the evolutionary offshoots (Kalamar, Pathfinder, the D20 worlds like Modern, and so on) and games within the games (campaign worlds that stray from the basic swords and sorcery milieu) lead to a giant pot of games for players to play in.

In spite of all of my irritations of 4E, I don’t hate it. I do not like it either.
I believe I’ve given it a fair shot, but in the end, it is not what I want for my D&D.

It has indeed given the players a larger share of the game to take care of and allows the DM a bit more freedom in encounter design, but it does not feel like D&D to me.

Sure it has the names in the game, but it doesn’t play the same.

Maybe it’s nostalgia. Maybe it’s my selective memory only remembering the good stuff.
But in the end, 4E isn’t for me.

That is just me.

Aaron has his opinions, but he generally doesn’t care too much what we play as long it’s not expensive and we play something entertaining.

Scott is pretty much the same.

Dale would like to give D&D Essentials a try, but I’m a great big “meh” on that idea.

WotC (and I mean Hasbro when I say that, not the pre-Hasbro WotC which was run by gamers) lost me as a customer. It has been over 2 years since I bought a single gaming book from them.

I will not be giving them more money because players found exploitable situations, killer combos, and bugs in their game.

You can’t “patch” physical books.

They’ve made a complicated game which made it prone to exploits. Their solution was to release Essentials.

It’s more money for me to spend on them.

“Isn’t that what they’re in business for?”

Yes, kind of.
They have to earn my business. Spending my money on book after book is not good economic sense for me.

So they leave something out of each book; nothing truly essential to play the game, but a few things that they can put in future books to get you to buy them.

How many times have you bought a D&D book only to use a dozen pages or less?
For me it’s far too often in recent recollection.

So, as I’ve told Dale, WotC will not be getting any more money from me until they’ve proven they are something more than a subsidiary company who thinks of players as a money source more than as people who are trying to enjoy their game.

WotC will not be getting any money from me until I can legally use a pdf or other file to prepare a game. (The loss of the SRD I think was the biggest mistake made for 4E. I blame shortsighted profit grabbing.)

In spite of all that, Dale and I still have two active campaigns going on.
Neither of us have any real intention to stop running them in 4E since we’ve put too much work to stop and redesign the game while at level 15.

But after that…then what?

3E?
Not likely. As much as I loved 3E, it wasn’t really usable after level 8.

2E?
It’s possible. But will people who are used to the dynamic play style of 3E & 4E be able to deal with the simplistic setup of earlier editions?

AD&D 1E?
That’s even more possible (Yottaquest has had one going on for over a year now). Dale and I probably have enough books to loan out.

Basic D&D?
That’s possible too. I own a lot of those books.

Hackmaster?
Also possible, but none of us have ever read the books. I do know they’re a lot more like AD&D 1E than any D&D edition following.
Take a break? I doubt it, but it’s possible.

We’ll have time to discuss.
Hasbro will also have time to pull their heads out of their asses too.

Here’s a suggestion Hasbro – sell the D&D IP back to true gamers.
I would love to see Kenzerco own D&D.

The Valley #35

2011-01-18T12:17:00.000-05:00

Please keep up the positive comments.
Believe it or not, it helps for me to continue writing (in a semi-timely manner).

Also, if you’d like me to link you I only ask two things; a link to here and to update your blog occasionally.

These two sessions will be the last of Jacob’s. He’s too busy, and although he had fun while here, I don’t think he felt like part of the group (though I personally think he did quite well).

Our group itself always seems to need new players.
Dale, Aaron and I are pretty consistent.
Scott was mostly consistent, but is a foster parent now. So his attendance is a bit random.
Joy is also at a busy point in her life, so she has pretty much disappeared from the game.
Glenn I don’t know enough yet. I fear he may prefer a group that role-plays a bit more than we do or is a bit closer to his home.

And then there were the holidays. They destroy gaming opportunities for us adults. We played twice in November and not at all in December.

Given that Dale’s campaign still has two more sessions, I won’t be running another one until in late January at the earliest.

Now this session was played on Halloween night. Yeah, I’m that slow at getting this stuff out.

For Halloween I wanted to do something that fit the day and I just couldn’t think of anything that would do the job of WTF (look it up) that I wanted. Until I remembered a story I listened to (MP3 player FTW (look that one up too, or leave the internet)).

At the time I couldn’t remember the name of the story or the author, but it turned out to be The Boogey Man by Stephen King.

(Yeah I know…I feel kind of dumb for not remembering that.)

But the story contained things that affected me only because I’m a father. Had I heard the story before that, I would have been less revolted than I was.

So I took the story, and rewrote it with a D&D and Valley feel.

Dale even said I should submit this module for publication.
That would be cool, but since I borrowed heavily to design the module, I’ll just post it here and let you all use it to your preferences so long as you don’t make any money off of it either.

And I do suggest you read or listen to King’s original story. It’s better than his other stuff I read. (Note: Other than The Stand…I’ve not liked King’s other writing. It starts off good, treads water, and then flounders horribly at the end.)

Session 35
Edward (Aaron); level 14 human paladin of Brekaneth
Ander (Dale); level 14 halfling storm sorcerer
Lindorial (Jacob); level 14 elven rogue
Adrie (Joy); level 14 elf cleric

A week had passed since the previous session, allowing for the repercussions of that day to settle in.

First off, the city’s populace has thinned quite a bit. What the city has lost, Theven’s Wharf has gained.

Edward Wootenmorgan the VII has concluded that since he is the last of his line he needs to “get busy” and make some heirs to continue the family name.

As expected he has high standards and only wants a chaste woman with the same beliefs he has.

Adrie decided to help him. Not really.
She decided to turn his search for a wife into a VH1 dating show.
She went to the Crags and found every tramp and gold digger she could and told them that the new Elder Paladin of Brekaneth will be at the Roaring Bull Inn tonight and looking for a wife and he was rich.

Edward attempted to be nice, but these girls were in no mood to take “no” for an answer. Aaron also rolled a natural 1 in an attempt to nicely tell the “ladies” “thanks, but no thanks”.

So while Edward was having drinks dumped on his head, a 12 year old boy entered the bar and went mostly unnoticed thanks to the fun Adrie was having at Edward’s expense.

Ander did notice the boy. He also noticed that the boy appeared to be genuinely scared, but not of what was going on in the Inn.

Ander asked what was wrong and the boy asked him to come see him and his father, because he doesn’t want to die.

That certainly woke Ander up, so he and the others went to the boy’s house. Adrie didn’t want the fun to end and Edward couldn’t leave fast enough. (Lindorial joined them too, but since Jacob won’t be coming back, I’m not going to focus much on him.)

The boy and his father (Billy and Richard) told them their story.

About 10 months ago they bought this house and all was well. (No they didn’t buy the house for cheap. That’s a little too cliché.)

But a few days ago Billy started hearing distant, whispered voices and he told his father about them.
Richard panicked.

When they moved in they found a handwritten book in the house, but thought it to be a bad attempt at writing by the previous owner.

Now he fears that the book was a diary of the last moments of the house’s previous owner.

For the past few days they’ve slept in other places, but the whispers did not go away.
With each day the voices seem to get closer and clearer.

Note – Hallowed Saints Day is an obvious rip-off of Halloween, but the party (through skill checks) knows it to be to a special day to the believers of Brekaneth; A day when the early saints cast out the evil mages of Valley. Those outside the church see the data differently. It’s a day when the Valley’s strongest mages had enough interference from the Church of Brekaneth so they attacked killed the leaders of the church and then fled the Valley to never be seen again.

Richard hands the diary to the party and they read it. It is a small book, but most of the pages are blank.

(Beginning of writing)
I will surely pay for what I’ve done, but I pray that these words will save another’s soul from the damnation I have succumbed to.
An evil resides within this house. I do not know where it came from, but it is most definitely here, though I have never seen it.
It only exists as a voice in my ear and hot breath hovering above me in the darkness.
Every year for half a decade it has come. For a week prior to the…incidents I can hear the voice as a faint whisper. As each day comes and goes and the moon emerges over the Valley, the voice grows stronger.
On the Eve of Hallowed Saint’s Day, the voice is strong. I can only describe the voice as a deep, smooth, oily, and wholly malevolent. I could almost hear the smile in its voice the last time it threatened me.

It was this monster that took my first son.
My wife was concerned that he had been having nightmares of the monster in his closet.
We accepted the stories as nothing more than the bad dream of a child whose mind is dealing with the realities of the world he’s beginning to explore.
The perceptors wrote his death off as crib death, though he was a bit old for that.

A year later I began hearing an odd thing or two, like the edges of a conversation around the corner, but nothing was there.

Though my wife was doting over our second son, born shortly after the death of our first, her thoughts kept returning to losing him a year ago.
On the night of Hallowed Saint’s Day she decided she would sleep in his room in a vigil for him while I watched our second child in our room.

At midnight I awoke from a nightmare of something in the blackness of my dreams hunting me down.
My son began crying moments after I awoke. After soothing him back to sleep, some kind of dread in the back of my mind pulled me to check on my wife.

Her eyes were open, hands clutched to her heart.
She was still warm, but there was no pulse.
I felt a sudden coldness in the wind, could swear I heard a deep voice say “So delicious”.

Once again the perceptors claimed it as “one of those things”.

As we had tried with our first son, I handed my hard earned gold over to the priests of Brekaneth to have her raised back to life.
As with our son, it did not work.
They claimed that there were many reasons for the failure of the ritual.
“Perhaps she’s happy to be with your son and can’t bring herself to be away from him.” said one of the younger priestesses, hoping I could see the wisdom of her idiocy.

Rather than rebuke the girl, I smiled and returned home.

The next year was very hard on me, raising a son, keeping the business running, and keeping the household from falling apart, but I managed.

My son became the pride of me.
I did everything to give him what I felt my wife would have wanted.
There was nothing I would not do for him, and our bond of father and son was unbreakable.

As the year came around to the anniversary of the deaths, I felt a horrible dread grow inside of me.

I contacted priests of Brekaneth, and even those dwarven and elven priests.
I told them my story and asked them to assuage my fears.
Each in turn checked my home for any signs of evil, but found nothing.
Per my request, they each blessed my house.

A week before Hallowed Saint’s Day, my beloved son had a nightmare and asked to sleep in my room.
I agreed.

The next evening he didn’t want to go into his room at all.
“Monster in closet.” he cried to me.

I pulled him into his room and showed him that there was nothing in there, and even checked his bed for good measure.

But I could deny him nothing, and allowed him to sleep in my room.

Each day his protestations of sleeping in that room became more desperate.
Each day I relented to him.
Each night I had dreams that turned into nightmares.
Each night I awoke from the nightmares, sweating, and terrified.
Each night I awoke with the words in my head “I will be sated”.
Each day I convinced myself that this was all just foolishness caused by stress.

On Hallowed Saint’s Day we repeated the routine.
That night I awoke from the nightmare with “I will not be denied! I will be sated.” clinging to my thoughts.
I could hear something else in the room as I awoke.
I heard something hovering above me. I could feel something’s hot breath in my ear, coming from the closet.
I felt hunted; like a rabbit from a wolf.

Then, in a panic, I committed myself to damnation.
I took my sleeping and trusting son, and put him in his bed.

I will not recount what I heard that night.
I heard things that no man should ever hear.
But I had done something that no man should ever do.

I was different after that night.
Everyone knew it.
Another crib death in my family was the news.
They said that my children had inherited their mother’s weak heart.

People looked at me with pity.
Each night I would return to my empty house, and mourn my lost world and hate myself for what I became.

Heavy drink could not mask the emptiness where my soul used to be.
My attempts at socializing were sad affairs of a man who is obviously not what he pretends to be.

The change in me was obvious to anyone who knew me, and once the pity wore off, people simply avoided me.

No aspect of my life went untouched.

I was alone in every sense of the word.

Until the year went by and that damned holiday returned.

The nightmares returned.
The voice returned.
The dread returned.

It was coming for me this time.

Unless…

Unless I gave it someone else.

It did not take much to find someone easily fooled and easily forgotten by society.
There are many in town that beg for copper and spend it on drink.

I never knew his name, though I’m sure he told me in his ramblings.
It was easy enough to act as the nice yet lonely man to someone so drunk.
I told him a simple story that my wife and children of were gone, and that this time of year I needed a companion for drinking.
He was eager to help me drown my sorrows and tell me his stories.

He out drank me with abandon.
I even had to slow him down on his drink for part of me knew that it wanted its food to be aware; to know what was happening.

When it was late I led him to the room.
He was immediately beset paranoia and began to make excuses of having to be somewhere else.
I struck him with a rock and bound his unconscious body in rope.

Later I heard him coming around and he yelled for someone to help him get untied, I stayed in my room and waited with dread in my stomach.
Then I heard the “other kind of scream”; a scream that erupts from a person who has seen his doom.

“So delicious.”

When I knew it was over, I returned to the room and saw the same expression on the man’s face I had seen on my wife’s.

A trash-well is just a few dozen feet from my door, so it was not hard to dispose of the body and hide the evidence of my guilt.

I returned home and no longer felt dread. I did not even feel guilt. I felt relieved.
In time I had even convinced myself that I had done the city a service by removing a vagrant from its midst.

By the time the year came around again I had actually begun looking forward to being a secret hero and using evil to defeat evil and thus I was doing a good deed for all.

This year the drunkard was another middle-aged man who had let his life get away from him.

No one ever came to my door asking about him.
No one ever mentioned anything anywhere.
Just another vagrant had gone missing and presumed dead.

When I attempted to lure a third victim from the gutters to my house, no one followed.
This holiday had become a bane to them, as each year for the past two; one of their numbers had gone missing, and no one cared.

The dread returned to me. I needed to find someone or my damnation would consume me.

Luckily for me society has many who will one day become a drunken drain on the coffers of humanity.

A young man named Harold had been receptive to a benefactor helping him drown his sorrows at that dwarven tavern.

When he was sufficiently inebriated, I made up a story about my sister being a good woman needing a good man to keep her company.

He eagerly agreed and followed me to my home, telling me many a tale of his lost loves; tales that rang familiar to my ears from the two drunkards before him.

But damn his youth!

He recovered from my assault before I could sufficiently bind him.
In the struggle he managed an act of the cruelest irony.

My leg, now broken from my fall in the struggle, now prevents me from leaving this accursed room.

Read these words and heed them.
Evil lurks in this house.

I am soon to be taken by it, though I know it would prefer someone else, someone whose soul is…cleaner.

I hear the whispers now.
And I think, yes, footsteps.

Footsteps are coming from the closet.
(End of writing)

The party just had a few days until the All Saint’s Day, so they went to work.

They studied and experimented.

Ander believed that whatever was in the closet was in another dimension and each time this year the two dimensions synch up for a day. This was why there was nothing wrong detected before and why voices were so distant at first but became closer.

They found out that the house was built where Lord Velserrad’s tower used to be, but the general populace knows nothing of the evil that man possessed, so there was no PC information there.

They tried having the boy and father sleep in the church for a night, under armed protection and observation, but it changed nothing.

If anything the father and son were even more terrified. They had gotten the best protection the Valley could offer and it wasn’t helping.

The party had only one option left – return to the house with the father and son, and protect them from whatever comes out.

They place both father and son in the son’s bedroom and the party blocks the closet while keeping an eye on the father’s bedroom as well.

They are not disappointed.

As the cheers and other noise from the celebration outside, the party can hear faint footsteps walking up some stairs…coming from inside the closet.

A deep and greasily cheerful voice says, “I see that you have prepared extra guests this year. A pity. I guess I shall wait until next year.”

Then the footsteps begin walking down stairs.

Inside the closet is the faint red-glowing outline of a door. Edward pushes it open and is rewarded with a foul, rotten meat stench.

The party, one by one, walk downs the stairs. At first the stairs are made of stone, the same as the house is, but the farther they go down the five hundred feet of stairs, the stairs turn into a solid mass of flesh that barely feel like they can support a person.

At the bottoms they’re in a large “room” complete with rotten fleshy walls and columns, and a pillar in the center that they notice is covered in thousands of fine hairs.

There is also a thin membrane in the room that reminds the party of a door to another room.

A bodak and a pair of devourers live here, waiting for their time of year to feed.

I thought the bodak would be a tough challenge to the party. But my poor rolling and the party’s good job of keeping him off-balance prevented him from using his Death Gaze (encounter power to reduce a weakened target to 0hp).

The column covered in cilia was just an obstacle for the party to avoid, which limited maneuverability.

And the last little bit of fun was when the “room” was damaged, it would squirt some acid into the room. But the party never stood where the acid blasted.

Now the spirit devourers were nasty for the party. With their ability to trap a party member inside of them while draining the PC of life, they could (and did) keep two members of the party out of combat a lot.

The party did learn how to deal with the devourers and took them down, but it took some time.

The party did not like this room. They likened it to a giant intestinal track.

They were not happy in the slightest about having to cut open the membrane door either.

The next room reeked of vomit rather than rotten meat, and it was slightly more “alive”; a stomach to the party.

This “room” was about the same as the last one except there were no undead and there was woman in her mid-twenties, whose hands and feet were bound at the floor and ceiling by fleshy manacles, and surrounded by five demonic, winged statues holding hands in a circle.

“Please help me. Once these things awaken my soul will be stolen from me. There is a creature in the room next to this one that refuses to help, but it has a key that can free me. Please hurry; I’ve seen what these demons can do to a person.”

The reasonably suspicious party asker her questions while trying to find other ways of freeing her. The answers to their questions led them to believe she was the mother in the story. The attempts to free her ended in failure.

They did find one thing odd. When they cut her hair, it changed color from blond to black (this occurred before the movie Tangled came out.)

So they did as she suggested and cut open the membrane to the next room and proceeded.

Other than the PC’s footprints, this room was immaculate.

The room was large with polished marble floors, with a sphinx at the far end laying in front of a small chest.

It yawns then opens its mouth and says, “The choices are many. The results are simple. Flip a coin, or trust your instincts, or trust your logic, or trust nothing. Fight once, or fight twice, or flight nevermore. A key you seek. A key I have. A key to a lock that is not a lock. Whether your hearts are noble or greedy the results will be the same. You may not ask questions. You may only commit to action. Success will grant you a key. Commit to an action and challenge your prey.”

I repeated that statement at least half a dozen times.

After each repetition the party would attempt to pick it apart to figure out clearer what was truly being said.

“The choices are many. The results are simple.” = blah blah blah

“Flip a coin, or trust your instincts, or trust your logic, or trust nothing.” = also blah blah blah

“Fight once, or fight twice, or flight nevermore.” = The number of fights the party wishes to have, or they can flee and die in the process. One fight is if they make the right choice. Two is if they don’t.

“A key you seek. A key I have. A key to a lock that is not a lock.” = He has a key to a non-standard lock.

“Whether your hearts are noble or greedy the results will be the same.” = The reason you’re here is irrelevant.

“You may not ask questions. You may only commit to action.” = exactly what it says. Whenever the party asked a question, I repeated the whole speech.

“Success will grant you a key.” = If you win, you get a key.

“Commit to an action and challenge your prey.” = Make your choice.

Quite simply the sphinx gave his challenge to the party (see the MM1 sphinx entry) and the party had to make a choice to either trust the bound woman or not. If they believed her and attacked the sphinx, they made a bad choice as they would have failed the sphinxes challenge and would have to fight him while he was much stronger. And then they would have to deal with a death hag and her friends (vrocks).

But the hair thing clued the party in the right direction and they returned to talk to the lady…who then attacked them.

Sadly the fight was not really that difficult and the party freed the souls of the innocent people (both sons, mother, and both men) as they were freed from the statues and flew away as tiny balls of white light, while a sixth soul, a black one, fell to the ground never to be seen again.

When they returned to the sphinx’s room the sphinx was gone, but the chest remained.

Inside was a bronze disc (the key), some other treasures, and a level 17 magic item to choose from:
Red-tinged Glowing Robe: Robe of Bloodwalking +4 (chosen I believe)
Golden Ring of the Saint’s: Ring of Protection
The Bard’s Opening Number: Horn of Blasting

They also were able to choose one of the items below from the fight with the hag:
The Witch’s Silver Circlet: Headband of Insight (chosen I believe)
Glenda’s Pulsing Red Glass: Orb of Mental Dominion +4
Glenda’s Clawed Gloves: Shadowfell Gloves (Level 16)

Afterwards the party walked back up the long flight of stairs, never to see this disturbing place again.

The Valley #34

2010-12-06T12:04:00.000-05:00

This session was the culmination of building plotlines and was, thankfully, a good night for combat and role-playing.

We also have a couple of new players who jumped right and were ready to go once we started up.

Given the role-playing elements of this session, they kind of stepped into a big night.

It was also good that they showed up, because Scott and Joy had to skip out that night.

Had there only been 2 PC’s for the evening, the evening would either have not happened, or would have been a little too interesting.

Session 34
Edward (Aaron); level 13 human paladin of Brekaneth
Ander (Dale); level 13 halfling storm sorcerer
Lux (Glenn); level 13 elven cleric of Corellon
Lindorial (Jacob); level 13 elven rogue

We started where the last session ended; with a dense fog concealing the attempted attack of a group of ogres.

The party took account of their surroundings and found no more ogres about, then the obviously magical fog lifted as fast as it rolled in.

From their perch at the main guard towers they saw a pair of human-sized figures; one doing nothing, the other killing some fleeing ogres.

The party went out to escort the pair and see if they needed help.

One of the figures was recognized by Ander as Minral – middle-aged and generally unremarkable human sorcerer. He was also in chains and being led by the other human.

That human was none other than Girvan Torl.

He was his normal size.
His holy sword was as normal as it ever was (minus the ogre blood).

The only thing that kept Edward from lunging at him immediately was the ass-kicking Girvan had handed him several months prior.

Before Girvan even recognized who he was talking to, he implored the party to let him back in the city so he can turn himself in and prove himself innocent.

He had captured this sorcerer who will freely give testimony about what really happened the day that he supposedly killed Edward’s family. He also implores Edward to believe that it was not he who killed Edward’s parents and grandfather.

He did not want to be snuck in the city. He wanted everyone to see him because he had nothing to hide.

So together they made the long march to the march to the City Council’s amphitheatre (the other option was the Grand Temple of Brekaneth, but Edward would not let that happen).

The moment Girvan was recognized a crowd began to form and grew continuously until they reached their destination.

The populace was curious what the heroes were doing until they saw Girvan, and then they became angry.

It was probably the largest crowd seen in the Valley since Nafterran cast the spell to lift the Silver Veil over 5 decades prior.

And it was just what Girvan planned on.

He stood in the center of the amphitheatre and said what he came to say, loud and clear.

“People of the Valley, I am not the monster who attacked you that day.”
“I am but a victim of a conspiracy to destroy the city and the church from within.”
“I have here a prisoner who will freely tell all of you what the uncontrolled wizards and innates (sorcerers) of the Valley have been doing.”
“My prisoner’s name is Minral. He is a sorcerer of no small power. He will admit to you that he and an evil lich-wizard have worked together in creating the magical rifts that have been plaguing the town this past month and terrifying many to blindly lashing out. Then they put a bewitched creature made to look like me in the church and let it loose. I have many regrets that such a horrible thing happened. But I was unable to stop it since I was foolishly away from the town at the time on what I thought to be a holy quest.”
“I had let my own inner turmoil blind my faith in Brekaneth. I lost my way and found my own way to Heroes’ Rest when the city’s heroes were also heading to a tower near there. When the heroes fought a shade of the lich I found this worm of a man sneaking about the area. I confronted him and he tried to flee, and I stopped him.”
“He then, knowing he had been caught, revealed to me what he is about to tell you.”
“Speak, but do not let a sorcerous word escape your lips.”

Minral speaks:
“It is so very true, and I am so very sorry. A creature of darkness, a lich named Pehr’All Herollus came to me and offered me power if only I were to help him in a way that only an innate truly can. If I were to spend my time learning the secrets of the chaotic magicks of this land and then reveal them to him, he would in turn teach me the power he has over death. I could have declined, but it would have meant my death.”
“So he took me to a cave in the mountains where the magic had been strong and I spent my days harnessing that magic and eventually creating and controlling what we have come to call Chaos Sparks.”
“The lich then brought forth creatures to put inside the sparks, and together we released them on the Valley.”
“Had I only known that we were releasing them inside the city, I would not have let him.”
“I regret doing such…”

Girvan’s responds as he raises his sword for a strike at Minral’s neck, “Your regret is noted. But your confession can have only one result.”

Minral’s last words are “What? No!”

Without missing a beat Girvan makes a speech while Minral’s headless body is in plain sight to all.

“People of the Valley; for too long we have hidden behind this city walls to be protected from the evils outside of them. But I’m telling you that we are stronger now than we have ever been. We are stronger than the evils we hide from.”
“The corrupted politicians of this city have led you to believe that we are in no position to wage war against the evils that plague us.”
“I am here to tell you that they are lying to you.”
“Wizards and fallen nobles have lined their pockets with gold so they can continue to live in excess while you suffer.”
“They have encouraged you to be dependant on the meager food they decide to give you.”
“I am telling you that the denizens of Heroes’ Rest are not nightmarish creatures from the great beyond. They are nothing more than fat goblins who steal from us every chance they get.”
“We know that goblins are no match for the heroes of this town. The dwarves of Silverhome owe a debt of gratitude to these heroes in the eradication of an entire goblin clan.” (Cheers begin.)
“We know that the mayor of this town was corrupted by the evils of politics and the council did nothing to stop him. Only these heroes were able to see through the lies and end the misery of poor Mayor Ryan.”
“Who has saved you from the chaos sparks time and again?” (He points his finger at the heroes.)
“Who has time and again fought devils that try to corrupt this town further?”
“Who has valiantly led an attack against the invaders of Theven’s Wharf and brought us an army?”
“Who has risked their lives to save us from dragons, orcs, and wizards?”
“Who has fought against this lich before, on his own turf, and escaped unscathed?”
“And who has agreed join me tomorrow in cleansing the evil from the Valley.” (Applause reaches a crescendo)
“Tomorrow, we will have an army. An army open to every able-bodied warrior in this land; and we will show the city council what true victory is.”
“Tomorrow that army will be meeting at Southgate and we will march to Heroes’ Rest and we will show the goblins, devils, the corrupt, and the arcanists what their future will be.”
“We will have victory!” (Thunderous applause erupts.)

Most of the city council is not happy, though they feign otherwise.
Father Jason Adrek is not happy, and he doe not hide it.
The party is not happy. They’ve been had.

The joke there is that the party probably would have joined the army.

Edward quickly talks with Jason Adrek on his opinion. Adrek is very dubious of Girvan’s intent, and tells Edward (and friends) that they can choose or to go with Girvan or not, but their priority is to protect the church and city (probably in that order).

Edward notices that Girvan is walking the direction of the temple. He intercepts Girvan and makes it clear that until Girvan has totally proven himself innocent, he will not be welcome in the temple.

Girvan understands and then walks to his parents’ house instead.

Ander attempts to get a personal interview with Girvan, but is blocked at the door by Girvan’s parents and later their servants.

The only information that his investigations come up with is that Girvan is praying.

During this period of time we introduced Lux and Lindorial.

Both offered their aid to the party (read as: I had already written the module and was unable to properly work them into it with only a day’s notice).

When the sun rose the next morning the army began forming.

At first it was just a few battle-people from here and there, soldiers and non-soldiers.
Then you add in a few more that joined because of the party.
Then someone had somehow changed the price of the teleporter to Theven’s Wharf from 100gp to a mere 1gp. That drew many actual veterans from General Marcum’s army.
Then with the confidence of having veterans at their side, even more people joined the army.

The party felt that they had no option but to join. Over half of Theven’s Wharf and the city’s defenders had joined.

If the army was wiped out, the city would be bereft of sufficient defenders.

That, of course, was Pehr’All’s plan.

The army, party included, began its slow march, just a few miles away, to their initial target – Heroes’ Rest.

Halfway there they were ascending a short hill when it rapidly grew dark overhead and an army of goblins appeared at the top of the hill.

“Turn back humans! Flee like the cowardly animals you are. Hide behind your walls. This is the day of the goblins!”

Girvan raised his sword and responded “For Brekaneth and for the Valley! Attack!”

There was no battle plan, just a direct attack order.

Before the party decided exactly what they should do, a man in a cloaked hood passed them and said “You protect these people, I will keep and eye on that paladin.”
The party recognized him as General Marcum Songrider. They also noticed the obsidian head of a mace that could only be the Voice of Brekaneth.

The fight was pretty much a pushover in difficulty, but interesting for role-playing.

Each PC had 2 soldiers that were under the PC’s command.

Each time a person would die, they would rise almost immediately as an undead (horde ghoul). This was thanks the lovely fog that was now in the area courtesy of one Pehr’All Herollus.

In cruel fashion, each new undead would attack the nearest living thing, with a preference for what might be turned first…in other words they went straight to the weakest targets so there could be more ghouls.

The combat finished when Ander, in one of Dale’s freaky good rolling streaks, proceeded to hit every single enemy target on the table with one of his “keep rolling if you hit” spells.

In the end only 2 soldiers survived, both Lux’s. He sent them both away for the next fight as the fog was still in the air.

The fog removed any ability of the party to determine what exactly was going on, but they assumed it wasn’t good with the number of screams they heard.

So they went to the nearest place with screams and helped those people out and instructed them to return to the city.

This went on until the Nerwold the ettin and his band arrived on the scene.

(Ok, Nerwold was actually a combination of Nermal and Woldy…but no respecting ettin wants to go by those names.)

Nerwold didn’t last all that long, but he and his friends certainly drained the party of some of their dailies.

The party also picked up Nerwold’s Pretty Necklace (Necklace of Fireballs +3) over Nerwold’s Stitched Suit (Trollskin Hide (Feybeast) Armor +3) and Nerwold’s Oversized Belt (Ironskin Belt Level 15)

The party had barely caught their collective breath as they made their way up the hill when they heard two men shouting at one another.

At the top of the hill the fog seemed the thickest, though they knew it was General Marcum and Girvan Torl doing the yelling with the occasional metal-on-metal clang of weapons clashing, and an odd buzzing they’d never heard before, but know it to be coming from the Voice of Brekaneth.

Marcum yells, “You have betrayed all that you hold dear! You have betrayed Brekaneth!”

Girvan in a voice filled with hate: “I have served Brekaneth faithfully. It is fools like you who have failed him!”

The party hears the charging footsteps of both men as they charge each other.

The Voice of Brekaneth and Brekaneth’s Holy Avenger collide and both shatter in an explosion that pushes away the fog allowing the party to see both men flying backwards and away from one another.

Marcum is knocked unconscious; the shattered and cracked head of the Voice lays about him.

Girvan fairs much better.
He is conscious, though he is no longer large in stature, back to his usual size.

Girvan stands and looks at his shattered sword.

“No! You will pay for this heresy!” pointing the broken blade at Songrider.
The sword rebuilds itself from the hilt as a black sword, dripping in blood.

Girvan begins the march towards Marcum, preparing to give a killing blow while the general is helpless.

The party rushes to stop him but lightning strikes all around them.

“Not so fast children. Grand pappy Pehr’All has some more friends for you to play with.”

From the strikes emerge 4 trolls, directly blocking the party’s path to stop Girvan.

Girvan looks at the party, specifically at Edward, and his eyes glow red.

The party quickly blasts an opening for Edward to get through and block Girvan.

For the next several rounds Edward uses every thing he has to keep Girvan’s attention on him and off Marcum.
He is forced to heal himself when the party can not.
The party is forced to help Edward as best they can while corralling the trolls into a tight area to be blasted away with fire.

In the end Girvan is surrounded, and slowly beaten down, until he realizes he cannot win.

He pulls off his helm.
His eyes cease glowing red
He looks at his sword, dripping with the blood of his victims.

“I have lost my way. Brekaneth forgive me.”
He falls to one knee and looks to Edward.
“Tell them I am sorry for everything. My intentions were always for the best. Give me an honorable death younger paladin. Hurry before the darkness reclaims my senses.”
He then lays his neck out for a clean cut.

Edward does not delay.

He who was once the elder paladin of Brekaneth falls to the ground. The moment the body touches the ground the fog and clouds disperse.

The thousands of bodies on the ground immediately decay and seem to slide into the ground. Where there was once a body, a pure white mote of light appears, illuminating the hill until midnight.

Over the next few days, while General Marcum Songrider recovers, every member of the party somehow wins or lucks into a small treasure of some sort.

All save Edward Wootenmorgan VIII. He gathered the shattered remains of the Voice of Brekaneth and Brekaneth’s Holy Avenger. He is now going to look for a way to repair them.

Top and Bottom 10 Monster List

2010-11-05T12:29:00.001-04:00

Time for a pointless post.

I’m sure other blogs or forum posts have covered things like this, but I don’t care.
My blog / my opinions.

This time I’m going to give my top and bottom 10 monsters from the various D&D monster manuals I’ve seen and read over the years.
If I missed one you like or loathe, speak up. I have a lot of books, but not a lot of time to go through those books.

We’re going to start with the top 10 critters I like.

#10 Goblinoids
Let’s face it, without these hapless walking XP punching bags, many PC’s wouldn’t make it past 3rd level.
Kobolds, goblins, orcs, hobgoblins, bugbears, and more are the bread and butter of low level adventures.
Sure a DM could design a campaign without them, but it would be a bit more work than I’d feel like putting in for low-level adventures.

#9 Gargantua and Dire Monsters
From Basic D&D (Campaign or Master books) come the gargantua; larger versions of low level monsters.
In Basic D&D a carrion crawler was scary to low level PC’s, but barely a speed bump past level 7. But if you throw in a 50’ long carrion crawler, they might notice it.
Dire creatures were added in 3rd edition (except for the dire wolf, their namesake) which were the same thing.

#8 Balhannoth
There were only a handful of creatures that didn’t suck in the latter days of 3.5’s Monster Manuals, and the Balhannoth was one of them.
This slimy mess of tentacles and a central mouth had one amazing ability – if it grabbed you your magic was nullified.
In 3.5E, having no magic effects meant you were half the PC you used to be.
The 4E Balhannoth is like the 3.5 version only in appearance, and is less interesting.

#7 Big, Bad, Intelligent, Boss Undead – a.k.a. Death Knights & Liches
I don’t have a direct reason for why they’re on the list other than they’re cool.
What PC sees one and doesn’t pause before rolling initiative?

#6 War Trolls
The war troll is in the same boat as the balhannoth, a cool monster surrounded by a pile of suck in a monster manual.
A normal troll is nothing to sneeze at, considering it’s a regenerating ball of claws and teeth.
A war troll is a trained, armored, armed, regenerating ball of claws and teeth.
A kitten is just a furry ball of claws and teeth. Yeah they’re cute, but those claws are frkn razors man.

#5 Feral Demons
The idea of this creature is awesome.
Running it in combat is not unless well prepared.
A feral demon (from Creature Collection I) is a single monster that has been split up into multiple versions, so they all act with one mind.
The kicker is that when one dies, all of the others get stronger (more hit points, damage, attack bonuses, etc.)
What starts as half a dozen creatures no stronger than a bugbear, ends up as a single creature that hits like a truck.

#4 Rust Monsters
It’s no secret that I love the rust monster.
The original one, not the pussified, half-ass rust monster you see now.
When it hit you, or you hit it with a weapon, something metallic was going to rust away.
“Oh no! My magic weapon is gone!”
“Yeah, and?”
Any DM worth his salt would put something better in the module to replace lost things.
A lost level I can understand bitching about, but lost gear is easily replaceable.
Nothing makes fighters more afraid than the idea of losing their full platemail +2.

#3 Original Outer-planar Beings
By that I mean the original 1st Edition AD&D angels, devas, devils, demons, demodands, and daemons.
Granted they really haven’t changed since their creation, but I felt they lost something when 2E AD&D cleaned them up and gave them names that hid what they were originally called.
I saw nothing wrong with them as is, but I guess if you get enough nutbars to yell, then you just have to change words around.
Hmmm, maybe I should put real life humans as my #1 least liked monster.

#2 Blue Dragons
As I’ve always read it, blue dragons are the noblest of the evil dragons.
They are indeed evil, and will go about the usual things that evil dragons do, but they do it with style and a personal set of rules and codes, giving it an honor-bound existence.
To me, blue dragons are the “knights” of the evil dragons.
Granted, most of these opinions are from my reading of the Dragonlance books.

#1 Kythons
I love these evil, insectoid monstrosities.
They’re vicious, heartless, and cruel demon-spawn.
In combat they do ridiculous amounts of damage for their challenge rating.
There is nothing redeemable about them as a monster.
They have no obvious agenda other than killing and they enjoy that immensely.
For these simple reasons, they’ve earned the #1 spot.

Honorable mention to Modrons
I’m a math loving guy, so I have a soft-spot for these almost-useless, law-abiding “creatures”.
I’ve never used one in a game, ever. Mainly because I haven’t found a good, and sane, excuse to throw a walking sphere, cube, tetrahedron, etc. into a game.

Now for the bottom 10.

#10 The Mimic
Here’s how to speed up a combat when there’s only one mimic; “It hits you with a surprise assault and does x damage. Now we roll initiative. Oh it’s last? Well then. You hack it pieces and it gets one more attack in before you slaughter it to goo. Here’s some XP and treasure.”
My point – they get a surprise attack and then don’t last 2 rounds. So to use them, they need something more than that.
Perhaps this has been fixed in 4E. Not that I’ve cared.

#9 Hydras
4E has fixed this creature a bit, making it less of an irritation to run.
Keeping the math straight on this thing made it more trouble than it was worth.
Which head has enough damage to die?
How much damage on the body?
And so on.

#8 Dragon-men
Draconians, dragonborn, dragonspawn, blah, blah, blah
Draconians were interesting back when Dragonlance was new to me.
But anymore the “special-ness” of dragons being rare and powerful creatures is lost when damn near everything has some dragon blood in it.

#7 Yuan-ti
I don’t have a good reason for disliking yuan-ti, I just don’t like them.
I totally did not understand why WotC kept them out of the SRD.

#6 Color-wheel Dragons
White, Black, Green, Blue, and Red are acceptable.
Yellow, Purple, and Brown are not.
Mating different dragon species to get an entirely new one just seemed like some obsessive-compulsive art nerd had to fill in the gaps that he saw and couldn’t let go.
Note: I am referring to the original color-wheel dragons, not the current ones (who have mostly just been renamed).

#5 Rot Grubs
Hey, there’s some treasure on that rotting monster.
Oh no! I’ve been attacked by a white maggot that is now chewing its way to my heart (through my arm).
Unless I cut off my arm or have a cleric right next to me with the exact spell needed I will die.
Yeah…that’s a good idea for a monster.

#4 Githyanki & Githzerai
Never has so much attention been paid to a race of creatures I’ve never ran.
Yeah, they’ve got a nice history.
No, I’m not interested in using them because I rarely have the PC’s go to the place where the Gith live.

#3 Lycanthropes
Yeah, let’s use some creatures in a fight that can totally derail my campaign with a disease than can destroy a town.

#2 Ogre-magi (a.k.a. Oni)
Ogre-magi always felt out of place as a monster.
They were pointlessly complicated in 1E AD&D and I never used them. As the editions changed, this monster barely did.
I don’t know if 4E ever fixed them because I never bothered to look.
There’s only so much crap I’m willing to look at before I just change the channel.

#1 Warforged
They
Are
Robots
!
“No they’re not!”
Bullshit
This boils down to “If it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck, it’s a duck.”

Honorable mention goes to the Shrieker.
This monster cries out like a little girl if it detects even the slightest light or motion.
It is the monster equivalent to a beer-can trap on a door.
The best use I’ve shriekers put to was in a PC game. Until you killed the shriekers, monsters would endless spawn to attack you.

And there it is.
Do I have good enough reasons for my listing?
Probably not.
But you know I don’t care.

The Valley #31-33

2010-09-27T12:18:00.000-04:00

Yes, that is three sessions in one blog post.

I’ve spread myself thinner than usual recently. Busier home and work life will do that to you.

For this month’s entertainment (a.k.a. me bitching about something) it’s all about our lack of players.

It’s a simple thing you’d think, but getting new players is not an easy task. At least not how I do it.

I have a “sense” about people. When I say “sense”, I’m basically saying that my subconscious is smarter than me when it comes to reading people. Thus when I don’t trust someone, I may not know exactly why, but I don’t question that feeling. That feeling has been right time and time again.

Here’s a quick story, no full names.
Long ago I met Ken at the game store. Something about him set off my “do not trust” alarm.
So I didn’t.
He said he had cancer and used the sympathy that people gave him to his advantage (free food, social agreeableness, loaning a few dollars, etc).
He later went away for a month for cancer treatments out of state, but he returned with no improvement.
About 6 months later he had all but disappeared (having worn out his welcome to many) and then the police showed up at the game store looking for him.
The police wanted him for writing tens of thousands of dollars in bad checks.
He didn’t have cancer.
His month-long treatment he had for that cancer was actually a month long stint in jail.

And that’s just one instance of where my subconscious has proved itself smarter than me.

There’s also the overly-sensitive part of me.
I will not game with someone week after week if they can’t maintain some simple manners.
This includes eating relatively quietly. (It requires a lot of self control to not snap at someone who is crunch-slop-slurping away.)
There was actually an asshat who thought it was ok to eat Cheetos, and then loudly suck the cheese powder off of each finger, while talking, and then had the gall to ask to borrow dice with his slime covered fingers.

Here’s how it went when he ran that one game I was at his table:
“So…um…(sucking sound from his thumb)…you open the door and…(sucking sound from his index finger)…you see a…(sucking sound from his middle finger)...Oh yeah…(sucking sound from his ring finger)…I need to borrow someone’s twenty-sider for a minute.”
He’s lucky he didn’t reach for my dice.

And for Flying-Spaghetti-Monster’s sake, can’t you eat the whole bag and then run the game…preferably after you’re done chewing, instead of eat a little, then talk a little while chewing with your mouth open, then clean fingers…also while talking, and then repeating.

That was my second World Wide D&D Game Day. There has not been a third, but not because of this guy. (My first such game day was actually pretty awesome.)

So we’ve removed from our pool of candidates the criminals, the loons (I’ve covered the “don’t bring crazy into my house” before), those who don’t have common table manners, and those who simply can’t make the games on a regular basis.

Then there’s this guy that Dale told me about.
He was interested in joining the group until he learned how limiting I made the game.
My response to Dale about it was “Good”.

If you absolutely have to play the most recently discovered broken class and/or combo and cry like a baby or whine like a little bitch (refer “little bitch” to the movie Basketball), then you’re not welcome to a game I run.

It’s a matter of being able to work with other players and not trying to show off to them with the hopes of some kind of comment comparing you to a gaming god with a giant e-peen.

We like having the big numbers of damage and like it when each player contributes to the group, but we don’t go looking to make some horribly broken PC whose goal is for everyone to say to him “Wow, you’re a much better player than me. I want to be just like you.”

And that is why we’re quite often low on players.
We have standards.

No thank you Cat-piss-man. Our olfactory senses work too well for you to stick around.
Bye-bye anger-control-problem boy. I don’t want to have to make a rules call against you and then dodge your fist or stare of enmity.
Move along Miss Wants-to-be-the-center-of-attention. Take your queen-bee attitude and move to a table where the guys are willing to fawn all over you to the detriment of their game.
Try the next table Mister Refuses-to-take-bipolar-meds. I don’t feel like starting a pool to figure out which personality you’re bringing to the game tonight.
See you later broken-combo-epeen-man. Thanks for killing the monster. Now maybe the rest of us can play.
Burn in hell Mister I-am-going-to-show-them-how-to-play-this-game. Take your self-empowered attitude and take it to a table who actually wants to be “improved”.
Go back home Mister Angry-at-everything. Only one of us is allowed at the table.

On that note, Joy has rejoined us.
Yep, somehow she made it through the screening process.
Human?
Check.
Does she take her meds?
Does Jim Beam count?
Is she mentally stable?
She’s Dale’s daughter…so 50/50.

Session 31
Admon (Scott); level 12 human war wizard
Edward (Aaron); level 12 human paladin of Brekaneth
Adrie (Joy); level 12 elf cleric
Erdrick (“PC light”); level 12 human cleric of Brekaneth

No Dale. He hurt his knee.
He’s a perpetual walking-talking injury machine.
Well, not walking.

I’ve decided to keep the difficulty options around for the players to decide how much they want to try for.
It’s more work for me, and still needs tweaking, but I think it’s worth it.

One big tweak is needed for solo monsters. They require a bit more finesse than just dumping 2 of them in a fight.
I’m mostly referring to dragons.
Something I may do for dragons, at least at this level, halve their hit points but allow them more attacks or double their damage.

Dragon fights take too long.
High defenses + high hit points + low damage = long boring fight.

For this session they chose all difficulty 3 fights (which translates to 150% of suggested encounter xp for their level).

We’ve also started to keep just one XP listing for everyone. Since no one is really dragging the party down with their random attendances and poor-excuse for a PC, there’s no reason to not keep everyone at the same level.

The party had just helped saved Theven’s Wharf from a red dragon plot to bury the place in lava, and now it was time for them to escort General Songrider to the Grand Temple of Brekaneth in the Valley.
(They refer to him as General “Awesome” in a slightly derisive tone.)

At the doors to the temple, waiting to greet them is Father Adrek and Girvan Torl.

Greetings are exchanged and a tour is given.

Adrek talks up a storm about the place.
Songrider listens intently, paying attention to all details spoken and seen.
Torl remains grimly quiet.

Songrider asks about the defenses of the city and the temple. Torl, almost defiantly, boasts that the temple is the most defensible location in the city and the city does as best it can with what is available and the church sees to it that it helps in every way possible.

Songrider states that he believes the city’s biggest weakness is Theven’s Wharf as it is the city’s only supply-line to the outside world.
Torl then erupts into a tirade about the city’s weakest link being it’s bureaucracy and the council’s constant bickering and refusal to do what must be done (crush the goblins, mages who ignore the world but gladly accept the protection that soldiers supply them, and the continued existence of a trio of powerful liches living in the Valley…somewhere).
He believes that Songrider’s army should be used to clean the Valley of all its filth, starting with the retaking of Heroes’ Rest.
Songrider admitted that Heroes’ Rest would be a good place to start with, but his army is in no shape for such a campaign at the moment. But he does have a plan.
Step one is to scout the place, as he’s heard that the beasts that now reside in the keep are a fair bit more dangerous than goblins.
There is an abandoned guard tower not far from Heroes’ Rest. That would be a good position for scouting and to supply an attack on the keep if needed.
Torl stands at attention and volunteers to lead the mission.
Songrider declines and states that Edward and his friends are more suited for such a mission.
Torl, clenches his fist, and then storms off.
Father Adrek apologizes to the general and mentions the rough period the elder paladin has been through recently.
Songrider questions the stability of Torl, but Adrek responds that so long as he’s done nothing to anger Brekaneth then Torl will remain the elder paladin.

The party is then grouped up with an elf named Adrie. While not a scout, she’s been to this area before and the elves insisted she come along.

Using a non-combat challenge I was able to have the party find the tower.
There were 4 rolls to be made:
Step 1 - Finding the path: DC20 Nature group roll. Failure meant each PC had to make a DC20 Endurance check or lose a healing surge. Repeat this step until the Nature check is successful.
Step 2 – Crossing the Clichéd Bridge Over the Chasm: DC20 Athletics group roll. Same results as step 1 for failure.
Step 3 – Searching for the Tower: DC25 Nature group roll. Same results as step 1 for failure.
Step 4 – Sneaking to the Tower: DC25 Stealth group roll. This time each failure would make the next encounter 1 step more difficult.

Poor Kag was a bored hill giant, sent out here to guard this semi-ruined tower with some ogres, goblins, and a couple behemoths. Then some ugly humans showed up and killed him.
Life a monster sucks.

Of the treasure below the party chose Kag’s Bribe.
Kag’s Bribe: Amulet of Bodily Sanctity +3
Kag’s Spiked Ring: Iron Ring of the Dwarf Lords
Kag’s Digging Stick: Golden Spade

After the party finished looting they noticed a dark cloud floating too low to be an actual cloud.
It descended to the ground where it split into two shapes; one humanoid and one draconic.

The humanoid one took a slightly more solid but still shadowy form and began talking and asking questions like “why are you here?” and so on.
It mentioned something about “the keep over there” being a nice one and how he might take it over.
Its last question was “Are you the son of the Silverblade family? Why are you not with your family? They are in desperate need of protection at this time.”
The shadowy film over the creatures reveal Pehr’All Herollus and a wyvern…and a fight commences while Pehr’All taunts Admon and his family and throws in a comment about the end of the Wootenmorgan family as well.

This fight took a little longer than expected, but not horribly. The zone the lich kept dropping and the spectral tendrils he used kept the party at bay for a while.

The party chose the Lodestone rather than the ring I expected.
Pehr’All’s Lodestone: Orb of Weakness Intensified +3
Pehr’All’s Staff of Striking: Striking Staff +3
Lich’s Band of Shadow: Ring of Shadow Travel

When the party returned to the city they heard news of a horrible attack at the Grand Temple of Brekaneth.

About the same time that the part was fighting the shadowy Perh’All, he also appeared in front of the temple challenging its champions inside to face him.

As expected Girvan Torl, Father Adrek, and others went out to the courtyard of the temple.
At that point Herollus blasted Torl with a black and green beam that held him in place for a moment and changed him.
Within moments Pehr’All Herollus had disappeared and left a changed Girvan Torl on a blackened circle of grass on the lawn of temple.
Girvan was now much larger and bulkier than before. His armor and sword, holy relics of Brekaneth, changed and grew with him.

His mind became warped as well.

He began walking towards the family house where Edward grew up, and where his parents and grandfather still live.
Anyone that got in his way was killed without thought or remorse.
Father Adrek was not killed, but his wounds would leave him bedridden for a week.

By the time the party had returned to the city, all they found were trails of dead bodies.
The Wootenmorgan house was broken into. Edwards’s parents and grandfather were all dead. His grandfather had been more viciously attacked and was tortured before he was finally allowed to die.

After the attack Torl strode out of the city, still being sure to kill anyone who tried to stop him or otherwise get in his way.

Session 32

Admon (Scott); level 13 human war wizard
Edward (Aaron); level 13 human paladin of Brekaneth
Adrie (Joy); level 13 elf cleric
Erdrick (“PC light”); level 13 human cleric of Brekaneth

A week had passed since Girvan Torl’s attack.

Edward has been under protection in the temple (Erdrick is his main guard).
Adrie has been looking for Ander who has disappeared.
Admon has not left the Silverblade house for fear of attacks on his family or himself.

Otherwise the Valley has been mostly quiet.
To kill 2 birds with one stone the council decided to send the party to the Fey Realm for the funeral of Ivellios Galanodil as Thlyria Isara’s guard.
The burial is somber, simple, and uneventful and the PC’s are given ample opportunity for some role-playing.
But since Dale and Mike weren’t around, not much role-playing was done.

So we jumped right into the action.

After they had finished with escorting Thlyria Isara, but were still in the woods, a cold chaos spark appeared.

Surprisingly the party chose the hardest difficulty (5 for 7800XP).

This fight pretty much told me that using dragons as is, is not the way to go. The fight took forever and just became a slugfest after the first dragon was down (no more dailies).

The Ice Chaos Spark froze the ground around it unless a sufficiently intricate arcana check caused it to not grow larger (or possibly even shrink).

To keep the rest of the party busy a pair of adult green dragons played cat and mouse with them.

Of the below items they chose Krant’s Bravado:
Jaycee’s Stocky Hide: Hide Armor of Durability +3
Shelob’s Tricky Crossbow: Transposing Crossbow +3
Petra’s Temporary Escape: Symbol of Censure +3
Kaeroth’s Bloodied Arms: Bloodthirst Bracers
Krant’s Bravado: Cincture of Vivacity

Due to their poor information gathering skills the party totally missed that there had been other sparks appearing randomly around town the past few days and many people were starting to flee to Theven’s Wharf (because this stuff doesn’t happen there). This desperation was causing an increase in theft as not everyone can afford 100gp to pay for the teleport.

A few of the party are also a few gold coins shy because they were being pick pocketed by some kids. But some of the party noticed and ran after the children, following them to a pair of conjoined, abandoned houses in the Crags.

Just as the party got there a purple chaos spark appeared. The party had just enough time to get the children out of the house before this purple spark fully appeared and spit out an Enormous Carrion Crawler and a Balhannoth.

The spark itself was supposed to do more, but after reading the monsters again at the game table, I decided that the fight might be a bit too tough. I’m still not sure if it was or wasn’t.

The party won, but they had to pull some major crowd control on the carrion crawler since it could freeze them all in place every round.
So they used a variety of sliding and pushing powers to keep it away from them while they dealt with the balhannoth first.

Of the items below they took the helm:
Zodac’s Whomping Stick: Lifedrinker Warhammer +3
Dizzen’s Focus: Symbol of Dire Fate +3
Krant’s Encompassing Helm: Carcanet of Psychic Schism
Sillah’s Trick: Cloak of Displacement +3
Norm’s Surprise: Ring of Aquatic Ability

If you’re thinking “He sure is handing out a lot of magic items.” you’re right.
Long story short, I had been shorting the party just a little bit for a while, so now I’m catching them up until my spreadsheet says it’s all even.

Session 33

Admon (Scott); level 13 human war wizard
Edward (Aaron); level 13 human paladin of Brekaneth
Adrie (Joy); level 13 elf cleric
Ander (Dale); level 13 halfling sorcerer

Admon, Edward, and Adrie were heading to the temple of Brekaneth when, once again, all hell broke loose as a brown chaos spark appeared.

This one spat out several earthen creatures (and then large rocks) and the largest of them (an earth titan) grumbled something like “kill the wizard”.

It also spat out a hairless, almost naked, Ander. He later found out he had the same tattoos as Girvan Torl, but wasn’t dazed like Torl was when he was spit out of a chaos spark.

The party was surrounded on the street and would have taken a nice beating but they were able to buy themselves plenty of time with various pushing attacks.

Magic items to choose from: (I believe they took the bracers)
Hin’s Second Skin: Dwarven Chainmail +4
Hin’s Rock Tosser: Resounding Sling +4
Hin’s Scar: Skull Bracers

This last attack caused a large amount of damage in a public place, and became the final straw for many people. There were many small riots, which were really brazen attacks to get money to pay the teleporter fee.

The city council acted quickly and “asked” the party, who are viewed as heroes, to guard the main gate of the city as a symbol of the city doing something.

But this had no chance to affect anything because the party had only been at their new post for an hour when an obviously unnatural fog rolled into town.

The fog was quite thick (50’ max viewing distance) and the party prepared for an attack of some sort.

They were not disappointed.

A contingent of ogres and other creatures attacked the main gate. Their intent was to get past the gate and move into town under the cover of fog and create chaos.

If an ogre made it past the gate, and out of sight of the party, then they lost 25xp for each round the ogre had a chance to wreak havoc.
But if no ogres had that chance, then the party would get 1000 bonus xp.

They came within 1 initiative of losing that 1000xp.

Treasure options: (I think they took the bracers this time too)
Flail of Nightmares: Battlemaster’s Heavy Flail +3
Hin’s Bloody Bane: Bloodthirst Bracers
Green Glowing Rock: Amulet of False Life +3

And that is all for now.
There was going to be more…but I forgot to add it during the session. And since this write up is already quite large, then I will wait until next time.

Magic Item Dilemma

2010-08-13T12:25:00.001-04:00

At one of our recent sessions we encountered an odd issue.
Dale gave us a list of items to pick from as part of our winning a fight.

There were some alright things on there, but nothing that really said to any of us “gottahavit” or even “that would be nice”.

Sometimes he’ll pick stuff he thinks we’ll want but we don’t.
That didn’t happen this time.

They were decent items, but they were “meh” to us.

Do we have too many magic items?
No, I think we’re actually a little low powered when it comes to magic items.
Well that’s what I think, but I don’t know for sure.

Time for some pseudo-math…

Here are our assumptions based off of what has been implied in the rules:
10 encounters per level about equal to the PCs’ levels
5 PC’s
4 magic item per 10 encounters
Magic items will be 1 to 4 levels above the party
Usually PC’s can make or buy magic items – given how much a PC is supposed to have by level, this comes out to about 2 levels behind their current level assuming money is not wasted.

Conclusion – A PC will receive 4 magic items per 5 levels they gain and that item will approximately be 2 levels above their new level.

Now we know that the assumptions will not be 100% true to what happens, but a d20 will never truly average out to 10.5 on its rolls either.

Next are the item slots: Armor, Weapons and Implements (combined to around 3 slots total), Arms, Feet, Hand, Head, Neck, Waist, and Wondrous (which we’ll say are 2 slots), and 2 rings (but are all level 14 and up).

That’s a total of 12 slots to start with and 2 more around paragon levels, but unless your DM hands out rings to everyone like they’re gifts I’m going to say 1 ring is available at level 11 and the other at level 21.

I know there are a lot of “But what if…?” possibilities, but I’ve got to draw a reasonable line somewhere.
“Some items are more useful than their higher level replacements.”
That’s an opinion. Another opinion is that some items are utterly worthless at any level.
“Some DM’s hand out more than what you’ve listed.”
I’m aware of that. Some also hand out less. Some players don’t need many items and some need more.

Remember, this is just a rough listing.

So let’s see what we get as we level up (with levels 1, 6, 11, 16, 21, & 26 as the level we don’t get an item from loot):

PC level – item levels
1 – no magic
2 – 4
3 – 5, 4, 1
4 – 6, 5, 4, 2, 1
5 – 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1
6 – 8, 6, 5, 4, 4, 3, 2, 1
7 – 9, 8, 6, 5, 5, 4, 4, 3, 2, 1
8 – 10, 9, 8, 6, 6, 5, 5, 4, 4, 3, 2, 1
We’re out of slots so we start replacing the lowest level items
9 – 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 6, 5, 5, 4, 4, 3
10 – 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 8, 7, 6, 6, 5, 5, 4
Ring slot opens up
11 – 12, 11, 10, 9, 9, 8, 8, 7, 6, 6, 5, 5, 4
12 – 14, 12, 11, 10, 10, 9, 9, 8, 8, 7, 6, 6, 5
13 – 15, 14, 12, 11, 11, 10, 10, 9, 9, 8, 8, 7, 6
14 – 16, 15, 14, 12, 12, 11, 11, 10, 10, 9, 9, 8, 8
15 – 17, 16, 15, 14, 13, 12, 12, 11, 11, 10, 10, 9, 9
16 – 17, 16, 15, 14, 14, 13, 12, 12, 11, 11, 10, 10, 9
17 – 19, 17, 16, 15, 15, 14, 14, 13, 12, 12, 11, 11, 10
18 – 20, 19, 17, 16, 16, 15, 15, 14, 14, 13, 12, 12, 11
19 – 21, 20, 19, 17, 17, 16, 16, 15, 15, 14, 14, 13, 12
20 – 22, 21, 20, 19, 18, 17, 17, 16, 16, 15, 15, 14, 14
Ring slot opens up
21 – 22, 21, 20, 19, 19, 18, 17, 17, 16, 16, 15, 15, 14, 14
22 – 24, 22, 21, 20, 20, 19, 19, 18, 17, 17, 16, 16, 15, 15
23 – 25, 24, 22, 21, 21, 20, 20, 19, 19, 18, 17, 17, 16, 16
24 – 26, 25, 24, 22, 22, 21, 21, 20, 20, 19, 19, 18, 17, 17
25 – 27, 26, 25, 24, 23, 22, 22, 21, 21, 20, 20, 19, 19, 18
26 – 27, 26, 25, 24, 24, 23, 22, 22, 21, 21, 20, 20, 19, 19
27 – 29, 27, 26, 25, 25, 24, 24, 23, 22, 22, 21, 21, 20, 20
28 – 30, 29, 27, 26, 26, 25, 25, 24, 24, 23, 22, 22, 21, 21
29 – 30, 30, 29, 27, 27, 26, 26, 25, 25, 24, 24, 23, 22, 22
30 – 30, 30, 30, 29, 28, 27, 27, 26, 26, 25, 25, 24, 24, 23

That’s a lot of magic items.

I’m curious about how the items average out to the PC’s in the game I run.

I know that my current PC’s in Dale’s game are a little underpowered, but Dale is making up for that (as he has found out when an equal level combat nearly killed us because our most powerful items were 2 or more levels below our PCs’ levels).

So the levels are a little low, but that should make us want newer items more, right?

You’d think so, but no.

The items we had to choose from were mostly weapons, armor, and items related to weapons and armor.

Much of the equipment we had were things were picked as optimal for our PC, or were pretty good.

That means that any improvement in gear would have to be something big, not a baby step.

Why would my sorcerer give up a Staff of Ruin +2 for a +3 staff with a daily I won’t get much use out of and 1 more average point of damage on a crit?
The tradeoff would be +1 to hit, -1 to damage or even if it’s a crit, and gaining a daily effect that doesn’t impress me.
The boost is minor, so let someone else in the group pick an item from the list that would do better for them.

But my sorcerer does have a few slots that are totally empty.

“Ah ha! It’s Dale’s fault. He’s not giving you a variety of items.”

No sir.

I’ve had ample opportunity to buy gear, create gear, or choose loot gear that could be used in an open slot but I’ve overlooked it.

Why? Because I want to do more damage. I want more effective characters.

So I’m just as guilty as Dale. Heck, probably more-so since it’s not as easy for him to know every piece of equipment I have on my PC’s.

As I’ve listed above, the items you replace should be replaced by something roughly 10 levels higher. Replacing your main weapon every month may be costing you in the long run as all your other gear gets more and more outdated.

But what do I know?
I could just be reading tea leaves.

The Valley #29-30

2010-07-20T12:21:00.000-04:00

Everyone welcome Dan to the group.
Everyone say to goodbye to Dan.

He very much fit into our group, but quickly found out that work + family sometimes doesn’t leave much room for D&D. So rather than linger on as an “I think I can make it” player, he chose to exit in a friendly manner so that he could rejoin us if his schedule can consistently open up.

Given what we’ve seen in this group, we appreciate that a lot.

So thanks for not taking our group for granted Dan.

For Session 30 I decided to try something a little different.
I set up a scaled set of encounters and allowed the party to pick the difficulty on a scale of 1-5.
Difficulty 1 would be a standard, equal level encounter (100% XP for 4 PC’s), while difficulty 5 would be twice as hard (200% XP for 4 PC’s), and the other difficulties would scale.

The higher the difficulty, the more treasure and XP to be given, and the more time it takes to finish the combat. It’s going to take some tweaking to get right, but so far I like it.

The setup will be clarified more in Session 30’s write-up.

Session 29
Admon (Scott); level 11 human war wizard
Edward (Aaron); level 11 human paladin of Brekaneth
Ander (Dale); level 11 halfling sorcerer
Kabret (Dan); level 11 human cleric (it may be Kabert, I have forgotten)

Due to time issues I made Dan’s PC for him since he’d only really played low level 4E games.

Considering that, he did pretty good adapting to a paragon level PC.

Plus he wanted to play a cleric.
That’s a big jump from our usual of “I guess I’ll play a healer (sigh).”

For the time being Kabret is a cleric of Brekaneth under the command of General Songrider. The general decided that Erdrick can be put to better use for his plans so he places his trusted Kabret to support the party for their part in taking back the town of Theven’s Wharf.

We jumped into the action as the party poured into an open section of the town wall. There was more action going on, but to keep things simple (as in no huge numbers of minions on each side that would attack each round) I pitted the PC’s against several dozen orc warriors in a town setting with a lot of buildings near the breached wall.

The plan was to kill the orcs’ leader Bromock, and then lure out the devil Ozim.

The PC’s charged in and had to deal with dozens of orcs throwing spears from behind buildings and from above while dealing with more of the paralyzing ghoul’s teeth.

(After a good chunk of time was wasted dealing with the 4+ dozen orc minions on the table, I decided to just assign a number of attacks each PC would receive a round.)

Once several orc warriors had been killed Bromock and his pair of bloodragers arrived to fight.

The 3 orcs hit maybe 10% of the time, but when they hit they put a hurting on their target. Add the 2-4 attacks per round from the minions, and you have yourself a nice sum of damage each round.

The PC’s won but used half of their healing surges.

The reward choices:
Bromock’s Greataxe (Vicious Greataxe +3)
Bromock’s Attitude Adjustor (Bracers of Mighty Striking – Level 12)
Bromock’s Clawed Feet (Assault Boots)

I believe they went with Bromock’s Clawed Feet.

Now that Bromock is dead, Ozim goes on a rampage and he eventually finds the party.

The general had told them that whoever Ozim goes after, they were to hold him off until the general can join with his crew.

The party rested near the docks until they heard Ozim and his devil horde coming.

The party didn’t quite know what they were up against, so instead of delaying Ozim, they decided to let loose with their most powerful attacks.

When they found out what Ozim could do, they were not happy.

Ozim isn’t your normal bone devil. Instead of the usual Aura of Obedience (which does damage to bloodied devils, but they do more damage, and if they die the bone devil heals 10) he had the ability to absorb the devil minions into him to heal.

With Ozim bloodied in the first couple of rounds, the party was enjoying a series of crits from their dailies.
Then they were not happy when he was back to full health by the time the fourth round came along.

Later the players stated that they didn’t like the way that the combat worked out. But other than maybe limit the number of minions absorbed per round, limit Ozim’s teleporting, and make it clearer that “keep him occupied” means just that, I liked the encounter as it was.

Once the party realized that the minions were mobile healing potions…they still chose to attack Ozim.

What I expected to happen:
The party tries to take him on alone - Check
Ozim heals up - Check
The party’s damage dealers change their focus to the minions - D’oh!
General Marcum Songrider arrives - Check (eventually)
The party achieves a lockdown on the minions as Marcum faces off against Ozim and Marcum’s forces join the party in controlling Ozim’s minions - Check
Ozim is defeated - Check

So what really happened vs. what I thought would happen was not that much different.
It just scared the party.

DM’s job done – check

Session 30

Dan was unable to make it, so Erdrick rejoined. The way things are looking, Erdrick may be with the party a lot.

Admon (Scott); level 11 human war wizard
Edward (Aaron); level 11 human paladin of Brekaneth
Ander (Dale); level 11 halfling sorcerer
Erdrick (NPC); level 11 human priest (modified cleric)

The day after the town was liberated there was much work going on.

Ander finally met up with a sorcerer from Ander’s cabal. This particular sorcerer had been instructed by Polaris to join up with General Songrider’s army, and it has been the best thing for him. Songrider has given this sorcerer purpose and has done so without prejudice.

At that particular point in time the sorcerer’s job was to simply send up flares into the sky to notify that those hiding at sea that it was safe to return. Ander decided to hang out with him and do some fishing.

Admon spent his time assisting in rebuilding the town. The army supplied the materials required, so Admon was casting a lot of Mend Object rituals.

Edward escorted Kabret to the Valley to report in and to facilitate the eventual arrival of General Songrider to the Valley.

They could only spend a day in the Valley as there were still some residual issues left over from liberating Theven’s Wharf.

While many orcs fled, they were too few in number to be an issue for an army to worry about. But the dragons that escaped could do much more damage, singly or in numbers.

Many of them fled to a nearby dormant volcano, and they were looking for some revenge. If they could reignite the volcano, they could bury Theven’s Wharf under a lava flow.

And we can’t have that now can we?

The general grabbed his best soldiers and were going to strike at as many nests as they simultaneously could.

General Songrider gave the PC’s the option of which nest they could attack.

This was the role-playing excuse I used to allow for the options in difficulty. I gave the party an option of 1-5 with each option representing roughly 100% standard XP for their numbers and level, 125%, 150%, 175%, and 200%.

Difficulty 1
1 Lava Spray (modified level 9 blaster trap from the DMG)
1 Young Red Dragon
2 Red Dragon Wyrmlings
2600XP, 600gp, 600sp, & 1 quartz (500gp)

Difficulty 2
1 Lava Spray
1 Young Red Dragon
4 Red Dragon Wyrmlings
3400XP, 750gp, 750sp, & 2 quartz (500gp each)

Difficulty 3
1 Lava Spray
2 Young Red Dragon
2 Red Dragon Wyrmlings
4000XP, 900gp, 900sp, 2 quartz (500gp each), 1 topaz (500gp), & a 1 level 12 Item

Difficulty 4
1 Lava Spray
2 Young Red Dragon
4 Red Dragon Wyrmlings
5000XP, 1000gp, 1000sp, 2 quartz (500gp each), 2 topazes (500gp), & a 1 level 12-13 Item

Difficulty 5
1 Lava Spray
3 Young Red Dragon
2 Red Dragon Wyrmlings
5600XP, 1200gp, 1200sp, 2 quartz (500gp each), 2 topazes (500gp), & a 1 level 12-14 item

The items to pick from:

Level 12:
The Ascendant Noble’s Cudgel (Resounding Mace +3)
Felix’s Bane (Orb of Indisputable Gravity +3)
Keoghtom’s Ointment

Level 13:
Sill’s Singed Robes (Robe of Defying Flames +3)
Fizzigan’s Third Arm (Force Wand +3)
Nerm’s Failed Hope (Winged Boots)

Level 14:
Sill’s Focus (Bracers of Iron Arcana)
Lavender’s Eyes (Goggles of Night)
Zee’s Oily Amulet (Amulet of Bodily Sanctity +3)

The party chose Difficulty 4, which surprised me a little. I expected them to go with 2 or 3.

The cave they entered was large, with several columns, and the dragons just waking up from the disturbances they were hearing.

The combat didn’t move from where the party started the encounter; the 20’ wide entrance area.

Admon was able to immobilize half the dragons before they were able to get an action off, and that saved the party a lot of trouble as half the dragons had to sit out round 1 and some for even longer.

The party had to arrange themselves just right or they’d give an opening for one of the larger dragons (young reds) to get right in the middle of the party and lay waste.

Admon also gave Edward a buff for 17 points of resistance to fire, but they decided that for future combats that it should go to Ander as he absorbed half the healing that was doled out during combat.

This turned out to be a slugfest with the dragons’ huge amount of hit points and many fiery breath attacks.

The combat also took way too long; so long that I had to declare that there would not be any further encounters for the night.

Then the party let go.
They had been holding back some daily powers for the next fight. With that no longer being required, the dragons were shredded fast.

With Ander being a constant beating target, they gave him some protection with Sill’s Singed Robes. Dale protested, stating he had just gotten a magic dagger the previous week. But they insisted that he being better protected would help everyone else since he would need less healing.

And we stopped there.
For the next 3 sessions it is Dale’s campaign, so I may post something else on the blog.

The Valley #27-28

2010-07-08T12:39:00.002-04:00

Well we’re back to The Valley for a few sessions, and while session #27 happened almost 2 months ago, it fits best with session #28.

Also, due to our low number of players, we had to cancel two weeks because missing one person now can really hose up the game. But with at least one new player joining us, we shouldn’t have to worry about that too much.

One thing Dale did while his campaign was running was to give us a list of magic items to choose from rather than give us specific items (which leads to a high chance of us not wanting them) or just letting us pick items from of a specific level (which is a giant can of worms by giving too many options to players).

He made 3 lists and asked us to pick one from each list as our magic item treasure from the previous week’s fights. So I stole that idea, modified it, and made it my own.

It’s perfect for allowing me to control what I give to the party while giving them a fair chance at getting a useful item.

First I decide what level item to give out.
Then I trim items off the list I consider broken, too confusing, or not fitting with the campaign.
Then I trim the list down to 3 or so items that fit the flavor of the fight.
Then I give the items names for some role-playing flare.

So far it’s worked out quite well and I feel it adds to the fun and role-playing of the campaign.

Session 27
Admon (Scott); level 11 human war wizard
Edward (Aaron); level 11 human paladin of Brekaneth
Ander (Dale); level 11 halfling sorcerer
Kergan (Mike); level 11 dwarf rogue

We stopped just as the party killed Mayor Xavius Ryan and the devil Stefforri as her giant fire pyramid disappeared leaving only several empty barrels that once held the zombie elixir and the dead bodies of Xavius and Stefforri.

The party makes cleans up the area a bit to prevent accidents with the elixir and then picked up the bodies to begin heading back to town.

Then a hulking figure in full plate armor strode out of the polluted water.

It’s Girvan Torl and he’s angry and believes he’s just caught the party red-handed, having murdered a good friend of his and one of their accomplices in the evil act.

Before Girvan could bring the PC’s to justice, a squad of dwarves arrived.

The Silverhome dwarves still work a bit outside of the city’s control (and Xavius’s eyes), so they were able to create a formula that would neutralize the zombie elixir and they proceeded to dump it in the river and would soon spread it to the rest of the city before morning broke and any accidents could occur. (A “Boil Water Advisory” would be placed in effect as well.)

Admon questioned Girvan how he could survive in the river that had been polluted with the zombie elixir.

“The grace of Brekaneth protected me.”

Amazingly not a single person drank the polluted water, which added some more fame to the party’s already hefty supply of it.

While Admon, Edward, Ander, and Girvan headed to the Grand Temple of Brekaneth, Kergan took off in another direction.

Among the treasure they took from their fight with the mayor was a statue of Stefforri in all her devilish succubus form. So Kergan took the statue and planted it in the mayor’s house (which helped them in proving their innocence later).

When the group arrived at the temple, they found it on alert.

They went to see Father Adrek, and immediately Girvan accused the party of orchestrating the crisis, including murdering the mayor and cavorting with devils.

Father Adrek asked a few questions and believed the party’s story. They’ve done too many good things for the city and Girvan has no proof.

Girvan says “You are weak old man. You have done nothing but lead this church into oblivion.”, and then storms out.

They then tell Father Adrek that they believe Torl is “not well”.
Adrek admits that the man has been through some trauma but the sword he carries would reject him had he fallen from favor with Brekaneth.

He then suggests that everyone in the party get some legal representation. Even though he believes them, if the story of what happened were to be told (spun) in the right manner the party could be in real trouble.

The party did help someone who made deals with devils gain more power in the Valley. And they also killed him and that devil. Who’s to say that the party hadn’t just killed their accomplices? And so on.

So they each get some legal protection and put it to good use. Over the next few weeks each party member is absolved of any wrongdoing and thus all are still the heroes the citizens of the city believe them to be.

During the week the following is determined/discovered/revealed:
- Only the soft bits (wooden) of the Roaring Bull Inn were hurt. It is being rebuilt. Some of the party give Bull some money to help him in the rebuilding.
- Nothing more can be gleaned from Ivellios’s tomes. They now have permanent spot in Admon’s slowly growing book collection.
- Kergan is sent a note. “You’re a dead man traitor.” It is presumed to be from the Thieves’ Guild.
- Each PC is sent a letter. “Well done! Amazingly well! Exceedingly well! I had not expected this outcome, but it did happen. Luckily I have contingency plans.” Signed “XR”
- The city council is debating whether to remove the position of mayor from the government and thus may reduce the number of city council members to an odd number again.
- Duncan’s political career is either in jeopardy or potentially booming thanks to his friendship with Xavius Ryan.
- Ander gets back in contact with Bobby McDonaldson. He had to “disappear” for a while. He confirms that many sorcerers have disappeared and promises to help Ander find out what’s going on with them.
- Edward researches as much as he can about dragons (role-playing for the Dragonslayer paragon path).
- Kergan’s contact with the Thieves’ Guild, who never was his contact, has disappeared.

One day, about a month after the defeat of the mayor, each PC was going about their usual, mundane activities that we just glaze over (because role-playing every single detail of someone’s life would be more tedious than reality), when several dragon shapes flew overhead, blocking out the sun.

That is when 2 dozen red dragons attacked the city.

Each PC prepared to join in the fight, but then they noticed a smaller group of fliers heading to the center of the city.

The red dragons were a diversion to draw the city’s defenses away from the real target, the city’s teleporter.

The teleporter is a 10’x10’ stage that was created by members of the Magus Sanctus organization. For 100gp a person or parcels can be teleported to and from an identical teleporter in the port town of Theven’s Wharf. (The fee is for funding the Magus Sanctus’s other humanitarian activities.)

Theven’s Wharf had just been attacked by devils, red dragons, and orcs from Sordimar. But that town was not the real target, the Valley was.

A smaller group of dragons, abishais, and bloodfire harpies snuck to the teleporter to perform a ritual to remove need to pay 100gp each.

The aura of the harpies prevented most people from helping (5 fire damage per round), leaving only heroes able to help.

When the PC’s arrived on the scene, the ritual was almost complete as any of the fiery attackers could make a successful arcana check to convert one of the four pads on the teleporter. But PC’s (Admon) believed the damage could be undone just as easily.

The rules of the fight – once the harpies were dead the PC’s could call for aid from a city guard as a minor action (Bluff/Diplomacy check with DC = 15 + number of dead guard – the current combat round). Guards are a minion with a simple short sword or crossbow attack (3 damage)

The PC’s made quick work of the harpies, forcing the red dragons to finish the ritual.
This gave the party a chance to regroup thanks to the party’s lack of dedicated healing (Edward has Lay on Hands, but it is very limited in use).
When the dragons finished the ritual, up to 4 orc warriors appeared every round.

The PC’s were starting to feel a bit overwhelmed when suddenly the dragons just up and left. The dragons had been contracted for a job (distraction) and they weren’t about to stick around to die for the pay.

After that it didn’t take much to kill off the abishais, play whack-a-mole with incoming orcs, and return the teleporter to normal.

Of course this added much to the fame of the party, so Edward couldn’t help but try to get a dig in about Girvan Torl.

“Where’s Girvan?”
“He killed a dragon single-handed.”
“D’oh!”

The city was saved (again), but as of now the Valley is cut off from the outside world (again).

Session #28

This session was meant to be a mostly combat session.
Sometimes you have to do that to get the ball rolling.

Weeks have gone by in the Valley since the previous session and things are getting desperate.

Supplies are getting low and there is talk of returning to the old ways, where the town guards were just as apt to protect the city from goblins and to put down food riots.

The Church of Brekaneth has asked for volunteers to scout into Theven’s Wharf.
Now this had been tried previously in the past few weeks, but each time the scout never returned, and are presumed dead.

There even seems to be magic that protects the town from being scryed.

It is believed now that anyone attempting to scout must have a good means of escape. So each volunteer will be given a special enchantment upon them that will allow them to teleport to a possible safe spot outside of Theven’s Wharf (coming back to the Valley is too far for this kind of magic). All they have to do is say “Velserrad” (free action, must be able to speak).

Edward chooses to go for his church and the people of the Valley.
Admon chooses to go because this is hurting his family greatly.
Ander chooses to go because he hears rumors that his sorcerous allies have hidden nearby.
Erdrick chooses to go because it is the right thing to do.

(Erdrick is a player controlled NPC, designed to be relatively simple to run while still being useful to the party.)

The party’s tasks; scout the forces of the orcs, harms as many orcs as possible, and return safely home.

Admon (Scott); level 11 human war wizard
Edward (Aaron); level 11 human paladin dragonslayer of Brekaneth
Ander (Dale); level 11 halfling storm sorcerer
Erdrick (NPC); level 10 human priest (modified cleric)

The party finds out pretty fast why the previous scouts didn’t last very long.
Small white pellets on the ground release a toxin that acts very similar to a ghoul’s bite, paralyzing the person who stepped on them. You can choose to walk carefully through the area, or to not move much, but in a combat that’s almost as bad.

Once that begins, the orcs start to pour in. They are later joined by the orc chieftain Bromock, his bodyguards, and eventually a bone devil named Ozim. Those are in addition to 2d12 more orc warriors every round.

The party did a poor job of sticking together, forcing them to use their escape enchantments several rounds sooner than the DM expected.

The next thing the party knows is that their in a shaded nook in the middle of a hot, dry place, the badlands bordering Theven’s Wharf.

After resting and tending to their wounds they scout out their new location.

First they realize that they’re at the bottom edge of a cliff face.
Then they notice there are 2 armies about to engage in the distance. One army they can’t make out due the distance (and poor rolls). The other army has red dragons on its side.
Next they notice some cavalry getting ready to flank against the army with dragons.
And finally they notice five trolls laying in ambush for the cavalry.

Taking a small risk, they decide to help the unknown army by killing the trolls.
This goes exactly as planned. The trolls were heavily outmatched (even though 4 level 11 PC’s vs 5 level 9 monsters is a fair fight).

The cavalry rides up to the party and quickly thanks them. They have no time to explain what’s going on, but if they’re willing to join in their crusade to expel the orcs from Theven’s Wharf, Lieutenant Brand will buy the party a round of drinks later.

At this time they finally notice the symbol of Brekaneth on Lt. Brand’s shield.
That’s all the convincing it took to get the party on board.

There were no extra horses, but the party can be dropped off at an opportune time to raise as much hell as possible inside the flanks of the orc army.

This fight is pretty straight-forward with a small twist.
The combat map was very flat and the combatants are 4 orc warriors, a bearded devil, and a hellstinger scorpion.
But each round 1d4 more orc warriors will appear on each side of the map.
But on each corner of the map is an “x” and on each side of the map are two other “x”’s.
If the party does a single point of damage to an “x”, it will go away (all defenses 15).
If not a single “x” is on a side or corner, that side will stop creating its 1d4 orc warriors.
The combat ends when the devil and scorpion die.

Now this party claims to not be set up for clearing out minions.
My response to that is BS.
Not everyone in the group has to have minion clearing powers, but they do have to adapt.
My expectation of the combat was for Edward to occupy the devil and scorpion, Admon to clear out any nearby orcs, and Ander to blast each “x” away (all while Erdrick buffed and healed).

What the party did instead was to focus on removing each “x” they could as fast as possible, while dealing with orcs as they came to them.

In the end it didn’t matter. The party won. It just took longer and was more painful.

Afterwards the party joined the whole army as it gave no orc, devil, or dragon a chance to flee.
They saw the leader of the army, General Marcum Songrider, lead his troops and use his hammer to great effect on the heads of his enemies.

When the battle was over and the military-style celebrations begun, General Songrider admonished Lt. Brand for his near ambush, and praised the party and Brekaneth for their aid.

He felt he must reward the party for their deeds, as to not do so would be an insult to Brekaneth.

The reward was a gold ring with a symbol of Brekaneth, a Potion of Vitality, and a magic item from this list:

Faith’s Shielding Links
Chain Armor of Cleansing +3

Anan’s Folly
Luckblade Dagger +3

Brekaneth’s Saving Hand
Symbol of Hope +3

Brekaneth’s Wall
Shield of Protection

Brekaneth’s Grace
Cloak of the Chirurgeon +3

The party chose Anan’s Folly for Dale, since Dale does a wonderful job of missing important attack rolls.

General Songrider tells them to eat and prepare for tomorrow, because he intends to take back Theven’s Wharf and visit the Grand Temple of Brekaneth in the Valley.

The Valley #26

2010-06-02T12:04:00.002-04:00

Well Mike had rejoined us just for a few sessions, and soon he’ll be heading out of state for his next step in his doctoring career.
Relocating with 2 children and a newborn does not sound fun in the slightest.
I’m not sure D&D is even legal where he’s going. (Ok, that’s an exaggeration…I hope.)

Justin is out for now. It always happens this time of year for him. This time it’s a job that has him working in the evenings.

So now it’s just 4 total players available and prospects for replacements are few and far in between.

Also, given my tiny amounts free time, I will not be blogging about our Hillside adventures; though I will probably use it as a springboard for something to talk about on occasion. Dale will probably make his own blog posts about our adventures (which I will link when I remember to).

Wildeyes will be getting retired. Apparently the path I was taking him on was a well trod one. In fact, abused would be a more apt description. While I didn’t think that the way I was going to use the Daggermaster paragon path was all that much worse than a bow ranger using those over-the-top bows, there were others out there that exploited the system (surprise) and used the Daggermaster’s powers on a sorcerer.

(In case you didn’t know, WotC has released a list of errata. One erratum changed the critical hit bonus from Daggermaster to only work with rogue powers, which totally kills my plan.)

I’ve recently made a sorcerer (to replace Wildeyes), and the damage a sorcerer can do is scary, but I’m curious if the math is truly that different.

So I did some math on a pure rogue Wildeyes, Wildeyes as is, and the sorcerer.

The math was interesting, but not perfect. I had to make a lot of things equal and help reduce wildly random results, which meant making all attacks limited to just 1 or 2 targets and removing all special magical effects beyond some +2 items.

Wildeyes the melee ranger/rogue:
Total average at-will power damage = 15 / 17
Total average encounter power damage = 14 / 15
Total average daily power damage = 20 / 23

Wildeyes the pure rogue:
Total average at-will power damage = 19 / 20
Total average encounter power damage = 25 / 27
Total average daily power damage = 28 / 30

Aryoon the dragonborn sorcerer:
Total average at-will power damage = 13 / 14
Total average encounter power damage = 17 / 18
Total average daily power damage = 30 / 33

The first number is normal damage at level 9, and the second number is normal damage at level 9 if their crit range was increased to 18-20.

I see that my ranger/rogue creation is actually pretty low, but the damage doesn’t account for one-off attacks like sneak attack once or twice per combat (which the pure rogue gets on his attacks), nor does it account for area attacks which the rogue doesn’t get as many of (or as good). So I would say that the ranger/rogue Wildeyes probably does a little more damage on average but with a lot more dice rolled (and a lot of combat time consumed).

Now I don’t visit the Character Optimization boards on the WotC site, so I could easily have missed something that made the classes over the top powerful, but I don’t see the big need for the nerf.

Look at the increased damage from high crit chances; it just isn’t that impressive with a whopping 1-3 more damage on average.

I can’t think of any legitimate reason other than flavor and intended use of the Daggermaster paragon class that makes me see how it’s broken.

So for the time being I’m playing a simplified rogue Wildeyes (who does more damage in less time I guess) and a dragonborn sorcerer. I’ll be playing both simultaneously, at Dale’s request, to cover our PC needs until we get replacement players.

Yeah, I know, I’m playing a dragonborn. But I came up with a concept and felt like trying it out; a fire-focused dragonborn sorcerer who likes to stand up front and cleanses everything with fire. And he wants to be bloodied. He does better when bloodied, so he’ll be doing all kinds of over the top heroic stupidity until he gets bloodied. At that point he’ll let loose with everything while doing more damage and not taking anymore damage.

At least that’s the plan.

Role-playing-wise, he’s a lawful good narcissist who believes he’s a chosen of Bahamut and his god will do anything to protect him.

So when he comes across a group of Bahamut-following dragonborn, it was Bahamut’s will that led them to him.

If he lives past the first 3 sessions, then he’ll be around for quite a while.

Session 26
Admon (Scott); level 10 human war wizard
Edward (Aaron); level 10 human paladin of Brekaneth
Ander (Dale); level 10 halfling sorcerer
Kergan (Mike); level 10 dwarf rogue

Subtle clues did not exist for this session.

The story was close to chapter’s end and the players were missing the clues or misinterpreting them (causing me much mental trauma).

So this session I slapped them with information and railroaded them to where they needed to be, so we could get to the big fight by the end of the night.

But first we had to integrate Kergan back into the story and explain why he disappeared so suddenly.

Way back, when the party had just defeated Stefforri on the streets of the city, Kergan was about to join his friends on a dragon-back ride to stop Stefforri’s escape.

But prior to that his half-elven Thieves’ Guild superior stopped Kergan and, long story short, led Kergan to the Fey Wild, to the audience of Ivellios Galanodil.

Guy, Kergan’s superior’s name, had been working for Ivellios the entire time, and really had no connections with the Thieves’ Guild. Ivellios had basically duped Kergan into working for him. (It also turns out that Guy is not the true jerk Kergan thought he was. It was just an act as part of the ruse.)

Ivellios sees bad things happening in the future, but can’t piece together exactly what is wrong, so he needed Kergan’s skills.

From that point on Kergan worked for Ivellios.

Kergan stole the Vial of Purity from the City Council to give to the party to help contain Ivellios’s Shame

He scouted the communication runners going from the government building to someone in the Ironmonger territory only to find that Mayor Xavius Ryan is one side of the communicants (not much later all of the communication stops).

Then one day Ivellios tells Kergan that his friends are in danger, and shows him the conversation the party had with the fake Tonus. With a further bit of magic the visage of Tonus is replaced by one of Stefforri. When the party’s conversation with Stefforri ends, she turns and seems to notice the scrying and dispels it with a wave of her hand.

We wrote Duncan out with the excuse of him working on his political career.

Back to present day and poor Ander can’t seem to catch a break.

The dragons seem to be perpetually busy, and probably not even in the Valley.

Nobody from the sorcerer’s cabal he started is around and Fiermach has apparently killed himself by accident.

Even Bobby McDonaldson has gone into hiding.

Kergan looks into why the sorcerers are disappearing and gathers that they have gone into hiding or are on special tasks given to them by Polaris and Ajell.

Edward has kept quiet around the temple after his “attitude adjustment”. There are a lot of “you got showed” looks he has to endure because of it.

Occasionally the group gets together to compare notes at the Roaring Bull Inn. Recently it’s been very quiet, which is unsettling to them – as in “the calm before the storm” kind of quiet.

Admon has learned everything he can from Ivellios’s tomes. (Scott rolled freakishly well on those rolls – as in less than 25% single digit rolls.)

The only thing they need to seal the door to Ivellios’s Shame is silver blood; specifically, mammalian silver blood.

That rules out silver dragon blood that they’ve long thought was the solution.

For several weeks (real world time) he’s wanted to try something, but has been denied an opportunity to test it by Duncan (who thought the idea was a waste of time).

So he goes through the trouble of buying the test equipment, and then gets a vial of Ander’s blood.

Ander, a halfling with silver-toned skin, appeared one day in the Valley on a night where a freakishly powerful storm drenched the land and filled the sky with a lightning storm never before seen in the Valley. He has no memory of anything before that, and is generally considered a minor celebrity in the Valley (up until his naivety or pushiness gets him into trouble).

Admon tested Ander’s blood and found that it had a much larger amount of silver in it than it should.

So they gathered a bit more blood and prepared it with a ritual to be used on the doors in Ivellios’s Shame.

A day later the thin purple skin that is the barrier that keeps the undead elves inside takes on an almost solid look while the denizens inside scream out their pain. Admon believes it will be at least a decade before the magic wears off and the ritual will need to be repeated.

A few days later they’re back in the Roaring Bull Inn doing their usual comparing of notes and such. A few moments after they leave the inn, an explosion erupts from within it.

The party immediately goes into crisis mode and begins helping.

Amazingly no one is killed. The explosion appeared to be centered in the table area where the party was and Bull had been behind the bar, and the party had been the only people there.

The guards show up to take control of the situation, as does the mayor (though mostly for political appearances).

Eventually Girvan Torl shows up and, in his newly pompous way, tells Edward (and crew) to move along “Men are here now.”

Correctly, the party believes the attack was on them, a continuation of the previous week’s ambush arranged by Stefforri.

Kergan attempts to pose as an assassin to see if he can find someone who is looking to have them killed, but he fails at it (poor rolling).

But they still have a plan. Kergan gets Guy to procure the magical bell that detects outsiders (by not making a sound when one is within 25’).

The first place they head is the government building to check the mayor and his staff. No one there appears to be a demon, devil, daemon, or demodand (suck it 2E naming changes).

They warn Mayor Ryan that Stefforri is still in the Valley which visibly upsets him. He notices that all of the city’s protections appear to be elsewhere leaving only the city guards and the party left to defend it.

Kergan suspects the mayor, but gets no reads off of him. (The old joke – how do you know if a politician is lying? His mouth is open.)

Kergan whispers to him “I know who you’ve been talking to” and then rings the bell leaves. The mayor just looks confused.

Then Admon has an epiphany and finally connects some dots.
The DM thinks “About damn time.”

Admon says “A succubus can only control one person at a time. Girvan Torl was being controlled at the same time that Mayor Xavius Ryan was being controlled.”

The DM thinks “Yes! They’re about to get it.”

Admon says “So there must be two succubi.”

The DM thinks “D’oh!”

The party decides to scour the city looking for Stefforri and another not-yet-seen succubus.

They start with the Grand Temple of Brekaneth, believing that if Stefforri’s back, she might be behind the changes in Girvan Torl.

Kergan is made invisible by Admon, and then Kergan walks around inside and out of the church while ringing the bell. The bell rings throughout the entirety. Everyone hears the bell, but they attribute it to something new to the church. The only person who sees Kergan is Father Adrek, but he just gives Kergan a look of “what are you doing?”

When Kergan is about to flee away, Tonus steps around the corner and begins to talk. (Of course Kergan rings the bell just to make sure it’s not Stefforri.)

Tonus: “You’ve been looking for me?”
Kergan: “There seems to be something bad brewing in the Valley.”
Tonus: “There always is…”

Kergan then proceeds to ask him all kinds of questions, but Tonus only gives vague answers. Mainly because that’s the only reason why anyone seeks him out, they always want something.

Before he leaves, he tells Kergan that the party should trust their feelings.

This helps affirm the party’s thinking that Stefforri is hanging around the mayor again.

It’s late in the evening so the party begins heading to their homes.

Kergan takes a detour and sneaks into the mayor’s house again. It’s late, but the mayor isn’t home. He does find evidence that 2 people have been living in the mayor’s house.

In the meantime Ander decides he wants to sleep on his balcony under the sky. He notices a large man dressed in plate armor walking oddly along the rivulet.

Edward has been discreetly asking people in the temple if Girvan Torl has been dating anyone, but there is no one. He finds out that Torl has left the temple a few hours prior. Edward then leaves to find him and stops to get Admon along the way.

When Ander heads outside to check on the armored man, he finds Admon and Edward about to knock on his door.

They compare notes while heading to the river only to find the armored man gone, and the rivulet water glowing faintly green.

They correctly suspect that it is the zombie elixir and warn nearby guards who then proceed to sound the alarm.

By this time Kergan has joined the group on his way back from the mayor’s house.

A few moments all four of them are walking upstream along the edge of the fast moving rivulet (it’s not too deep, but it could carry someone away).

They come to the edge of the small waterfall that feeds the rivulet. They see several people standing around but two of them are pouring barrels of glowing green liquid into the water. The other people are undead.

Mayor Xavius Ryan, “Ah, I expected you fellows to show up. It’s a shame I’m going to have to have you killed.”

Then the zombies charge the party, but we don’t even run that combat.

Xavius: “Well done! I guess it’s time to do this the hard way.”

Stefforri speaks a word of magic and fire erupts all around them, fire that is both burning and freezing.

The fire grows into a giant 3-sided pyramid (almost in the shape of a d4).

Stefforri had linked this area and her sanctum together.

Stefforri and Xavius are now floating on some runed discs with another one on the ground.
Near the corners of the place are also runed circles.

The runed discs and runed circles can teleport to another empty runed disc or circle so long as it’s empty.

The runed discs can fly at the rider’s normal speed if they make a DC20 Athletics or Arcana check. If the check failed, or the disc was not occupied, then it fell 2 squares.

Each round, if there were at least 3 open teleportation points then 3 devil minions would appear.

There were also 3 spined devils that attacked the party from the ground.

My intent was for minions to harass the party in melee but be easily clearable, the spined devils to harass them enough from ranged to force the party to pay attention to them, and have Ryan and Stefforri casually attack and curse the party from a distance. Once the spined devils were down, then the Cambion Hellswords would appear and beat up on the party in melee. And once one of the bosses was bloodied, or I felt the time was right, the bosses would go from harassment mode to kill-the-party mode.

As I expected, the party had other plans.

After the usual evil mastermind ranting, Xavius was beat to all hell and back as the party shredded him with daily power after daily power.

First they knocked him off his disc and swarmed him, but he was able to get away to a disc and get out of melee…for a time.

Mayor Xavius Ryan’s last words were a congratulatory “Well done”.

The party did not get to celebrate a victory as the cambions were let loose and Stefforri went on full aggression.

She used her sorceress powers from above until the party started riding the discs and hurting her. So she moved to ground and used her succubus powers to force the party to separate from one another, giving her minions a great chance to swarm the individual party members.

Most rounds she was able to dominate one of the party members, usually Edward, and would send them charging at another party member.

She was also able to consistently keep Kergan charmed, which forced him to stay away from her or be forced to protect her.

But the party was able to hit her often enough, even without their usual healer.

When she dropped the whole pyramid of fire disappeared, and they were back in the Valley, with zombie elixir polluted water to deal with.

Several months ago a reader of the blog did an excellent rendering of the mayor.
I wanted to post it before, but I thought it would be bring too much attention to what the mayor was doing.
So now I present to you Mayor Xavius Ryan, born Session #1, died Session #26.

The Valley #24-25

2010-04-23T12:37:00.000-04:00

Yes, it’s been a bit since I’ve posted last.

The reason is simple: available time for me to write + how often we’ve gamed recently = longer intervals between posting.

From what I’ve heard of the PHB3, I’m not buying it.

Anyone who’s read this blog long enough knows that I hate psionics; mainly because in the previous editions it used an alternate version of “magic” to create the same effects.

I know that a lot of people hated the cast and forget version of the Vancian magic system. I actually liked it until high levels, but even then, it wasn’t bad.

Psionics used points. So while it had effects like magic, it wasn’t used like magic.

I honestly thought that with 4E the whole point system would be unneeded as everyone would use the at-will/encounter/daily power system.

From what I’ve been told, I was wrong.

So no thanks WotC/Hasbro. You once again failed to listen.

Ok WotC/Hasbro, listen to me now.

I’m not buying your books unless there is something of value in them that is more than a dozen pages of things I can and will use.

So unless you put value in those books by making them more than rehashed and failed ideas, and include a download for the pdf so I can copy/paste information from it for ease in making modules and characters, then I see no reason to spend $30-40 of my money on you when I can use it to buy something else for me, like a WoW game card.

Session 24
Admon (Scott); level 10 human war wizard
Edward (Aaron); level 10 human paladin of Brekaneth
Ander (Dale); level 10 halfling sorcerer

Justin had to cancel at the last minute, so my planned adventure had to be partially scrapped and reworked (and thus we ended our night a bit earlier than usual).

Dale is back in all of his usual low-rolling glory.

I wrote Duncan out of the module by saying that he went back to Silverhome to figure out what the runes from last session meant, since they appear to be created by dwarven hands.

While he was doing that, Admon and Edward rested at the runed door.

Eventually Ander showed up, and there was an “Oh, it’s you.” kind of reunion.

Ander had been wandering in this direction because he felt that another Chaos Spark was coming, and it led him here.

Rather than wait for Duncan to return, they decide to check out the door, and if possible, open it.

They could faintly hear something moving around in water on the other side.

They were also able to roughly translate the runes to be saying “do not enter”.

After that they opened the door by beating and blasting on the dried clay until it opened.

Inside they found a pair of vine horrors (with spellcasting abilities) and a pair of very large and very hungry snakes.

This fight was entertaining to me. They started the battle by nuking the vine horrors so hard that both were bloodied by the end of round 1, and one was at 1hp by then end of round 2.

I thought I was going to have to find a way to pump up the encounter, but then my dice rolls kicked in.

Every round it seemed that there were always 2 PC’s that had been blinded by the vine horrors, and 1-2 of them grabbed by the snakes.

Soon it was the PC’s who were in bad shape, but not so bad they couldn’t recover and kill both snakes and one horror and take a moment to rest.

Then the Chaos Spark arrived and Ander felt that it felt “off”.

It spit out some warped humanoids that were only interested in killing PC’s and then it started randomly attacking the group with a set of shadowy tentacles that dazed people for two rounds straight.

The fight was not all that tough on the party, and the group got the Chaos Spark under control (using rituals in the form of Arcana skill checks).

When it finally closed, it burst back open for a brief moment and a human-shaped figured fell to the ground.

The figure was Girvan Torl but something had happened to him.

He was utterly hairless, wearing his armor, drenched in sweat, and had a death grip on his sword.

He was in such agony that he did not seem to respond to anyone or anything until they got him back to the Grand Temple of Brekaneth. Only then did he seem to make a change for the better and relax just a touch.

Due to Edward’s less than positive view of Torl, the group made sure to bring him openly into town, rather than secretly.

Father Adrek thanked and told them they had done a good job, but the party knows that they had just been lucky.

After the clerics removed Torl’s armor (he still could not be coaxed into releasing his sword) they found something else different about Torl. On his chest, upper arms, and back were tattoos of a symbol; 5 purple “T”’s joined at the bottom in a star formation.

Edward immediately began suspecting that whatever was on the other side of the Chaos Spark had tainted Torl.

In actuality, Aaron is just looking for an excuse to say “taint” more often.

While Edward and Ander were having fun at the church, Admon decided to take the frozen package of vine horror to the mayor.

Admon attempted to carry on the same way with the mayor that Duncan does, but the mayor was very business-like and not at all cordial. But the mission was accomplished, so it wasn’t a big deal.

The following day they resumed reading Ivellios’s tomes and were able to get some data deciphered about Ivellios’s dealing with outsiders of the plane.

There was information about a lust devil named Stefforri that he conversed with using arcane means. She was unable to subvert him in any form, but he was able to get information about her which more or less allowed the group to find out what special powers Stefforri had.

Unfortunately, I tried to put a tiny bit of emphasis on a specific ability of hers, but they missed it.

During Session 25, while repeating the information to Justin, I did the same thing. Once again, they missed it.

Let’s see if you can see what they missed:

Charming Kiss (std, at-will): Charm:
+14 vs. AC; on a hit, make a secondary attack against same target
Secondary Attack: +12 vs. Will; target cannot attack Stefforri, & if adjacent to her when she is targeted by a melee or a ranged attack, the target interposes itself & becomes the target of the attack instead. The effects last until the succubus or one of its allies attacks the target or until the succubus dies.
If the target is still under the effect of this power at the end of the encounter, the succubus can sustain the effect indefinitely by kissing the target once per day. The succubus can affect only one target at a time with its charming kiss.

Session 25
Admon (Scott); level 10 human war wizard
Duncan (Justin); level 10 Silverhome dwarven cleric of Moradin
Edward (Aaron); level 10 human paladin of Brekaneth
Ander (Dale); level 10 halfling sorcerer

We jumped back in time with Duncan, to give him an opportunity to find out more about the runes, but he found out nothing more than what the party already had.

The next morning they had already taken care of business without him.

The party is still searching for “living silver blood”, but can find nothing of what that could be.

They keep returning to the conclusion of dragon’s blood, but the dragon’s are stonewalling them on that idea.

So Duncan goes to talk to Thlyria Isara to see if any elven scholars would know of something like that. She promises to ask, but does not expect them to know anything that Ivellios would not already have recorded.

He asks her if there is anyone else who may know. She responds with Lord Tonus.

So they look around town for him and can’t find him until they say his name aloud.

He appears and politely asks them what they need.

They tell him and he points them in the direction of a hermit wizard. The wizard never keeps the same name for long but he specializes in many odd magicks.

He lives in a magically cut cave not far from Heroes’ Rest.

Ander asks Tonus what has happened to all the sorcerers. They seem to have disappeared.

Tonus flatly tells him that several are probably working for the dragons, and some have died, like Fiermach (by an accident he caused).

Almost immediately they head out to where Tonus had pointed them.

Well where Stefforri, in the shape of Tonus, had pointed them.

The ambush scared the party at first – a hill giant, a wyvern, ogres, worgs, and goblins all magically appeared and surrounded them.

Unfortunately for the monsters, this party can dish out some damage, including some nasty blast attacks.

A few rounds later only the wyvern and giant were left. When the giant was dropped the wyvern flew off.

It was barely a challenge to the party, though it did scare them at first.
(How would you like it the DM put 8 large minis on the map, plus a dragon, and some scattered other minis?)

Among the loot was a piece of parchment with their pictures with skulls next to them and a pile of gold bars on it. They had been set up.

In spite of the expectation of a setup, they found the cave, but it was long abandoned. It was empty and held the faintest traces of powerful magic that had once been used here.

Empty handed, they return to town.

Over the next few days Duncan begins to pay money out of his pocket to begin his campaign for the city council.

He also tells the mayor his plans, and the mayor tells him he can get some people to help him out.

Girvan Torl is up and moving around at this point. He’s still hairless and very weak, but refuses to not wear his armor or carry his sword.

Edward feels that Torl may know about what’s on the other side of the “chaos sparks”.

With the faintest of voices, say “I sure hope he’s not tainted.”

Torl hears the comment and immediately calls Edward on it.

He orders Edward to the training grounds for an immediate lesson.

With a decent crowd surround them, Girvan makes several misses.

(Edward has 29+ AC while I kept rolling 3’s and 4’s).

Edward missed with a roll of 19 (not a total of 19, a roll of 19), so he switches to attacks that targets Torl’s Reflex defense and proceeds to roll 19, 20, 20, and 18 while Torl continues to or barely hit.

Edward knows he’s in bad shape, because even the minor attacks are forcing him to lay on hands and maneuver well.

Then Torl gets a crit with an at-will, and deals 50 points of subdual damage.

A few minutes later Torl slaps him awake with “learn some respect.”

Ander tries to talk to the dragons, but he gets their “answering machine”.

He searches for members of the sorcerers’ cabal and comes up empty yet again.

He heads home and sees a man on his balcony.

Tonus says, “I hear you were looking for me.”
“We were. I thought we had found you.”
“You my friend are in a scary situation. You have all the information you need to see clearly, but your not looking around. You’re failing to read the fine print. Whoever you saw yesterday was not me. I am simply here to say read the fine print.”

(As you can tell, I’m getting pushy with the “open your eyes” hints. But since we’re all guys at the table, hints do not get noticed.)

The Valley #22-23

2010-04-01T12:40:00.001-04:00

Here’s a particular danger I’ve fallen into at least twice now: If your group stops their session w/o a chance for a rest, remember that when designing the next session.

You’d think it was a minor thing, but since we’ve been only gaming every other week recently, it’s easy to forget such a minor detail.

Luckily you can just wave your magical DM hand and fix it. Players usually don’t mind.

My players usually don’t mind because I tend to drain them of their resources like it’s my job (it is).

As for getting new players, we’ve not had any luck.

Dale should be returning soon. I’ll probably give his sorcerer a level boost to bring him closer to the group. It would not be fun and would be unfair to him and the group if he was 5 levels behind everyone else and they had to babysit him.

Mike still might return with Kergan for a game or two, but that’s up in the air at the moment.

One thing I, surprisingly, miss writing out on the blog is the combats like I used to. But 4E combats aren’t as easy to write about. So many special powers, movement, healing, and the like are too hard to keep track of. Not to mention that the combats take a lot more time, real time and number of rounds.

More hit points and less damage does not good drama make. (Wow the grammar checker didn’t explode on that last sentence.)

I try to put in as much of the role-playing as I reasonably can while not outright dumping everything that was said. What I do write feels light, but I also don’t want to post giant pointless walls of text that won’t get read.

I’m not a good story writer and never will be. Hell, I can’t even keep the past/present tenses correct in 90% of the sentences I write.

What I think I’m good at is making the game sessions connect and flow well in a fantasy world. When something strange happens in the game the party will say “Hey, that’s strange.” and not say “Here’s another mistake he made.”

At least that’s what I hope they say.

The Valley may not be the most realistic campaign world, but I’m not shooting for that. I want something fun for me and the group. I get to tell my story (stories) and they get to have PC’s that grow in any manner of directions (power, popularity, etc.).

If you think it’s just improbable for all these people to survive in a secluded, giant hole in the ground for 300 years then I will explain it after you explain to me in real world physics how spells are cast, how beholders work, and then you find me a real green dragon living who’s been to the Feywild.

Anyway…

Session 22
Admon (Scott); level 10 human war wizard
Duncan (Justin); level 9 Silverhome dwarven cleric of Moradin
Edward (Aaron); level 10 human paladin of Brekaneth

Kergan had just left the group to their task while he had to hurry off on his own.

He left the Vial of Purity with them and told them that this should be able to delay the total collapse of the undead elf prison now known as Ivellios’s Shame.

The Vial of Purity is actually a powerful artifact, so powerful it decreased the amount of XP the party would get for each fight.

First off it removed the fatigue of the party (free extended rest) and could generate a turn undead power each round as a minor action of the person holding it.

The three party members stepped through the failing shimmering purple “skin” of the prison entryway.

Their knowledge of history and religion (translated = skill checks) told the party that they should find the central heart of the prison and place the Vial there.

The magically cut tomb was freezing and was getting colder with each step they took further away from the exit.

The first room of the tomb had been altered recently with artificial walls being put up around the room.

This was done to make it easier for the banshee to go where she wanted to without being easily pursued.

The banshee and a trio of four-armed skeletons beat the hell out of the party the first round as the DM rolled a lot of 16’s and better.

This went on for a couple of rounds until Duncan used the Vial’s power. Then the combat became manageable for the party (which is surprisingly what the DM expected – a tough fight that balanced out once the Vial was used).

Before the banshee was hacked down she screamed out “They have something that hurts us.”

There were several “doors” of the same shimmering purple skin at each passage, and the party chose to head straight which the undead may have helped them make that decision because the undead were yelling out to one another that the intruders were probably heading to the “heart”.

The next room was no real surprise; a bunch of armored dead bodies laying about the corners of the floor. When the bodies jumped up to attack, no one was surprised.

The fight itself was not so easy though. The chill of this room was even colder on an unnatural level that cause the party’s attack rolls to be at -1 (-2 for the Vial).

The battle-wights were tough and the party had left Admon a bit exposed, so the battle-wights pounced on him for a round.

But after that the party had managed to gain control of the combat, it made the rest of the combat an exercise in rolling d20’s.

The final room was beyond freezing (like -40) and the attack penalties were double the previous room.

This room’s defenders were simple ghouls and ice zombies mixed with the frigid cold of the room and a ramped floor that had ice that made combat a chaos of tripping and painful cold.

But at the end of the room was a barely glowing ruby that flickered with fading power.

Halfway through the combat a wall of cold magic separated the room, and forced the party to pass through it and fight the remaining ice zombies on their terms.

As expected, the party won (their biggest opponent was actually the icy floor).

They place the Vial next to the heart and notice immediate changes.

First the “doors” strengthen, the cold of the air dissipates, and the prisoners scream in pain and rage.

From one of the bodies a spirit rises and introduces himself as Nilrathal and thanks the party for their deed. He warns them that this won’t be permanent, but has bought some time. He can feel the strength of the Vial beginning to lose its strength already.

He then instructs them that there is an item of magic on his body (simple orb +3) and gives to them in thanks.

As they leave he says “If Thlyria gives you any trouble about taking things from the tomb, tell her that “Uncle Nilrathal says ‘don’t be a silly prat little girl.’”

When that exact that occurrence played out, Thlyria Isara stops in mid-sentence.

Session 23
Admon (Scott); level 10 human war wizard
Duncan (Justin); level 10 Silverhome dwarven cleric of Moradin
Edward (Aaron); level 10 human paladin of Brekaneth

She also hasn’t seen Girvan Torl in quite a while. No one has.

They’re pretty beat up, so they head back to their homes to rest to resume their search for Torl in the morning.

Admon has made much progress at learning from Ivellios’s books, but he’s starting to hit walls when it comes to translating the higher end information.

The three of them regroup and head out to see Polaris and Ajell at Silver Lake to see if they know anything that can help them.

They get to the lake and yell out Polaris’s name. In response a dragon head made of water rises from the lake and talks with them.

The party says something that sounds a little like this, “Valley’s about to be destroyed, blah blah blah, impending doom, blah blah blah, apocalypse, blah blah blah, elves damned us all to hell.”

The watery dragon head responds with “We’ve heard all of this before and are currently dealing with other such issues as well. We implore you, great heroes of the Valley, to solve these problems as best you can.”

They then ask if they can have a sample of their silver dragon blood because they think it might help with the special silver component they need to fix their elf tomb problem.

“Do you know you need it? Dragon’s blood is not exactly weak in nature. We will not hand over something so pure and valuable without guaranteed proof that it will work as intended.”

“Then have you seen Girvan Torl?”
“No.”, and the head drops back into the water with a plash.

When they get back to town, the guards inform the PC’s that the mayor has been looking for them.”

It was a bit late, but the mayor was still in his office.

He asks the party to get him a live specimen of the vine monsters that’s part of the recipe for creating and possibly curing the zombie elixir.
A perception check says that the mayor is holding something back, so they press him for a full answer.

It turns out that someone who was working on the counter-elixir has been killed and his copy of the recipe was stolen.

They mayor wants a live capture for the city, and for the party to destroy any other such vine monsters to prevent anyone not of the city from getting their own sample.

To capture it a live specimen the mayor hands Duncan a small crystal sphere and instructs him to throw it at the base of the vine monster.

He then warns them to be careful, the cave they’re heading to is near Heroes’ Rest, a place known for being a home to monstrous humanoids, ones that are much tougher than goblins.

(The party decides that one day they’ll take back Heroes’ Rest.)

They travel to the location that the mayor gave them and find it protected by some prepared goblins.

The lead goblin says “Your kind aren’t welcome here.”
The party responds with “We don’t give a damn.”

With a lovely exchange like that it’s no surprise that a fight broke out shortly afterwards.

The goblins were able to split the party up, but that’s really about it.

The goblin boss was hard to kill, but was taken down eventually. (Actually he had plenty of hp and defenses, but dealt small damage – so I just made Edward take 50 points of damage spread over several rounds and call the combat over.)

Next they attempted to sneak down the cave opening. Edward, the plate wearer, rolled a nat 1 so Grob and Blog heard them coming easily.

This led to a lovely fight where the three well-powered PC’s faced off against an ettin witch doctor and their pet redspawn firebelcher.

Note: Ettins are bad ass in 4E.
Note: Firebelchers makes fire wizards cry because firebelchers give allies fire resistance.

Tactically I think the party goofed in focusing on the ettin. The ettin had huge defenses (and was wearing +3 armor) and was receiving fire resistance. The party’s wizard has a lot of fire spells. If you drop the belcher, the ettin loses some key protection.

The party was thinking that the ettin’s dual actions made it way too powerful to not focus on. What they didn’t know was that the ettin had triple the belcher’s hit points and was about 10 higher on all defenses but Reflex. The ettin was weak versus the wizard’s Reflex attacks, but those attacks were mostly fire-based.

The party still won, but the party had the holy hell beat out of them.

On the ettin’s corpse was a copy of the recipe for the zombie elixir, written in a nice clean hand, most-definitely not written by an ettin.

Before the party arrived the ettin was working on opening a newly built wall to the cave. The wall appeared to be of dwarven make and had magical runes on it that gave warning of “What is inside must stay inside”.

And we stopped there.

4E Mod Ideas

2010-03-12T12:42:00.002-05:00

I had hopes that our group would be growing, but alas no.

Justin has a friend who may be able to play, but not just yet.

And I got an e-mail from someone new to D&D but could only play every other Friday. Unfortunately, that’s not something that works for us.

In case you were wondering, I had not given up on trying figuring out ways to alter 4E to speed it up a bit, mainly by removing things that slow down the flow of combats and making the game simpler by removing pointless mechanics.

Well I believe I’ve developed something of a good base. My goal is to make simple, repeatable changes that can be done without rewriting books, and hopefully don’t affect game balance too harshly.

First on the hacking table – ongoing damage and any damage that occurs at the start of a turn

While individually it’s minor, this minor stuff can add up and gets old fast.

My BBEG with 500 hp takes 70 points at the start of his round from 5 different effects (such as Rain of Steel, Acid Arrow, Flaming Sphere, etc.). And let’s not forget that he’s immobilized, dazed, -2 to all defenses, and is vulnerable to the wizard’s cold attacks.

For ongoing damage it’s a set amount of damage per round that is saved at the end of each round.
For “starting your turn in a square adjacent” damage, its damage rolled each time.

Screw both of those.

For “starting your turn” damage, we’re rolling that one time and one time only. When the power is used, the damage is rolled one time only, and that is the damage done for the duration of the spell.

There are pros and cons for this, but I’ll take a set amount of damage over re-rolling all the time. The main difference is that average damage for the short term will vary wildly, but long term in will be the same.

For ongoing effects like stunned and dazed I’m doing nothing. There are too many effects and I think the system as is for that is acceptable.

For ongoing damage I’m going to keep the same for monsters. Players can keep track of their “upkeep damage” on their own. DM’s have a bit more work than that once the PC’s start blasting out dailies on the BBEG.

How about we choose a set number for the spell damage one time rather than “x damage (save ends)”?

So I’m changing “x damage (save ends)” to “double x damage” as an immediate effect. Mathematically it almost works out that way.

Your chances to make a standard save are 55% since a 1-9 is a fail and a 10-20 is a pass. I’m going to assume that the only reason that 1-10 is not a fail was because the 4E designers wanted to keep things simple. So 1 digit = fail and 2 digits = pass.

So on a (save ends) damage power, barring bonus saves and bonuses to saves, you will average normal damage on the first hit of the power, then you have a 50% chance to take it again the next round or not, then a 50% chance to take again the following round if you failed your first save, and so on.

So you would average 100% + 50% + 25% + 12.5% + 6.25% + 3.125% + 1.5625% + 0.78125% + …
If you add that all together for a good long time you’ll get 200%.

So why go through all that and just double the damage right off?

Take a look at the level 5 warlock daily power Avernian Eruption.
It’s a simple big damage power (for that level) that does 2d10 + con mod damage followed by an effect that does 5 ongoing fire damage (save ends) whether the attack hits or not.

For my system the damage would be 2d10 + con mod fire damage on a hit, plus 10 fire damage whether the power hit or missed.

The pro is that it works must faster and something less for the DM to worry about.
The cons are that this can’t work with every power (such as powers that renew ongoing damage every round) and elite and solo monsters (or anything with a saving throw mechanic) are taking a bit more damage than they would on average.

Solving the cons is mostly simple:
Powers that are too complicated or renew ongoing damage every round, we don’t touch.
Monsters with special save bonuses (such as elites, solos, and hobgoblins) get a little bonus to hp (say 10%).

Quick and easy, so I hope.

Second on the hacking table – “until the end of your next turn” type modifiers

Those things drive me nuts as player & DM. They add an excessive burden to the game and need to be removed.

Unfortunately the game is heavily balanced around these abilities.

Well how about instead of modifiers that end at a certain point, we cut the modifier in half, make it last the entire combat, and we make it a bonus to all the PC’s rather than specific targets?

This method replaces the constant penalty and bonus checking with an easily handled system that only changes when something new is added.

Any power that gives a +2 power bonus to you or an ally’s attack roll for a round, make it a +1 Morale bonus for the PC’s for the remainder of the combat.
Any power that reduces a monster’s defenses by -2 for a round, make it a +1 Morale bonus for the players for the combat.

What’s a Morale bonus?

Morale [x]
+x to attack rolls to yourself and all allies until end of encounter

We also have:

Fury [x]
+x to damage rolls to yourself and all allies until end of encounter
(Replaces any round-long damage bonuses, but cuts bonus damage in half)

Sturdy [x]
+x to AC to yourself and all allies until end of encounter
(Replaces any round long AC bonuses, or monster attack penalties, with the value cut in half)

Dodge [x]
+x to defenses (not AC) to yourself and all allies until end of encounter
(Replaces any round long defense bonuses, or monster attack penalties, with the value cut in half)

Example: Right Brand, Cleric at-will, Strength versus AC attack

Normal rules on a hit:
1W + Str mod damage, & one ally within 5 squares of you gains a power bonus to melee attack rolls against the target equal to your Str mod until the end of your next turn.

Now on a hit:
1W + Str mod damage & Fury (1/2 Str mod – round down).

Now the players just keep track of what rank their Morale, Fury, Sturdy, and Dodge ranks are at (with the same tokens or notes you would have previously used). And we don’t worry about multiple ranks of the same thing, as only the highest one will apply.

Now I will clearly say that this is utterly untested and could possibly have unforeseen side-effects, but I’m ok with that.
I want to improve the game, not make some half-assed system of convoluted house rules that is an arbitrary mish and mash of what the DM thinks is better (and can’t prove).

My expectation is that the first few rounds the PC’s will be using their buff powers, followed by their their “big hitter” powers.

Third on the hacking table – dragonborn’s Dragon Breath

I don’t like that I don’t like this power, but the time kill from this racial ability can’t be ignored.
So my fix was pretty simple, make it a standard power and give it something to make up for it.
In this case, after the dragon breath power is used, the dragonborn can shift a number of squares equal to its Str/Con/Dex (whichever bonus was used for the attack) modifier.

This power allows an opening attack, followed by a shift into position. (I may change the shift to an option before or after.)

Fourth on the hacking table – fighter’s Combat Challenge and Combat Superiority

I don’t like how they’ve added rules that take away the DM’s ability to think how an opponent would react by using an “aggro”-like function from MMO’s to make the fighter “sticky”.

I understand the paladin version, if the paladin has someone marked, then there’s an attack penalty and some damage.

But the fighter version is much more insidious. If you’re marked by the fighter then he gets a free swing at you and can say “you’re not going anywhere”.

That’s a bit much for me.

So fighters still get to mark as they did before with Combat Challenge, but instead of making a free attack (which also kills time and combat flow) they simply treat all of the squares they threaten against their marked targets as difficult terrain.

And to replace the movement-killing power of Combat Superiority, fighters simply create Fury with their attacks.

If a fighter hits with an at-will or heroic tier power, then he creates Fury 1.
For a paragon power, he creates Fury 2.
And he creates Fury 3 for hitting with an epic power.

That about covers it.

I’m interested in hearing opinions; good, bad, and misc.

The Valley #20-21

2010-02-26T12:04:00.001-05:00

Well unfortunately Mike has had to leave the group due to family and work. He may be able to show up one or two more times before his job takes him somewhere else.

So we must recruit one to two more players as right now it’s just Scott, Aaron, Justin, and me (Dale is on medical hiatus). While I could allow the players an opportunity to run a second PC, 4E requires a bit more attention from player than previous incarnations of the game, so I’d rather just scale back modules.

So if you’re a sane and polite person who can play D&D 4E on Friday evenings, send me an e-mail.

Our cast for Sessions 20 & 21:
Admon (Scott); level 9 human war wizard
Duncan (Justin); level 9 Silverhome dwarven cleric of Moradin
Edward (Aaron); level 9 human paladin of Brekaneth

We last stopped with the party having failed in taking out Stefforri/Niyah.

The disappointed but understanding silver dragons (Polaris and Ajell) flew the party back to town where they were greeted with some fanfare and questions of what feats of bravery they performed with the dragons.

Eventually the PC’s return to their prospective homes and rest to prepare for the fun the next day may bring them.

The next morning Edward is questioned by Father Jason about what happened, so Edward repeats the same information he told Girvan Torl which Torl was supposed to relay to Father Jason but didn’t.

But Torl has not been seen since the fight in the market with Stefforri.

About that same time, Duncan was awoken by an angry Mayor Ryan, demanding to know where Niyah went.

When Duncan fills the mayor in on everything that has occurred, and points out to the mayor all of the odd things he’s done while under her control, the mayor immediately decides to set things right.

He thanks Duncan for being a good friend and asks Duncan to be his right hand man (dwarf) when it comes to spinning all that has happened to him into something that will make him look better to the public. Duncan takes on that task, and soon his days are filled with questions and advice for the mayor while the mayor throws himself into his work to both fix what has happened and to avoid dealing with his wrecked personal life.

Admon’s family barely notices that he was missing. Their heads are full of business and he’s always going out on some adventure anyway.

A day or two later while Edward is tracking down the missing elder paladin Girvan Torl, he is attacked by a dwarf assassin (who had no real chance of winning, but did more damage than I expected, bloodying Edward easily).

The dwarf is still no match for the paladin of Brekaneth and is shortly subdued by the paladin, who then gets some backup from the city guard.

They all head to the nearest guard tower to interrogate the dwarf, but the he’s not talking and he makes it clear that he won’t talk unless he’s let go. He also knows the paladin won’t kill him, and he’ll be out of any prison that the town puts him in before the night is over.

Edward reluctantly agrees, and the guards have to let the dwarf go as he’s only attacked Edward.

He says that a dwarf follower of Brekaneth put a 1000gp bounty on Edward’s head.

It doesn’t take much to research that this dwarf is Grandinack; a non-native of the Valley who rents a space in the Ironmonger housing area (rental areas cut out of the cliff side), and is very aggressive, even for a warmonger follower of Brekaneth.

While doing his information seeking for Grandinack he is also asked to find Girvan Torl. Naturally Edward believes Grandinack may have something to with Torl’s disappearance.

Edward grabs the few adventuring friends of his that are available and they head to Ironmonger territory.

At first they are greeted with interest as many of the dwarves try to sell them one thing or another, but once it is determined that the party is not here to shop the happy attitudes turn sour, especially towards Duncan.

Soon enough they find a simple door with the holy symbol of Brekaneth painted on it.

They knock and the door is opened by a dwarven worshipper of Brekaneth.
He rudely asks “What do you want?”
Edward says, “We’re looking for Girvan Torl.”
The dwarf slams the door shut saying, “Never heard of him!”
“Then we’re looking for Grandinack”
“He has no interest in seeing you”

They knock again and wait but hear nothing; not even the sounds of someone moving around on the other side of the door.

So they open the unlocked door and find an empty chapel, no dwarf. There are just a few benches and a statues of a sword and shield, with the sword prominently displayed (indicating that this is a militant group of followers of Brekaneth).

Looking around they find a secret door that leads to a passageway with several alcoves but no obvious door out, but each alcove has a lever.

As expected, they pull a lever and something bad happens. First it’s a dire stirge, then a gelatinous cube, then fire is blasted at them, and so on.

Two particular levers are need to trigger a door appearing, which has a battle-ready Grandinack, half a dozen of his followers, and a Galeb Duhr he had time to summon since the party took a short rest.

The fight went pretty much as I had expected with the dwarf followers being mostly fodder and the Galeb Duhr doing a nice job of pounding Admon and Duncan while Edward was busy with Grandinack and his buddies.

The party started with the idea of capturing Grandinack, but decided against it (probably because they broke into his home…).

The group returns to their respective home to begin the fun again the next day.

Session #21

The next morning Edward is ordered, not asked, to find Girvan Torl by Father Adrek.

Edward has been questioned often about where the elder paladin has been, and in the hopes to build the pedestal high, he tells people that Torl must be off doing something heroic. That way, when Torl returns, unless he’s done something truly amazing, it will be a let down.

So the three adventurers regroup and go about the city looking for the missing paladin.

The mayor has not seen him, and he is deeply concerned because he and Torl have been friends for quite a long time.

They find Torl’s parents’ house and ask them if they’ve seen anything. They are not remotely polite to Edward and refer to him as a “fallen paladin” in reference to some issues Edward’s grandfather had when he was the elder paladin. In any case, they know nothing of his disappearance.

When they head to the elven areas to talk to Thlyria Isara, they hear sounds of metal clashing and yells of battle.

A few elves run past them and inform them that a green dragon has found Ivellios’s Shame (the name for the elven tomb that’s been having undead containment issues) and it seeks to break into the place to take the place as his lair and control the undead as his servants.

Given that an adult green dragon is a level 12 solo and the party is only 3 level 9 PC’s, I gave them each a simple eladrin warrior to control (level 9, with minor special abilities like fey step and crits on a 19) (I also cut the dragon’s XP in half – because elves need XP shares too).

Other than taking a bit longer than I expected it would take, the fight went as I expected it to.

The eladrin offered consistent, but low, damage while the party was appropriately challenged on all sides.

When the dragon dropped everyone got to work putting out the several small fires that Admon had started with many fire spells.

After the party had rested up they noticed that dark energies were escaping from the prison and were entering the corpse of the dragon. That’s when the inanimate gargoyles suddenly animated and the dragon rose again as a winged putrescent undead dragon, with even more evil and malice than before.

Reusing monsters is not something new to me. One time previously in the Valley, in one of Justin’s first D&D sessions (3E), the party rolled a random encounter, so I threw a wyvern at them. It was a tough fight and the party won, but Justin’s fighter PC dropped.

So the party rested as that fight took a lot out of them. During the rest I had them roll another random encounter check (1 on a 1d6=random encounter), and they had another fight on their hands; this time against a zombie wyvern. They had a tough fight and fewer resources, but they won, and Justin’s fighter PC dropped again.

So they rested…and rolled another random encounter. This time the bones of the wyvern burst free of the flesh and attacked the party. Justin’s PC did not drop that time.

After that they destroyed every last bit wyvern before resting. Even then they were afraid the wyvern’s ghost would show up. But alas no, they did roll another random encounter and rested just fine.

Anyway, the two gargoyles and the dragon attacked the party (the eladrin warriors were busy dealing with other risen elven soldiers this time around).

The dragon had some interesting attacks, so the party bashed it severely, but that left the gargoyles opportunities to attack the party’s weak points (like an undefended wizard).

So the party stopped beating on the dragon to take out the gargoyles. This was funny to the DM because the dragon only had 4 hp remaining and he was given at least 3 additional rounds to use his special attacks on the party.

They made sure to burn the dragon corpse when it died (again).

Thlyria showed up and saw the fading power of the prison. With much fear she asked if the party had found anything to restore the prison. The party had nothing other than needing a special kind of silver.

They could hear ghostly voices talking from inside.

“Are we free?”
“Yes sister, we’re free.”

“I don’t think so”, says Kergan.
He’s holding the Vial of Purity.

Next session – a Temporary Solution

The Valley #18-19

2010-02-05T12:41:00.000-05:00

Well my life is a bit full of things at the moment, and no chance of it letting up.

No worries, I won’t be doing a “blog-fade” as it’s called.

At worst there will just be a continued series of multi-session entries every 2-4 weeks.

After 5+ years there’s no way I’m going to just fade away so long as I’ve got something D&D’ish to write about.

It appears the Valley will be continuing uninterrupted for a bit longer than planned as Dale is taking an involuntary extended vacation from the game due to health reasons.

That means we need to push to get new members now. We actually did have a waiting list a few years back, but it’s been so long that I figure those players probably have a group already.

Dale had been looking around on various websites geared towards player recruitment with not so hopeful results.

Unfortunately too many people can’t play on Friday evenings, are too young, are smurfing insane, or want to play an older or heavily house-ruled version of D&D.

Personally I don’t understand how some people without a group can demand that a whole group stop how they play so they can let this new guy join.

And yes, about five years ago, we had a guy tell us that if we wanted him to join our group we would have to “unlearn” 3E. For the first time ever, my response was more polite than Dale’s. While I tried to educate the guy and make him aware of how ignorant he was about 3E, Dale’s response was “Tell him to f--- off.”

Way too many gamers are more arrogant than they ought to be.

Now if someone were to join the group and, after a while, made a reasonable case for a change, we might listen. But no one is going to come to the group and start dictating to us how our group is going to be.

Someone like that will be booted before 9pm on his first day.

There’s only going to be one self-appointed asshole in this group, and that’s me. And that means I’m the guy who says what several in the group want to say, but are too polite to say.

Recruit A: “Hey, I’d love to join your group, but I can only play Saturday evenings. Is that possible?”
Me: “Sorry, but we can’t do that.” Then I usually add, “But contact Yottaquest. They have multiple games of Living Forgotten Realms running or may know of a group that has a spot open.”

Recruit B: “HEY! I luvz DnD. Can I play?”
Me: “No” or no response at all.

Recruit C: “Hi my name is ----. I use to play D&D back in 2nd Edition and was looking to get back into it. Do you have a spot open?”
Me: “We do. Tell me more about yourself and we’ll go on from there.”

Recruit D: “Hi my name is ----. I’m new to the area and am looking for a game…”
Me: See the response to Recruit C.

If you think that maybe I’m a little too harsh or closed-minded, remember that I’ve played D&D since I was 14 (37 now) and I have seen the damage that a destabilizing player can do to a group. I’m also not going to risk health and home of me or another group member.

Maybe one day I’ll write a post about my early years of D&D that helped form my reasoning.

Session 18 had everyone but Dale, so Ander just faded to the background for the time being.
Session 19 did not have Dale or Mike, so we left Ander in the background and Kergan snuck away before 19 started.

I intend to give story reasons for their disappearances.

Our cast for Session 18:
Admon (Scott); level 8 human war wizard
Duncan (Justin); level 8 Silverhome dwarven cleric of Moradin
Edward (Aaron); level 8 human paladin of Brekaneth
Kergan (Mike); level 7 dwarf rogue

Duncan and Kergan started off the day comparing notes about what they’ve learned about Mayor Ryan and Niyah.

(Admon still spends at least 5-6 hours a day studying Ivellios’s tomes.)

Things discussed:
Laws were being passed without the general populace knowing.
Niyah was controlling the mayor.
The mayor and Niyah are engaged.
Upon the death of a council member or the mayor, that person’s spouse would take over until replaced by a new appointee or elected person.
All this time the group has been working on getting the mayor more power.

They inform Edward and Admon this information and decide that their first step is to figure out how to determine if someone is currently being enthralled by Niyah.

After some bad starts, they hire a charm expert from the School of Wizardry and put him on retainer for possible future needs.
His best advice to determine if someone is charmed is to try to get the charmed person to do something that person wouldn’t usually do.
The group was hoping for something a little bit more straight forward (like a ritual to dispel a charm), but that’s all they can get.

Kergan takes it upon himself to tell Jason Adrek of the Church of Brekaneth. He isn’t available but Girvan Torl (the elder paladin) is.

Kergan tells him everything about Niyah and the mayor and Torl says he’ll relay it to Jason Adrek.
Torl does no such thing.

Kergan rejoins the group and is promptly punched in the face by Duncan.
Kergan doesn’t strike him back, saying something more akin to “WTF?!”
Duncan decides that Kergan is not charmed and heals him (it was a crit punch).

So the party brainstorms for a while, coming up with ideas that just aren’t suitable until they decide to throw Xavius a bachelor party as an excuse to get him boozed up and talkative.

So Duncan spends 100gp of his own money to prep up for this thing (we ignored what specifically that money was going towards).

So a day later the group is faking drinking while the mayor is getting plastered.

As expected they guide the conversation towards Niyah.

Xavius praises her in every way, including her being invaluable in aiding him in the right ways to say things to people on a political level.

He also tells them that the whole “spouse takes over when you die” bit of the law was suggested by her.

As for the reason why they couldn’t read about any recently passed laws, well that was because of the volatility of the Ironmonger/Silverhome debate as either side was looking for any reason to discredit the other, and some were willing to take down anyone who thought would vote against them. But since the vote is over, things will return to the way they were in a month or two.

The Anti-zombie serum is still a high priority, though there always seems to be something that is slowing down its development (needing components, other crises).

Kergan suggests that maybe Niyah has too much of a hold on him. So the mayor punches him and demands he take it back.

“Why am I getting punched by people that are my friends?”

At that they decide he’s way too far gone to be useful, and take him back home to a waiting Niyah and put him to bed.

The next morning Kergan wonders who’s going to punch him today.

He also attempts to bluff his way past the mayor’s guards claiming to be her new bodyguard. It doesn’t work. The guard tells him that without the proper notice from his superiors he can’t let Kergan in.

So Kergan waits for her to leave the mayor’s house and then tails her as she casually strolls through the general market area.

She makes several stops at places that sell magic-related materials and reagents but buys nothing. But she still brings a smile to the proprietor’s faces.

Afterwards Kergan stops at the shops and claims to be Niyah’s assistant and he was sent to pick up something she wanted to buy. He’s told that she never buys anything.

At this point the group is out of ideas as they can’t think of a single way to expose her without the results making it look they were the bad guys and Niyah is just an innocent victim of ruthless adventurers…so the DM helps them out.

Kergan eventually has a conversation with his Thieves’ Guild contact.

Kergan is told that the guild has determined that Niyah is evil and uncontrollable by the guild, so her execution has been called for and it is Kergan’s job to do so

Kergan explains that he can’t get his friends to go along (specifically the paladin) without some kind of verifiable proof that she’s a devil/demon.

A few hours later his contact procures a magical bell. When rung and there only normal people are nearby (5 squares) the bells rings like normal, but if demons or devils are around it makes a dull thud.

The group’s retained School of Wizardry charm expert confirms that is indeed what the bell does (and also mentions that a similar item disappearing not long ago from another school member).

To cover their asses they bring along the mage and Girvan Torl (he will “ensure that justice is served”).

That day they confronted her and she was visibly annoyed at always being hounded by Kergan and his friends.

They ring the bell without her nearby, then with her nearby and it acts as expected.

She scoffs at the broken bell and they put her under arrest.
She stares at Girvan and asks, “I’m not under arrest am I dear?”
His face goes blank and stares into space.

Edward grabs her and she shouts “Don’t touch me! And don’t call me Niyah. My name is Stefforri and I am your doom.”

She turns into a succubus, a hell hound appears by her side, and we go on initiative.

They quickly find out that she has 3 resistances – 20 to fire (devil), 5 to cold (frost adept), and 5 to radiant (sorcerer) – which really put a damper on their damage doing abilities.

This makes Scott cry as he’s given Admon an exceptionally large number of fire based spells and rolled a crit with his Fireball, doing only 11 damage with it.

Girvan begins silently running interference for Stefforri yet not directly attacking the party (+2 to all of her defenses when he is adjacent to her).

The fight itself took forever thanks to the resistances had by all.

When she was about done, she threw a clear crystal up in there air, where it exploded. A round or two later a white dragon swooped in and picked her dying body up off the ground.

Scott didn’t particularly like this fight because he was reduced to only using Magic Missile. But that isn’t my fault, it’s his. Everyone has pointed out that he needs something more than just fire powers in his repertoire. (He’s been working on it.)

Thus ends Session 18 and begins Session 19.

Note: I had made the module for this session hard for 4 PC’s, when Mike had to cancel I both had to power down the module and power up the players.

So I took out some monsters, made some traps less difficult, let the PC’s have a spontaneous extended rest, and gave each PC a bonus action point to use in each combat (to somewhat simulate an extra PC), but I also cut out some XP (which they still got plenty of).

This ended up being just about right…almost.

Moments after the white dragon flew off with Stefforri’s unconscious body, Ajell, Polaris’s mate, teleported in. She stated that she had heard rumors of a white dragon hiding in the Valley and her magic had warned her of its presence in the city.

Duncan quickly tells her what happened and soon they were holding onto her back while they are flying off in the direction the white dragon went.

Soon they are on the same level as the plateau and see the Kryptonian-like rock formations that make up much of the lifted land.

They approach a small, snow-covered ledge with a cave opening.

The snow is odd because it is currently mid-spring and there is no snow anywhere else nearby.

As they approach the ledge the white dragon flies at them. Ajell tries to land but is unable make it in time.

The party falls 20-30’ and Ajell yells for them to kill the succubus before she can escape.

They head towards the cave and are met by a tall humanoid-shaped set of rocks connected by flames.
He welcomed them to Stefforri’s lair and informs them that she is entertained by the sport that adventurer’s bring and she has entered her icy chamber to recover from her wounds. In order for the party to enter the chamber the party must first find the Key of Fire’s Hate and the Key of Frost’s Sorrow all while avoiding the guardians of the maze.

(Yeah I know it’s cheesy. Shut up!)

The elemental tells them this as it leads them through the cave which dead-ends into a rock wall with a large chunk missing out of it.
For the party to enter Stefforri’s lair they must take the molten heart of a fire elemental, the tongue of a fire snake, and the wing of a fire bat and then bathe them all in ice and snow that has fallen from above, then put the resulting stone into its place in the wall.

He then apologizes for his actions as he attacks the party and is joined by a fire bat, fire snake, and eventually the cave starts to cave-in a bit (coincidence?).

The party most definitely won, but working together didn’t seem to be their strong suit, so they took plenty of damage (even though two of them had resistance 5 to fire).

Once they had the stone, they placed it in its place and soon were entering a new dungeon which had plenty of faint screams and monstrous growls as well as hot and freezing blasts of air.

And to make it more entertaining, all ranged attacks had their ranges cut in half.

The maze itself was actually quite large, 15’ wide hallways. That should have been an immediate concern to the party.

And while they’re traveling, Niyah/Stefforri is saying things like:
“More of you are coming to see me? I’m so flattered.”
“I’ve had many husbands, and I loved them all dearly. Until death do us part.”
“Poor, poor Xavius. I heard his father died too young. I wonder if it was passed down to his son.”
“Once we finish this I will start again. Soon the Valley and all of its precious magical energies will be mine.”

Their first encounter in the maze was not a fun fight for them.
In fact it beat the daylights out of them.

Justin: “Aw F---!”
Scott: “Run!”

The Eye of Flame Beholder had no interest in letting them run.

The first round made the PC’s want to run, but they stuck it out and worked together (interesting how being about to die does that).

Eventually they won but it cost them quite a few resources, more than I had expected. Several dailies had been used and their only tank had 2 healing surges left.

They had one key and the other was guarded by a white dragon that had many metal plates attached to it, causing it great agony and making its temperament oh so lovely.

Admon had decided to do some scouting while invisible, and although the dragon couldn’t see him…

Admon: “Do you need some help?”
Dragon: While sniffing the air, “Where are you? Show yourself.”
Admon: “I’d rather not.”
Dragon: “I hear you but I don’t see you.”
Admon: “That’s always a good thing.”
Dragon: “Why are you here?”
Admon: “To put an end to somebody.”
Dragon (enraged): “My mistress? You will pay.”

Then we rolled initiative.

The party tried a stalling tactic of having Admon and Duncan look for the key while Edward fought the dragon. This plan ended up being a bad idea as the dragon was doing a nice job of landing blows on the poor paladin (I just kept rolling double digits).

By the end of it Edward had used all of his healing surges and the party had no remaining resources to fight a succubus-sorceress in her own lair.

They would not be able to rest inside the dungeon (heat/cold temperature extremes, and the screams make it hard to rest), so they left the dungeon to left.

Bu the moment they took the keys outside the dungeon, the keys ceased to exist as did the dungeon.

The party was standing by a giant pile of rubble, with two concerned silver dragons towering over them asking if they were ok and if Stefforri was dead.

The party replied that they had failed.

The Valley #17

2010-01-19T12:09:00.000-05:00

Well it looks like we’ll be continuing the Valley uninterrupted for a bit longer.

Dale will be unable to play for a while, so I’m back to full time DM’ing for the time being.

Speaking of Dale, he was heartbroken over having missed the previous session that had a cameo appearance of fairy dragons. He probably would have spent an hour of time trying to play with them, and possibly take control of role-playing them.

Dale really, really likes fairy dragons.

One thing that several people (Dale being one of them) have mentioned to me is that you can ignore the “role” a class is designated as “if you build it right”.

I only partially agree, and even then only begrudgingly so.

To do this, first you have to have more than the PHB because the PHB really only gives you just enough to do your main role.

Second, you have to scour your available races, feats, powers, and magic items for the right combination of options to allow you to break free of your class’s mold.

Third, chances are all that work and you will still not be as good as a class designed for that role.

Fourth, the last I checked, wizards can’t heal. “Sure they can”, you say. If you multiclass them…and spend so many feats and powers, then you have a healing wizard…who can kind of heal… and kind of control.

You can make a fighter or wizard into a damage dealing machine, but if a friend of yours puts the same amount of effort into making a damage-dealing ranger or warlock, you will find that his damage outshines yours most of the time.

So yes, in most cases you can change your PC’s role, but it will never be as good as a class designed for that role.

One concession, 4E caster multi-classing is definitely much better than 3E’s version.

Now to the game, and everyone was there.

This session was also one of those rare “95% role-playing” nights, which I think helped make up for those multiple “75% combat” sessions we’ve had a lot of.

Our cast:
Admon (Scott); level 8 human war wizard
Duncan (Justin); level 8 Silverhome dwarven cleric of Moradin
Edward (Aaron); level 8 human paladin of Brekaneth
Ander (Dale); level 5 halfling sorcerer
Kergan (Mike); level 7 dwarf rogue

We did a quick jumping back in time to take care of some things that Kergan did while Duncan, Admon, and Edward were in the fey-realms.

Kergan had been given a task by the Thieves’ Guild to spy on Mayor Ryan at his home prior to the Silverhome representation vote.

He scouted the location thoroughly in the time he had, and found that only Girvan Torl was patrolling the area, and Torl was running his rounds like clockwork.

When Kergan finally snuck into the home, it was just prior to the end of Ryan’s workday.

He searched the house while not disturbing anything. He found the place to be quite Spartan, with just enough comforts to live with.

He did find the mayor’s official seal, which he took before he left the next day.

Eventually the mayor and Niyah came home, have dinner, and finally retired to the bedroom where Kergan is hiding out (the perv).

At that point Niyah kisses the mayor and he gets a glazed look on his face and she begins questioning him about his day.

He answers all of her questions in a far-away, monotone voice.

Niyah: “And what of the special addendum to the law my dear?”
Mayor Xavius Ryan: “When we are married, you will be my successor in case of my death”
Niyah: “And what of those adventurers?”
Mayor: “Per your request we keep them quite busy.”

Other things are talked about, but the only thing that is of interest to Kergan is about the zombie elixir. All of the people working on it for the council are being intentionally interrupted so that they can make no progress in finding a cure.

When the mayor is snapped out of his trance, they get down to business, and Kergan takes notes.

Kergan reports to his Thieves’ Guild boss, who tells him that others were watching the rest of the council and he does not know what will be done with the information.

Next we go to Ivellios’s house (and portal to the fey realms) where the entire party regroups and meets with Thlyria Isara, an hour before the vote is to be held.

Duncan tells Thlyria the whole story and leaves nothing out about their journey in the fey-realm (see last session’s write-up).

She tells him that he has failed in his task and orders them out of the elven areas.

Duncan makes a plea and tells her that they have much of Ivellios’s written works that Ivellios believed would help with the situation.

She responds by showing them the problem and leads them to a cave, carved out of the “wall” of the Valley.

Everyone has an intense feeling of unease staring into the thin shimmering field that holds in the once-elven undead.

Gargoyles, originally just carved as a warning to all, now have glowing red eyes almost look as though they are moving.

“No one can rest near here. The things inside haunt their dreams.”

And with that she walks away as it is almost time for the council meeting.

Everyone save Admon goes to the meeting as well.

On the way Duncan pulls Kergan aside and asks him to find a way to discredit the Gorn family (leader of the Ironmonger dwarves).

Kergan agrees to and also tell Duncan to keep an eye on Niyah, though he doesn’t explain why. Later Kergan also sends Duncan an anonymous letter telling him to look into what happens if the mayor were to die. (Duncan pays the courier to tell him who sent the letter.)

Once at home, Admon begins delving into the books.

They’re written in Elven. That’s ok; Admon knows Elven (and has the Comprehend Languages ritual).

But they’re also written in a semi-code format with a lot of cross-referencing.

Admon quickly finds that this will require a lot of intelligence and patience to decipher and put to use. Everyday he will have to make 3 skill checks, one each for Arcana, Religion, and Nature to properly grasp the next “level” of the books.

On that first day, he realizes that these books will be a great resource, and not just for the problem at hand.

At the council meeting the party is scattered amongst a large crowd of mostly dwarves.

The two dwarven sides each form a distinct semi-circle around the meeting area.

Edward, Girvan, and many others positioned to keep order at the meeting.

Many people are heard from, and they’re all the same speeches that everyone has heard before.

Eventually it is time for the council to vote.

Each councilmember must stand and announce publicly their vote, with an optional short speech.

Brandon Accord (human, elected) says this day has taken too long to arrive.
He votes yet.

Jason Adrek (human, Church of Brekaneth appointee) gives a speech about honor and doing the right thing.
Duncan translates the speech to “We need them and this is the price we have to pay.”
He votes yes.

Ilustaria Joron (half-elf, elected) gives a speech about needing a non-human on the council to balance the obvious human bias in the governing of the Valley.
She votes yes.

Hilfan Tryst (human, elected) gives no speech.
She votes yes.

Thlyria Isara (elf, elven appointee) looks distracted and unhappy.
She gives no speech and votes yes.

Horgred Gorn (dwarf, Ironmonger appointee) gives a speech about bad blood and making amends. He says it would be an honor to have a member of the Silverhome clan on the council.
He votes yes.
Duncan tells Kergan to cancel that whole “discredit the Gorns” thing.
His keen eye also notes a slight irritation in Horgred’s expression.

Aegris Zahn (human, elected, corrupt) looks confused and stares around the council.
He hesitates, but votes yes.

Then the Silverhome dwarves erupt in celebration while the Ironmongers glare and quietly walk back to their homes.

The rest of the day is filled with drinking and song, all on Silverhome’s tab.

During that time, and for a few days after, everyone is doing their thing.

Duncan hears that his name is on the shortlist for the council seat, but so is his superior Agramarr Flamehammer.

Ander attempts to garner acceptance for the Sorcerers’ Guild, but he is blind to both the history of sorcerers in the Valley and everyone’s looks on their faces when they think of the horror that some sorcerers have caused.

Later Ander attempts to get help from Polaris about the elves and their undead problem. Polaris has sympathy, but he is “too busy protecting the Valley with other major problems”.

Duncan goes to see Lita, the mayor’s secretary, and asks for information about recently passed laws. She declines saying the mayor has strict orders about that. He later tells Kergan about this.

Admon and Edward visit Tonus, who is relaxing near a school.

Their chat encompasses the current problem on their plate, the elves. Tonus tells Admon that being given those tomes was a great honor and tells them that they are on the right track, but has no further help.

Continuing the potpourri of role-playing gathered information…

Duncan and Kergan find out from Agramarr Flamehammer that the dwarves are secretly working on a zombie-elixir cure.

Everyone except Ander is doing their best to keep the elven-undead issue quiet.

Kergan uses the mayor’s seal to make a “get out of jail free” letter.

The group gathers together at the Silverblade compound when planning.

Kergan cases the city offices, which is quite protected during the day and moderately protected at night.

So he buys a chicken for use as a distraction at night.

Justin: “You’re such a fag. You just paid a silver for a cock.”
(Sadly this is tame for Justin.)

The few guards in the area are distracted by a loud chicken not far away, giving Kergan the opportunity he needs to pick the locks of the offices and sneak upstairs to the mayor’s office.

While trying to pick the lock of the mayor’s office he hears a dog growling, but sees nothing.

When determines that he can’t pick this lock, he decides to bash it open.

When the door is successfully open, a hell hound appears and attacks him.

After a couple of rounds Niyah appears and calls the hound off of Kergan.

The dog obediently comes to sit by her side as she sits in a chair and offers him one as well.

Niyah: “So what were you looking for?”
Kergan: “That’s a nice beast. Where’d you get him? Somewhere hot I suppose.”
Niyah: “No, actually it’s quite cold.”

They have this sort of back-and-forth for a while, until she comes out and says that she is in charge of the city and there is nothing he can do to stop her. She tells him that he and his adventurer friends need to continue on their little adventures with the elves and ignore her.

He agrees to “take it under advisement” and leaves.

Through the week that all of the above happened, Admon’s understanding of the books increases, and he learns several low level rituals of Ivellios’s.

When it comes to the seals of the “prison” (or Ghostbuster’s Containment Unit”) he finds that Ivellios had tried many things but he had always been missing a key ingredient.

The group tries to hypothesize what that ingredient may be, but they are doing nothing more than guessing.

Next they visit Thlyria Isara again, hoping she’d be able to offer some guidance.

She was impressed that they were actually researching the problem.
But she is also depressed as the elves that have done so much to help the Valley, have apparently left nothing positive and may be the cause for its impending destruction.

She has no guidance, other than that they haven’t mentioned visiting Sibylline Tarn.

None of them are fond of this idea, and had intentionally avoided seeing him.

But with no other leads available they reluctantly go to see Ander’s foster father.

Tarn’s place is empty.

There is no evidence of a fight as everything is tidy and in the usual order Ander would expect to see, just nothing of value left.

The only thing that is out of place is a note with Ander’s name on it, but the note is empty.

When he says “Sibylline Tarn”, writing appears on the paper.

“Repeat this one more time at night when the moon is full.”

And we stopped there.

The Valley #16

2009-12-24T06:41:00.000-05:00

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

2009-12-11T12:47:00.002-05:00

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.

The Valley #13

2009-11-06T16:55:00.001-05:00

I keep trying to think of ways to improve 4E.

In other words, I think 4E can be saved from itself.

What I would like to do is remove certain aspects of 4E that waste time, seem pointless, or are needlessly complicated.

First: temporary effects that target anyone but the creator of the effect. This is on top of the list for good reason; I’ve seen it waste so much time for so little gain. One or two of these don’t mean much, but once you add in multiple such effects and effects that change from round to round, it gets old fast. Computers can easily and near instantaneously deal with things like this, we cannot.

Example I’ve seen: The first young black dragon fight I ran in this campaign.
Every round everyone had to determine what attack modifiers were in effect. And I’m not kidding when I say every person, every round.
The dragon had multiple penalties to its defenses, but only if the cleric or rogue had hit with their attack and the dragon had multiple penalties to its attacks depending on whether it had been marked by the paladin or the cleric had hit with a different power. Oh and don’t forget concealment from an ally, second wind defense bonuses, darkness effects, and so on.

Solution: There is no simple solution as each power would have to be looked at individually, but a simple attack or defense bonus for the user of the effect would be fast and simple, maybe with a further bonus to make up for any meta-changes to the power (like reducing your target’s AC).

Example: Griffon’s Wrath (level 7 fighter encounter power); it’s a standard strength attack for 2 dice of damage + str mod (and others) and the target takes -2 to AC until the end of your next turn.
How about we change it to a strength attack + 3 and no penalty to AC?

Exception: Powers that last the entire combat. Since they are not conditional and they are persistent, remembering your +1 to attack from Bless is much easier.

Second: Marking.
First off, the DM is the brain of the monsters. He should be able to decide what a monster would do based off of its experience, intelligence, and role-playing qualities and not be forced to attack the “defender” or be faced with a ton of penalties.
This is a tabletop RPG, not an MMO.

Solution: Marking has to go. It causes way too many slow downs and conditional effects.
Unfortunately marking is incredible ingrained into the system that pulling it out may not be so easy.

My current thought is to take every class with marking built into it and replace the marking with something flavored to the class but gives an all-combat-long effect.
A paladin would lose his ability to mark and all powers associated with it, but would gain an encounter power (maybe daily) that would give his allies a +2 to defenses (not himself) for the combat while the paladin gained vulnerability 2 (or 5). This would make the other targets less appealing, and make him more appealing to monsters. To me, this fits in with the classical flavor of the paladin sacrificing himself for others.

Third: Ongoing damage and “beginning of your turn” damage.
I don’t hate ongoing damage, but I’m not a fan of it. I have had way too many BBEG’s get totally slaughtered thanks to standing next to something or someone (a fighter using Reign of Steel, or a Flaming Sphere) and then getting pounded with ongoing damage attacks. These are all from daily powers that the party saves until needed for a big fight, which is what they were meant for, but it goes over the top (IMO). The issues swings against the party as well when they’re taking ongoing damage that will drop them unless they save, which they fail over and over again.

Solution: Give a bonus to the initial damage, but only have it affect one time and without ongoing damage. This, like all the others, may have to be looked at on a case-by-case basis as to make sure a simple little at-will power doesn’t turn into something more powerful than a level 10 daily.
A side-effect of this may be that leaders may be giving more temporary hp rather than free saves, but kind of means the same thing.

Example #1: Flaming Sphere (level 1 wizard daily power); anyone starting their turn next to it takes 1d4 + int mod damage.
Wouldn’t it be easier just to say 2 + int mod damage?

Will changes like this be worth it?
I certainly think so and so long as we’re only changing the constant and pointless interruptive powers, we’re still rolling plenty of dice for our attacks and healing.
They make take some of the glory out of the combats, but level 1 combats should not take 2 hours, even against the BBEG.

Has someone already done this work?
If so, let me know.

If you have anything to add, let me know.
I love to read the comments I get.
Knowing that people read this blog helps to keep me writing.

Now the session was a special one.

‘Twas the night before Halloween and I felt that such a night needed something a bit more than my usual setup.

Our cast:
Admon (Scott); level 6 human war wizard
Duncan (Justin); level 6 Silverhome dwarven cleric of Moradin
Edward (Aaron); level 6 human paladin of Brekaneth
Kergan (Mike); level 6 Silverhome dwarven rogue

We had jumped ahead a few days and wrote Ander out of the story for this session with a reasonable excuse of him having gone back to the Valley to let Polaris and the others know what happened in the Shadowfell.

The party had stayed behind a few days in the town of Two River’s Rest, and Pehr’All had not shown his bony white visage,

The party was chatting with some friends they had made recently who were also adventurers:
Bjorn, a typical headstrong dwarf warrior who prefers to fight first and ask questions later
Norris, an elven archer, whose skill with a bow is overpowered by the yellow streak going down his back
Valance, a brave human warrior whose heroic nature will some day lead him to greatness or death
Norbert, a halfling who loves money almost as much as Troy McClure loves fish, and would gladly sell out his mother for a gold piece
Grinder, a wild and crazy human whose giant muscles draw much needed oxygen away from his brain
Jaycee, the group’s wizard and brain trust, and a bit of gold opportunist herself

Now we have the cast of a bad zombie movie, and all we need are zombies.

The two groups are exchanging war stories before heading on their separate ways on the porch of the Tavern of the Dancing Wyvern when they screams coming from multiple places.

The next thing they know zombies begin charging down the street attacking every living humanoid in sight.

That is how this one and a half hour long combat began.

Every round for the entire combat 20 zombie rotters and 2 zombies would come in from the multiple entry points on the map. On the third round and all subsequent rounds a modified flaming skeleton would enter as well (modified = replace all fire effect with disease/poison).

For several rounds the party tore through the zombies, killing the zombies almost as fast as they were entering.

But like all zombie movies, that wouldn’t last.

At first they were cocky and were using encounter and daily powers in a near wasteful manner, but they had no expectation that this horde had infinite numbers at the time.

The NPC combatants did as their personalities dictated.

Bjorn and Grinder charged in and started hacking away. Bjorn chose his targets a bit more carefully while Grinder just mowed down whatever was in front of him.

Soon Grinder was surrounded and had to begin hacking his way back to the porch of the inn while Bjorn was able to maintain a position near Edward.

Norris shot at everything that was closest to him. But he was quickly surrounded and unable to get back to the group.

Valance chose to protect Duncan, who ran off to fight off one side of the zombies almost alone.

Norbert quickly saw where this was going and he fled into the Inn with the rest of the staff and then upstairs to safety.

Jaycee had stayed close to the door of the inn and ran inside when the zombies started getting too close for comfort, but unlike Norbert, she still attacked targets. When the situation got worse, she was going to run upstairs, but found that Norbert had nailed the door shut.

Kergan was having a rough time with this combat as his talents went to a lot of waste with the number of minions present. But he did serve a valuable purpose in blocking off an alley that was rapidly filling with undead.

And the star of the session was Admon, the not-so-controlling wizard with multiple burst and blast spells and could only miss a zombie on a roll of a natural 1. His job didn’t really change much for this combat, which was kill as many zombies as possible, as fast as possible, and occasionally make room for the rest of the party to maneuver.

Now the zombies had other things going for them, and none of them would become apparent until someone was bloodied.

This was guaranteed to happen once you were bloodied and you had taken any damage from an undead. At the end of your round make a saving throw or you lose a healing surge, or take a healing surge in damage if you have no surges left. Repeat this until dead.

The only way to save someone is 3 DC30 healing checks in succession.

When someone dies, they immediately join the initiative of whatever creature type they are part of (zombie rotters for NPC’s, and zombies for PC’s).

So when Norris and Valance dropped and Edward and Duncan healed them, the damage continued.

When the party noticed this happening (specifically, Norris healing above bloodied, and then inexplicably dropping back to bloodied at the end of his turn) and still see no end to the undead supply, they went from a casual “let’s get back to the inn” to an “everyone back to the inn now!”

Over the next couple of rounds the party made back to the inn, facing up to 5 opportunity attacks each. And this includes picking up their fallen allies Norris, Grinder, and Valance.

Unfortunately those allies are about dead and Norris and Grinder eventually turn, and are then “put down”.

But Duncan is able to save Valance by making the three healing checks and using his clerical healing spells to keep him up when failed (he couldn’t help but like a guy who refused to leave before him when faced impossible odds).

Justin: “He’s like Lt. Dan from Forrest Gump. He did everything he could to die in this combat and he still couldn’t do it.”

So we fast-forwarded to the next bit as the fight ended up taking a lot longer than I expected.

The party boarded up the windows and doors, helped or killed their friends and then made it upstairs where we glossed over whether or not they got revenge against Norbert.

They got on the roof and looked out at the devastation from undead horde, which was still going on.

They saw what appeared to be a ring of death spreading out from a central point; a Temple of Thirus (god of adventurers) that was flying a new flag. The flag was white with red blood dripping from it, the symbol of Nazuel (god of undeath).

Unlike in the movies, the party could not wait this out as ghouls were batting clean up. Ghouls are not mindless zombies and they can climb. So the party had to act then and there.

They gathered what material they could and traveled from rooftop to rooftop as fast as they could.

This was a skill challenge of sorts, where each poor roll or failure added more zombies to their next fight. And for each natural 1 they rolled, a ghoul was added.

Edward, who has no athletics or stealth training, was pretty bad at this.

But as they fell off the last roof (a build in bad need of repair), the pair of ghouls and handful of zombie rotters were only a minor impediment.

Soon they were inside the incredibly dark and quiet temple, now defiled to Nazuel.

They find absolutely nothing in the entire place until they reach the chapel, where they find a very dark and barren room with lone man standing in the center.

“Thank you for coming. I was afraid we were going to be left alone all day. I was hoping to have company for dinner.”

His barely seen fangs and pale skin gave his origins away.

The party is not interested in playing verbal games at this point, so they attack. And so do the dozen vampire spawn that have been clinging to the walls above.

This combat went pretty fast in comparison to the others during the night.

There was also a special mechanism in the place that involved a series of mirrors to focus light and move it about the room, but the party didn’t get that far. The fight was easier on the party then the DM expected.

Vampire Lords are dangerous when they have combat advantage, and their healing abilities are powerful (regeneration, second wind, blood drain).

For several rounds this guy kept bouncing back and forth from being bloodied to not.

The party was not as lucky as he was able to dominate Edward for a round (who beat on Duncan) and he dominated Kergan a few rounds later (who later apologized to Admon for the welt).

But thanks to Admon’s minion sweeping powers, the vampire was soon out of flanking partners and the party wore him down slowly until Admon critted the vampire to exactly 0hp.

At which point it looked at Admon and laughed as it turned to dust.

Then Admon woke up with the sound of the Pehr’All’s laughing still in his ears.

But it was ok. He was safe and in his bed and it all was just a nightmare.

The Valley #11-12

2009-11-03T06:55:00.001-05:00

I just realized that I haven’t given WotC a penny since the MM2 came out.

Out of the 8 books I have of this edition, I’ve bought 5 (core 3, PHB2, MM2), and the others are presents.

I have zero reason or interest in buying anything else, which is sad since I was voraciously buying books when 3E came out.

Other players in the group have bought a small variety of books, but nothing much recently. For some of us the reason is that we have no spare money. For others the reason is lack of interest in paying $35 for a book that might have a dozen pages of information we’ll use.

The cruel irony – WotC sold out to Hasbro, but we’re paying the price.

I’m not 100% sure, but I believe the last person in the group to buy a book was Mike. It was the Complete Divine, and I think Justin gets more use out of that book than Mike has.

(Several powers in that book, specifically the cleric powers, look like porn titles too. Hello…Stream of Life, Astral Seal, Moment of Glory, etc.)

For our sessions, I continue doing my best to take the good bits of 4E and use them as best as I can.

Examples:
I use minions as often as I reasonably can.
I try to hand out magic items that have passive abilities or work without interrupting combat flow.
I use monster templates and other modifications to make the standard ones more interesting rather than to use the same base creatures over and over.
I use skill challenges, but not always as written. Sometimes I alter skill challenges to be less of an encounter, but to rather modify an upcoming encounter. This makes sure that all skills will be useful at some point but doesn’t guarantee a giant fail if the party is missing one.
I make sure that I hand out the right amount of treasure without being blatantly predictable on how the party gets it (as in “kill a monster, take its treasure, rinse, repeat”). This vaguely follows the treasure suggestions the core rules give (though I use monster levels instead of party level).

Ok, on to the sessions before I start with the 4E hate yet again.

Session #11

Our cast:
Admon (Scott); level 6 human war wizard
Ander (Dale); level 4 halfling storm sorcerer (slacker XP gain)
Duncan (Justin); level 6 Silverhome dwarven cleric of Moradin
Edward (Aaron); level 6 human paladin of Brekaneth
Kergan (Mike); level 6 Silverhome dwarven rogue

The party returned to town with the Annesius children safely with them, to much fanfare (and some rewards of course).

Several people actually went out of town to grab the dragons’ bodies, threw them on a cart, and paraded them through town.

This made the party a bit uncomfortable, but it certainly helped spread the word of their deeds. Not to mention it may have swayed a couple of the council members to see Duncan and his cause in a better light.

We jumped to 9pm the next night when a robed man showed up at the Silverblade compound, asking to see Admon.
“Admon Silverblade?”
“Yes”
“Come with me”
“Who are you?”
“I am an assistant of Polaris.”

So Admon quickly gathered his gear and followed the robed man while Duncan, Edward, and Kergan joined.

An hour or so later and they’ve all gathered at Silver Lake, plus nearly a dozen sorcerers, including Ander.

While gathering up members for the cabal, Ander unknowingly added a silver dragon to their ranks, specifically, Polaris’s mate. That led him and the rest of the cabal to the current situation.

She explained to the party and cabal that the reasons the dragons attacked last night was because there was an active portal into the Shadowfell and it needed to be closed before anything really dangerous snuck on to this plane.

She and Polaris had scouted out the area of the portal and gathered what information they could, surmising that the Herollus family was possibly behind this.

The dragons and sorcerers were going to distract and destroy the black dragon defenses while the party had their own special job of destroying the defenses directly at the portal and to “calm” the portal with a ritual (skill challenge) to prevent any other creatures from entering this plane from the Shadowfell.

After the battle, the party was to enter the Shadowfell to permanently destroy the portal from that side while the dragons did the same from this side (also using a skill challenge ritual).

“How do we get back?”
At that point Polaris walks out of the water and hands the party several polished black stones with silver streaks.
“When you are calm, hold a stone in your hand and concentrate on me. The stone will bring you to me.”

For the record, “calm” means not in combat or other peril.

Five minutes later and the entire group were landing on the treacherous and rocky area that makes up the walls of the Valley.

Shortly after that the two silver dragons attacked the flight of black dragons, followed up by attacks from nearly a dozen sorcerers who concentrated their fire on one dragon at a time.

This gave the party to sneak into an exposed half-cave where a thin violet film shimmered in the background guarded by a floating and flaming skull and giant zombie that was swarming with rats.

As combat began, all the rats poured out of the zombie, making two swarms that the party just loves to deal with.

The party was doing quite well when a specter walked out of the portal and began harassing them.

When Admon was finally able to begin the ritual, the portal appeared to become more frantic in its shimmering, and another specter appeared.

In the end, 3 specters had appeared before the ritual was complete and the portal became calm.

At that point several of the party went to help the rest of their combatants (read as I allowed good-aligned party members to sacrifice up to two healing surges for 25XP each).

Once the dust settled and the party rested up, it was time for them to enter the portal.

They entered into a very dark room where they could barely half as well as usual (half normal vision, and everything had normal concealment), and walking around felt like they were swimming through mud.

Unfortunately, the change in the portal was seen on both sides, so several shadar-kai were ready for the party and attacked them upon entry. They also recognized Admon Silverblade immediately, and occasionally paid special attention to him.

But as usual, the party dealt with them and continued about their business.

As Admon was going about permanently closing the portal, the rest of the party could hear fighting going on somewhere else in the building they were in.

Moments after the ritual had been finished, several humans rushed into the room.

They wanted to know what happened to portal, and were very upset about it being closed as it was the only way they were going to be able to get back home to the real world.

These humans were at one time employed by the Herollus family and quit after a time, but were refused access to the main portal the family had. This left them stranded in the Shadowfell, and they were forced into hiding and banditry when they could (not everything is dark and evil in the Shadowfell, just most of it), eventually taking on aspects of the realm (the shadowborn stalker template).

They had heard that this small fort had a new portal opened and they intended upon using it, only to find the party had just destroyed it.

Since the silver stones only transfer one person, the party could not in good conscious (well some of the party) leave these people stranded.

So after much role-playing, and an opportunity to hurt the Herollus family added to the till for Admon, the party came up with a plan.

Session #12

Our cast:
Admon (Scott); level 6 human war wizard
Ander (NPC); around for appearances only
Duncan (Justin); level 6 Silverhome dwarven cleric of Moradin
Edward (Aaron); level 6 human paladin of Brekaneth
Kergan (Mike); level 6 Silverhome dwarven rogue

Using uniforms from other, now deceased, ex-employees of the family, the party dressed up as those ex-employees (even Ander).

Except for Ander, he was “captured” and would be turned over to the Herollus family and be allowed to return home.

But the real plan was for the party to distract the household and the “guardian of the portal” long enough for their new allies and themselves to escape through the portal in the basement of the mansion.

The walk from the fort to the mansion was short, not even a quarter-mile, but they couldn’t clearly see the place until they were almost upon it.

It was your standard gothic-style mansion, with a dim, stationary blue bubble surrounding it.

This “bubble” was to keep the Shadowfell and it’s effects out, allowing the mansion and its residents to continue on with business as normal.

The leader of the exiles chatted with the lead guard on duty. Once Admon’s face was shown, the guard went to immediately get his boss, Pehr’All Herollus.

Pehr’All gave an evil smile, and agreed to let the exiles return to their home plane when morning came, while a pair of guards followed Pehr’All back to his study with Admon in tow.

The exiled guards and the employed guards began chatting with one another, several of them still friendly with each other apparently. Ander and a couple of other exiles snuck off to scout around. And the rest of the party began discussing potential strategies.

First was the idea that the center of the protective bubble surrounding the mansion could be destroyed and the ensuing chaos would be a good distraction to escape under.

Then we jumped to Admon and Pehr’All having a nice chat in the study.
Pehr’All makes it known that he knows the party’s intent, but that’s okay, he’s willing to let them go if Admon is willing to cooperate.

He gives the standard spiel of the quick and painless death or the long slow death, but then adds another deal – no death.

But that particular plan is unpalatable as it requires Admon to give Pehr’All every last detail of his family, and to not intervene as the Herollus family destroys every shred of the Silverblade family.

Admon declines and says, “Don’t underestimate me, my friends, or my family.”

So in disgust, Pehr’All tells his guards to take Admon back to his friends; presumably to wait for their execution.

About that time Ander came back with some scouting news and confirmed some things the party had speculated on. He had found the room where he believes the shield is being emitted from (but it’s locked), and the news from the around the house is that the guardian of the portal is being held prisoner by that same shield and the shield gets some of its energy from the guardian. So if the shield is destroyed, chaos will erupt as the Shadowfell will no longer be held at bay, and the guardian may want to get some revenge for its captivity.

Thus several of the guards, exiles, and Ander created a diversion while the party snuck off to the shield room.

On their way they ran into the guards and Admon, and were able to get him away from them (not a combat, just a convenient and fast way to get Admon back with the main group for a fight).

First the party had to get the door to the room unlocked, requiring 3 successful skill checks to get it open, with each fail giving the guardians of the shield room a round to prepare.

The room was large with a bridge in the center. Under the bridge was dark blackness the oozed evil and the party just knew that falling into that meant instant death. On the bridge was a pedestal, and on the pedestal was a brightly glowing gem.

Floating about the room was three more flaming skulls.

What the party didn’t know was that each round, one of the skulls had to spend an action to maintain the shield by blasting it with some of its own energy. If this didn’t happen, the shield would become unstable and if this happened five times, the shield would collapse.

Also, a skull could spend an action and turn on the shield’s other defenses, specifically a ray that struck two random enemy targets every round (merely +6 vs. Reflex, but for 2d8+3 damage), and some runes that appeared on the floor (that the party avoided). And when I say random, I mean that Admon and Kergan took 75% of those attacks (my d4’s kept rolling 2’s and 3’)s.

In spite of all that, the party did most of the damage to themselves. If someone attacked the gem on the pedestal in any way, they would be automatically hit by 1d8+10 necrotic damage and 10 more ongoing necrotic damage (save ends).

As each flaming skull died, the remaining ones would get more defensive.

But eventually the skulls were destroyed and the shield became obviously unstable, appearing as though it were going to explode.

So the party fled the room before that happened, and closed the door, only to hear a barely audible pop and the sound of stone cracking.

They returned to the room to find the bridge and everything on it had collapsed into the blackness below.

And, of course, all hell began to break loose, initiate by a loud growl from beneath the mansion, followed by panic spreading throughout the place.

The party rushed to the basement hoping to get as many people out of the place as fast as possible.

But the basement was crowded:
- All four PC’s, plus 1 exile that each player controlled and acted right after the PC
- Pehr’All Herollus and shield guardian
- Pehr’All two sons (no names, and it doesn’t matter – they die) – both human mages
- 4 human guards
- 12 flunkies (minions)
- and 12 humans that sought to escape, with more coming each round. One third of these human were helpful to the party (offering flanking and could be moved through), one third was hurtful to the party (accounts as flanking against the party, and can not be moved through), and one third that were neutral (cannot be moved through)
- The guardian, a Thief of Life, a.k.a. a vampiric dragon

Each time an escaping human made it through the portal, the party got 10XP, even a hurtful one.

Pehr’All was quite aware of the party’s presence but he was preoccupied by the guardian.

“All life will pay for the pain you’ve inflicted upon me.”

That comment didn’t settle well with the party, so they did what they could to clear a path to the portal while steering clear of the two titans fighting one another.

The party was tearing through their main focus of enemies and the dragon was putting a hurt on the shield guardian.

Pehr’All could not hurt the dragon, and the dragon could barely hurt Pehr’All as they both had very good regeneration. So Pehr’All occasionally tossed one of his powers to hurt the party (such as a 5x5 field that does 10 damage a round and slows movement).

Once the shield guardian dropped the dragon attacked Pehr’All directly and in spite of his regeneration, it became obvious to all that he was a lich and he couldn’t take on the dragon directly. Sor Pehr’All searched on the ground for his phylactery (the gem in the shield room), and fled through the portal.

Now the party did take a couple of shots at the dragon and the lich, but when a rolled 18 missed they decided not to push their luck and fled through the portal as soon as everyone else was out of the room.

In moments they were all back on the Prime Material Plane and finding themselves surrounded by a multitude of people that would be best described as friendly, with Pehr’All nowhere in sight.

The Valley #9-10

2009-10-22T23:41:00.001-04:00

Ok, yeah, I’ve not posted a blog entry in a while.
And yeah, I’ll be a session behind after this is posted.

It’s a matter of priorities, and while I enjoy posting, a blog entry takes a fair amount of time.

First I have to type it out from notes and/or memory. Then I have to half-ass-proofread it. Then I post it.

I don’t have pictures like I used to. It’s a hassle to deal with. I know it takes away from the reading when there’s not a visual aid, but oh well.

I don’t post the minutiae of what happens in the game. I’m not a novel writer (obviously); I’m a gamer who believes that recording what happens in his group is entertaining and possibly helpful to others.

Game-wise, things are going pretty well.

Dale makes it to about half the sessions, adding fire power to the group.

Scott consistently has shown that a “boom wizard”, while not optimal, is certainly a viable damage class – until the DM screws with you (read on).

Mike enjoys the time Kergan spends getting the role-playing he does, but will soon be forced to taking a back seat as the storyline shifts to other PC’s for a time.

Aaron is playing his paladin well, in combat and out. As a “tank” class, he’s pretty solid at defending the “squishies” of the group. (We don’t bother saying defender or leader anymore – we say tank and healer. We do say striker and not DPR though. That crosses the line into MMO territory. )

Justin is also doing his job well in combat, but he has a lot of backup with the paladin’s Lay on Hands and Kergan’s clerical multiclass ability. Like Kergan, Duncan has received a good portion of the role-playing. Unlike Duncan, for the near-future, I expect this to not change.

The large amount of healing we seem to get in our group has me wondering; is healing really that needed beyond one dedicated healer in the group?

In the first fight of the day, assuming we had everyone at the session, we have 6 healing minor action abilities available for use. This does not count Second Winds or other powers that the PC’s have taken that give healing of temporary hit points.

Let’s say we keep our cleric, but dump the paladin in favor of a different tank type (that controls better or deals more damage), and Kergan picks a feat that increases his damage a few points in the combat.

Will the combat results change?
I’m betting they’ll change cosmetically, but not overall.
The increased damage dealt or increased control will compensate the loss of healing by ending the combat sooner (damage) or suppressing/directing the monsters’ attacks better (control) thus ending with less damage dealt to the PC’s.

This is all conjecture, as it seems the lessons of 3E haunt 4E with the ever-present fear of lack of healing meaning TPK.

I’ll bet you that a group of 5 healers with a variety of abilities will do similarly to a group of 5 strikers with a variety of abilities if the combat is well-rounded and not setup to advantage or disadvantage either side. The same goes for 5 tanks.

The difference would be the amount of time a combat takes to finish.

The strikers would bring down their opponents fast, though there would be a lot of movement. And if they didn’t drop their targets fast, tragedy may result.
The healers would take a good chunk of time, as they would get beat on harshly, but then heal up easily. All the while their opposition is slowly worn down.
The tanks would take just as long as the healers. They would get hit less often, but would hit often enough to do small amounts of damage, nickel-and-diming their targets to death.
I shudder to think of what 5 controllers would do in a combat. They’d probably lock it down to a standstill.

All of this conjecture assumes that everyone rolls average and are all of an equal competency level.

As for the actual story information, here we go…

Session #9

Our cast:
Admon (Scott); level 5 human war wizard
Ander (Dale); level 3 halfling storm sorcerer (slacker XP gain)
Duncan (Justin); level 5 Silverhome dwarven cleric of Moradin
Edward (Aaron); level 4 human paladin of Brekaneth
Kergan (Mike); level 5 Silverhome dwarven rogue

Ander and Bobby McDonaldson became friends during the period of time the rest of the group was dealing with the dwarves.

Ander finally convinced Bobby to aid him in creating his cabal of sorcerers, so long as it’s done secretly.

The next day Bobby introduced Ander to a couple of sorcerers he knew:
Fiermach – a human wild mage with a far away stare who seemed barely grounded in reality with several burn scars on his body
Morgrim – an elf that reminded Ander of Sibylline Tarn, dark and prone to anger

Fiermach, when lucid enough to respond, agreed to join the cabal.

Morgrim wanted something more, a show of good will.

He wanted the head of a wizard named Infersidia. She had been doing “unnatural” things by warping nature and life, but Morgrim did not clarify, and helped in no other way. To get a group together to do this task was Ander’s responsibility.

Ander was able to get the group to go, but it took a lot of convincing and research work.

Their research did find them Infersidia’s location, a guard tower that the city sold to her. She was also not a member of the Wizards’ Guild.

When they found the tower it was definitely in disrepair. But that didn’t stop the door from being trapped (I like it when rogues miss traps).

After a stunning glyph blasted and stunned half the party, a pair of carrion crawlers crawled out of the ground while a spellfiend vine horror pulled itself off the side of the tower.

The fight was quick, though not exactly easy (read as: nothing really interesting or exciting happened), and next they had opened the door to the tower and found a magical field at the threshold that seemed warp the appearance of the inside of the tower.

When they entered they found that the field made the tower much larger on the inside, with the walls looking paper thin.

They also found a large grey dragon chained to the floor with 6 chains, and a trio of half-white half-grey dragon wyrmlings also chained, but just at the neck.

I wanted to have a tough fight with multiple dragons, but knew it was going to be too much for the party to handle. So I had each wyrmling have to use a move action to make a strength check to break the chain while the large dragon had to break each chain in order to use its abilities specific to that limb, neck, or tail.

Well I rolled poorly, but so did the party, which made the fight challenging without going overboard; though poor rolling all around makes fights take forever.

The next fight contained Infersidia and her minions, but I goofed and the fight was about a fifth as difficult as I meant it to be. It was over before I could modify it on the fly.

Soon Ander had her head (the group was not pleased by this fact), and thus a sorcerer’s cabal was born.

Session #10

Our cast:
Admon (Scott); level 6 human war wizard
Duncan (Justin); level 5 Silverhome dwarven cleric of Moradin
Edward (Aaron); level 5 human paladin of Brekaneth
Kergan (Mike); level 5 Silverhome dwarven rogue

In game time we jumped ahead a week, to the night of the party that Duncan was going to attend, to both sway the minds of the city council to adding another seat to the council meant for Silverhome and to establish himself as an up and coming person in the political circles.

The party had originally been intended as a small dinner party, but due to the recent issues the city has been having the invitation list was expanded.

The hosts, the Annesius family (merchants), had rented out a large ball-room (or the fantasy medieval equivalent), balcony and all.

Kergan was outside with some guild associates, working their thieving skills on people entering and leaving the place. Due to Mike’s rolling, he failed in his task. No harm done other than lost time.

Duncan’s goal was to get 4 of the 7 current council members to see things his way, and to rub elbows and impress a number of people (diplomacy checks).

The council members each had a DC number (secretly chosen by the DM) that Kergan had to achieve. The results would be modified later based upon the events that occurred later in the evening.

Admon and Edward were also at the party; Edward as a representative of the church and Admon as a representative of his family and their business.

Edward and his paladin superior made small digs at each other all night, and both successfully deflected each other’s verbal skills and neither came out looking worse.

Admon’s only job is to not make his family look bad. It turned out to be a difficult task for him. A diplomacy score of 1 and poor rolling will do that to you.

To keep one person from dominating the spot light for a long period of time, I had each player do some of the role-playing they needed to do or I that I pushed upon them (I’ve got to seed in future plot lines at some point in time).

We started with Duncan; the lion’s share of the role-playing tonight.

First he chatted with council member Hilfan Tryst and was able to push her mind in the right direction, but just a little.

Then there was Father Jason Adrek, head of the Church of Brekaneth, and council member. Duncan is in the rare position of being a non-church member that Adrek actually may like. While Duncan tries to get Jason to agree to Silverhome being added to the council, Jason tries to convert Duncan over to Brekaneth. Both decline, but in a polite manner that leaves options open for later.

Edward was spending his time trying to get a read on how the attendees viewed the competency of the city’s defenses – the answer was that the city has done a decent job and a lot of faith is put into the forces defending the city.

He also chatted with Zenith, the half-elf who is second in command of the Perceptors. It was like talking to a half-elf fighter/wizard version of Edward.

Tonus, a powerful wizard, and friend to all children (not in a Michael Jackson way), sat down next to Admon and chatted with him.

Tonus spends his time saying he’s heard some good things about Admon’s skill as a war wizard.
“I’ve seen wizards like you. I’ve lived centuries. I’ve seen people like you. You’re destined for a short burn; short but intense.”

He then says that wars and other such bloodshed can be avoided with clever manipulations.

Some of the group thought I was getting on Scott’s case about being a war wizard rather than a controller. This was not a correct interpretation of what happened. The role-playing I did was something Tonus would say.

Back to Duncan; next on his list was Thlyria Isara (Thleer-ee-uh Iz-ar-uh). She was sympathetic to his cause, but simply had too many other things she felt were more pressing.

Then there was Aegris Zahn. This was an “oops” for Justin, as he meant to pick someone else, but oh well.
Zahn is a corrupt politician who has used a lot of dirty tricks to get into the political scene, but no one has been able to prove anything.
He had no interest in what Duncan wanted, but he could think of 10,000 things that could get him to change his mind. Duncan got this obvious request for a bribe and moved on.

After Tonus was done entertaining the younger people with his magic, he pointed Edward in the direction of Terras Villium IV.

Terras was looking for some assistance in finding a place for the relocation of his family’s mercantile business to somewhere in the Valley. This was both a seeding of a future plot hook, and to bait something in front of Aaron; a potential magic store in the Valley.

Next was rapid-fire role-playing for Duncan (it was getting late and we hadn’t had a combat yet).

Horgred Gorn had no interest in talking to Duncan, but his uncle Dhryveg did. They were nice and polite and even a bit of charisma in all of all that, but there was no chance of any changes.

Brandon Accord, the life of the party, is the shining example of good on the council, and is whole-heartedly on Silverhome’s admission to the council.

Ilustaria Joron’s catering to the non-human vote made it relatively easy for Duncan to convince her of his case.

Then the party was over as a party member was killed by a shadowy blade going through his torso and his wife screaming about it.

For the record, Scott absolutely hated this combat because of my special additions to it:
500 bonus XP, -25XP per innocent killed (or all XP if a PC killed them), and -10XP for each square damaged by a PC (like a boom spell).

The room was full of party-goers (minions, who are neither ally nor enemy) and four shadow creatures teleported onto the balcony. They killed any party-goers in their way until forced to stop by a PC.

For several rounds the exit out of the room was packed, as panic set in and everyone tried to get out of the room at the same time.

The only person in the party who was equipped for a fight was Kergan, and he and his “friends” had to climb the balcony to join the fight.

Admon could cast his spells, but was limited to Magic Missile, and missed quite often (though he did roll and unnaturally high amount of natural 20’s).

But that is ok; at the end of each round one of the PC’s had their equipment magically placed on them by Tonus (who had left the party an hour or so prior).

Three of the attackers were taken out in the usual manner, but the last one, a dark stalker, had such high defenses that the party fought him for at least 10 rounds alone. But he did eventually drop and it was a very close fight.

(At this point the thieves, including Kergan, rob the place of any quick-to-grab items of value – like paintings.)

All the treasure the attackers had on them was a drawing of Admon.

As the crowd was picking up the pieces of what had just happened, they hear the sounds of the roof being torn apart, followed by screams of terror, then followed by screams of “they took the children!”

Next the party is running after a trio of dark draconic shapes flying in the black night with children in their claws. Once again Tonus helps them by illuminating the dragons’ flight to their destination.

Since the party had to run hard, I forced them to make athletics skill checks (DC16) to push some fatigue on them.

Six skill checks later:
Admon – 1 failure, -1 healing surge
Kergan – 3 failures, -2 healing surges, -1 to attacks
Duncan and Edward – 4 failures, -2 healing surges, -1 to attacks, -1 movement
This all had a enough of a difference on the combat to make me think it was just about right, as Edward had only 1 healing surge remaining, and the movement hit came into play just often enough to hurt.

The irony was that the group’s wizard did the best, and the two most athletic members did the worst.

The dragons landed in a clear area a short distance from the city wall, and unlit (save for Tonus’s lighting).

They had followed three black dragons, a young and 2 wyrmling, and waiting in the clearing was an adult black.

He was amused by the party, until he saw Admon and thought “2 birds, 1 stone” (referring to black dragons working for the Herollus family in some capacity).

As he was about to strike at the party a silver streak crashed into the dragon.

That’s when combat began.
The party had to face the two black wyrmlings, and young black dragon while Polaris, the silver dragon, took on this adult black dragon.
At the end of every round some minor effect from the two big dragons fighting would spill over into the party’s fight, in the form of some acid or cold damage.

The two children ran as fast as they could as the party and dragons only paid attention to each other.

Note for anyone wanting to run black dragons: don’t. They have high defenses, high hit points, low attacks, and low damage; meaning that a black dragon fight will take forever.

The party won, but the effects of the fatigue jog earlier (the athletics checks) hurt the party as most of them only had a healing surge to last the whole fight.

Admon: “I’m bloodied again.”
Kergan: “Wizard, heal thy self.”
Edward: “You’re on your own.”

The adult black fled from Polaris, giving a perfect opportunity for him to talk to the party.

The party was honored greatly, even though Polaris is a bit more scarred than most silver dragons his age, and also a slight bit less patient than his brethren as well.

And Polaris apparently knew/knows Edward’s grandfather.

After only a few minutes Polaris had to leave, though he walked rather than flew.

The party returned to the city and as heroes to the Annesius family.

The Valley #8

2009-09-16T06:52:00.000-04:00

My last month has been busy and full of stress, hence my lack of updates on the blog. By the time I get this posted I’ll be 2 weeks behind.

As for ranting against WotC, nothing much new comes to mind.
That probably means I haven’t paid attention and missed something other than the standard batch of books I’m not going to spend any money on.
I think the ranting has turned to apathy.

Our cast:
Admon (Scott); level 5 human war wizard
Duncan (Justin); level 4 Silverhome dwarven cleric of Moradin
Edward (Aaron); level 4 human paladin of Brekaneth
Kergan (Mike); level 4 Silverhome dwarven rogue

We last stopped with Duncan having died while saving Ander from a revenge-seeking quickling.

But thanks to Duncan’s lack of greed and good standing within the church of Brekaneth, the party was able to get him raised for free.

Father Jason Adrek personally performed the ritual (in private) and made sure the first thing Kergan heard when he returned was “Keep your secret and we’re even”

Afterwards everyone went about their business.

Since this was Kergan’s last day to give the Thieves’ Guild the 2000gp they said he owed them, he planned for the worst, though he did have the money.

He sent a sealed letter to Lord Rushgar Hammersmith, with instructions to not be opened until later that night.

Oddly enough, another messenger, from the church of Moradin, found him to say that Agramarr Flamehammer was looking for him.

Next Kergan went to the money changers to convert all of his coin to silver and copper, just to be irritating (only slightly). Then he met with his new contact from Thieves’ Guild at the Roaring Bull Inn.

Their conversation was calm to the outside observer, but quite belligerent.

Kergan made it clear that Marko was incompetent and stupid and his boss agreed, but Kergan’s new “handler” made it plainly clear that Kergan’s current status in the guild was of his own making, especially by denying the guild information about Silverhome.
“Silverhome is off the table. That’s been clear from the beginning.”
“You don’t tell us what is off the table. We are the ones in charge of this town, not the mayor, not the council.”
The conversation went on this manner for a short while, but in the end Kergan was no longer on the outs with the Guild and would be getting jobs again shortly.

Kergan then returned to Silverhome and headed straight to Lord Hammersmith, mostly to let him know he’s still alive and explain the reasoning for the letter.

His note read
“Lord Hammersmith, my family is now likely in danger. Please spare what dwarves and resources you can to protect them. Long live Silverhome Kergan”

At that point Kergan’s family was protected for a little while, and his mother would be receiving a personal bodyguard for a few days.

Conveniently, Agramarr Flamehammer was with Rushgar at the time, making it easier for the DM to lay out the plot hook for the night.

For the past week Flamehammer had been searching the records for any mention of Kergan’s platinum pick being a key or something.

It wasn’t until Agramarr read into a personal family journal dated back to the end of the last Silverhome did he find anything.

When Silverhome was being abandoned, a small squad of dwarves lured a large force of goblins away from the last of the dwarves fleeing to the city. They led the goblins into a killing zone, one that would neutralize the numbers advantage the goblins had. Unfortunately the goblins were able to get help from dark sources (something unheard of during the time of the Silver Veil).

When it was obvious there was no longer a chance of winning, all but one of the dwarves fled. One of the surviving dwarves to flee to city was Kergan’s great grandfather. The one who stayed was Darniv Flamehammer, a great uncle of Agramarr.

Kergan promises to investigate and bring back Darniv’s body for a proper burial.

The next morning Duncan and Kergan discussed ways of getting Silverhome representation in the city council over breakfast. So far they’ve come up with nothing.

At that same time Edward visits Girvan Torl and asks for more duties, only to be coldly told that the only job he qualified for is to “look pretty”.

So he decided to just patrol the Crags. That resulted in any crime to move elsewhere.

But in the end everyone just gathered up to follow the plot hook the DM set up for the night.

The location of the last stand of Darniv Silverhome is supposed to have been in a cave in the wooded area between the elven section of the city and the region of Silverhome.

In spite of the lack of biodiversity in the Valley, the elves have done a nice job of keeping the trees in their area strong, healthy, and thriving.

Her diligence in protecting this area is why the elven woman Mavath’riel saw the party long before they found the cave they were looking for.

She introduced (from a distance) herself and questioned the party about their plans.

When they told her of their plans, she informed them that entering the cave would not be a good idea as the cave is the home to the only two mated bears within the Valley, and they would not take kindly to such an intrusion into their home.

She then states that she could assist the party by luring the bears away for a short time, but first they would have to prove to her that they know a little something of nature in the Valley and therefore are not mindless destroyers of the land.

Unluckily for the party, none of them took Nature as a skill during character creation. Luckily for the party I knew that and increased the DC’s needed and allowed for other skills to be used.

I won’t list the questions, as they’re actually pointless questions only meant to facilitate role-playing and had no actual answers as the answers were supplied by skill check rolls, which the party answered correctly with no need to resort to threats or other forms of bribery.

(I did have another out, a dear carcass to lure the bears from their cave for a time. But since there are no dear in the Valley, they would have had to hire someone to leave the Valley, hunt a dear somewhere else, and then bring it back. That would have cost at least a couple of days and 250gp.)

Mavath’riel told them that they had 2 hours to take care of their business in the cave.

At the back of the cave they found an old but sturdy door that showed signs of something beating on it from the inside long ago.

They find no locks, only an indentation that perfectly fit the platinum pick of Kergan’s.

The old door opened slowly, revealing a room with an eerie green light and several devilish creatures and skeletons ready for battle.

The party took care of them with relative ease thanks to the DM not being ready for a level 5 war wizard who readily threw in his brand new Fireball to clear out the minions the DM placed in the room. The rogue did take a beating, but that was his own fault for running to the back lines of a fight all on his own without an easy form of escape.

The only exit from this room was another door just like the last one.

The new room revealed was one light by hidden yellow and white lights but with two identical vaults built into the back corners, and standing guard was a trio of mechanical dwarves, one of them riding a mechanical boar.

The dwarves never moved until the party entered the room. Neither did the pendulums.

The Kergan failed in missing the trigger plates for the pendulum blades that swung across the room at varying locations (on a rotation that monsters in the room knew, but not the PC’s, but they could determine which one was next with a minor action).

The dwarves gave the party a nice but manageable fight, and the pendulums did nothing more than force the party to dance a little.

But the second trap of the room caught the group off guard.

I decided that having one trap was quaint, easily manageable, and predictable.

Players expect a pit trap in spots. But they don’t expect an additional trap at the bottom of the trap and on the other side of the trap.

This time there was a pair of fire spitting nozzles, one guarding each vault. Once someone got near the vaults, they’d activate and start blasting.

One vault had the control panels to disarm the traps in the room. The other had the treasure spoken of.

The beating the party had taken from the dwarves and fires left them a bit weakened, so after the dwarves were down they took a rest, and eventually so did the traps which made it easy on Kergan to disarm.

Kergan also gave the party the coin treasure, but kept the item treasure to be given directly to Agramarr.

Once they were back in Silverhome, Agramarr returned most of the treasure to the party, keeping only a trinket for himself and Darniv’s book (which described the sacrifices many dwarves made so that the rest of them could flee to city, and that he made the mechanical protectors to carry for him when he passed).

It was considered odd that they never found Darniv’s body, but not odd enough to warrant further investigation.

Quests completed:
Kergan – The Platinum Key [Level: Unknown (4). Reward: Unknown (175XP). Find the long lost cache of treasure that your father told you that your miniature platinum pick would be the key to.]

The Valley #7

2009-08-28T12:54:00.001-04:00

Have any of you heard any rumors about 5E being worked on?
If so, have you heard anything about it being dice-less?

If that happens, I guarantee you that I will drop D&D immediately.
No hesitation.
No regrets.
Hackmaster here I come.

Personally I think Dale will love Hackmaster, due to its joking references to AD&D 1E.
The rest of the group probably not so much as none of them have played much of anything before 2E.

Why would I give up a game I love over the removal of little plastic polyhedrons?
Because it would be just another step in removing what makes D&D into D&D.

At this session we discussed how D&D could be made dice-less, and we could only come up with something very similar to Magic: the Gathering.
Each round you gain X amount of a power, let’s call it mana, and you use that power to perform certain special actions, like spells.
You can add certain mechanics to make it different, but it looks, walks, and quacks like a duck named M:tG.

I’d rather be an anachronism than play that.

I just hope those rumors are just rumors or a joke.

There’s been a running joke in group – one day we’ll have to buy new PHB’s every couple of years, and if we’re lucky we’ll get the one with the rare fighter class in it.

Yeah I know; it’s only a matter of time before I just say “Screw this game! I’m done with it!” unless WotC/Hasbro cuts the crap.

This session consisted of a decent amount of role-playing followed by one long fight and one average length fight, both of which were very tough.

Our cast:
Admon (Scott); level 4 human war wizard
Ander (Dale); level 3 halfling sorcerer
Duncan (Justin); level 4 Silverhome dwarven cleric of Moradin
Edward (Aaron); level 4 human paladin of Brekaneth
Kergan (Mike); level 4 Silverhome dwarven rogue

Ander, finding that all of his friends had disappeared on him and still feeling under the weather (hangover), chose to sleep in a full day. Then on the morning that the rest of the group found the Voice of Brekaneth and returned with it, Ander began a search for other sorcerers in the Valley.

But sorcerers aren’t exactly on a list (anymore), and he has no contacts with the rogue’s guild, so he decides to head to the Valley’s newest dive-bar.

So he gets relatively naked and brings only 2gp with him and heads to an open-air bar in the Crag area of town.

The place’s name is Hellcrag’s Diner, but the only food served there is low quality cheese.
Of course the bartender was neither nice nor helpful, especially not for two gold pieces.
As is required with a stereotypical dive bar, several less-than-savory characters decided to take out their mommy issues on the halfling sorcerer.

That’s when Bobby McDonaldson showed up.
With a few words, none with any kind of obvious malice, the thugs left.
Bobby, a dark haired halfling, with a pleasant smile and demeanor immediately befriended Ander. According to him, it never hurts to have friends of Ander’s sort.

When Ander filled him on his idea of creating a group or sorcerers, Bobby let him know that it was not the best of ideas to create a sorcerers’ cabal in the Valley, but he’d try to get in contact with some other sorcerer friends of his.

They made plans to meet at the Roaring Bull Inn the next day and Bobby would bring some of his friends.

The other four members of the group had returned to the city with the Voice of Brekaneth hidden under Admon’s robes.

After reporting in what they’d found about the destroyed goblin encampment, Kergan and Duncan headed back to Silverhome (for some relatively sundry role-playing) while Admon and Edward took the Voice directly to the Grand Temple of Brekaneth.

Upon walking into the temple Edward had a vision of him leading a troop of men into battle while he wore gleaming armor and wielded his sword that now had alternating bands of steel and onyx on its blade.

They first showed Girvan Torl the Voice, who then takes it to Father Jason Adrek.

Adrek is quite shocked and pleased to have the Voice back, but when he hears that those who don’t revere Brekaneth were involved in its reclamation, he sent someone to summon Kergan and Duncan immediately.

When the two dwarves were arrived, Adrek almost bluntly asked “What do we need to do to keep you quiet about this?”

Kergan had some requests at the ready – he wants information about the platinum pick his father gave him and he wants to know about someone in the Thieves’ Guild named “Sam”.

Duncan asked for nothing more than to aid the church without betraying his own loyalties to Moradin. Adrek is pleased by this response (because Justin rolled a 30 on his diplomacy check).

Admon asked for information about the Herollus family.

Edward is not asked, but sought nothing either as it was his duty.

Later that day Ander goes to report his activities to the ever-unpleasant Sibylline Tarn.
After berating Ander for something insignificant he states/asks him “You don’t smell it do you?”
“Smell what?”
“That’s what I thought.”

The next day Bobby and Ander meet at the Roaring Bull Inn but Bobby sadly responds that none of his sorcerer friends seem to be available for anything. Ander fails to add 2 and 2, and it gets him killed.

That evening the whole group is back together relaxing at the inn. Everyone around them seems to be irritated as if it was a hot and oppressive summer’s day.

While just chatting away, Ander is yanked out of his chair and through the door of the inn (breaking it) into the area outside of the inn that has been recently converted to a small grove of trees. All was done by some unseen force.

When he moves to run back into the inn, he is hit by a blast from a multi-colored point of light that coalesces out thin air. That same point of light pulls a woman from out of another building and disintegrates her on the spot and then it shoots out a red, black, blue, and green bolt of energy that form into a fiery harpy and a black, blue, and green humanoid dragon creatures. None of them look like they want to play Twister.

The party immediately rushed into action.

This combat beat the hell out of the party with almost everyone dropping at least once. The fire harpy did 5 fire damage to everyone on their round and the dragon-men did poison, acid, and lightning damage to the party in addition to dazing them.

If anything, this combat showed me the upper limits of the party’s abilities as the plethora of healing and damage prevention the party had was pushed beyond it limits.

The most interesting tweak to this combat was the “Chaos Spark”, the multi-colored point of light that started the whole thing. After a few rounds Admon and Ander realized that they (“they” meaning those with arcane abilities) could possibly take control of the Chaos Spark to prevent it from randomly striking out at the party (2 attacks per round and +8 vs. AC for 2d8+3 damage). By using a standard action they could make a DC17 Arcana check to force the Chaos Spark to include the party’s opponents in its random attacks. On a DC27 Arcana check, they could force the Chaos Spark to shoot only at their opponents, and on a natural 20 (still DC27) they could force the spark to attack specific targets.

This control must be done every round, so Admon was pretty much relegated to spark duty for the rest of combat. This was arguably the most important job in the party at the time, if anything just to keep the Chaos Spark from attacking the party.

On the second to last action of the combat, Ander died due to the ongoing fire damage.
On the last action of the combat, Kergan got a critical hit on the harpy, killing her and ending the combat.

But before they had the opportunity to mourn him, everything that the Chaos Spark spit out got sucked back into it while everything that had happened during the combat was put back together (in a reverse action like in bad sci-fi movies). When that was complete the spark spit out some items and turned into a gem, then fell to the ground.

Then the officials showed up to ask questions.
The lady who was disintegrated was back together, but she was hysterical for quite a while.

Then the sorcerers began showing up, and all were upset (or worse) that they had missed it.

Even Sibylline arrived, and was quite irritated that Ander was the lucky one who was gifted with the appearance of the Chaos Spark.

Ander, after the usual berating from Sibylline was done, got a little uppity with Sibylline. Ander was rewarded with being thrown into the wall with a flick of Tarn’s wrist.

The officials nearby did nothing to help.

The next morning Bobby shows up at Ander’s home and rapidly tells him that he was finally able to contact a couple of his sorcerer friends. And although Ander doesn’t quite trust him, he follows Bobby.

An hour later Duncan, Edward, Kergan, and Admon each received a letter stating something like “If you ever want to see Ander alive again…”

A short while later they all had gathered together outside the warehouse they had all met at.

They knew it was an ambush, and they discussed whether or not saving the halfling was worth it, but at least one person in the group has a good alignment so they went in.

Inside they found the warehouse slightly cleaner than the last time they saw it, but it had a pair of unconscious halflings hanging upside down from the ceiling.

On the ledge was “Evil Bobby” laughing at the party and talking rapidly.
“Hi! Remember me? Kill them!”

With that Evil Bobby laughed and turned into the quickling from the last session, plus a displacer beast and owlbear appeared.

Ander wakes up early in the combat, and is cut loose by Kergan, but that doesn’t help the party much.

Instead of this simply being a tough fight, the party made some bad decisions, and later that night they knew it.

Early in the fight they focus on the displacer beast, but once he’s bloodied they ignored him and started going after Evil Bobby and the owlbear. This means that for several rounds longer than it should have the displacer beast was able to rip into the party.

When they finally started focusing on one target at a time, the combat ended fast, but not before Duncan died from failing three death saves.

Lucky for him he didn’t ask for anything from the church earlier in the session.

Quests completed:
Starting quest – Your First Steps [Level: 1. Reward: 100XP. Use the Ritual of the Younger to enchant the Armor and Sword of the Younger to at least a +1 status.]

New quests:
None

The Valley #5 & #6

2009-08-24T07:25:00.001-04:00

Ok, these past few weeks have left me with very little free time, hence the lack of blog entries.

My options are to either spend my time making a half-way decent module for game night, or to make a blog entry.

With that said, let’s jump right into sessions #5 & #6, with a bit less information than what I usually give.

Mike and Justin couldn’t make it for session #5, and Dale had to skip session #6 (after the next session he’s going to miss a lot more too).

Our cast:
Admon (Scott); level 3-4 human war wizard
Duncan (Justin); level 3 Silverhome dwarven cleric of Moradin
Edward (Aaron); level 3 human paladin of Brekaneth
Kergan (Mike); level 3 Silverhome dwarven rogue
Ander (Dale); level 3 halfling sorcerer

We last stopped where only Edward and Admon had been told of the Voice of Brekaneth being a fake, the original had been taken by a misguided fanatic of Brekaneth, while the town went on alert and Silverhome shut its doors due to warnings of a goblin attack.

Edward, given the way the facts appeared to him, did not believe that the Broken Bone goblin clan had the Voice. He considered it more likely that something else snatched it from the thief on his way into Broken Bone territory.

So he and Admon began researching for information about the Voice of Brekaneth and the person who took it.

During this time Ander is on a personal quest for a new home in the Valley and the DM successfully drains his coffers of nearly 100gp. He is also instructed by Sibylline Tarn to spy on the church, but he pretty much ignores that and mostly just hangs out at the church with Edward during his search for information.

When he sleeps his first night in his new place he has weird dreams that he is either really small or the trees are really tall and he is terrified and running during a storm. He has these dreams more than once throughout the night.

Their research and interviewing gives them plenty of information, but nothing that concretely tells them where to go, but a rough idea.
- The thief’s name was Valendorn Desh, an unassuming sergeant in the military wing of the church with some friends that had dreams of adventuring.
- The Voice of Brekaneth is an onyx-headed mace that was either gifted-to or created by the high priest Kretack during the purging of the other human religions early in the Valley’s history. In the hands of a believer of Brekaneth it is stronger and can be imbued with divine power.

While all of this is going on there are occasional hit and run attacks by goblins throughout the area outside the city walls, but nothing large; attacking guard towers for just a couple of javelin throws before running off, killing farmers and/or stealing livestock, or just simply making itself known and running away.

All of these actions have no obvious pattern, but they succeed in keeping the city’s defense off-guard.

One particular night the goblins finally attack. The main focus of their attack is the Grand Temple of Brekaneth, but a few attacks occur throughout the rest of the city.

While walking home from the Roaring Bull Inn, and very drunk (-3 to all attack/skill rolls, but +1 to damage and 3 temporary hit points) Ander is the target of one of those random goblin attacks.

He survives the small attack (4 goblin minions & 1 stormclaw scorpion), but is nearly killed. When that’s done with, he resumes his walk home and passes out on his new bed.

Admon had to deal with a similar situation where he needed to get up to a guard tower near the church to aid in controlling the waves of goblins. He simply had to run 100’ through a gauntlet of variable goblin minions and a fire beetle to get to a door, open it, get inside, and then close it. He succeeds while nearly dying in the process.

Edward is put in charge of guarding the main church, where the fake Voice is located. He surmised correctly that they were going to try to come get the Voice with this attack. Each round more friendly guards or not-so-friendly goblins would appear. To simplify the combat if one of those were to move into the square of the other they would both disappear. Edward’s biggest target of issue was a stronger goblin with the intent of taking the Voice and leaving.

Dale: “He can die defending a fake?”
Yes he can (but he didn’t).

The next morning, after resting and some “hair of the dog” they interviewed the last person to have seen Valendorn Desh alive, a man named John Grey who works for the Silverblade family as a guard.

But he gave very little information. Desh and his friend headed out of the main gate of the city and headed in the direction of the Broken Bone clan.

Given that Crater Lake lies along that path, they figure they have a long shot chance that the Voice will be somewhere in the lake or its vicinity.

- End of Session #5 / Beginning of Session #6 -

During the lockdown of Silverhome Kergan begins learning more about the church of Moradin, setting up a role-playing reason for him to multi-class into cleric.

Once the lockdown was lifted Duncan immediately went to see Mayor Ryan. After the usual small talk, Duncan was told that the party he was invited to was cancelled for the time being, so no chance to schmooze with the other council members and influential people in the Valley.

He also filled in Duncan on a little information – the city council asked Silverhome for help, but Silverhome refused, citing the council’s refusal to help them when they asked. There was also an unofficial report that Silverhome has no representation in the City Council and was unlikely to get it handed to them without playing hardball.

The mayor understood and agreed with that sentiment, and he intended to remedy it, but was unsure how.

Duncan tried to think of a multitude of ways to do this, but nothing that was workable. The only ways are to totally change the city council or get them to see that having a Silverhome representative would be best for all.

As per what’s becoming the group’s standard, they meet up at the Roaring Bull Inn.

While there Kergan receives some signals from someone in the Thieves’ Guild to come have a chat. He is told in calm and clear tones that he owes the guild 2000gp and it must be paid within 3 days or he’ll become pudding-bait.

He asked about Sam, the purported trap-smith Kergan’s been looking for. He was told “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stop asking.”

He knows that this is his only way to get back good with the guild.

He also begins looking for ways to scrounge every last bit of money he can get. Too bad he gave Rushgar Hammersmith his dwarven plate +1 just a few days prior.

Wouldn’t you know it, the city is still on alert and has all of its guards protecting the city and its main interested. So they have offered money for independent scout to search through various areas; including an area for Crater Lake.

So the party set out to scout for the city with an extra task just for them.

Their first encounter consisted of an attacked goblin supply post. They found several goblin skeletons stripped clean by rats. What they didn’t find until afterwards was one goblin body was still intact and had dozens of small knife wounds all over him, all done by a quickling.

While attempting to scout, Mike botched Kergan’s stealth roll. Then they heard rats and some evil giggling.

Word of warning, quicklings can be one giant pain to a party that can’t pen them in. Add in a rat swarm and a vine horror and you have a party irritated at you (I’m used to it).

In 4E, the fastest way to piss the party off is to stun, immobilize, or daze them.

The vine horror and rat swarm didn’t last long, but the quickling just kept slicing at the party round after round. No until they got him to 25% of his hit points did it run away.

Next they began searching around the circumference of Crater Lake (which indeed looks like a weather worn crater with several fast-flowing rivulets converging on it).

They stumbled across, literally, a hole in the ground made out of fresh webbing and camouflaged to appear like the ground. Peering down below they saw a 30’ drop with a webbing net at the bottom to catch them (how thoughtful).

A couple minutes later and all of the webbing they saw was burned away, and after the smoke cleared they lowered themselves down the pit, expecting a fight.

The trio of ettercaps and deathjump spider didn’t disappoint them.

The fight took a good chunk of time and no side had a clear advantage for the longest time.

And to make it more entertaining, Admon used a Flaming Sphere. The webbing smoldered and fire and smoke spread, giving ground hazard and the potential for obscured vision and suffocation (but it didn’t happen).

Eventually the party won, but it was definitely not a simple and easy win (poison + webbing + poor player rolls = fun but long fight).

After putting out the remaining smoldering fires and collecting their loot (lots and lots of copper pieces) they found another concealed pit, this time blocked off rather than a trap. When they listened they could hear the faintest electrical hum.

The room only contained five bodies that had been dragged here and not much more. The bodies had only a little webbing on them, and the party did not notice that the bodies had not been drained of fluids as you would usually expect from spider attacks.

They started searching the bodies one at a time, Kergan began with searching the body that looked kind of roguish (dressed in leather armor and daggers).

When Duncan touched the front and center body of what they thought might be the priest of the group (chain armor, no shield) he was blasted with radiant damage and then the spirits of all 5 rose.

The spirit of priest spoke “Keep your hands off of me you damned, dirty dwarf!”

The priest had in his hands a ghostly version of the Voice of Brekaneth, so Edward attempted to rationalize with him.

But the spiritual version of Valendorn Desh had no interest in handing over the holiest gift of Brekaneth over to someone who is friends of a believer of Moradin.

“If you want the Voice, come claim it!” (He was a warrior-priest after all.)

Instead of 5 ghostly apparitions to face, they faced 5 flesh and blood opponents, each with a little magic item (if just to say to the players “How do you like it?”).

But the party kicked ass. They burned action points and dailies early in the first round, targeting Desh almost exclusively.

In short term they had possession of the Voice of Brekaneth.

And that’s where we stopped.

Quests completed:
Ander – On Your Own [Level: 1. Reward: 100XP. Obtain new living quarters and spend 25gp on furnishing it.]
Edward & Admon – The Holiest Gift [Level: 3. Reward: 150XP. Find information leading to the whereabouts of the Voice of Brekaneth.]

New quests:
None

The Valley #4

2009-08-10T07:15:00.002-04:00

If you want to mess with your players’ heads, pull out some extra miniatures when prepping for the game.
Whenever I do it one player always takes notice and makes comment like Aaron, “I just noticed what you’re doing and I don’t like what I’m seeing.”

Speaking of Aaron, he didn’t like the revisions to the paladin’s marking ability, so he went back to the PHB version. He didn’t like that the only penalty for a marked target not coming after him was a -2 to attack. I certainly understand, though I feel the pulling effect makes up for it and I’m not a fan of marking when it causes a break in the flow of combat.

Ah, do you remember the good old days when all you had to do was attack once or twice, and then roll damage, and you never had to check for modifiers each round?

Oh early D&D, how I miss thee.
Though I just know if I was in a 1E AD&D game I’d find something screwy there that I totally forgot about (hush THAC0 haters).

This session went well, though the group almost didn’t do what I expected which meant I would have had to drastically change my plans.

Luckily I was able to make the path I wanted them to go all nice and shiny so they’d be attracted to it. Hopefully I wasn’t too blatant about it.

Our cast:
Admon (Scott); level 2 human war wizard
Duncan (Justin); level 2 Silverhome dwarven cleric of Moradin
Edward (Aaron); level 2 human paladin of Brekaneth
Kergan (Mike); level 2 Silverhome dwarven rogue
Ander (Dale); level 2 halfling sorcerer

As usual we started off with role-playing.

Kergan is almost desperately trying to get in contact with the Thieves’ Guild, but no one is talking to him, and he’s getting the feeling that he’s a pariah to the guild.

Not letting that stand in his way, he has other business he wanted to check into.
Kergan asked Duncan to get a temple historian to check into something for him. The best historian the temple has is Duncan’s superior, Agramarr Flamehammer

Before he died, Kergan’s father had given Kergan a tiny platinum pick. This pick supposedly is the key to some great treasure in the Valley.

Agramarr said he knew nothing but would research into it. And in a sign of trust I did not thing someone playing a rogue could do, he left the key in Agramarr’s care while he researched.

Ander had a different dilemma; he had murdered a captured goblin , and some of the people in this group he was with didn’t exactly act in an honorable manner.

So he talked to the only person he felt he could chat with, Sibylline Tarn.
Unfortunately Sibylline isn’t exactly the best person to ask questions on morality. His responses were in his normal blunt and scathing manner “Killing goblins is not something to cry about.” “Killing someone who has tried to kill you is what you are supposed to do.” “Honor is just a bunch of rules that your adversaries can use to kill you with.”

Mr. Tarn is not exactly a nice elf.

After other role-playing, we jumped right into initiative.

Encounter #1 was against yet more goblins. Initially the party didn’t exactly know why they were fighting the goblins. That would be explained over the first three combat rounds, in addition to something that wouldn’t happen until much later in the session.

The combat was setup next to a cave, with several goblins in and out of the cave and a tangler beetle, with four human guards being forced to mine for gems inside the cave.

As usual the party had no real trouble overall, but one thing for your own use – goblin sharpshooters are dangerous. Just ask Ander. In two different fights he’s been blasted unconscious by them.

Read to Admon and Edward over the span of the first three rounds before their action:

Round 1
Admon, why is it that every time you take a job from the city, you get into worse trouble than the pay is worth?

Edward, just a few hours ago you were doing your duty. Now you’re filled with confusion and rage. And worse, you can’t even kill this “thing”, this goblin.

Round 2:
Admon: All they said you had to do was make rounds to several of the guard towers, and you would each get 5 gold. Apparently the number 7 is not your lucky number.

Edward: You hear their voices behind you, telling you that you can’t do it. This wretched creature deserves to die for its blasphemy, but doing so means you and your comrades-in-arms die also.

Round 3:
Admon: Save the captured guards from the goblins became your new task. Then it turned into a hit-and-run attack. And now you have to stop a paladin from getting you and your friends killed.

Edward: With the grace of Brekaneth you calm yourself. You now have to let this piece of filth live or face a couple hundred goblins that have you pinned in here. But now it will have to answer why there’s a drawing of Brekaneth’s holiest gift on the table.

When combat was over the guards thanked them and told them that they’d been forced to mine for gems, even though this cave was no longer viable as a gem source.

They also found a map on the lead goblin. Edward, who’s learning the goblin language could make out some of the writing, but to ensure they missed nothing Admon cast Comprehend Languages.

It showed a simple map from a hilly area to the cave they were in. The hilly area had a spot marked “talk cave” and this cave was marked as “gem cave”. The writing read “The Dead Dwarves are dead and gone. We need more treasure to convince the Cracked Shields to join us. With them on our side we can destroy the human’s city.”

Given the two options of going back to the city or investigating the area of the “talk cave”, thankfully they chose to scout the cave.

The location of the talk caves had several small hills, perfect for hiding from a distance, but also perfect to sneak up on. This made it possible for the party to get to the near top of one of the hills and then for Kergan to do scouting of the staging area of the talks.

With a natural 20 perception roll, I gave Kergan all the information he needed, and a little extra to get the party to actually go and interrupt the talks.

Kergan determined that the talks were under way, both groups had set up camps and were doing regular patrols, both were around 300 strong, and there was a lone door on the side of a hill flanked by one goblin from each of the two clans (Broken Bone and Cracked Shield). But most importantly he noticed a pattern to the patrols; one he could exploit to sneak up on the door with only the two guards to protect it.

After much discussion (and another discussion about how plate armor had a mere -2 to move silent checks), the group decided to take out the two guards and ruin the talks.

The only possible snags would be not being able to take out both guards before they were able to blow a warning signal with their horns, to open the door before any of the guard patrols showed up, and to do it all quietly.

Another snag they wouldn’t see until it was too late was that the door was magically locked and required some skilled lock picking to get opened. What the DM didn’t know was that DC16 was entirely too low of a difficulty for Kergan.

The entire group made their move silent checks (though just barely), they took out the guards with their surprise round and normal round, Kergan got the lock open with Admon’s arcane assistance.

They were noticed by a guard patrol, but it was too late for the party to be swarmed. They got everyone in the door and closed it, and the door relocked itself, giving the party time to do some damage to the talks.

After barring the door additionally, they got a quick rest in and checked the next door.

That’s when I found out that Edward only has a strength score of 13. The door to the talks was jammed shut and if the party wanted to get a surprise round they had to bust it open with a DC16 strength check on the first try.

That was a failure until around the tenth try.

The room was relatively small (3x5) with a large stone table in the center. On the table was a suit of plate armor, a pile of good, and a piece of paper.

Two goblins from each of the two clans were on the long side of the table.

The party now knows that they need to capture a leader goblin to get out alive as there are no other exits from the cave.

Admon uses his first action to use Mage Hand to grab the paper, seeing that it is only the drawing of a mace (bye-bye action point).

The party then let loose with their daily powers, thrashing the goblins pretty hard while taking a good beating from the goblins.

In the end they decided to subdue both goblin leaders as an insurance policy.

Then they take a closer look at the drawing of the mace and recognize it as the Voice of Brekaneth – the holiest weapon the church has. Now insert the part where Edward wants to kill one of the goblins from the first encounter.

The leader of the Cracked Shield contingent knows that he won’t be killed so he just laughs at the party while the leader of the Broken Bone contingent much more easily believes the party’s threats, so he spills his guts.

The extermination of the Dead Dwarf goblin clan terrified the Broken Bone goblin clan, as they see themselves next in line (being closest to Silverhome and the city). So they are trying to create a truce with the Cracked Shield goblin clan and unite to make they aren’t exterminated too.

So they brought money and magical armor to the talks, but the Cracked Shields wanted the mace on the paper and they believe the Broken Bones have it.

That’s when the party barged in, but the goblin claims to have never seen that mace.

In the end the party succeeded in escaping intact by holding the goblins hostage, letting them go at the right time, and then running for their lives directly to the city to warn them.

Once back in town Duncan warns the mayor, who in turn sends warning to the appropriate people.

Ander talks to Sibylline, who is very short with him for wasting his time while he should be defending the city. Out of spite Ander leaves out the bit about the Voice of Brekaneth.

Kergan heads to Silverhome to warn Agramarr Flamehammer.

Duncan meets up with Kergan and Agramarr and all three warn Rushgar Hammersmith, including the information about the Dead Dwarf clan’s extermination starting all of this. Rushgar sounds the alarm while being amazed that the goblins would bother uniting at all.

And finally Edward and Admon go warn the high priest of Brekaneth, Father Jason Adrek and Girvan Torl, of the situation.

Note: Jason Adrek is not a fan of wizards, sorcerers, and their ilk, so he’s not exactly friendly to Admon, though he’s not as openly irritated when he finds out that Admon is a follower of Brekaneth.

Edward fills them in on the situation, with an emphasis on the Voice.

Adrek points out that the Voice is “right over there”, on the wall behind the altar.

Long story short, that Voice was a fake.

According to Father Adrek, several years back, after “I gave a particularly amazing speech” a sergeant in the church became filled with delusions of glory and stole the real Voice of Brekaneth. Then he gathered some friends and headed off to destroy the goblin clans.

Neither he nor any of his group were seen ever since.

On a rumor that the Voice fell into the hands of the Broken Bone clan, a force of loyal soldiers of the church attacked the clan. But Brekaneth was not with them, and they were slaughtered.

So a fake was made to hide the church’s shame.

And that is where we ended.

Quests completed:
Kergan: Goblins! [Level: 1. Reward: 100XP. Kill 10 goblin minions.]
Edward: Proven Superiority [Level: 1. Reward: 100XP. Be the only one of your group to be bloodied during a combat equal to greater than your level.]

New quests:
Edward – The Holiest Gift [Level: 3. Reward: 150XP. Find information leading to the whereabouts of the Voice of Brekaneth.]
Admon – The Holiest Gift [Level: 3. Reward: 150XP. Find information leading to the whereabouts of the Voice of Brekaneth.]

Next session: No Justin and no Mike.

The Valley #3

2009-07-31T07:20:00.001-04:00

(Quick note - I've not proofread this...not that it'd be noticeable from my proofread ones.)

Divine Power is broken. Well maybe.

If you’re a healing cleric this book is for you.
There’s an at-will attack (Astral Light sounds right) that requires you to hit a target’s Reflex. If you hit, that target is -2 to his defenses, and the next ally that hits it gets healed for 2 + your charisma bonus + and your wisdom because it has a healing tag.
I immediately nerfed away the charisma bonus, but after thought says to add it back in since it doesn’t scale much with level.

We also dumped the paladin’s marking ability and changed it to match it to how I see a paladin should defend while not copying the marking abilities of any other classes, though maybe we borrowed some concepts.

It’s now an at-will power as a minor action that pulls the target your Charisma modifier to you and marks the target. The mark remains so long as it is adjacent to you at the end of your turn.
And yes, you can use this on an already marked target multiple times, but it’s limited to a range of 5 (burst 5). And so long as you stay adjacent to your targets, you can have more than one target marked.

It’s not 100% fleshed out, but I think it works, and it’s most certainly better than the current setup for Divine Challenge.

And although previously we never had an issue with it, tonight we had a lot of time lost thanks to powers that gave “-2 to attack until…”.
Our second combat for the night probably took 5 minutes longer thanks to me having to constantly ask what penalties I had to attack, and who.

Worse, there’s no way to fix it without totally unbalancing the game.
I can’t remove or limit those effects; too many abilities use them.

I remember saying long ago that those effects would kill combat speed.
For the past year I thought I was wrong about that, but now it’s obvious we just didn’t encounter the worst of it.

For now I’ll do nothing about it to see if it’s an isolated instance or maybe we’ll think of a better way to deal with them.

As for my campaign, it’s going very well and the players seem to like it.

Focusing on 1-2 PC’s per session, while not perfect, is going well. And the personal quests are a definite improvement to the game and work amazingly well to promote role-playing.

Now our session had less XP compared to the last two.
I’m wondering if there’s a coincidence between that and longer combats because there we no minions this time around.

Our cast:
Admon (Scott); level 2 human war wizard
Duncan (Justin); level 2 Silverhome dwarven cleric of Moradin
Edward (Aaron); level 2 human paladin of Brekaneth
Kergan (Mike); level 2 Silverhome dwarven rogue

Because we had to quickly end the previous session, we backtracked a little bit to get some role-playing in for Duncan.

First we found out that he didn’t have Goblin as a language (an oops with the rules), so he had to talk to his superiors at the temple of Moradin to get a copy or three of them.

(I also had him roll a check from last session to determine if he understood that the formula he found was indeed a formula.)

He was able to get 1 copy in Dwarvish for him and his church leader and one in common for Mayor Ryan. His reasoning was that it was best to have 2 separate groups with the recipe.

Next we jumped to Duncan handing the copies to the mayor. He was not happy that someone else had a copy of the formula, but he conceded that it was best to have another copy of the formula in their hands just in case.

He went on to say that he knew the party would work well together and he was glad that he could trust Duncan, but he stressed that if he needed something kept secret, it had to remain secret.

Next he mentioned something about a party the following week that might have a lot of people in it that Duncan may want to get to know on a political level.

He then handed Duncan something that was found a while ago that he had forgotten about until recently, but he thought that Duncan would be able to put it to good use: a holy symbol of Moradin +2.

Next we jumped to Admon.

He was walking home when a giddy red-haired woman in her mid-20’s named Muriel and her bodyguard (Harold, a man in full platemail) stopped Admon and asked if he was Admon.

She was looking for a wizard that could help her with a ritual, and that his name came up several times but the people at the School of Wizardry were giving her the runaround.

She said she’d pay him 100gp to help and that she’d like to do it tonight. It would be in a “fire cave”, and the ritual would be cast into an orb which would then be used to summon fire elementals. It had to be in that cave because the strange magicks of the Valley gave the “fire cave” its special features.

He wanted to get his friends to help, and she readily agreed. She said she would meet him at the Roaring Bull Inn and would be anxiously waiting to get this ritual done.

While that was going on Edward was imbuing his sword with a magical ritual that only paladins of Brekaneth know. He can take a magical weapon and move its enchant onto his sword, and the same with his armor.

And Kergan went about trying to make contact with the Thieves’ Guild. He heard nothing, as in not a thing when he would usually hear something.

Eventually they all wound up at the Roaring Bull Inn. Well a little more than that happened, but it’s all pretty mundane.

Bull, the owner of the inn, made friends with everyone in the party except Edward, who mistrusts him for not being a believer.

After some drinks and negotiation, it’s 6pm when the party leaves for the fire cave, with Muriel skipping happily along the way. The party had the feeling that Harold dealt with her antics on a daily basis.

Yeah, it’s a trap.
You know it.
I knew it.
And the party knew it.

I’ve really got to learn better ways to spring traps.

So she puts the orb on a small rock in the center of the cave, and has Admon stand on the opposite side of the side of the rock while the party chooses their own positions in the room.

Luckily for my trap they didn’t quite get that the 3 large rocks in the room were part of the trap and didn’t set up a defense for that.

Just as she was about to begin casting the supposed ritual, she shouts out “Now!” and the boulders spring to life as 3 magma claws.

Admon had the living daylights beaten out of him and could hardly get a spell off every other round. He was knocked out early in the combat until the party came to his rescue and kept him healed up.

Harold spent the first half of the combat guarding Muriel, but when Muriel shouted out “Kill him! Kill the Silverblade!” his attitude changed.

He shouted “Prove you’re a Silverblade, use your weapon.”

When Admon used his family’s longsword (he was pinned down and couldn’t cast a spell without being pounded with opportunity attacks) and hit with it, Harold switched sides and began attacking the magma claws (but never Muriel).

While the rest of the party was focusing on the magma claws, Kergan focuses on Muriel.

Edward said to capture her and not kill her and Kergan responded later with “I couldn’t hear you over the screams.”

To make a long story short, between this point and the rest of the night, Harold tells his story after pulling up his visor and Admon recognizes him as an old employee of his family’s business.

Prior to the fall of the Endarian Empire, the Silverblade family ran a company of bodyguards. For reasons unknown they failed and the empire fell. The Silverblades fled to the Valley and with the quick wit of Admon’s grandfather they were able to re-establish their business, albeit much smaller.

Ever since then they’ve believed that the Herollus family was at the root of the betrayal, but never had proof.

Harold, once a loyal hired sword in the Silverblade family’s business, had signed on to the Herollus family as a personal bodyguard after the Silverblades disappeared. Over the past eight years he has seen and heard snippets of information about what the Herollus’s have been doing; dealing with beings in the Shadowfell, dark magic (Admon suspects they may be behind the Zombie Elixir), and searching and destroying anything in their way.

He had not known what Muriel Herollus was up to specifically, but when he saw the family sword design of the Silverblades and the style in which Admon wielded it (though in the clumsy hands of a wizard) he knew he had found his previous, and decidedly less evil employers.

Of course if they sent one of their own to assassinate Admon, who or what would they send to go after the rest of the Silverblades?

Encounter #2, entitled “The Insurance Policy”, happened during this discussion.

It was past 8pm, so the sky was dark enough, plus the group missed their perception checks.

A dragon, either black or shadow when they finally saw what they could of it, landed in their path and asked them to hand over the Silverblade.

Negotiations didn’t make it too far after that.

And this combat took forever thanks to the number of “-2 to attacks” that hit the dragon, and the penalty wasn’t the same for everyone.

Other than that it was fun while the dragon taunted the party, especially the paladin.
Most of the taunts were about Edward’s church, but Edward, being the faithful paladin listened to none of them.

And worst of all, no treasure.
Where’s a flying dragon going to hide his hoard?

When they make it back to the city they immediately go to Admon’s family’s home to warn them and so on.

They wisely set up defenses within and around the house, with the party defending the hallway to the bedroom where mother, father, and grandfather or holing up.

When the attacker showed up the party was in bad shape immediately thanks to bad rolls, bad choices, and bad hits.

Their attacker: a shadow bat, a shadow hound, a dark creeper, and a shadowy goblin (notice a pattern?)

The fight was in tight quarters within the hallway and the party had a simple goal, do not let anyone into the bedroom.

And they didn’t, though they had the crap beat out of them defending it.

Admon now has a new quest – Destroy the Herollus family.

And that’s where we stopped.

Quests completed:
Admon: The Search [Level: 1. Reward: 100XP. Find information leading to the whereabouts of the Herollus family.]
Duncan: Secret [Level: 1. Reward: 100XP. Details are hidden. Telling the other players of this quest voids it.]

New Quests:
Admon: Vendetta [Level: Unknown. Reward: Unknown. Destroy the Herollus family.]

Next session should be all of us.

The Valley #2

2009-07-27T05:56:00.003-04:00

Combat speed has increased dramatically these past couple of sessions.

This session even had 4 combat encounters and a skill challenge.

There is no one thing that I can attribute this to, but there are several things I believe that help; the players are honoring my request to avoid powers that kill the flow of combat or are giant time sinks, no fighter classes, many minions, letting other players play their own class, and the usual DM being prepared.

Just thinking about dragonborns makes me cringe with their combat-stalling breath attack.

If this speed can be maintained past level 5, I’ll consider my changes to the game for this campaign a victory against those who made 4E into a role-playing version of D&D Minis.

Last session both Kergan and Admon made it to level 2 (barely) after only one session. Dale was already level 2 due to back-story (but at 0XP to start with).

Knowing the gaming community how I know the gaming community, several people are going to say things like “You’ve given out way too much XP!”, or “You’re obviously a Monty Haul GM!”, or “This is yet more of proof of how poorly designed 4E is!”

Once again I’d like to say “Shut the smurf up.”

When’s the last time you had a game where people went from level 1 to the teen levels?
(Just one for me)
How many campaigns have you played where people made it past level 6 in less than 6 months?
(Hundreds for me)
Have you ever seen me just give things to the players without good reason?
(Never)

I made the players earn that XP, through combat, role-playing, and choosing the right skills.

I have said it before and I’ll say it again; I don’t care if the PC’s gain a level a session, but I guarantee that every bit of that XP will be earned.

Of course what constitutes “earning XP” could be debated.

Several blog entries back I mentioned that anyone who makes a substandard PC is “stealing XP” from everyone else who made a decent PC. I was called to task by this blog that this is just another example of MMO games influencing D&D, as this is a common ideal in MMO games – when one player is slacking so everyone else has to work harder to get anywhere, or even to not die.

The difference in MMO’s is that it’s a hell of lot easier to boot said slacker and replace them.

(That reminds that I need to update the links on this blog.)

My reasoning for the “stealing XP” comment is from my experience in that some people will choose to make a poor excuse for a PC or my personal favorite from 3E, making a PC that is crap until he hits a certain level at which point he “matures” and can then contribute to group. Some people might call that an “investment”, I call it theft of XP and gaming time.

One positive thing about 4E (so far) is that it’s kind of hard to make a totally pathetic PC, but it is quite possible to make time-wasting PC.

But hey, you all let me know your thoughts.

Now let’s talk about The Valley, Session 2.

Our cast:
Admon (Scott); level 2 human war wizard
Ander (Dale); level 2 halfling storm sorcerer
Duncan (Justin); level 1 Silverhome dwarven cleric of Moradin
Edward (Aaron); level 1 human paladin of Brekaneth
Kergan (Mike); level 2 Silverhome dwarven rogue

We started the morning after last session, with the group being led into Mayor Xavius Ryan’s office by his clerk Lita.

The mayor greeted them all with enthusiasm, asked them how they were doing and other such pleasantries that politicians are all but required to do.

Duncan brought the mayor some Endarian Noble-wine, claiming that it was from his collection. It was totally untrue, but no one knew. And hey, if a 10gp bottle of wine helps your rise to power, it’s a small price.

It didn’t take long for the conversation to head to what special task he had for them.

Rushgar Hammersmith had asked the city council for help with the remnants of the Dead Dwarf Clan of goblins.

The dwarves had removed the goblins from Silverhome, but the goblins still raided occasionally. Recently the goblins had gone from a minor nuisance to an outright guerilla force that did hit-and-fade attacks on dwarven mining squads.

The city council denied the request for both money concerns and that since this occurring entirely underground; it would take too long to properly train non-dwarves to be competent.

So the mayor took it upon himself to take some money from his small discretionary fund to offer the party 5gp each to help Rushgar deal with the goblins. Of course the party accepted the task, and Duncan and Kergan declined any payment.

After the meeting was over Kergan asked to speak to him privately and the mayor asked to speak to Duncan privately.

Kergan offered his services to the mayor for any tasks that can’t be done through the more legal channels.
Xavius thanked him for his offer and requested that the next time that the guild had an internal dispute that they keep it out of the eyes of the public (see last session).

When that was finished the mayor privately talked with Duncan.

Xavius said that he saw some resemblances between the two of them (my actual words were “I see some of myself in you” – but you can imagine how that went over).

Mayor Ryan had another task for Duncan; to find a sample of fresh Zombie Elixir, and the formula for making it.
His logic – if that stuff made it into the drinking water then it would be disaster. But if he could get the formula to the proper people, then preventative measures could be taken to safeguard the city.
The only sticking point was that Duncan needed to do it discreetly, even from the rest of the group.

Of course Duncan agreed to help. If everyone knew about the stuff, the public panic could be uncontrollable.

By noon that day the entire party was within the main halls of Silverhome.

Compared to the scarred and strip-mined area that is the Ironmonger mines, Silverhome has become an icon of dwarven art and pride in their work.

There is artwork in the stone combines the stone’s natural colors mixed with silver for amazing grades of detail.

The artwork in the main hall shows the history of Silverhome from the first finding of the ore, through the creation of the Valley, the destruction of Silverhome, and finally the reclaiming of it.

They also meet Rushgar Hammersmith and the Hammer of Silverhome, a talking hammer (which has some prejudices against elves).

Rushgar tells them that this is a mission to exterminate the Dead Dwarf Clan once and for all and has the commander of the campaign, Kraven Thunderfist, explain the plans.

Over the next several days they’re looking to scout out where the central location of the goblin clan, then pen the goblins in, and corral them into one final fight where no goblins will come out alive.

The party, and several all-dwarf parties, start off simply scouting areas, then move on to actively pursuing goblins, lying traps and ambushes, and so on.

By the third day they notice more aggression from the goblins, possibly out of desperation.

Game-wise we do not run any of those fights. We instead fast forward to the fourth day.

They find that the goblins’ central home was an ancient temple to Moradin that the goblins had converted to a fortress.

To make it worse, the front gates could not be opened unless two sets puzzles were solved. Of course each puzzle area was protected.

The party’s job was to solve one of the puzzles while another force of dwarves did the same on the second “lock”, and a third force would directly assault the front gate to occupy the attentions of the goblins. When the gate was open the fourth and final group would charge into the temple and leave no goblin standing with everyone else becoming reserves, while the 2 lock groups would wait in reserve.

Encounter #1: Storming the East Wing
The party is forced to climb up a hill full of loose rocks (DC 25 athletics) or to travel along a series of switch-back trails while goblin archers shoot at them and melee goblins and terrain impede their travel.

This fight quickly turns in a ranged vs. ranged fight, as expected.
Edward leads the charge up the hill while the rest of the group picks off any goblins in the way, hopefully before Edward gets there.
Ander makes himself a target by taking out several goblins early, so both archers take him out by round 2. He almost stays down after he’s healed.
When they’re within range of the top, Ander uses Sorcerer’s Sirocco to fly Edward up the last bit of the hill. By then the only goblin remaining is an archer, and he surrenders immediately.

Encounter #2: Solving the Lock
At the top of the hill, behind the parapets the goblin archers hid behind is a diamond-shaped, octagonal stone with eight puzzles, one on each side.

We remain on the same initiative as before and this encounter begins at the end of the last one.
As a standard action a PC can try to figure out the puzzle of that side with a DC16 skill check depending on the side being faced (Arcana, History, Perception, and Religion – 2 of each) or a Thievery check could get any of them.
If a PC fails, they get a cumulative +1 per round for the next attempt, but it goes away if they leave that spot. Also, due to the small work area, aiding another PC does not help.

From the beginning of this encounter the party has 5 rounds to solve all 8 sides. If they do so, they get 625XP. If not, for each round after the fifth, the reward drops by 125XP (so 0XP by then tenth round).

Unfortunately, with the exception of Edward, it took everyone 3 rounds to make it to the platform. The party solves it on round 6.

The door opens and the party pulls on the wheel that opens their bit of the gate.

While some of the party listens to the combat raging through the facility (and hearing something about a witch doctor), the rest tend to the captured goblin for interrogation.
The goblin realizes that he’ll die no matter what so he picks on the Ander, who fries him in response.
Kergan: “Now you’re learning.”

While waiting in reserve, the party gets a short rest.

First the dwarven reserves are called in, but the goblins quickly intercept them, leaving only the party to take advantage of a chance to get at Grizshnak, the lead goblin. Kraven Thunderfist orders them to do so.

Encounter #3: The Throne Room
With this combat I felt that there should be utter chaos in the room, so I included a handful of glass beads that counted as combatants that were effectively semi-mobile walls. They were neither friend nor foe, they offered no flanking, took no attacks of opportunity, and were unaffected by powers. Every couple of rounds I’d pick a couple at random to move in a random direction 1 square, except for a few at the back of the room that blocked a rear escape for Grizshnak.

At the back of the room were 4 of the beads, at the end of every other round one of them would move out of the way. So by the end of round 6, Grizshnak would have an escape route. I did not tell the party this, but it didn’t matter.

Even though Grizshnak and his bodyguard were tough, they had no chance against the number of daily powers thrown at them.

The poor bodyguard (I named him Skankmasta 5000 to mess with Aaron who had to write that down on the initiative tracker and then say it every round) had the daylights beaten out of him. At one point he was blinded, poisoned, weakened, had -4 to attacks (not counting blinded), and was next to a Flaming Sphere and a Guardian of Faith.

When their leader died the rest of the goblins fell quickly.

Soon there were cheers of celebration and success ringing throughout the place.

Several odd bits of stolen loot were found, including a full crate of recently stolen black-bottle whiskey.

When the party were each offered bottles to join in toasts of celebration.

Foolish players; never trust a DM.

Encounter #4: The Fallen Rise

After the first toast everyone downed some of the whiskey, whiskey tainted with the Zombie Elixir.

Immediately everyone was doubled over in pain. Because they voluntarily drank it, the poison automatically hit and the damage was 5 points of poison damage a round, slowed, lose 1 healing surge a round, and weakened (save ends all). Oh yeah, since it was based in alcohol, dwarves don’t get their +5 to poison saves.

All my evil DM nastiness went to waste as everyone made their saves on the first round. But there was more going on.

From above more of the glowing elixir was pouring down the walls and flowing down the every so slightly slanted room (something I did mention to the party early on). All of the fallen dwarves and goblins rose as zombie rotters, and several dwarves succumbed to the poison becoming zombies themselves.

But once again my evil DM nastiness was thwarted.

The party was surrounded by zombies, as were the rest of the dwarves throughout the complex. But Admon rolled a 27 on initiative and was able to fry all but 3 of the zombie rotters and miraculously missed all of his allies with his Burning Hands spell. He then uses and action point to take out 2 of the 3 remaining rotters. Then Duncan turned undead and the fight was pretty much over.

During the whole of the 2 round battle everyone heard maniacal laughing coming from above.

Kraven told the party to get up there and stop whoever is causing this before it’s too late, as each dead zombie may re-rise, and each dead dwarf will re-rise.

The party rushes up stairs, not getting a chance to rest for the fifth combat.

Encounter #5: Growven, the Dark One

The party bursts open to the door to find several skeletal archers aiming at them, a pair of skeletons guarding and blocking the doorway, and Growven standing in a large “green room” with plants everywhere emitting the eerie green light that the goblin elixir has.

Growven, a pale-skinned goblin with black veins and an evil grin says, “Welcome to my playground.”

Apparently the party had used all of their karma in the previous encounters of the night because they started missing left and right giving me a lot of chances for Growven and his skeletal archers to freely attack the party.

Even though they do only 3 points of damage, when you get hit by 2-4 decrepit skeletons’ ranged attacks a round, it adds up fast.

Eventually the skeleton guards up front were taken out, then the rest of the skeletons and other aid Growven summoned were destroyed. That only left Growven and a vine horror he had held in reserve.

The party was drained of resources everywhere. They no healing, no encounter powers, no daily powers, and no magic item powers left but the party still won.

And when I say “won”, I mean with single digit hit points and a fear every round that the DM will crush them.

It was late so we fast-forwarded the ceremonies where Rushgar gives the PC’s each a medal (Star of Silverhome) and they return to the city after a stop at Crater Lake so Ander can get a sample of Mage-wort.

Among the loot gained, written in goblin was the formula for the Zombie Elixir. In the group, only Duncan can read the language. He pocketed it for his quest.

Quests completed:
Group: Goblin-solving [Level: 1. Reward: 100XP. Assist Silverhome in exterminating the Dead Dwarf goblin Clan.]
Duncan: Find the Elixir [Level: 2. Reward: 125XP, Holy Symbol of Moradin +2. Find a sample of and the exact recipe for the goblin’s Zombie Elixir.]
Ander: Reagents for Tarn [Level: 2. Reward: 125XP. Bring Sibylline Tarn a seal vial of goblin elixir and 2 mage-wort roots without destroying more than one in the process (DC16 Arcane or Nature)]

Quests added:
None

Next session: we have all but Dale.

The Valley #1

2009-07-17T07:10:00.000-04:00

Ok, this session went damn near perfectly.

The only “eh” bits would be me reading from my script and the confusion the group had when what was happening didn’t at first appear to match what I was reading to them (that’s because it wasn’t).

This session the only one missing was Aaron. Unfortunately for the group, specifically Mike (Kergan), Aaron has the group’s only defender. But since I knew this ahead of time, I was able to set up the encounters with that in mind.

Each session I’m going to try to focus on the story and/or quest line of at least one PC, and then move on another PC the next session.

To get the ball rolling, this session focuses on Kergan, Mike’s rogue.

Part of Kergan’s history is that he was part of the Thieves’ Guild and had a special contract to aid his fellow dwarves in Silverhome by searching mines for goblin-laid traps before the miners would go through the less traveled sections of the mines.

Towards the end of that contract, Kergan and Marko (Kergan’s boss) began having some disputes. On the final day of his contract he almost missed a gas trap that could have killed the entire mining crew. This trap was too sophisticated for goblins so Kergan immediately suspected Marko.

There was also Ander (Dale’s PC), a halfling storm sorcerer who appeared in the Valley during a thunderstorm. His curiosity, heroic actions, and odd appearance (silver-tinged skin, silver eyes, and silver hair) have made him a celebrity of sorts.

Next is Admon Silverblade (Scott’s PC), a human war wizard whose family is known to be professional bodyguards. Admon has chosen to venture out on his own to determine his own fate and perhaps set up his own business.

And finally there’s Duncan, a Silverhome cleric of Moradin who has his eyes on political power and letting other people do the “dirty work”.

We started the session with the PC’s in a warehouse and not yet together as a team.

The warehouse had small force of goblins led by a hexer, some confused thieves (Marko, Kergan, Simon, Lee), several corpses, a halfling hiding in a crate he shared with a corpse, and suspicious dwarven cleric of Moradin.

Here’s the script I read to the players (more or less), and note that they not yet played their PC’s at all:

“Ander, if there was ever a time to act, it’s now. You push yourself out the side of the crate you’re in and stand up. Several faces suddenly turn to look at you with surprise. You take this opportunity to step back and prepare for a fight and shout ‘Goblins raising zombies! Even thieves can’t be so stupid!’
Suddenly your brain does the math, and you desperately hope you’re not wrong about that dwarf.”

“Duncan, you knew you needed an opportunity before you could act, and it appears that the brain-fried halfling has just given you one. You open the door they’d forgotten to lock and step into the room.”

“Admon, with a bit of desperation, you are finally able to cut the last of your bonds. Luckily for you the stupid creatures didn’t take your stuff. You slide off the wooden plank you were tied to and shake the pain out of your hands. Now it’s time to give some payback to the goblins.”

“Kergan, you knew you shouldn’t have done this, but this was your first chance to talk to Marko. Now you realize that you’re the fourth and Marko is delivering bodies to a goblin to be animated as zombies. You pull out your weapon, realizing that you’re surrounded by people who mean to kill you.”

And thus the combat began.

I had set up the initiative order for this first fight allow for story telling and to get the fight going in the direction I wanted it to.

During the first round, just before each PC acted I read this bit to them.

To Ander:
“Yeah, these guys have to be up to no good. You can clearly hear them talking about easy money. One of the three, obviously their boss says “Come on. It’s time to go get our fourth.”
Your curiosity has once again overridden your common sense as you sneak outside to check out the situation. By the time you get there the three men are gone, but the crates are there.
The one in the middle has a loose side panel, so you open that one. What you see scares you.
What scares you more is what you do when you hear voices coming back around the corner.”

(This is the part where I had to tell the group that this particular bit of narration happened previously that day.)

To Duncan:
“Something isn’t right. Those guards aren’t standing the way guards usually stand. And why aren’t they questioning four men pulling a cart down the street on a day like today?
You hate to leave when the mayor is giving a speech, but this needs some investigation.
You tail the four men casually from good distance back until they stop after hitting a bump in the road. Two of them hurriedly put the crates back with a panicked look while one looks pissed and another confused.
A few moments later they enter a warehouse. You decide to sneak around to the front door of the place, just to make sure. It’s probably something Moradin would want you to do.”

To Admon:
“Sometimes being a mage for hire from the city council isn’t worth the 5 gold you’re going to get paid for this; if you get paid for this.
Your job was simple, check out the blocks near the temple to make sure there were no surprises.
Unfortunately there was a surprise and it landed on you.
You checked out this warehouse, expecting to find routine materials. Instead you find some ‘witch doctor’ goblin directing other goblins to set up some kind of mad scientist’s lab.
Before you know it goblins are all over you although several of the bastards paid a permanent price. But next you’re tied up on a plank, with the witch doctor hovering over you saying ‘I wonder what will happen with a live target. Either way you’ll be dead.’ Then he laughs evilly.”

To Kergan:
“If Lee and Simon weren’t here, you could question Marko out in public. Even he wouldn’t be dumb enough to pull anything that stupid on a day like today. But so long as the “moron twins” are around, you can’t talk about guild business. That’s a guaranteed death, and probably by pudding.
So you quietly do as you’re told and pull these carts, full of illicit goods for sure.
Then one of the twins hits a rock in the road and the top crate falls to the side. The lid pops off revealing the dead body of an old human man dressed in rags.
With a question on your tongue Marko cuts you off and says ‘Medics are willing to pay large amounts of gold for cadavers. Each of us is going to make 10 gold for each of these three people who would otherwise be tossed to a pudding.’
When Lee and Marko are done putting the crates back, it only takes a minute to reach your destination.
Once your eyes adjust your anger flares.
Marko says, ‘I didn’t know I’d be selling to a goblin. Just make sure we get paid in city coin.’
As Lee and Simon put the top crate on the ground Gornik says, ‘You were supposed to bring four bodies.’
Marko responds, ‘The fourth body will be here shortly.’
Then a halfling slides out of the middle crate shouting ‘Goblins raising zombies! Even thieves can’t be so stupid!’”

The combat had the party scattered through the twin-layered warehouse.
Ander killed Simon pretty fast, while Marko and Lee put several dagger-sized holes in Kergan.
Admon survived surprisingly well for a wizard surrounded.
And Duncan split his attention between the groups.

Marko focused the majority of his attention on Kergan. Gornik, the goblin hexer “witch doctor”, spent the first two rounds pouring a glowing green elixir onto the heads of corpses, who would then rise as zombies to attack who he told them to.

Because every opponent other than Gornik and Marko were minions, it was not long until just Gornik and Marko were the only ones left; and not much longer before Marko fled and Kergan and Ander gave chase.

Duncan took care of the crazed Gornik, while Admon had fallen through a trap door and had to deal with a pair of hungry giant rats.

Kergan knew he had to chase after Marko or all four of them may be “taken care of” by the guild.

Chasing after Marko was a non-combat encounter where they had to go through a series of skill checks while running through the streets. It’s a modified skill challenge from the core rules, adjusted to numbers I think are fair.

First they had to chase after him (athletics) or push themselves (healing surge). (Both had to spend a healing surge.)
Next was a chance for a shortcut if they thought of it (streetwise or athletics). (Both failed.)
Next was reading Marko’s body language/movements when he came to a T-intersection to determine which way he might head (insight). Only Ander succeeded.
Then Marko tried to lose them by running through a crowd of children playing in the street (acrobatics only). Amazingly, both make the roll.
Marko was now out of sight, but Ander quickly asks an old man which way he went (diplomacy). His roll gives both a success.
Finally they had to push themselves hard to catch up to him at the last minute (endurance or a healing surge). Both succeed.

They needed four successes out of of the six chances, and they got that.

Fortunately there were no fruit carts to knock over, or men carrying a large pane of glass crossing the streets.

When they catch up to Marko, Kergan grabs him and pins him to the ground, saying “If you tell me who set the trap, I’ll kill you quickly!”
Marko responds that it wasn’t his call; it was others who were mad at Kergan for not doing as he was told.
Kergan repeated his question with a dagger to Marko’s throat, this time Marko told him that “Sam” did it and that is all he knows.

To Ander’s surprise, Kergan killed Marko.

As he dragged Marko’s body back to the warehouse, Kergan explained his reasons for killing Marko to Ander. Simply put, it was a kill or be killed situation.

While that was going on, Duncan and Admon were chatting away while searching the warehouse. In addition to the usual adventuring spoils, they found a recently used alchemical setup with no chemicals remaining.

When the four of them got back together they introduced themselves to one another.

In the midst of that I had them roll 3 skill checks simultaneously, one for Perception, one for Religion, and one for Arcane all at DC18.

Admon was the only one to make it.

(I was surprised anyone made it. He got a 100XP award basically for lucky rolling and having skill points in the right fields.)

Admon pieced together the following:
There are a lot of warehouses in the area, most of them empty now that the construction of the Grand Temple of Brekaneth is done.
Rogues were delivering crates of corpses for money.
Those same corpses were being raised as zombies.
There was a large ceremony going at that very moment.

They rush out of that warehouse, but too late.

Other storage locations within several empty blocks had dozens of human and goblin zombies pouring out of them and heading straight to the temple courtyard while screams were beginning to fill the air.

Being heroes, the party rushed to the nearest screams and found themselves coming to the aid of an undefended section of the courtyard with 2 dozen zombies (minions) rushing towards the helpless people.

Using something I had done before with a one-shot this was a “save the townspeople” encounter.

Encounter #3
20 zombie rotters + 1-4 every round, coming from various roads
40 townspeople (minions, AC12 so zombies only miss 25% of the time) and they are panicked (not allies of the party – so can’t be moved through or offer flanking)
4 rounds – the party has hold back the zombies for 4 rounds before the “cavalry” arrives.
Bonus 500XP, -25XP per townsperson killed by a zombie, -500XP if a party member kills one.

The party starts in an area near the crowd, but not much closer to the crowd than some zombies.
Admon puts his Burning Hands to good use allowing the party a better chance to control the eastern half of the map.
Several zombies are left unchecked for two rounds, causing the death of 9 townspeople. That was put to an end when Kergan and Duncan took over the western half of the map while Ander pulled swing duty and took out any “overflow” zombies.

By the end of the second round the party has managed to control the zombies, though in some cases “controlling the zombies” means a PC must become a target for the zombies.

I considered that pretty good since the party had no real defender.

When the fourth round was over the undead in this area were few in number when several clerics and both paladins of Brekaneth arrived to guarantee there would be no more zombies.

And then the role-playing began.

While the clergy of Brekaneth were taking care of the wounded and the mess, several council members thanked the party for their aid.

Although with some of the members the thanks felt a bit hollow, when Mayor Xavius Ryan came over to thank them his thanks felt genuine. Plus he praised their quick thinking and teamwork.

Duncan took this opportunity to get in good with the mayor.

The Younger Paladin of Brekaneth, Sir Edward, seemed a bit arrogant to which the Elder Paladin of Brekaneth, Girvan Torl, told Edward to mind his humility.

The mayor then requested that the four of them and Sir Edward come to his office in the morning. He has some things that he needs taken care of and they may just be perfect for the job, starting with some help for Silverhome.

All agreed immediately, but Duncan and Kergan, both Silverhome dwarves, did so a bit louder than the other 2 PC’s.

Admon spent the rest of his day assisting in the clean up.

Justin did nothing to help with the clean up, as it’s both dirty and menial work (he’s a clean freak).

Kergan returned to the warehouse to make it look like Marko and his crew got into an argument and killed each other.

Duncan talked to Ilustaria Joron, a council member to find out what the mayor’s favorite cigar is. Ilustaria knew the dwarf’s intentions but she helped him anyway and informed him that the mayor likes Endarian Noble-wine (10gp a bottle).
Duncan immediately set out to buy the wine.

Ander also returned to the warehouse, but to get a sample of the glowing green elixir that Gornik used to raise corpses as zombies. The bit he found was no longer glowing, but he took it to his patron, Sibylline Tarn.

Sibylline is a powerful elven wild mage who has taught Ander to control his magic, but hasn’t been the nicest of parental figures.

After some tests, Sibylline told Ander that he needed a fresh amount of the goblin’s elixir and a couple of mage-wort roots before he could get any conclusive results.

And that is where we stopped.
It was short, but fun session.

Quests completed:
Admon – Free Advertising [Level: 1. Reward: 100XP. Defeat an enemy in combat with at least a dozen witnesses from the Valley.]
Ander – None
Duncan –Networking [Level: 1. Reward: 100XP. Meet and converse with the mayor of the city of the Valley.]
Kergan – Confront Marko [Level: 1. Reward: 100XP. Confront Marko about the poison gas trap to determine who set it.]

Quests added:
Ander – Reagents for Tarn [Level: 2. Reward: 125XP. Bring Sibylline Tarn a seal vial of goblin elixir and 2 mage-wort roots without destroying more than one in the process (DC16 Arcane or Nature skill challenge)]
Kergan – Find Sam [Level: 2. Reward: 125XP. Find the Sam Marko was referring to.]

Next session should be all of us.

The Valley - the New Campaign

2009-07-10T13:19:00.001-04:00

Ok, I’m going to have to make sure this whole new Valley thing doesn’t suck.

I’ve put too much work into.
I’ve talked way too much about it.
I’ve asked the players to do more work than usual.

But I think all of the work will pay off.

I’ve almost finished the adventure for the first night and I hope it goes off as I plan it.

All of my previous attempts at grand beginnings to a campaign came off a bit lacking, usually due to a missed detail. Not that the campaigns were bad, just the first nights weren’t as kick-ass as I had wanted.

This time I believe I have that covered. I’m simply not going to do anything over-the-top…yet.

The only thing that could bring down the night is a player not getting in to it. This shouldn’t be a problem unless a player totally hates their setup and decided to not say anything to me the past week.

Everyone, eventually sent me their back-stories, and modified them to give each PC something more than just “I’m a wizard looking for ancient magic. I have 100gp, and 22 build points.”

Justin, somewhat surprisingly had the best back-stories, even though he only made 2 PC’s (and I’m not saying he was the only one with good stories).

He gave one of his PC’s claustrophobia (minor case). I added special rules for the condition and a personal quest that would remove the condition.

Aaron will be unable to play the first session of the game, which makes introducing his PC a bit easier.

Here’s our cast of characters:

Mike will be playing Kergan Pathfinder, a dwarven rogue with experience in dealing with goblin-laid traps in the mines of Silverhome.

Scott will be playing Admon Silverblade, a young human wizard looking to make his own fortune and not use his family’s.

Dale will be playing Ander, a popular halfling sorcerer hero who mysteriously appeared in the Valley on the wings of a thunderstorm.

Justin will be playing Duncan, a Silverhome dwarven priest of Moradin who is on a path to power.

And finally Aaron will be playing Edward Winston Wootenmorgan VII, a human paladin of Brekaneth who feels he isn’t getting the respect her deserves.

The first session will be set at the time of the ceremony for Edward to receive his last blessings and be granted the holy arms and armor due the younger paladin of Brekaneth.

This next bit is some general information about NPC’s, organizations, and places within the Valley.

Brandon Accord
Brandon is one of the seven city council members and the first person from outside the Valley to obtain such a position. Many credit his charisma and genuine good nature for his elected position.

Father Jason Adrek
Father Jason represents the Church of Brekaneth in the city council.
In recent years he has toned down his rhetoric for the cleansing of all goblins, orcs, and arcanists. But it generally assumed that he still thinks it, he just doesn’t say it.

Audhild Balderk
This disgusting, old, fat, greedy, ironmonger dwarf woman is tolerated for three reasons: She’s a master potion maker, she’s a seer, and she has helped the Valley many times in her long years there.

City Council
The city council is a blending of several cultures forced together for survival. In recent years the incessant bickering and power playing of the council forced the creation of a mayoral post in the hopes that a single person can take care of the unimportant and mundane tasks that the council itself can’t deal with in the midst of their arguing.
Beyond that the council itself has worked well for a long time thanks to the hard work of its members for the past 200+ years.
It consists of 7 total members; 1 from the elven community, 1 from the Ironmonger dwarves, one from the Church of Brekaneth, and 4 elected from the main populace of the city.

Crater Lake
This circular lake sits near the center of the Valley and is now believed to be the location where the great spell was cast so many years ago.
While the water is potable, it has the smell of goblins to it as some of the water comes from areas inhabited by that unclean race.

Death’s Head Crag
This is simply a large rock perched above the city. It has a vaguely skull-shaped appearance.
Originally several buildings were built in the location, but much weathering and a small earthquake appears to have weakened its perch.
The subsequent drop in land value means that only the desperately poor and unseemly people live there.

Dhryveg Gorn
Dhryveg is the leader of the Ironmonger dwarves and is well known to be the personification of opportunism and greed. His slick tongue, quick mind, and ruthless business acumen has made him the richest person in the Valley.
He was once on the city council, but resigned when allegations of him supplying weapons to renegade members of the Church of Brekaneth were made public. After his resignation he was never charged with any crimes, something he said was proof that he had done nothing wrong and his resignation was only to calm emotions in the Valley for the good of all.

Horgred Gorn
Horgred is the nephew of Dhryveg Gorn who replaced him on the city council once Dhryveg resigned.

Guard Towers
Two tiers of guard towers ring the exposed side of the city.
The first tier is a long series of walls interspersed with guard towers approximately every 500’ and surrounded the city where there were not any of the rocky spires from the Valley to protect the city.
The second tier of towers was meant more for scouting and guard posts to protect those not living within the city, such as farmers.
Now the majority of the second tier towers lie abandoned due to economic cutbacks, or were bought from the city by wizards looking for some privacy outside the city.

Rushgar Hammersmith
Rushgar is the leader of the Silverhome dwarves.
In addition to his never-ending work in Silverhome, he seeks to purge the Valley of goblins, who always seem to find secret ways into the extended network of mines of Silverhome.

Thlyria Isara
Thlyria is the elven representative to the city council and has been since Ivellios Galanodil’s disappearance.

Ilustaria Joron
Ilustaria has been an elected member of the city council off an on for six decades. Her electors tend to be from the non-human populace living in the city.

Mirtulessa
This elven lady is a fierce protector of the Valley, and leader of the Perceptors.
Her tactical prowess saved the Valley from the Sordimar horde as much as any archmage.

William “Bull” McAllister
Owner of the Roaring Bull Inn
He bought the rundown drinking hole known as The Golden Grog a few years back. He rebuilt the place and his eye for ne’er-do-wells helped changed the way the clientele in short order.
The Roaring Bull Inn is now known as a place for all.
In spite of his aggressive nature, he is a very good person and will go out of his way to help someone, so long as they’re willing to help themselves.

Perceptors
Perceptors were once the crowd control police of the city. They were in place to both protect the city from goblin attacks, but also to put down any riots that came as a result of lack of foot or rebellion.
In the years since, there has been no need for insurrection control, and the Perceptors have become more defensive in nature.
Though Perceptors are fighting mages (usually wizards with fighting multiclassing) they are not artillery type. Their roles tend to be controlling battles and letting soldiers do what is needed.

Polaris
Polaris is the scarred silver dragon that was once the “monster of Silver Lake” that was rarely seen, and generally considered myth.
Now he is a rarely seen and unofficial protector of the city. Usually those sent looking for him never find him.

Mayor Xavius Ryan
Xavius is a charismatic half-elf who won his office with a smile.
Mayor Ryan is the stereotypical politician, who always smiles, knows the right things to say, and is very well liked.
Since this new position of mayor is only given menial jobs the city council doesn’t want to deal with, the position is mostly ceremonial.

Silver Lake
Silver Lake was named for the special way it reflected moonlight with a more silvery sheen than expected.
It is currently believed that the presence of Polaris caused this effect.
The waters are otherwise very cool and clean due to much mountain water.
Goblins consider the place haunted.

Tonus
Possibly the mightiest archmage in the Valley, Tonus is the representative for what’s left of Magus Sanctus, an organization seeking to keep magic viewed positively by putting it to good use in the world.
Tonus is very old, even for an eladrin, but remains very active.
He fights the ennui of the ancient with puzzles and games, and enjoys watching children play during recess. Several accident-prone children owe him much.

Girvan Torl
Girvan is the Elder Paladin of Brekaneth, and makes an imposing figure when he’s fully armored and speaks with his deep and authoritative voice.
He lives the idol life that a paladin of Brekaneth should, but has been known to make it known that he is not happy with particular aspects of his church, specifically how the rich have more sway in the church than they should.
It is slightly lesser known that he considers the soon to be Lesser Paladin of Brekaneth an example of the rich interfering in church matters.
Him and Mayor Ryan have long been friends, and they take each others council quite seriously.

Hilfan Tryst
Hilfan is an ancient human who should have retired from being on the city council years ago, but she refuses to step, or possibly even die.

Aegris Zahn
Aegris is an elected member of the city council. Many consider his recent election to be a fluke as his supporters are not what can be called honorable citizens.

Zenith
This silver-haired half-elf is the second in command of the Perceptors and step-son of Ivellios Galanodil.

The Order of the Mithril Dolphin #14

2009-07-06T12:38:00.001-04:00

Well Brian won’t be joining us any longer.
His wife is due to have a baby soon so his Friday night gaming has come to an end with us.

Last week we had a session with Scott as DM for another one-shot session.
Dale couldn’t make the game on time but when he showed he had a nasty elf bow ranger modeled for ranged attacks while avoiding melee. His crits with his +3 vicious greatbow were disgusting.

Scott’s combats were tough yet good. His only flaw was giving us a tough fight but not giving us an opportunity to rest before the next, even tougher fight. The result was a horribly tough fight that made every decision and roll of the dice incredibly crucial where more than one PC dropped and recovered in some way or another.

In the end Ergot died.

Scott tried to flub a few things once he realized how bad things were going. I told him not to. The fight was tough, but not un-winnable. If he obviously threw the fight, then any victory we had would be a hollow one. But if we won on our own merit, that victory would have been considered an awesome fight where we were challenged to our limits.

Here’s a little secret when you find out you’ve gone over the top with a combat – cheat in secret, only in little bits, and only when it’s your fault. If you have a DM’s screen, then you only hit half the time and you only crit on someone you know can take the hit to keep the illusion of legitimacy. If you aren’t using a screen then shave a few points off of your to hit roll. If your players know the monsters too well and catch your “mistakes”, then oh well, slaughter them for not running and call it a “too smart for your own good tax”.

You must maintain the illusion that you’re not cheating 100%. And the best way of maintaining the illusion is to rarely do it, so only cheat when you’ve made a mistake.

I believe this session we were all level 8.
Shamash (Aaron), dragonborn fighter/cleric, defender
Sephira (Scott), dragonborn cleric, leader
Wildeyes (Me), halfling ranger/rogue, striker
Gorak (Mike), human barbarian, striker
Stout (Justin), dwarf fighter, defender (his original 4E PC)

Oh um, right, I forgot to criticize 4E.

Screw the new rust monster!
If it eats a magic item, you can raid its stomach for 100% of its value in residuum.

I smell an exploit there.
“Let’s see – we can disenchant that sword we’ve been using since level 2 and get 20% of its value or we can feed it to Rusty and then make him vomit up the full 100% of its value.”

For this final session of this campaign before its hiatus Dale used the death of Ergot as the MacGuffin to get us to travel back to Hillside after talking to Sammath Narr one more time, while saying that Stout was brother to Ergot to get him included quickly enough.

But before that we started off with a mook fight against some galeb duhrs first. The only things interesting about the fight was that Dale hates the ranger daily utility power that allows you pick people in your party that get to act in a surprise round and that Wildeyes was beaten up pretty bad by the galeb duhrs special area attack. Anywhere Wildeyes went, he was almost guaranteed to take some damage.

Soon we were back and talking to Sammath Narr. Due to my poor recollection of the events (and it didn’t help I’ve missed 2 sessions involving this storyline) I was unaware that we were about to talk to an oracle.

Mike had notes that reminded us of our goals and such. One storyline, centered on Brian’s PC, will either be abandoned or rewritten. The two other storylines right now are getting more information about the Cult of the Ebony Obelisk and the heavy bandit activity around Hillside.

Sammath had the oracle answer two questions rather than one, since one of our group had fallen.

The Cult of the Ebony Obelisk turned out to be followers of a demon known as Orcus (who apparently is not well known in this world).

The whole Oceanside/Hillside issue is about taxes. Oceanside has a large army and pays for it with high taxes from surrounding regions. Recently the roads have become bandit heavy and Oceanside has done nothing to stop it. This has lead to many in Hillside to demand secession from Oceanside’s power, but the mayor will not do so as the count of Oceanside will send its armies to crush such a rebellion.

The oracle shed a little more light on that – the count of Oceanside is undead. Hopefully that information will be enough to get the mayor to do something.

After that Wildeyes upgraded his weapons.

Now this is where dual-wielders get shafted. Bow rangers really only need one magical weapon while dual-wielders need 2. Yeah, I figure that two different magic items could have two separate special powers, and you don’t need ammunition, but I still feel there’s an issue.

Here’s a blatant example: Dale gave his bow ranger the previous session a +3 vicious greatbow while Wildeyes this week got two +2 vicious short swords. Now we’re ignoring that Dale has a greatbow itself as that’s costs a feat, and we’re ignoring that I’m using mere short swords as the halfling benefits of small size have paid off. Dale will get the same number of attacks as Wildeyes, but will consistently do more damage and hit more often thanks to the +1 bonus difference and the extra 1d12 rolled on a crit. Am I whining – probably, but it’s something for me to remember in the future – DM’s need to make sure that strikers have consistently equal or better weapons than the rest of the group.

In other words, don’t give your cleric a +3 vicious flail if your rogue is using a +1 dagger.

Of course this session it didn’t matter; I didn’t crit the whole night.

Next it was time to leave the Underdark and return to Hillside.

And once again we were ambushed in a “mushroom forest”. That place and King’s Road seems to pretty dangerous.

We were surrounded by a pair of sword spiders, some nasty spider swarms, led by a drow. All of these things were fast (+9 to initiative minimum) and they had a surprise round, once again mitigated by Wildeye’s level 6 daily utility power that allowed Gorak and Sephira to act.

In addition to these things being fast, they were also hard to hit. But it was an egg-shell type of AC: high AC + low to moderate hit points.

We ended up ignoring the near 30 AC drow while pounding the spiders. Eventually the drow fled.

Eventually we made it back to Hillside and Ergot was raised. He then went out for a night of drinking and fun, but disappeared.

We were eventually given a note to meet some people who had him at one of the many inns of Hillside.

We knew it was a trap, but we triggered it, though Aaron brought up a good point:
Dale either overestimates how much we care about Ergot, or he underestimates how much we’re willing to get into fights.

Answer: a little from column A and a little from column B.

So we went to the inn and along the way were dead people scattered everywhere just outside the place.

The bloody mess led right up to the inn and inside, ready to attack, and in no mood to talk with us:
3 Battle Wights
1 Battle Wight Commander
4 Vampire Spawn
1 Vampire Lord

After the first round we realized we in bad shape.

We had somewhat scattered in the room, attempting to do our usual “defender up front, strikers surround” tactics going after better tactical targets. That ended fast when we found out their attacks immobilize, slow, and/or weaken you and they have high AC’s.

On round 2 we switched to “target that explosion and fire”. In other words we took risks to get ourselves into positions where we would all focus our attacks against one target, regardless of reasonable risks because we had to take these guys down one at a time.

First the spawn died, as minions tend to do.
Then we focused on the commander until he dropped.
Then we focused on the vampire lord until he slipped away from melee.
Then the battle wights dropped one at a time.

What started off as a tough fight quickly turned into a somewhat easy one.

Finally the vampire lord ran.

I’m guessing he’s off to tell his Strahd-like boss that we’re not as easy as he’d hoped.

And thus ends our time in Hillside for a little while.

Our next session will come in two weeks in the Valley, or as Dale calls it “Severe World”.

The Valley Part 6 - Waiting for Players

2009-06-18T12:42:00.002-04:00

The time for the Valley is coming up soon enough.

Summer activities are messing with our sessions as much as usual.

Dale’s schedule will be back to its erratic phase, starting in August and ending in December. So he will obviously have to stop running his game for a good deal of time.

He wants to resume the game some time (possibly after the Valley), but from experience, I give that less than a 50/50 chance. Things change too much to make solid plans, but I’m certainly not against returning to the Order of the Mithril Dolphin.

So that means we’ll be playing the Valley in early-mid July.

Next on today’s menu – Why am I playing 4E if I dislike it so much?

First and foremost, I don’t hate D&D 4E.
I’m just not happy with a good chunk of the crap they’ve served us this time around; overlong combats, increasingly more complex powers, every class is so balanced that they are all equally bland and boring, nerfing monsters to boredom so they don’t hurt so much (rust monster), not rolling for hit points, and so on.

I see a lot in the game that has potential, but there was a lot of potential in the suck-fest known as 2E.
In 2E we had house-ruled so many things that the actual rules in the book were all but ignored.

A year ago my liking of 4E was high. Now it is just a hair above 2E.

“So why don’t you play one of the other versions of D&D, or a different game entirely?”

- Because I am not the only person in the group.
I’d like to play Basic D&D, Dale would probably like to go back to 1E AD&D, Mike is happy with 4E, and so on.

- Because when we lose players, very few potentially new players will be interested in playing an old version.
D&D is the most known RPG and therefore has a better chance to pull in new players than any others. By not playing the latest version, you lose more than you gain.

- Because no one wants to drop $40 on a book without knowing they’ll get their $40 out of it.
I’ve literally bought books for a new RPG, only to play one game of it. Bye-bye money.

I’d rather use my experience and others to determine ways to fix or work around 4E.

Others have worked up ways to improve social skill challenges. I’ll just use role-playing and then have the players make the appropriate checks at certain points.

There are plenty of ways to speed up the combat.

And you can bet your ass the morons who nerfed the rust monster can kiss my hairy ass. When I use that monster it will not be some pathetic creature that has to hit the defender several times before it hurts. It will be the same exact creature it was before 4E – a force that makes the fighter jump behind the wizard, just like in the drawing in the 1E AD&D DMG.

“What about the all the equipment that gets ruined by the rust monster? It kills the game.”
Shut up.
You’re not dealing with some amateur DM that does crap to his players out of some immature control freak need to be malicious to the players and let them know who’s the boss.
I’ve played under those DM’s and they suck at it. I consider them to be worst than Monty Haul DM’s by far.
If I throw a rust monster at the party, you can bet money on there being a fair compensatory reward afterwards in addition to standard rewards.

Now you’re saying “Ok, I’m still waiting for information about the Valley.”

Well so am I.

I tasked the players to make three character back-stories so I can prepare a game based around the characters. Then I give them parameters to give the 3 characters stats.

“Why three?”
A lot of reasons really.
The last time I had players send me back-stories we ended up with no healers. This helps prevent that from happening.
It allows the player to have a back-up PC, just in case.
It spreads the work around. I’m keeping one of the PC’s for myself to be used for my own needs as a DM.

What if the player doesn’t make three PC’s?
Then he obviously is not vested in making the game entertaining, so I won’t be putting any effort into making his PC’s part of the story.
No quests, no special stories, no special consideration from the DM to help him out in the form of treasure.
If a player is just showing up to the game to be entertained and thinks I’m going to be a conduit to throw monsters at him so he can kill them and take their stuff, then that player is doomed to disappointment.
This isn’t high school D&D.
I’ve had actual Valley sessions where there was only a single die roll the whole night.
The campaign will not be a simple formula of 1 – snag plot hook, 2 – fight #1, 3 – fight #2, 3 – boss fight, 4 – return with plot hook item, 5 – reward, then next week repeat.

So far I’ve received a few histories, and some partial histories. At least a two of them did not even bother to read my “campaign packet” or even the blog entries so far.

Now once everyone has sent me their histories and we’ve hammered out any issues with the histories, I’ll be giving them special parameters that they can use to make their PC’s. Those parameters will be special abilities, penalties, equipment, and so on.

Then I added three starting quests to each PC suited to their stories. These quests can be as simple as killing ten goblin minions to as complex and open ended as “find out more about the dreams”.

Then everyone should make 3 PC’s while I populate the NPC’s I’ll need to get the game going.