Carl Cramér's page

I used teh "Palace of Plenty" Dungeon adventure for this. The survivors had closed themselves off in their own sub-realm.

Things are supposed to get considerably better as time goes on (often at the PC's hand).

I seem to recall Dark-sun was like that.

Independent development like this are better in that regard - its much easier to discard what you don't like for a loose set of ideas than from a full setting. At the same time, you can be inspired by others' ideas.

Now there is more team min maxing- ie. figuring out how to combine powers in effective tactical ways, and a lot of this experimentation goes on during combat (though not in a slow down the game bad way), as opposed to during character creation.

What really happens in a setting like this is that the monsters move out of the dungeons and move in as neighbors. The safe havens are less safe, the wilderness is more dangerous. Points of light!

I was looking at more of a "players patch up the setting" campaign that an infinite apocalypse, but making Greyhawk permanently be zombie-land works too. The problem with that is that so much of the original setting material is lost - I want Greyhawk to still be Greyhawk, just jolted. I generally have a lot of either light or at least hope of light in my settings. But the difference is one of degrees; the same setting material works for both. I just like a dynamic world where the PCs make a real difference, and that is easier in a world that is more messed up. I feel it is actually easier to be good in a world that is so strongly polarized.

That said, I liked the idea of plague locations and strains of savage fever.

I've been thinking that a World of Greyhawk where the Savage Tide failed might be a cool place to adventure. I know Greyhawk is no longer something Paizo can work on, but I figure these fora can still be a place of fan discussion.

If we stay with the campaign arc's number of shadow pearls, I think they were only about 70 - considering the chaotic organization behind the Savage Tide, that would hardly be enough to cause more than a wave of terror. But imagine a genuinely successful Shadow Pearl blowout - with most large cities blown away. The situation is in many ways similar to the postapocalyptic games that bloomed around 1985. Most larger cities have been "nuked", but important people got away (save DCs are modest). The area of destruction is not huge (only a mile in radius each); the outlying areas of large cities would be spared, only to be savagely attacked by transformed inner city citizens - many still somewhat recognizable. Many cities would be "zombie towns" full of the transformed and those infected. Others will have curtained-of badlands where all the monsters live. Small bands of infected would prowl outlying areas, attack outlying settlements and provide a general menace. The largest cities, like Greyhawk, Dyvers, and Rel Astra, would probably survive because of their powerful guardians and large size. Rural states, like Nyrond, Furyondy, and all hinterland areas, would hardly be affected at all. The emerging city culture of Greyhawk would be setback, but not destroyed. Trade would grind to a halt with so many hubs of communication disrupted, but would soon resume at a much reduced scale.

Recovery could take decades - or maybe just years, depending on resources and heroes to lead. It would be a points of light setting initially, but with a known map and known objectives. Nations would come in to "succor" wounded cites, no doubt re-igniting old political conflicts like the independence of Dyvers. And once the old safe places are saved, the larger world looms.

Monsters in the hinterlands would not be affected at all, and would start raiding the weakened civilized areas. Ius' state seems largely rural, but would probably be disrupted by the loss of key marshaling fortresses. Also, the infected in this area would be particularity vicious because of the high concentrations of military force there. The Great Kingdom would be largely intact but politically beheaded; it is a rural economy, but all the political power is in urban areas. A great opportunity for an insurgent campaign in either of these places.

And finally, there is old monkey-boy himself and his minions, greatly strengthened and with a new unity. The chaos would engender apocalyptic cults, many demon-worshippers. The cults of various demon lords would be warring against each other. Powers like Iggliw that opposed the new king of demons will be in hiding and might have to be sought out for their knowledge. There will be a civil war among the succubi, with a weakened Malcaenet rivaled by the likes of Red Shroud and Shami-Amourae.

Overall, it will be a very chaotic world, and adventurers thrive on chaos.

Ok, since there are no PMs here: if you want a 4E writeup of the Swords of Sin geared to level 15-25 and using names and inspiration from a Rise of the Runelords Wiki I browsed, send me an email at cramer dot carl at gmail dot com.

I got around to making a 4E artifact writeup for the swords, levels 15-25. If someone wants it, sent me a PM.

Want to investogate the Aranea? Sure you can!

This is typical of the Isle of Dread - there are WAY more adventure hooks than you can investigate in 6 levels.

This is NOT a complaint, mind you.

The Auto Fail - Action Point idea is very good and might make many DM's games better. If its actual AP you hand out, you need to lift the once per encounter limit, however.

If I ran this again, I'd add more chaos. Rowing packs of demons under no-ones command. Random eruptions that rain hot magma on the bridges with a few rounds warning. The way I ran it, it felt almost deserted.

of course, doing this might make it too protracted a slugfest for a party like yours for mine, who are very good at sneaking, it would probably just have been flavor.

Tim, what level are your players by this time to face epic treats?

Playing this in 4E now as a part of Rise of the Runelords. Its not as interesting or story-ish as the rest of the adventure path, but my players are having a blast with it - including the 4E hater/roleplayer. A little odd.

Anyways, has anyone attempted to make a 4E artifiact writeup for the swords?

He could do that... or he could let the barbarian's player learn the value of teamwork the hard way. My experience has been that players who are bound and determined to go tearing off on their own do so until they have the lesson of "Your characters can and will die when they go off too far from their buddies" the hard way. One of my current players took two Adventure Paths to learn this lesson.

Not everyone enjoys a game of constant tactical challenge; sometimes its good to just be the hero and face challenges that are dramatic but not all that dangerous. It all depends on what the players are looking for in their game.

I loved it, and its by far the best adventure path - Curse of the Crimson Throne might be close.

A bit more pirates on the way down would have been nice. My favorite parts were in Sasserine - they actually led to a Sasserine spin-off campaign.

I came late into the thread - seems a lot fothis is already outdate - wrote the reply before reading the whole thread :(

The trick, I should think, is to make them think that they're trying to hit the beach. For example, when the storm springs up, have them make their sailor checks and reward success with a chance to take the Wyvern to safety. Describe the beach as a sheltered cove they've sited. When they crash into the reef, give them another sailor roll to get free. When they finally get to the beach, it'll be because they made their rolls, not in spite of them.

On the trip, having one PC ship and one NPC ship might work well. Put whoever is not central to the plot on the Nixie, then arrange frequent social visits between the ships - dinners and such. Since one ship witll have a lot of female officers and your group seems predominantly male, these visits should be welcome. This also concentrates the social RP to certain situations.

I'd think the Rowyn plot would not work as written for you. As an alternative, have Rowyn on the Nixie too. Let her fool the NPCs there into suspecting each other, including Lavina. There simply is no fair arbiter on the Nixie that everyone trusts to run an investigation. Then have Lavina call in the PCs as investigators.

I can actually se4e an in-game reason for the low security. Security costs, and a burglar that broke into the bank would probably not be much trouble by any personal security the Vanderborens could afford. So, what they're after are confidence tricksters... who presumably would be bad at fighting, and thus the Iron Cobra would suffice.

of course, due to the DnD lab milieu, a good confidence trickster is also a decent fighter...

I had the pets attack the archer in back - which led to two quite interesting sub-fights. The sorcerer henchman was providing close support to keep the pets of the archer ranger, who was hitting the big bad, supporting the melee players who were getting kind of mauled. I love it when space matters in a fight. Shooting a bow balancing on top of a statue is quite a cool stunt.

But this might not work, depending on your party setup.

This is the eternal problem of the Lab Milieu in DnD. First level characters need first level challenges - which often does not make sense. Tenth level characters rarely fight first level challenges - that would be booring.

This is more and more becoming my main problem with DnD in all its incarnations.

I could never grasp the 3.5 Artificer. I loved the idea, but the mechanics were just too convulted, confused, and lacking in power for me. I've not had a chance to try the 4E Artificer, but it seems a lot less confusing to me.

My players are also with the Dawn Council (some of them). They did a great show of trying to redeem Rowyn, and partially succeeded (as posted earlier, she is now a crown princess in the South Kingdom).

Maybe a PC kinsman of hers would be interested in such a plot.

If the players insist on trying to squeeze the ship economics for money, make them pay risk wages at five to ten times normal rate.

The main problem my Olangru (and his mates) ran into was a lack of Concentration skill. Snce teleport is spell-like, it can be interrupted, and with no Concentration skill it WILL be interrupted.

Lightless Depths is one of the weaker adventures in STAP. But it still a good adventure; STAP is just so much above the norm that this one fell below the standards the adventure path has set.

Its pretty railroaded, and the motivation for some to the things you do at the end is pretty weak. If you do anything, it should be to give your players the information and lassitude to figure out their own solutions to the problems presented - particularly which targets to hit at the end.

My players fought over this for several sessions.

Four Roses and Red Roses were the two suggestions that came closest to being accepted.

In the end, they did not take on a name.

Choosing between Martial Power and Arcane Power, I'd definitely take the later. The martial classes are fine without Martial Power; the arcane classes really need Arcane Power.

I don't think its really a good idea. Yes, there are sanity-blasting scenes, especially in the later parts. But Savage Tide is written for the players to win. Sanity rules are written for the players to lose in the end.

Still, you game, your choice.

On the edition war thing: A whole lot of troll feeding going on here. Best tactics against regenerating critters is to report them and then starve them.

That's a lovely story. Shows rituals can actually be used in action. One of my players really loves the kind of magic rituals bring, but not how they work - this is an example that they can work despite the casting times.

Om Mommy; I would make her a Controller with Controller hp. The three sons in the barns are still Skirmishers. The idea to resurrect her sons is great, tough at 10 hp each they might not stay around for long.

A bit of thread necromacny going on here, is it not? :)

Didn't WotC say that they'll start by marketing the game at older players, then try and recruit new blood starting in 2010? It will be very interesting to see if this actually happens.

Back tot he original topic; I like the change. I like that Dragon is free for everyone to read while Dungeon is not. Perhaps this might even mean that Dragon will go back to paper some day; if it is made open enough to be a lounge magazine for gamers.

I am sad that this will probably mean less adventures in Dungeon, but to be honest I'd prefer fewer, better adventures over the glut of mediocrity it has had. And filling out Dragon more is probably good, I find 4E dragon better an more useful than 3E dragon.

You're right, she should be roled as a controller. Her brute role was a by-product of her being an ogrekin, but even with its application she remains a much more obvious controller than brute.

I find it odd that this fight became so grindy for your group. This fight went very smoothly for my own group. Were the undead listed in the encounter used in the fight? Mammy isn't designed to be her own threat. She's supposed to keep the party in disarray while her undead tear them apart. Those undead are quite strong on their own and Mammy herself should be reasonably assured of having at least one PC dominated per round, unless she's being controlled to a standstill. How did her dominate ability work for your group? My group had a rogue and barbarian, and the strength of their at-will attacks led me to keep them dominated as much as I could. I also dominated the party paladin at one point and had her use lay on hands on Mammy to give her a little extra staying power.

In the end, we did a storytelling finish, with the players moving outside, opening the windows, and killing mommy with ranged attacks - it was getting very late in the evening at this point. I docked them 3 healing surges for the group and said she went down after a long fight.

Talking to the slime demons. They just discovered the dragon is out there.

And Mammy Graul herself was perfect...

This is one of the few fights where I had to handwave things and say "pay X healing surges and win" - it got that grindy. The other such fight was against the end boss in Burnt Offerings.

My players just woke up the dragon at Divided's Ire. They cast control winds to cover their passage across the bridge. The storm lasts for hours and is big enough to block all bridges but one and the volcano . They then ran from the enemies still inside and ended up inside before the dragon awakened.

So, what will it do now? Its a pretty stupid beastie (Int 8) and lacks any Spellcraft or Knowledge skills, so it doesn't really know what happened, only that a tornado is throwing chunks of its beloved magama all over the place. I guess this is the kind of thing that can happen in the Abyss, but hasn't in a long time, so the dragon is too pissed to just go back to sleep.

Should it start tearing up the buildings? The tornado is mildly dangerous to it (Fort save +26 vs DC 30), so it would begin with some building not in the storm, which basically gives it a 50% chance to pick the building the players are in. They would have plenty of warning as it would take a bit of time to get through the very solid roof.

It could also simply hover outside and wait - sooner or later someone will walk outside. Its not like dragons lack patience.

As an aside, there are no demons outside any longer - most were swept away by the tornado and ended up outside the Forbiddance effect. They are very happy now - but won't be so happy when the secondary compulsion hits them, probably going to great pains to get even for this cruel "prank".

You mean they whimped out? How did they go with the "Wreck"?

As long as the match between god and favored soul matches thematically (and it certainly seems to here), I don't see this as a problem at all. Remember that, unlike clerics, a god chooses a favored soul directly. Gods(s) move in mysterious ways. Boccob might see qualities in this characters soul that the character cannot see himself. Or maybe Boccob has something he wants done - like preventing the ascension of Demogorgon in STAP - and doesn't really care about the inner life of the tool he chooses for the task.

I ran it straight after the siege of Farshore. No problems really, except I had to provide a motivation for my players to first go there and then go back.

Actually, it turned into kind of a random event. My player's wanted to scout out Scuttlecove, and I ran the scenario hook more or less as written on the way there. In the end, they established an ally and decided the place was too tough a nut to crack.

Congratulations!

We did session #52 yesterday, but I put in a lot of filler material. We are just arriving at Divided's Ire.

These monsters are very conventional and old school - I guess they correctly judged the reaction to the weird stuff in the MM1.

Problem is, I don't think she could pull it off alone. Also, my players are supportive of her (some of them at least) because she is cool and non-evil. Yes, they are a pretty chaotic bunch.

One idea is to give her the Crystal Ball with Telepathy to help her organize her faction.

This would likely all be off-stage events. Also, Harliss is by no means reformed - she is still unabashedly CN and every inch a pirate, making no pretenses or excuses. She is not good, just better than the current Crimson Fleet leadership.

Agree with most of the above - STAP is one of the best campaigns I've ever seen. I am running Rise of the Runelords paralell to it now, and STAP really is a lot better.

We just finished Serpents of Scuttlecove,and Harliss is triumphant. it was she who stuck the final blow to Cold Captain Wythers, she used his head to intimidate the crew, and she personally stuck down the last of the opposing pirate captains.

The question is; what to do now? My players (very much into the good amd redemption thing) are debating whether to give her the crystal ball with telepathy, to try and let her lead and reform the Crimson Pirates. However, even if they do not recognize Demogorgon's leadership any longer, they are still the scum of the high seas.

Good times was had by all! And a big thanks to all the people who made illustrations to show the structure of The Wreck; we really found these graphics useful.

I think the Red Mantis could be a heretical splinter group of the SB. This way you could allow players to be SB characters whose mission in addition to regaining SB control of the city is to crush this up start order.

Hadn't thought of Kalstrand. If you use that, the Rowyn angle works well. If I want to use that. After all the effort the players put into her redemption, I'm not sure I want to use her as a main villain.

I had been thinking that somewhere in the ruins of the Great Kingdom would be a good spot--Ountsy was where I was thinking of transposing the main city--it's a port and has a female ruler, according to Living Greyhawk Guide. A port city in Ahlissa might work well, too.

I was previoulsy planning to put Korvosa in Ratik, more specifically the city of Marner. Almost everythig there fits, and there is plenty of room for barbarian tribes and nearby orcs.

Have you looked at the free download Ivid the Undying? It would have a lot of good background material in it to help with this task.

Quoted from the Downtown thread:

Carl Cramér wrote:

I got my players away from Farshore to attend Rowyn's official inauguration as a princess of Ahlissa (long story), which of course served as a lovely distraction for Serpents of Scuttlecove.
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Rowyn Kellani as princess of Ahlissa . . . wow. At the risk of inciting a threadjack, how'd that happen? I take it your players sold out Lavinia?

Meanwhile, the players had picked up another bunch of colonists from Dragon Hunters (Dungeon #104) on a small island on the way. While Prince Henri and his cohorts most certainly were not of the same culture or alignment as the players, they decided his case was not hopeless and that taking him along was the best solution. Conveniently, there was room on the Blue Nixie as the passengers had eaten about half of the food stores. Prince Henri enjoyed Lavina's company a lot, tough not of that of the Jade Ravens. After the pirate attack on Farshore, Prince Henri was put in charge of keeping the pirate prisoners on his plantation - the task of being a prison warden being distasteful to my group. Most of the pirates were saved from death and captured - my players are quite pacifistic and very good in outlook.

As one of the more charismatic escapees, Rowing gathered many runaway pirates around her, then contacted Prince Henri with a deal; she'd give up all her pirate prisoners in return for a full pardon. The heroes were reluctant, but both Lavinia ad Prince Henri supported the idea, and it was accepted. Rowyn ended up living on Prince Henri's plantation (Farshore wasn't large enough for both her and the heroes), and the two became an item and finally got married. Her opportunism and quick thinking (CE) complements his steadfast and methodological approach to life (LE), tough neither is as evil as they were at the beginning.

About a year later, all adventures on the Isle of Dread resolved, the PCs arranged a reconciliation between Prince Henri and his mother, who I now (level 15) decided was actually the acting regent of Ahlissa. This was largely possible because Prince Henri has so obvioulsy settled down and "grown up" as his mother would say, getting married , building a plantation, and giving up the ambition for immediate warfare. With Prince Henri restored to the succession in Ahlissa, Rowyn ended up as a princess of that realm.

I don't expect this arc of the campaign to ever visit Ahlissa again, but I'm thinking of placing the Curse of the Crimson Throne in the Great Kingdom, where this act of charity could affect things greatly. I'd not go as far as placing Rowyn as the queen of the Crimson Throne, tough ow that I think of it... This will need more thought.

So, you should talk to your DM about down-time needs. However, he may have perfectly good reasons why he doesn't want to accommodate your desire for a trip home. Among other things, it does rob the challenge and drama of being two or three thousand miles away from home and having to fend for yourselves.

I fibbed quite a lot to keep the feeling of isolation when in Farshore. Isolation is a big part of the "lost world" feel. But to make that work, I had lots of resources available in Farshore, I let my players craft to their heart's desire on the Sea Wyvern, let the players use Alchemy to break down unwanted magic items into components they could make into other items instead of selling them for money, and generally did everything in my power to make the players not want to go back to Sasserine.

<anecdote mode>
Only now, at 15th level and about to play Serpents of Scuttlecove, has the world opened up to the players. By way of "compensation", I had a two-year break in the action just before Serpents of Scuttlecove. People travelled the world and visited loved ones. We had a 1-year RL break due to illness, so a long in-game break seemed plausible as well).

The setup from City of Broken Idols puts you on a schedule for Serpent's of Scuttlecove, but I got my players away from Farshore to attend Rowyn's official inauguration as a princess of Ahlissa (long story), which of course served as a lovely distraction for Serpents of Scuttlecove.
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First buffing the party to the teeth and then buffing the enemy seems kind of counter-productive. Then again, boss fights in 3.5 were always a little unsatisfying to me, especially against casters.

Then again, a heroic character wanting to do heroic things is very... heroic. Seems like you want a more tactical game, he wants a more heroic one. Neither of you is wrong, you just have to agree on what the game is about.