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So the players are making pretty decent work of the goblins, the sneaks are doing some decent damage thanks to hiding and ambushing, but the two reach combatants are making sure that their first attack is generally their last attack.

Drakthar makes a little appearance after they've cleared out pretty much the whole first section and does option two (summoned 3 bat swarms and dominated the fighter).

The fighter fails his will save, plus his second will save to overcome the dominate to attack his friend and proceeds to crit the mage, instantly killing him. The swarm keeps the "strider" ally occupied and the Ranger/Scout runs away. After being forced to go after his best friend he finally makes the will save though and they managed to kill off the swarms (barely). So the 2 of them plus the strider leave the dungeon to b!+&~ out the ranger/scout.

Why is this campaign made so difficult? Drakthar didn't even get anywhere near combat, and I don't see how they'll ever be able to pin him down. They're resting for the night and I'm probably gonna bring in an extra player to help fill out their numbers. It's very hard to do a 12 adventure campaign with one over-arcing story if you don't have any of the same characters from the original group (right now only one original member, and it's the second adventure!)

I'm gonna run Demonskar Ball, a side adventure to a Ziggurat on the way to Vaprak's Voice so my Sorc player can meet a couatl and become a Rainbow Servant, and a side adventure dealing with the leaders of the two nearby nations (Axion which Cauldron is a Citystate in, and the Principality of Corydon, who control my version of the Striders). The Cagewrights are going to attempt an assassination on the Steward of Axion and try to make it look like the Corydonites are responsible to through the "striders" off their track.

The players will investigate as a neutral party liked by both sides.

Also thinking of running Assault on Greymalkin Academy right after Test of the Smoking Eye.

I'm reading ahead to Foundations of Flame as I'm really looking forward to it, I was wondering: Does Kravichak serve any other purpose besides ruining what could be an awesome RP event by turning it into combat?

I'm thinking about just ditching him and increasing the Ad Hoc XP for roleplaying.

Our group decided on the name "The Chain Gang" since their leader is a Favored Soul whose god's favored weapon is a Spiked Chain. Their response from EVERYONE they introduce themselves to in town is "What, are you all ex-cons or something?"

There's now only a few merchants willing to do business with them (Skie loves the name)

I've been using Skylar quite a bit in Drakthar's Way. His patrol met the PCs while they were goblin hunting at night, and he's now guarding the bathhouse while they're investigating the ruins.

The real big boon that would've helped the Hard Cover would've been to have the NPC stats section a removable like the map booklet is. Or have just put the stats in with the tactical encounter, especially for one-fight baddies like Zenith and Kazmojen.

As for Blue Crater Academy there's an adventure in Dungeon 140 "The Fall of Greymalkin Academy" That I might run in Shackled City if I feel they need a bit more XP, changing Greymalkin Academy to Blue Crater Academy. It's for 9th level players

My group was able to find out the history from Keygan about Jzadirune and the Vanishing. It didn't stop the sorcerer from popping the Ioun stone around his head though. The look on the entire party's faces was awesome. Thankfully they went and got Jenya to cure it before he took any cha damage.

The Lie in State ability as described for every other demon that has it has the creature returning to life in 1d100 days (provided they aren't killed in the Abyss). That's how I intend to run it if any of the players get the template.

Ok so I had to reboot SCAP from the beginning, which is good because now I can run Drakthar's Way and the Demonskar Ball.

This is my new party
Human Dragon Shaman who is descended from Dhorlot (Wyrmblooded) and reveres Black Dragons

Human Sorcerer (Shackleborn)

Human Favored Soul (of the religion replacing St. Cuthbert in my campaign setting)

Human Ranger/Scout (a player who is afraid to get into melee)

Anyway. I'm not familiar much with Dragons and have never really done anything with them. I'd like some roleplaying oppurtunity for when they run into Dhorlot with the Dragon Shaman but am not sure how a black dragon would react or what could occur.

Any advice would be awesome.

I'd like to use this but I've already started Demonskar Legacy and I plan to run Smoking Eye right afterwards. Is it too late to? I have it but haven't gotten to read through everything yet. I'm guessing I might have to make changes, particularly depending on what happens to Alek?

It's kind of ironic, as a player I love character death because I love making new characters all the time (before Sylnae closed my profile had a good score of characters, some of which I'd never play or played only in one session).

As a DM though I hate it, my games are all story-driven games, and it's hard to keep a continuous story when you have a TPK or have cycled out all the original characters (as has happened in my SCAP game) and with the APs it's even worse because the adventures later on generally assume it's dealing with the original group from the first adventure. I've found ways around it, but it's still a pain in the arse.

I'm thinking of doing Goliaths or Gnolls myself as my Diamontsee (Diamond Lake) is set in a more Black Forest type region and thus Lizardfolk would be a tad far from their home. I'm just worried it might have an impact on something I haven't read yet. (Luckily we're still on Demonskar Legacy of SCAP so I have time to prepare for my players)

Hell I'd pay just for a PDF compilation of all the adventures/articles related to it. I was only able to pick up pieces of it, as it is right now I'm gonna have to order some back issues when I do run it, but I'd like to just buy it all together along with any information related to it that was in Dragon (I know there's stuff like that with Savage Tide, didn't know if it was done with AoW also) and all the various Web Enhancements in just one OCR PDF chunk with bookmarks and everything. Definately worth $30 I'd say.

Are we all forgetting the one class that was made to be the "5th character"?

That's right, I'm talking Bard. It looks to me like your group is seriously lacking social skills. And there's quite a bit of RPing and schmoozing of NPCs in the Adventure Paths. You'll fill a much needed role.

Could even have the Stormblades ask for their help in getting their dead friend back, if they start to suspect something as well (one of their members isn't too fond of Wee Jas from what I remember). Perhaps they no longer trust the clerics of Wee Jas to perform his Resurrection.

The Umber Hulk isn't nearly as bad as the Dragons, Cryohydra and Erinyes. At least they get quite a bit of help from the town during the umber hulk attack, and you can always have it distracted for a round smashing up a building.

My players are just outside Redgorge at the end of the session tonight. The tax riot scene was pretty fun, though most of them were taken a non-interference stance. Shensen did a lot of the work (though they did kill the Breathdrinker). A Sleet Storm was good at breaking up the crowd.

The Fire Elementals bothered me though. It was neat to use my new Huge Fire Elemental mini, but there was really no way to convey their purpose to the group. And that's a thing that bothers me about most of the AP (and quite frankly, a lot of dungeon adventures). There's a lot of great backstory information and they don't give you ways to let your players hear about it. And I'm afraid to give them too much lest it spoil something later on. So after I spent a good 5 minutes thinking of a reason for them to actually want to go to this inn that they'd never really even heard of before (and with them being relatively upper class probably wouldn't have really bothered with anyway). The Fire Elementals just seemed kinda like "LOOK! ANOTHER HARD ENCOUNTER WITH NO TREASURE!".

Now I'm off to turn the Chisel into the Order of the Chalice (of which Alek will be a part of) before tomorrow's game.

Well we had a near-TPK at the end of the last session so we've got a slew of new characters coming in, this is the start of Demonskar Legacy.

Aasimar Paladin
Human Knight
Half Elf Ranger/Rogue
Tiefling Wizard
Elf Bard with Elf Favored Soul cohort (the only survivors of the previous group)

I'm slightly concerned about the lack of a primary healer at their level (since the Cohort is two levels behind) but I've warned them several times, if they don't wanna listen it's their fault =p

My party got lucky and managed to get off a good ray of enfeeblement that made Aushanna unable to use her mighty composite bow and close into melee range. Unfortunately they all scattered after she dropped the cleric and wound up getting killed by the other inhabitants of the temple. One wound up falling in the trap with the wraith (after attempting to lock his friends out of the room and keep them stuck with the Erinyes another almost made it to Zenith but got into a duel with the Kuo-toa assassin (almost one in a one-on-one fight too, I was impressed) and the cleric's cohort and the spellthief ran for it.

Luckily a TPK at that spot is easily workable in since Demonskar just needs the group to be residents of Cauldron to get involved, and not need to have anything to do with the previous chapters.

My group went into Bhal-Hamatugn, a pretty well balanced group, but damn this whole adventure has seemed way too tough, I had to ditch the Cryohydra in favor of a Caller in Darkness, and the dragon killed two of them (they got raised). Then the mummy got one of them, so that player and a new player brought in new characters at that point to basically be their backup. But the Erinyes demon laid waste to them. Three character deaths from the one battle and no chance to bring their bodies out (they scattered across the dungeon running away from it after the cleric dropped).

So basically the party wound up giving up on the mission entirely, and the Stormblades are gonna get the credit, but now I need help getting their characters back into the swing of the story with the next chapter. I'm gonna say some time's gone by (like 6 months) while they greived. Has anyone else had problems with things being generally tougher than expected? I have 5 players and two cohorts and every combat seems way too deadly.

This turned into more of a vent than a question, but advice/help would still be useful ^_^

Yeah FC1 is on its way here. Considering they still haven't even statted out Athux (I was hoping he'd be in FC1 but he's not listed in the table of contents) I'm not too worried about killing him off. If he shows up in Savage Tide or something I'll just make it another son of Graz'zt.

I could always give Athux lie in state also so if he's killed in Carceri he'd just go back to Graz'zt's layer and be reborn in time.

I think I'll actually have it take place 50 years prior to the AP, during Athux's betrayal of Adimarchus and actually send the PCs to Skullrot with Adimarchus, witness his imprisonment (though none of them will have/know about the smoking eye and thus be unable to do anything about it) and fight Athux to the death in Carceri. This will be the formation of my version of the Striders of Farlanghn

Is there a list of adventures and their level range and what issues they appear in of Dungeon so I can order a backissue?

I'm trying to find a level 20 adventure that is not part of one of the APs (since I'm running them separately) to try and get the feel of running high level characters (and give my players the chance to play some). I'd really like something to do with the Abyss/Graz'zt that I might tie into SCAP. I'd take anything though just to use as a template.

I don't have any actual Psionic players, but since Psionics is pretty prevalent in my homebrew world I replaced the Striders of Farlaghn with a Psionic organization. I like them better as I think I've developed their motives better.

Hey guys, my group is for the most part unfamiliar with a lot of the D&D history and I'm planning a level 20 one-shot tie-in adventure for them for a few reasons.

Firstly, none of us have experience playing or running an adventure past tenth level.

Also, I want to give them a way to learn more about the Abyss without just encouraging them to read the books. Give them some actual playing experience dealing with the abyss so they can better appreciate what's going on in the overall storyline (they're just about to discover the Kuo-Toan shrine to Bildoolpoolp in Zenith).

I want this to tie-in to the SCAP as well.

So far what I have is that they're all famous legendary names in the homebrew world we play in, and a powerful nation calls upon their aid to enter the Abyss and stop a threat.

I'm thinking of sending them to Zelatar since Graz'zt is my favorite demon.

I was wondering if anyone might have advice on good reasons to send them there and how it might be able to tie into SCAP. Also, would defeating Graz'zt hurt the story of SCAP?

Sorry, I meant Bhal-Hamatugn

Group
Human Barbarian 6 "Ib"
Elf Spellthief 6 "Aianna"
Elf Cleric 6 "Elasar"
(cohort) Elf Monk 4 "Kethel"
Elf Bard 6 "Sieryth"
(cohort) Elf Favored Soul 4 "Talas"

Well, after a heard time with the young dragon (resulting in two deaths that made them blow all their cash on a pair of raise dead scrolls) they finally made it into Kopru. None of them spoke Kuo-Toan, Undercommon or Aquan so they just killed Abhacas and took his boat across. The barbarian managed a jump/climb up into the eyes to take the archers out and they made their way into the front area.

They cleared the barracks with ease but were a bit weakened, mostly from Abhacas. They get to Cherrit and Cherrit eventually offers information on the birthmark to get his freedom. He wants to leave, they say "but if he takes the boat across we'll be stuck. Let's lock him back up and take him with us when we leave." So Cherrit runs for it and gets hit by an AoO from the barbarian. He responds with a fireball that nearly drops everyone. They manage to kill him before he escapes.

Not learning their lesson they decide that Whiteeye was the trustworthy one after all and he offers his assistance. As soon as he's freed he drops the barbarian to bleeding and infects the Favored Soul with his lycanthropy. With them out of his way and no one else in melee range he runs out of the prison and shuts the lever on his way out, locking them in the prison area (they'll probably find the secret door though after they explore).

They're weakened, locked in and decide to rest for the night. On the Barbarian's shift Garekk shows up looking for some torture victims. He manages to sneak right up to the barbarian and slam him. They begin the fight, before it's done the barbarian who is down to about 4hp has mummy rot. They kill him, then the mummy rot takes enough HP (through con loss) to kill him outright.

They're still locked in, the new character for the barbarian (who is going to be a Drow Duskblade I believe) will probably end up freeing them after hearing the story from Whiteeye or something (still working on that). And that's where we ended it for the month.

I'm wondering if anyone else will come to check on them, or how it should work out with them trying to sleep in the prison area. Any thoughts?

Not being a regular subscriber to Dungeon/Dragon (The only issue I've bought of either actually is Issue 300 of Dragon) I didn't hear of SCAP until a friend started running AoW (that didn't go very far). I borrowed his issues to start running it and at first I too balked at the $60 hardcover price.

I just got my hardcover today (thank you national guard =p) and I feel I got every penny's worth. I'm on Zenith now with my group and probably won't get finished with the campaign until next summer, at which time I really hope to see AoW as a hardcover out there =).

And then, by the time I finish AoW, I hope to be getting the Savage Tide hardcover ;)

My group does not have the wits to sunder and burn each head (which I'm wondering if all you people taking it out in two rounds actually did...) and I'm not even sure they'd really have the capability unless they prepared specifically for it.

What I'm doing instead is taking the cryohydra out, making the pit of 7 jaws a former mass grave (In my campaign world the whole region was run by a "race-cleansing" empire from about 1200 years before the game to about 200 years before the game. I'm putting at the bottom a Caller in Darkness from the Expanded Psionics Handbook. I think it'll help add to my campaign world a bit more than "random deadly hydra in hole"

The hardcover just got here today (just in time too), so I can finally give back the stack of mags to my friend. And while looking through it I find Drakthar's Way...but wait a second. I'm already on Zenith Trajactory with the group!

I'm thinking of using this as a "Look what the Stormblades did" although I'm open to any ideas from others.

It also makes me determined to wait for an AoW hardcover before starting that one.

I was able to do the first two episodes in two 8-10 hour sessions. My group only gets to play about once every 1-2 months (but we play for 8-10 hours).

Though we only did the first one so fast because three elves found the shortcut that skipped Jzadirune.

My group generally uses 4d6 7 times drop the lowest and if the total mod score (adding up all the ability score modifiers) is less than 8 you get a reroll. We've never gotten anyone with over an 11 total mod (excepting for higher ECL chars)

Then again my group isn't the brightest lot and could use some extra power in the characters.

How did the Stormblades get down to destroy the entrance to the ubderdark during chapter 2/3?

I haven't seen that part...we're just starting Zenith in the upcoming week and I tend to miss things looking through the cluster of magazines I borrowed from my friend (hardcover is in the mail tho!)

Worse comes to worse I'll just say they didn't, the entrance is sealed up either way. I can make up some greater achievement for the Stormblades to piss off the party (who haven't even met the blades yet since I didn't have time for the "Unwanted Attention" in the WE when doing flood season)

He's the guy being held hostage at the Brass Trumpet...that's his name as written in the magazine.

It says right in there that the sacrifice only works once and the guy who did the sacrifice knows it. So unless your cleric is gonna drag someone else with him to push into the gusher (and thus do it the evil way) he aint gettin' it.

I haven't even started Zenith Trajectory yet but I was reading ahead into Lords of Oblivion and may have a sort of issue coming up.

I replaced the Striders of Farlanghn with a preexisting organization from our group's homebrew world (we each designed 1/5th of the world and use it for all of our campaigns). The group is a group of elite men from a Psionic nation. They've been a pretty big help to the group and have probably become the friendliest NPCs to them, even moreso than Sister Jenya. Since this can apply to regular Striders of Farlangthn as presented I'll use their names and everything as to avoid confusion.

My question is why wouldn't Meerthan send Fario, Fellian and Shensen to rescue Skiriol? Or at least to assist the adventurers.

I just had the guards destroy the elevator and seal the entrance between Jzadirune and Malachite

I'm gonna run Zenith in a week or so.

I started with:
Elf Swashbuckler
Elf Cleric (with elf/war domains, so an archer build)
Elf Spellthief

Suffice to say with that many elves they didn't go very far in Jzadirune (damn detect secret doors) and skipped straight to Malachite where the Swashbuckler was swiftly killed by the Stone Spike.

They retreated and went back up to Sister Jenya to tell about where they believe the kids are to find a Barbarian (Swashbuckler's player) there talking to her already trying to find the brother he left behind when he went to go fight in a war (an extra missing child). They went back down and got the stone spike dead (though my equivalents of Fario and Fellian came to help as well) and managed to get through the Malachite fortress without death.

so now it's
Human Barbarian
Elf Cleric
Elf Spellthief
and a Half Elf Paladin should be joining soon.

(My 1st post here) Just looking at the class list you have, it is certainly possible for them all to be useful in combat. The Favored Soul can be pretty decent up-front. The Shugenja is certainly capable of taking armor proficiency feats as he doesn't suffer arcane spell failure. (In Rokugan where the class came from it was considered 'inappropriate' but Cauldron is hardly Rokugan) and the Shugenja should be up there healing, perhaps launching some ranged attacks from a bow of some sort. Even the necromancer could carry a light crossbow and deal out some damage. I have no clue what the tome of magic guy is though.