Peruhain of Brithondy's page

For those running AoW in Greyhawk, the Living Greyhawk gazetteer lists coinage for every different country. When I'm running generic adventures I usually go with a default of pp="royal", gp="crown", sp="noble", cp="penny". Other good coin names from medieval Europe: ducat, florin (good for weighty gold, platinum coins); piastre, dinar, mark, shilling, drachma, pistole, taler (good for mid-range coins like silver or electrum if used); sol, farthing (for copper).

Incidentally, I was a bit suspicious of the idea of the platinum piece, having never heard of platinum used as coinage in my historical or literary readings. I researched a bit and found that platinum wasn't identified as an element until the 18th century, and that even then, no one could heat the ore up enough to smelt it and make it into anything useful. Ergo, IMC, platinum pieces are quite rare--usually minted by Dwarves or other groups with advanced and/or magical metallurgical techniques. Of course, this makes it inconvenient for parties that want to carry large amounts of coin--but that's what gems are for.

When I ran the Wrath of the Abyss, the revived Belgos turned out to be a wimp (sent running by party Cleric on the first turn attempt), but his mate Silussa earned infamy by slaying two party members with Phantasmal Killer before the party cleric brought the roof down on her with an Earthquake. (Combat was also memorable when the elf rogue-ranger Urgan the Giant-Slayer had the presence of mind to pretend that he was still under her spell after the cleric dispelled evil, downed a vial of holy water but didn't swallow, and spit it in her face when she tried to kiss him again. Urgan paid with his life, but it was a glorious moment!) Derrakshan will also be remembered--for disintegrating the party wizard, and for the memorable way in which he levitated up from out of the evil sanctuary for a final confrontation when he overheard the PCs discussing whether to bury him there with another Earthquake. And we musn't forget the Malgoth itself! (Yes, I know these may not be new villains, but . . .)

But Dungeon mag. adventures aside, what cool villains have people invented in their homebrew campaigns? And why are they cool?

I'm 40--started playing when a friend bought the old D&D boxed set in 1978 (I think, or was it '77?), and played/DM'd avidly through high school. Dropped out in college due to academics, rugby, and girlfriends (not necessarily in that order), and more or less forgot about it until finding myself on a two week vacation hanging out with a bunch of fellow grad student researchers in the small town of Lijiang, China about 5 years ago. Then my son came to visit with his PH and MM, and I got hooked again.

I think the Dungeon content is at the right level of PG-ness as presently edited. My son (now 15) DM'd several adventures out of it for me when he was 12-13--and he DMs for his friends now. I'm not especially squeamish about what he is exposed to, but I agree with above commentary to the effect that it's easier for DMs to add the R element if they want it than to subtract it. And it's nice that there are occaisional pieces that are a bit more low key--I'm DMing Valley of the Snails for a group of nieces and nephews, youngest of whom is nine (Says Angus, "I draw my sword and I charge them," to which his 14 year old sister, the party cleric who wants to negotiate with the goblins, responds, "Angus, why do you have to kill everything?")

Dungeon is a great resource, both for busy working DMs and for young aspiring DMs who need a model to help them learn how to create their own adventures (as we 30-40-somethings learned from the old T, B, and G-D-Q series modules). I avidly await my copy every month. Keep up the great work!

I logged in tonight, hoping that you all at Paizo had your Thursday night session last night and we'd get the latest entry tonight. Can we expect another installment before Tyralandi & c. go on holiday for the holidays? This is a totally cool campaign journal.

So Octopi are almost as flexible as the gholam in Robert Jordan's Dragon Reborn series, which can squeeze under a door.

On the subject of levers for the folks inside--D10 doesn't need a lever because you can walk out on the stone platform that extends from the door out to the pillar (level with the pillar when it's raised, but misleadingly shaded on the map as if it were underwater--see the description for D9). D19 does need a lever, though, or an interlock to keep anyone opening the secret door from flooding the passage leading to it. Alternatively, the secret door could be above water level and have a ladder allowing one to climb 40-50' down to the floor if the water is drained. Incidentally, to open to the floor of the room, D19 would have to be quite a ways below river level, which doesn't make sense for a passage off the sewer system. (I would have to assume that the Greyhawk sewers drain to the Selintan River and not to a one-way gate into the elemental plane of sludge, but I'm not an authority by any means.)

This may not be the right place for it, but does anyone have good suggestions for running a 3-D encounter like this besides making it a vertical 2-D instead of a horizontal 2-D encounter? When I ran the Oestral abyss encounter in the last episode of the Shadows of the Abyss AA I ran into this problem, and ended up with several points where two characters wanted to position themselves at the same vertical coordinates on the map (x and y axis) but a different spot horizontally (on the z axis--i.e. abreast of each other). We just had to mark them as being in the same square and remember who was "closer" and who was "farther away" (from the map-reader's perspective), since logically the two characters were not occupying the same 5x5x5 foot cube.

Maybe we all need dragonchess boards!

Spoilers

There are a lot of small problems with Sodden Hold, and this room is a bit wierd and not clearly described (a side view diagram would be helpful if you reprint AOW in book form, editors!). As I read it, you have to descend 35 feet down the well-shaft in D8 to get to water-level. Then you have to swim down another 40 feet to the bottom well shaft, take the 20' long passage west to enter the "water-control chamber," swim 40 feet back to the surface in that room, and climb up the ladder to the top of the pillar, which sticks up 10 feet above the water level, in order to reach the control lever which lowers the platform and drains the water. This puts you 25 feet below the floor-level of the warehouse. The map shows the underwater passage from the well into the water-control chamber running southward rather than westward, which makes more sense, as it would place the chamber under the part of the warehouse that is built on land, rather than right under the part of the warehouse that juts out over the river.

However, my question is, how do Telakin's gang get in when they come back from a mission, or want to bring a prisoner down from the warehouse level. Do they swim past the giant octopus guarding the chamber to activate the lever? Do they have some sort of voice-tube allowing them to call down a password to a guard below, who flips the lever for them? Also, it seems like it would be rather difficult to lower an unconscious or uncooperative prisoner down the shaft to the barrel, then haul him up the ten foot ladder to the top of the elevator pillar.

Also, a drain hole big enough for a giant octopus to squeeze through is probably big enough for a halfling to get through, and maybe a human--octopi are squishy mollusks and probably deserve a +8 racial bonus on their escape artist check, but the monster manual lists them as large creatures, so I'm guessing it would take at least a 2-3 foot wide hole for them to squeeze through. If the party wants to pursue it into the drain tank and finish it off, we should have some info on that space.

And I'm guessing there is some magic device involved in pumping the water in and out of the drain tank to another holding tank, or a permanent "control water" effect perhaps. I suppose the salt water for the tank is refreshed regularly from the elemental plane of water somehow or is aerated with a magic device, since otherwise the Octopus would die from lack of oxygen otherwise--and the salt water certainly didn't come from the ocean, at least not if we're setting Greyhawk as the Free City.

Of course, the PC's players probably won't think of these things, and I may be nitpicking it to death, but it seems like a good idea to have some answers ready if they do. (E.g., what if the party rogue tries to use "disable device" to sabotage or manipulate the mechanism somehow? Can he use it to completely flood out the lower level of the dungeon? Or drain the water out of the drain tank so the Octopus dies? Or jam the pillar in the down position so that enemies left in the level have trouble pursuing the party? What is the DC for these actions? Does the device give a positive readout for a detect magic spell?)

It is an interesting encounter, and I suppose space limits prevent addressing all contingencies in the magazine, but a few indications for the DM would be helpful.

Another small item that seems illogical is the unsafe ladder in D4, which is the only means of accessing the secret door into the rest of the warehouse unless you have a rope to get up and down onto the catwalk. This poses the same problems for movement of prisoners in and out that the barrel ride does. Should there be, perhaps, extremely difficult to locate secret doors (DC 35+ to prevent party rogue from finding them) to bypass these two difficulties? Of course if one takes this route to make the dungeon more logical, all it takes is one detect secret doors spell to bypass these challenges. I would say this is no great loss for the adventure on the weak ladder, but leaving out the octopus is a bigger deal.

Also, the "shaded planks" in D7 marking the structurally unsound pillar don't show up in the printed map. I assume the weak pillar is either the one just below the "D7" on the map, or just to the right of it, but it would be helpful in the reprint to make sure the shading shows up in the galley proofs.

The Elixir of Immortality--several Chinese emperors paid Taoist priests large amounts of money for such concoctions, historically. Of course most of them died of mercury poisoning, since this alchemical concoction contained cinnabar, a mercury ore. In the realm of myth, there were the Eight Immortals, Taoist priests who engaged in a variety of yoga-like disciplines and gradually weaned themselves from the necessity to eat, ultimately discovering the secret of immortality. Of course, this meant that they were, for all practical purposes, gods.

Then there was the Monkey King, who sneeked into the laboratory of Lao Tzu (the premier Taoist sage/deity) in Heaven, and managed to filch, and consume, a pill that made him immortal. When the gods subdued him (he put up a great fight, of course), he was punished by being imprisoned under a mountain for ten millenia. (His subsequent adventures as henchman of a Buddhist monk who controlled him with a magical squeezing iron headband are a must for all fans of Oriental fantasy--read Arthur Waley's translation "Monkey").

There were also the Isles of the Immortals, supposed to be located somewhere in the great eastern ocean--the first emperor sent an expedition there, but it never came back.

The lesson in all this for the DM? Immortality probably has a place in your campaign world, but it if mortals aspire to it, they are liable to be fooled by charlatans and perhaps even poisoned or otherwise harmed by elixirs, artifacts, etc. that are advertised to deliver immortality but can't deliver. There are, however, ways to achieve immortality, but they require epic-level efforts to succeed, and result in quasi-deity status for the character. In short, the very rare PC who succeeds in becoming immortal is removed from the ranks of PC-dom and becomes a tool of the DM.

Greg V wrote:

I believ Redhand is actually one of the old Bandit Kingdoms rather than a part of the Shield Lands. Its on the opposite side of the Rift from most of Iuz's concentration of force so it probably doesn't get much attention. But it's definitiely a backwater, little place considering it was kind of a no-man's land overrun with criminals even before Iuz got rolling.

So probably no Shieldies running to the rescue. And I doubt Iuz has much time to spare with a place he never had much use for anyway. Then again, maybe he'll send an invading army and give some 20th-level PCs something to do.

If memory serves, Redhand was once part of the Shield Lands, but broke away and became a "bandit" kingdom shortly after Zeach came to power. When Iuz invaded the area, Zeach signed on. In a way, Zeach saved his people from the fate of the Shield Lands, or at least so he tells himslef when he's trying to feel like a good guy. It does add some interesting deapth to his character.

My thoughts were that Iuz might pay more attention if an openly declared enemy got a toehold in the bandit kingdoms--certainly his local satraps in Balmund next door would, and possibly their superiors at Riftcrag, who might have heard rumors of the PCs' exploits in the Wormcrawl Fissure. The plot would develop slowly--first with threats and/or attempts to win the new ruler over to Iuz, then with minor military activity, and finally, the possibility of a war. This last would depend very much on what diplomatic alliances the new prince made with outside powers. Iuz's minions will certainly be contesting to see who can bring Redhand back to the fold, and thus earn favor with their master . . .

This is where the shield lands comes in--Redhand/Alhaster used to be part of the Shield Lands, and when news arrives in Critwall, the Knight Commander is torn between competing impulses to demand that Alhaster "return to fealty" and to be more diplomatic--an alliance with the new prince of Redhand could help the Shielding reconquer Axeport, advancing on Iuz's forces there along two fronts. This in turn would cut the Old One's forces on Admundfort Island off completely and make the Nyr Dyv, once again, a preserve of the forces of Good.

Meanwhile, the Countess of Urnst sees the regime change in Redhand as a chance to maneuver against Iuz's forces in Balmund and perhaps restore her relative, the rightful ruler of the Bandit Kingdom known as the Duchy of Artonsamay--i.e. Redhand would serve as the C. of Urnst's proxy without requiring Urnst to go to war openly with Iuz. Redhand's help might also be useful in supporting Duke Ehyeh's quest to regain Tenh, which would please the Countess, but she doesn't want an open war with Iuz or Stonehold over it.

Other nearby powers, like Furyondy, Greyhawk, Dyvers, and the Duchy of Urnst, may have their own diplomatic agendas, or may just want to get trading concessions in exchange for loans allowing the new prince to buy some much needed mercenaries to bolster his army (what's left of Zeech's force has been deserted by lots of the more devout Hextorians who used to serve in it, if the new ruler is openly patronizing a good deity).

Alhaster is a small place, but located where the Artonsamay empties into the Nyr Dyv. It has both economic potential and strategic significance, and a regime change there could even spark "The Second Greyhawk War" if the PCs don't play their cards right. And there is lot's of potential for a great "spy campaign" even if they do, with the PCs maneuvering covertly to ally with discontented elements in the Bandit Kingdoms and the forces of Iuz maneuvering to subvert Alhaster.

Let them escape back to town, then send the Ebon Aspect after them the next day. (There's some guidance about sending a second Ebon Aspect after them once they've left the dungeon, in the "scaling the adventure" sidebar).

I'm not very fond of point buy schemes either. I use the following method, which seems to usually produce decent characters that can be tailored a bit but avoids the cookie-cutter feel of the point buy. Roll 4d6 for each score. Player can roll 4d6 again and use that score to substitute for any one of his scores, and can then switch any two scores. If the combined total of bonuses and penalties comes out less than plus 6, I let the player reroll. (This can easily be reset to suit the style of your campaign, of course, and if you do really high powered you might try allowing two substitutions). I tend to use a mix of challenging combats, role-playing encounters, and skill challenges in my campaigns, and it makes it interesting for the players if they develop a few skills and feats atypical for their classes, plus it can make for interesting backstories and roleplaying hooks.

I had a big brainstorm about what's going to happen in my Greyhawk AOW campaign when Red Hand, formerly a tiny evil principality under nominal fealty of the very evil empire of Iuz, is suddenly ruled by a Hieronean paladin (assuming said PC makes it through the next 10 1/2 adventures alive). Redhand is a small rock, but it could make ripples across the whole lake. At the least, the news of its sudden fall to the forces of good will bring embassies from half a dozen powers seeking to turn this event to their own good, and the Old One himself will probably take notice, whether or not he can get his minions to stop squabbling long enough to mount a serious attack. (He might try the corruption route instead). Anyway, without putting all the political details up, this could lead to an interesting follow-on campaign, with the option of doing near epic level diplomacy/spying/roleplaying or having players roll up some lower level players to do a warfare & spying campaign.

Peruhain of Brithondy wrote:

So now Filge is in the Free City, grubby, penniless, missing a hand, and bearing a huge grudge against the party. It doesn't seem realistic to bring him back as a more powerful recurring villain, so I think I'm going to have him hook up with...

Not so fast there Peruhain... If he's hooked up with Zyrxog, there's all kinds of possibilties for bringing him back bigger and badder than before. Mind Flayers have been known to experiment with grafting the flesh of two types of creatures. Bring him back with a new and improved hand--a choker's tentacled hand seems appropriate, but a hulking demomic arm or even a necrotic zombie oe skeletal arm would be nice too!

Thanks for the idea--I'm sure I should have thought of it, having just purchased and looked through the Fiend Folio a few months back. Heh heh heh. No good deed goes unpunished, as we used to say in the Navy!

The PCs don't have the expertise in mining or business management and have to hire a subcontractor. Have a couple of the mine managers bid on the contract, and offer a low, but steady annuity for the rights to salvage what is essentially scrap iron. The mine managers can explain why they won't bid higher (cf. economics explanations above). The players can boost their incomes a bit without wrecking the game or the local economy, and they won't have to waste time on all that booooring paperwork. After all, killing monsters and saving the world is a hell of a lot more fun than watching ex cons hall iron balls out of a hole in the ground one by one.

I had an idea for a particularly nasty variant on the slow worm on my evening walk a few days ago that I plan to spring on the party during Spire of Longshadows. I'll share it when I get it fleshed out.

My party's bard managed to sweet talk Kullen into revealing Filge's location (though he got slapped around by the brute in a later chance encounter during 3FOE at the Dog, due to his failure to bring "that bastard's eyeballs," and only escaped with a well-timed Tasha's Hideous Laughter).

They too chose to surprise Filge by coming in the second floor window from the roof, and tipped him off when the paladin fell on the floor trying to get through the window. The ensuing combat was tough, but the Elf ranger/cleric of Ehlonna got good turn rolls, neutralizing some of the undead, and the Dwarf wizard flushed Filge from his cover spot behind one of the tanks with some smart maneuvering and a demonstration of his offensive firepower. As Filge tried to get across the operating theatre to where his remaining zombies could protect him, the paladin jumped all over him, hacking off his arm and dropping him to -9 hp. The elf cleric made a flying dive across the operating table to administer cure minor wounds and save him for interrogation.

So the party revived and grilled him (after discovering all the incriminating evidence on his desk), and extracted most of his secrets. They had already come to the conclusion that the Diamond Lake justice system was so corrupt that they might find themselves up on charges if they handed him over to the sherriff, and, with a paladin and a CG cleric couldn't very well summarily execute Filge without a proper trial by the proper authorities. Rather than trying to lock him up in the basement of the mine office, they decided to turn him loose, sans gear and spellbooks, with a threat to kill him if they ever found him in Diamond Lake again. (Our paladin puts up with some borderline behaviors once in a while, but he's a good guy at heart).

So now Filge is in the Free City, grubby, penniless, missing a hand, and bearing a huge grudge against the party. It doesn't seem realistic to bring him back as a more powerful recurring villain, so I think I'm going to have him hook up with Loris Raknian somehow (perhaps Loris gets a tip about a slimy beggar just in from Diamond Lake from his Thieves' Guild contacts--Filge is certain to visit his old cronies looking for a handout, and Raknian has sent out feelers looking for news from Diamond Lake . . .) Since no one in the Free City can recognize the party, Loris sends him to Zyrxog, who stations him by the city gate to point them out to Ixiaxian & co. when they arrive.

Actually, Filge might make a very interesting agent for Zyrxog . . .

SPOILER

Seems to me there are several places in each adventure where it would not be difficult to insert small-sized treasure without compromising "realism"--the chokers' rubble pile in the temple of Erythnul and the pool of rotting pilings in sodden hold spring to mind off the top of my head, and it's not unreasonable to replace some of the gold and gems in various treasure stashes with items that would be valuable, but not useful to their owners. A rolled up halfling-sized chain shirt or a gnome-sized longsword doesn't take up much room in a human-sized treasure chest.

I think we all have a bit too much tendency to play adventures exactly as written and not take a few minutes when prepping the adventure to make obvious modifications, fill in gaps, and tailor the small things for our groups!

Has anybody calculated the various jump difficulties for this room?

Cheers,
C.

Spoiler

Standing jump DCs (cut by 50% for running start):

Door to A: 10
A to B: 24
B to C: 14 (penalty for illusion not included)
C to D: 16 (penalty for rotation not included)
D to E: 12
D to F: 16
E to F: 10
E to G: 14 (bonus for special surface on E not included)
G to H: 4

I calculated these based on distance and the arc needed to reach the elevated pillars.

You can download copies of the CoG map from LGJ#2 and the unpublished sewers of GH map from Denis Tetreault's site (he was the cartographer) at http://www.melkot.com/locations/cogh/cogh.html

If you are willing to fork over $4 for a download of the 2nd ed. "Greyhawk: The Adventure Begins" off this site, there's a pretty good map of Greyhawk (and one of the surrounding region that shows positions of Diamond Lake, Blackwall Keep, Tenser's Fortress and other relevant sites. The book has many pages of info on the city's politics, points of interest, NPC's, etc.--plenty of info to help you bring the city to life.

Will the Kings of the Rift be scaled for the survivors of the epic battle with the Malgoth? I've got a party of 13-14th level characters on hold while we do AOW, but it would be really cool to pick the story back up where they left off. The Shadow of the Abyss was a really awesome adventure arc!

Speaking of fun flashbacks, I just realized where the bit about 3FOE author Mike Mearls being the "dark hope of chaotic evil" etc. came from after rereading the recently downloaded "Village of Hommlett" (last viewed when I was in high school, some time before mom threw out all those DnD books when I left for college).

This seems to take a lot out of the big punch concluding Black Wall Keep. Perhaps, the worms could infest a PC with DR through an already established wound without causing further damage. Thus, any wounded PC is susceptible. Just a thought.

It seems to me that DR means different things in different cases.

If you're wearing Dwarven Plate, you get DR from the adamantine, but presumably the spawn can throw a worm on you and it can find a chink in your armor to crawl through just as it can do with normal plate armor.

Barbarians get their DR because they are tough enough "shrug off" part of the damage from weapon blows that would fell normal characters (one supposes this is a combination of muscle tone, ability to roll with the blow, and insensitivity to pain). The PH description specifies that it works only against "damage from a weapon or a natural attack." Based on this, I'd be inclined to rule Barbarians are no more immune than anyone else. (I suppose they might not notice the pain as much and thus not take damage, but I still think the thing would burrow into them).

I don't have the book with Warlock, so I'm not sure how I'd rule on their DR. Also not sure about lycanthropes, fiendish or celestial creatures, etc. because the description of their DR is vague (MM says either weapon bounces off or damage heals immediately, depending on the monster, but doesn't go into detail which monsters' DR works which way).

sorry for the breach of etiquette and thanks for the suggestion on bandit kingdoms.

Rot grubs--I had the image (from 1E MM I had in high school)when I was trying to think out this problem by analogy, and couldn't remember the name. Have these nasty things reappeared anywhere in 3/3.5E? I think I'd like to try throwing some at my party.

Looks like we need a ruling from sage advice on this one!

I would tend to rule that the parasite is, as the MMII states, a fine vermin and not a disease, and that remove disease is merely one of several spells that happen to have special effects on that creature (like disintegrate slowing a clay golem).

MMII makes it clear that if you don't panic, and your whole party isn't infested at once, you have a reasonable chance of surviving a Kyuss worm delivered by a Spawn of Kyuss. Besides killing it outright with remove disease or remove curse, it can be stopped in its tracks for 10d6 minutes by dispel evil or neutralize poison. In that time, one should be able to make the DC 20 heal check to remove the worm and kill it. Even if you don't have any of those spells handy and no one has ranks in Heal, the worm doesn't start burrowing until the round after the slam attack, touch attack, or ranged touch attack that delivered it.

Since the PCs have by this point in the adventure at least seen the "worm in a jar" at Filge's place, and probably have heard a little about Kyuss, they probably know the worms are dangerous. (MMII says the worms crawling in and out of the Spawn of Kyuss's skull become apparent when you're within 20 feet). Presumably, they'll have a good chance to spot the delivery of a worm and try to scrape the thing off their skin before it can burrow in.

So, as long as they don't panic, a worm delivery really just means losing an action on their next turn (probably a move action--I'd rule it's similar to picking up an object because you have to look down to see where the worm is), possibly having to drop a weapon and/or take an attack of opportunity. If you can stay out of melee range, you're OK, if not, you might have to deal with multiple Kyuss worms per round, but even so, you can use two move actions to pluck worms, taking 2 slam attacks per round, in which case you might be in trouble if your comrades can't dispose of the nasty thing for you.

An airship--that's a cool idea!

While we're trying to figure out Greyhawk geography, what about the island where Dragotha's phylactery is supposed to be stored, according to the AoW overload?

Also, is there any good source of details about the Bandit Kingdoms, beside the very general info available in the various Greyhawk gazetteers? I want to think a bit about the milieu for Redhand/Alhaster, and it would be helpful to know more than the names of two or three of the bandit states and the general situation.

Given the tactical situation--that the intruding party appeared to be penetrating the compound swiftly and would arrive soon, why didn't the Faceless One just summon the monstrous centipede and send it out the door? That way he would have time to cast the full-round action spell, and could then follow the centipede into action ready to cast his other offensive spells at them while they're dealing with the big monster.

Nothing says the "boss" has to wait in his inner sanctum and wait for the party to bust in on him, if he knows they're coming! Plus, with a 15 foot "space," the centipede is going to be "squeezed" if he fights in the laboratory (which is what the text says he is supposed to do), unless he crawls all over the lab tables and wrecks the in-progress experiments. If I were the Faceless One I might hide in the lab to buff up, but I would try to avoid tearing the place apart by holding a melee inside it. If I'm ready and I've got an idea where the intruders are, I'm going to take them on in the inner sanctum.