Swinomancer

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Cool, as none of the group has played the old school Isle of Dread, no one will miss them. I may just relocate them and use them anyway, though. :)


Do the aranea in the northeast portion of the Isle of Dread ever appear again after HTBM?

I'm thinking of adjusting them to be a recluse group of Olman outcasts with natural lycanthropy. One of my players has been pitching an idea for a future character that is a natural wereraptor, and the brief encounter the party has with the aranea had me thinking it would be a good setup for the character's possible entrance. I'm a bit reluctant because I'm thinking the beginning of HTBM is already a little dinosaur heavy, and if the aranea play a part later in STAP, I'd like to know if I'll be needing to do any rejigging of later events.

Yeah, it's silly of me not to read ahead, but I just don't seem to have a lot of spare time these days.


It has worked out so far. I nudged him into the infiltrator/spy angle right now. The character has been accepted thus far, and there hasn't been any major points of contention yet. If that session was any gauge, the character will bide her time until the real time to strike arises (I'm predicting it will likely be a post-climax conflict, possibly expanding into something larger scale, but in any case at either the end of the AP, or close enough to it, that it shouldn't be an issue with my group)

As far as the lack of arch devil involvement, from my understanding and what I recall from reading, the arch devils don't seem to ingrained in the Bloodwar, and it's mostly the lower ranks that deal with that. Isn't Asmodeus building a huge army in preparations for some battle he believes will make the Bloodwar seem insignificant?


I gave my player free choice and coincidentally he has chosen Dispater, so I'll be interested in hearing your plans for the Dis trip now, too.

We're still on the tail end of SWW, so you've got enough of a lead on us. :)


One of the player characters was recently slain during the trip to Tamaochan. The player has been inquiring about a concept he has regarding a character aiming for Blackguard.

As a DM, I prefer keeping the group to one side of the Good/Evil chart. Neutral is always fine within a group dynamic, but I often find my playgroup will ultimately end in conflict if they start mixing the Good and Evil tendencies. Suffice it to say, I've strongly discouraged the players from bringing in evil alignments into what is mostly a good group.

That said, this player's concept involved selling his soul in service to a devil in exchange for his power. This devil has an undisclosed interest in Lavinia and her ragtag of adventurers, and has sent the PC to keep a close watch on them. He left the actual details for me to help fill in.

Now, having been approached from that angle, and knowing how STAP ends up, I thought this could be an interesting opportunity, perhaps changing the pact from devil to one of the demon lords. Indeed, towards the climax of the adventure path, it might even make sense for an inner party conflict, should that occur.

Would it be a good idea to allow this character?

If I choose to go ahead with this, I'd prefer not to deviate too much from the adventure path as written. Which demon lords would be most suited for the task?


Had blast running the conversion over our last two sessions. The PCs bargained with the Ogre Mage Xipe, sating him with tribute and allowing four of his lizardmen to accompany them to ensure they didn't "steal" any of the items within the ruins that "belonged" to him. Needless to say, all four lizards were fried by the first trap.

From there, it just became a trap-laden war of attrition, with the party slowly wasting away from the various diseases and poisons. It was a bit silly that the two rogues in group didn't even bother to search for traps once during their stay, and the group as a whole paid dearly for it.

I expected the vampire to be a near TPK, but the party ripped him to shreds before he regained strength.

They managed to survive intact, but they looked pretty silly meeting up with Lavinia and the Jade Ravens sans clothing (after a few prolonged baths in a certain room of brackish water).

A note to lazy DMs (like myself) who plan on running this: Be prepared with a suitable god to reference for the Nereid encounter. I was caught off-guard when the party asked who her father was. Xerbo makes a good choice in Greyhawk, since the Azure District of Sasserine features a temple dedicated to he and his wife.


carborundum wrote:
There you go!

Thanks very much! I can't wait to put it to good use.


My players just started SWW. A few days before the voyage to Farshore was underway, a couple of them got a little two drunk and rowdy, getting into a fist fight.

At least, that's how it started. A couple of rounds in, the Cleric/Sorcerer gets a little carried away and starts tossing around Shocking Grasps. He nearly kills the other brawler (Ranger/Rogue), stabilizing him from negative.

The near death experience during what was supposed to be a friendly fight sends the R/R into plotting against the other PC. I'm inwardly groaning at this point since I'm not entirely fond of inter-party combat, because it never ends well. Nonetheless, I let him use black market contacts in Shadowshore to secure a dosage of particularly nasty poison.

In the end, his vendetta and plots to kill the Cleric turn out to weave beautifully into Rowyn's own designs.

The vengeful PC figured Urol might be able to treat the poison, so he attempted to assassinate him, faily miserably and bluffing his way out of it.

Surprisingly enough, he ended up sabotaging the rope bridge at the dinner party, meaning Rowyn had the luxury of sitting back and simply setting the Mephit loose!

After Lirith openly showed interest in the Cleric, the R/R took her aside and gifted the poison to her, passing it off as an aphrodisiac. He instructed her to have the Cleric ingest it only to find out an hour later that the trsuting girl had guzzled some of it down herself and entered a catatonic state.

Shortly after, he jumped at the chance to make dinner and apply the remainder of the poison. This ended up causing a number of people to get sick.

When the poison was discovered in the food and Urol brought up how interested the R/R was in talking about various poisons with him before he made an attempt on his life, the other PCs put all the threads together.

He didn't quite make his escape in a shoreboat.

What I'm finding downright hysterical about the situation is that the PC has been doing most of Rowyn's dirty work for her, and the only real move she's made (the mephit) has also been associated to him just because of his underhanded behavior.

I can't wait until their reaction when they realize there is a second assassin on board. :)


Would I be able to get a copy of Luke's work as well?

My mail's baka{at}boards{dot}jp

Thanks!


My group is meeting again soon after leaving off at the end of "There is no Honor" in December. While the players managed to clear out the Lotus guildhall and rout Rowyn, they have a tendency to glaze over when it comes to investigating. In short, they didn't find Vanthus' letters to Rowyn. After a session through the entirety of the guildhall and its denizens concluded that Vanthus was there, but have no idea where he is now.

They did get really banged up in the guildhall, so they took their portions of the treasure and are recuperating over the next few days leading up until the next session.

My original plan was to have the party's rogue contacted by a black market face in Shadowshore. This shady character is one the rogue has been very dependent on, so a large sum of gold has already changed hands up until now for informational leads and items of dubious ownership. With all the rival guilds vying for top dog in Sasserine's underworld, I reasoned it wouldn't take long for news of the Lotus Dragon's fall to spread. The party wasn't exactly subtle with their raid, having torched the front that was the Taxidermist's Guild to the ground, so I also reasoned unsavory characters would soon find their way into the remains for looting. Thus, after a few days, Vanthus' letters would be found - which would naturally be deemed worthless to anyone save possibly Lavinia (or maybe Rowyn herself). The party rogues' contact gets wind of them and haggles the pages for a cheap sum knowing his customer (who had previously prodded for information of Vanthus' whereabouts) would pay well.

The party gets their adventure hook without things seeming too ordained.

Now I have the possibility of a player interested in joining in on this session as a one-off. Their desire was to simply have me roll up a character and have them jump in and out as a oneshot. I'm thinking this is an excellent opportunity to flesh out the Jade Ravens a little bit. I want to give them a little more exposure before they resurface during the manor attack - it's been some time since their first chance encounter back in TINH, and I'm sure most of the players even forgot they exist.

I'm thinking of maybe sending the players off on a little side trek out of Sasserine and having the temp player jump into the role of one of the Ravens as a tag-a-long. At the end of the side trek, the players could find Vanthus' letters, or else some other less cliche indication that he is over in Kraken Cove.

I'm wondering if anyone has any supportive ideas for this direction I'm planning, specifically:
1) A convincing reason why the Jade Raven member would work with the PCs for this one adventure.
2) A short adventure or map suitable as an outside location that the Lotus Dragons/Vanthus used prior to the events of TINH.

(As a side note, I was also considering using some ideas I saw on the boards regarding Malcanthet testing the PCs, but I'm not if weaving something like that in would be a good idea so soon in the campaign)

Thanks for all the incredible information on the boards thus far (there are many incredible ideas I have "stolen" and plan to incorporate), and thanks in advance for any suggestions directly addressing my predicament!