Takasi's page

Remember, the Overload isn't late. The magazine mentioning it was early. Just look at the date.

Magazine says August 2005. It's now August 2005. No Overload. The magazine said it is out already. Overload is late. Let's not pretend it isn't.

Can we get a quick update on where the doco is now? Is WotC still reviewing it? Any feedback yet? If there are revisions required how long will that take? If you get the green flag will it be up immediately?

My session is Wednesday night from 6pm to 9pm Pacific. Do you think we'll see it tonight or tomorrow morning?

The email I use here is web based, so it doesn't really matter if you send me the email or post the update online because I have to check both places manually anyway. Will you send the email out before you post it online or vice versa?

In our campaign, personal debts involve far more than money.

Aldrich, a dwarven ranger, cares for his father after a battle with a choker forced retirement.

Sledge, a warforged paladin, is honoring the dying word of a Silver Flame cleric to journey to Diamond Lake and help bring the town's church back under control of the theocracy of Thrane.

Doc, a human cleric of Dol Arrah, respects Velias Childramun and must fulfill his priestly duties.

Caliban, an elven wizard, spends his indentured days casting prestidigation to clean Moonmeadow's ship, The Lamikan ("Eternal Swan").

Vallen, a dwarven rogue, has no obligations. He was in town temporarily on an engineering job and found the PCs in the second session after their hireling quit. He's basically a mercenary, and this group is the best job he can find.

The group is currently "on vacation", taking a few days off from their daily routines to outsmart the newcomers in town (Kellek's group). They're in the middle of the WC now.

After they are done, Smenk will instigate 3 Faces of Evil. If they don't do the job for Smenk then other mine managers will approach them.

After that, Allustan is going to "free" all of them in return for service to him.

Will the conversions be one-pagers or will they be longer?

Will we see conversion notes specifically for 125 in Overload? Here's a quote from the Keith's Eberron notes in 124:

"The Ebon Triad reveres the Shadow, the Mockery and the Keeper-though they have a very different view of the Keeper than the Restful Watch. This cult will be explored in greater detail in the second installment of the adventure path."

Do the conversion notes have more info on the Keeper?

And will we see conversion notes on all of the adventures or just in Overload?

What does this thread gain from yet another complaint that the overload hasn't been released yet?

Other than possibly prompting Paizo to bug the powers that be at WotC to speed things up, according to Erik I don't think there's anything this thread can do to help the current situation.

However, thread does get bumped and shows up on the front page. There may be a few new people every day looking for this web article. It prevents others from posting "Hey where's the AoW overload?" threads. The size of the thread is also a testament to the passion for the path in general, and serves well as a complement and punishment for the quality of the series and tardiness of the supplement.

Of course, I could buy another saddle. After all, I paid the man for the horse, and the saddle was supposed to be an extra; I answered the ad...

Are you crazy? My family can't ride a horse bareback, we need a special saddle, a custom brand named Eberron orthopedic model. They're very difficult to locate, but this breeder promised he could get us one. And on top of that we really needed it for my kid's birthday last week. You should have seen all the crying children. The children, think about the poor children!

True, But you want to make sure it is not something the PCs would have seen before they find the red Lantern in the Cairn...

You could also house rule that lanterns removed from the cave no longer deactivate the trap once replacements are generated.

Not if instead of a commentary overlay I ended up getting the directors cut of the movie... which is pretty much what happened here. Made more sense to keep in more adventure than to cut some adventure and include the extras. I know, I know, some people love the audio commentaries...Sean Mahoney

I think a more appropriate analogy is buying a Playstation game that doesn't have cutscenes. Sure, it's still playable, but it doesn't make as much sense. In addition, it's an RPG like Final Fantasy.

On top of that, imagine if you read the back of a preorder disc at your local EB Games or Software Etc or online and found out that this game would have a great storyline, but you had to download all of the cutscenes online. You preorder the game and you're anxious to play it, but you want to view the cutscenes too. Also, some of the puzzles in the game are tied into the cutscenes, making it difficult to play without them.

And to make it a more fair analogy, there are no restarts and only one save game slot that cannot be rewritten.

Not exactly a platinum selling strategy.

Paris, I agree with the thematic issues. Why wouldn't he have eaten the dead body in the nearby room, especially when the descriptive text says the dead body was partially gnawed on?

One possible explanation is the water elemental. Perhaps when the insane water creature discovered that Ulavant had returned it tried to kill him again. Ghouls are pretty smart, and the description of Ulavant says he's still the trickster and show off he was when he was alive. Ulavant could have easily feinted death, tricking the elemental into leaving him alone. Can an undead ghoul practice enough patience to wait an eternity for an elemental to die? From a rules perspective, there's nothing that requires a ghoul to feed, so he could theoretically wait in the tomb forever.

Since he can speak, you could even have add a little roleplaying to the NPC. "You have delivered me from the cursed elemental. Now you will deliver me from the cursed hunger!"

Zombies tend to move slowly and methodically by walking on the bottom of the sea or whatever, and they don't have to paddle or look silly in any way. Perhaps the ghoul could move in a similar fashion or even "drift" toward them, then suddenly lunge at the characters, swimming as well as a human. That would scare the bejeezus out of me. ;)

The problem is there's no rules precedent for this. My players will ask why the ghoul doesn't have to roll a swim check. If he does roll a swim check and fail then the rules don't support a "drift". If I house rule drifting for the ghoul then they'll want to know why I can't let them drift like the ghoul; I'd rather stick with prewritten rules.

They party will develop their strategy based on whether the ghoul has to make swim checks. If they know they can't outswim him then they won't consider running away, whereas a swim check makes the ghoul MUCH slower.

A creature may have very well adapted to its environment over the 60 years that Ulavant would have been there, but this is assuming that ghouls have the capacity to learn.

Unlike zombies and skeletons, ghouls have above average intelligence. They have a fairly large number of skills with learned ranks.

I also don't know that the paralysis is what I would call a learned trick - it's an inherent ability of that particular undead species.

A swim speed is not a learned trick either, it's an inherent ability of lecadon. If he's a lecadon then he didn't learn how to swim anymore than he learned how to paralyze people.

Exactly. How does a human body learn to swim faster by being undead?

When the human body becomes a ghoul it "learns" several new tricks, including paralysis. It's not too far fetched to assume that a person who dies from drowning or from the attacks of a water elemental can gain the ability to move in water as easily as they did on land.

The creature is probably going to look very bloated and water logged anyway. It would look kind of goofy failing swim checks. A swim speed could explain some type of "supernatural" movement in the water, as if he's running on land but in three dimensions. It just seems creepier and for better effect.

A lacedon is a ghoul variant. It's listed in the Monster Manual, page 119. The only difference is that a lacedon has a swim speed of 30 feet and are only found in aquatic environments.

IIRC wasn't the CR upped from 1 to 2 anyway because they're underwater?

Considering how difficult it is to shoot anything underwater, the only major advantage of the swim speed is that there's almost no way the party can get away from him. By default a lacedon is CR 1, and considering that it's usually only encountered underwater I think CR 2 is more than appropriate.

Did anyone have a party member drown? How difficult is it to go Baywatch and rescue someone? I'm guessing carrying capacity doesn't change underwater, so most characters will have a heavy load. This would put them at -6 on their swim checks with a movement speed of 5 feet per round (max 15 feet with run). Do any of your characters have ranks in swim? None of mine do.

Also, do paralysis rounds stack? For example, if Ulavant hits someone and paralyzes them, on his next attack can he inflict additional rounds of paralysis?

Did you run Ulavant as a ghoul or a lacedon? I think it would be more challenging and more logical if he had a swim speed. IIRC he died underwater right? It seems kind of silly to see this horrifying monster doing a doggy paddle and failing swim checks. Also, if he were a ghoul wouldn't he rather swim to dry land where he would have an easier time hunting for food? One might think he was afraid of the water elemental, but if the elemental had wanted to destroy him he would be destroyed IMO.

Also, did you have him awake and moving around when the PCs encounter him? I'm considering having him try to bluff the heroes into thinking he's just a floating corpse, then when they investigate his eyes open and he attacks. Is it fair to modify his stats to do this? If he was a lacedon, he really has no need for skill ranks in climb and jump. Could I replace them with bluff (+5 total with charisma) and listen (+6 with wisdom)? Is it believable that an undead floating corpse would sit and wait patiently (perhaps years) for something to appear?

Are your PCs going to buy Fant Manor and work on it? If so, how did they obtain the manor? Are they squatters or do they attempt to buy the land? Do they find a deed? Where do they find it?

Did your players explore the mine instead of the cairn? What would be in the abandoned mine? How did you get them to go to the cairn instead of the mine?

Sorry for all the questions, I'm about to run this and could use some pointers on starting out from scratch. I plan on running the goblin adventure as a starter in the thread "Wormfood as Encounters", but I'd like to hear how others used the manor and the bridge between the manor and the cairn (if there is any).

What did you do with Filge? Kill him? Let him go? Take him prisoner?

If you killed him, do you plan on having him come back as undead or spirit in a future adventure?

If you let him go, do you plan on having him return?

If you took him prisoner, who did you take him to? What crimes did he commit in your campaign world?

Is necromancy illegal in your Diamond Lake? I can't remember if the description of his home implied foul play. Were the bodies murdered or simply dug up? Is there any proof that Filge dug them up? Perhaps he purchased them to conduct "important research" to combat necromancy (or at least that could be his defense).

Did the PCs break any laws by storming the observatory? What are the laws in your campaign against trespassing? How did the PCs explain their actions? Did they describe their discovery of the Whispering Cairn? Did they reveal information about the cult to anyone?

That's weird, when I was looking for this thread this morning it was buried all the way on the bottom of the page. For some reason the "date last posted" is blank or something. Anyone else see this? Hello?

I plan on running this also, but with a few minor tweaks to increase the difficulty slightly.

Areas marked as difficult terrrain in the map provide cover (+4 AC) for small creatures.

The goblins are equipped with two handed small spears (d6 damage) instead of javelins (d4) and shields. There are spears all over the house living room, allowing them to have constant access to ranged and melee weapons. Instead of Str 11 and Dex 13, they now have Str 10 and Dex 14, upping their AC to 15 and ranged attack to +4. Instead of alertness they have skill focus (hide) as their warrior feat, bringing their hide bonus up to +9. Ugloop's stats are also changed, and he will have Wis 14 instead of 12 and Strength 10 instead of 14 to increase his spell DCs from 13 to 14.

Strategy: The goblins in the living room listen for the sounds of the PCs in combat with the Stirges. The combat DC is around 8 (-10 combat, +15 stone walls, +3 and up for distance) so I'm assuming they'll hear them. They'll space out and hide in the building rubble and wait for the PCs to enter, attempting to surprise them. After the surprise round, one will of the gobbos will yell to the shaman in the next room. The shaman will then then yell from the other room, making a bluff check to distract the PCs. The goblins will then attempt to hide again and move to a different location. If engaged in melee combat they will withdraw and run away.

Strategy for Ugloop and guards: These goblins will also attempt to hide, hoping for to get a casting of sleep during the surprise round.

Interestingly, the staple food in a badger's diet is the earthworm. The kitchen could also contain two rotting lamb carcasses, with piles of collected maggots and bugs harvested from their bodies and stored to feed the badgers and goblins.

I just subscribed last week because I'm running Adventure Path 2 in Eberron. I would really like to see more of Keith's work, but he's not working on WotC's upcoming sourcebooks. I liked his article on nobility, but I would like more Eberron specific articles.

Can someone (maybe Mr. Mona) please assure me that I'll see a healthy portion of Eberron material for the next year or so? I'm hoping for something every issue. Conversion notes for ecology articles is very much needed IMO. For example, in the Behir article it would have been nice to read about some example legends of behirs in Eberron. What relationship do behirs have with the Chamber?

Separate "Eberron specific" articles are great too, but I could do with only seeing them in every two or three issues. The most important thing is seeing some coverage in at least one article every month. No one is going to gloss over an article just because it has some Eberron sidebar in it.

Forgotten Realms could use some help too, but Eberron especially because it's such a new setting and can use more help fleshing it out.

Any other Eberron fans out there?

I subscribed last week to both Dungeon and Dragon. Can I get an estimate on when I'll get my first issue? Will I receive issue 334 or will I have to wait for 335? What about Dungeon? Will I have to wait until 126?

I am also DMing this campaign in Eberron. In fact, I decided to finally break down and get a subscription to Dungeon and Dragon in good faith that I'll see more articles from Keith Baker.

Last night my group started building their characters. In the past I've ran Mark of Heroes games, the 3 WotC modules and one shot Eberron adventures from Dungeon (Queen with Burning Eyes & Fallen Angel). These were done in a card shop with a mix of young and old players. My new group consists of vets from first and second edition, and I was tempted to use Greyhawk as the baseline. To my surprise they wanted to give Eberron a shot.

One player who especially likes his games to be "classic old school" shocked me when he brought his sheet ready and it was a warforged! Interestingly, he wanted to be a warforged cleric of the Silver Flame. I strongly suggested Dol Arrah, but he insisted on the Silver Flame. Some issues that came up:

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Q.) Did the warforged cleric serve in the Last War?
A.) No, he was one of the last assembled prior to the Treaty of Thronehold and never saw battle.

Q.) How did a warforged cleric end up in Diamond Lake?
A.) During the Last War, Breland (home of Diamond Lake) and Thrane (the central power of the Church of the Silver Flame) were enemies. Many of the churches in Breland went "rogue", including the one in Diamond Lake. The warforged is on a mission from an authority figure in Thrane to bring this diociese back into the fold now that the war has ended.

Q.) Why would the Church send a warforged?
A.) For several theological reasons, the Church does not believe warforged have souls. This warforged was the traveling companion of a human cleric, who died of disease on the way to Diamond Lake. The warforged is journeying to Diamond Lake to keep a promise to his dying friend.

Q.) How does the warforged know the party?
A.) When the warforged arrived at Diamond Lake he was treated poorly by the Church. Many of the miners feel that warforged threaten their job security and the Diamond Lake church preys on this fear. Several sermons in the past have denounced warforged as vile abominations of the soul.

The Chapel of the Sovereign Host, on the other hand, heard of the newcomer and invited him to mass where his arrival was celebrated. It was at this mass where he met another member of the party, another cleric (yes the party has two clerics, and it's a party of four). They soon became good friends.

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One of the other party members decided to be a dwarf ranger. I suggested he take aberrations as his favored enemy. He comes from a long line of mine "exterminators", hunting down monsters that come up through underground fissures. His father recently retired due to a choker accident while on a job, so the dwarf is now looking for a team to work with. He wanted to know if any of the mine managers are dwarven. Would Dourstone hire someone to hunt down monsters in his mines?

And just a general question about Eberron and Diamond Lake. What impact did the last war have on the town? I'm assuming the King would have needed resources, do you think a lot of the town's money came from war contracts?

When I first read that I thought Erik was going to come in and correct the spelling from Worms to Wyrms. Sounds very interesting, I'll definately pick this up if there are Eberron sidebars.

I flipped through Dungeon 120 at my FLGS this weekend. I didn't end up picking it up because I don't have time to convert these adventures into my Eberron campaign. If someone else would do this, perhaps as a web supplement then maybe I'd buy it but until then I'll just keep waiting until there's more Eberron material for me. (I did pick up Dragon 328 though; I think the Saurian shifters will find their way into my campaign.)

I read Wil Save. It was horrible. Can anyone who enjoys Will's writing or Return of the Gamer please explain why it belongs in Dungeon?

And for those of us who agree that this is a stinker, which do you think was worse, part 1 or 2? I would say part 2, because it was such a let down. After reading part 1 I thought "Man, this can't be less relavant to D&D...but maybe when he actually gets to the convention he'll start talking about an RPGA event or a miniatures skirmish or a D&D game or something." What a letdown! That alone would make part 2 the winner (or loser, however you want to look at it) but he also throws in an inconsistent writing style (which he makes fun of), pompous sounding half sarcasms and an utter lack of any useful descriptions for someone who's never attended a convention.

Wil sounds like the dentist from Seinfeld: He converted to D&D for the jokes (and this article). Maybe he's a true gamer at heart, but it sure doesn't come across that way in his articles.

Gee, I guess if I was really good then I wouldn't need Dungeon at all, right? The magazine is supposed to be an aide and a few paragraphs for the two major settings available would be helpful.

Can you drop any cookies about the Campaign Workbook? Pretty please??? :)

Your conversion is pretty cool. As a DM I'd still have some questions about how the giants were imported. It may only take you a few minutes to do these things since you've already read the adventure, and that's great. However, for an Eberron DM to do this he would have to read THE ENTIRE ADVENTURE first to get a feel for the conversion. This takes more work than the conversion itself. Now, if there was a quick conversion already there then Eberron DMs would gravitate towards this first and THEN read the adventure. Do you see how helpful this would be?

I would think there's plenty of room to put these notes. Getting rid of Will Save would be a great start, but that's a post for a different topic...

Thanks for the info Erik. Will we see any articles in Dragon?

"Unless I've been misinformed, there should be a Campaign Workbook in issue #121 with a 12th level gnome NPC who could spark a lot of Eberron adventures."

Awesome! Is this in the preview for 120?

"I know you're looking for completely pregen adventures already set in Eberron, but I think Keith Baker and the WotC guys have that market cornered... and with a backdrop and a three-part adventure coming up, I don't think we can complain too much. :)"

Well there aren't very many adventures out there. Wizards has three settings and Dungeon has room for three adventures every month. As an Eberron DM, Dungeon has been a little disappointing in the last few months. It sounds like things will improve though, so that's good.

"That'd be interesting, but I don't think it'd work for at least two reasons. The first is that all the extra stat blocks would seriously eat into the space available to actual adventures. The second is that I think it would feed the notion (which I believe is wrongheaded) that Eberron is *soo different* from ordinary D&D that one has to convert all the NPCs to make a given adventure work. "

I disagree. It's true that Eberron doesn't have so much "new" stuff that you couldn't play an Eberron adventure in a generic setting. The problem is that Eberron has a concrete place for almost every staple in D&D. Most generic adventures (and settings like Greyhawk) just throw in everything and come off disorganized.

Take Throne of Iuz in 118 for example. I could replace Iuz with some fiend, but where are these orcs from? Droamm? The Shadow Marshes? And what about the ancient elven burial ground? Do they have any ties to the Undying Council or Valenar? And what about the Giants? And the Slaad? Sure, I could just throw these things as a hodgepodge of creatures but then the adventure would seem pretty shallow. Has anyone else took a stab at this? What about the adventures in 119?

As an Eberron DM, I'm having a tough time using Dungeon. Are there any other DMs out there running an Eberron campaign that have successfully converted non-Eberron Dungeon modules to the setting?

I'm a little disappointed that three issues have gone by (118, 119 and now 120) with no sign of Eberron content and personally I think its the setting that needs it the most. Here's a list of every Eberron adventure I can get my hands on:

Forgotten Forge - Level 1 (ECS)
Queen with Burning Eyes - Level 1 (Dungeon 113)
Shadows of the Last War - Level 1 (WotC Published)
Steel Shadows - Level 7 (Dungeon 115)
Whispers of the Vampire's Blade - Level 4 (WotC Published)
Fallen Angel - Level 4 (Dungeon 117)
Grasp of the Emerald Claw - Level 7 (WotC Published)

As you can see, there really isn't much out there and there's nothing out there after level 7. I've added the XP from all the encounters in these adventures and if you ran all of them players would still only be level 8 or 9. One of the reasons I pick up premade adventures is to have a wide variety of already available roads for my players to choose from. I could make up my own paths but if that's the case why pick up Dungeon at all? I need help and so far I haven't found very much from reading Dungeon. Has anyone else had more success?

I also greatly look forward to new skirmish maps. It would also be neat to see double sided maps in Dungeon at mini scale.

Doesn't Wesley Crusher have better things to do with his time? Like playing with warp bubbles in the Nth dimension?

If the articles were from any other writer it might be just "bleh", but I expect much more from an acting ensign.

:D

I'm very much looking forward to the Novel Approach coverage of the Rite. I finished the Rage a few months ago and I'm reading the Realms of the Dragons anthology right now.

Have the stats for the half-golem protagonist Dorn been posted on Wizards site? The only article I can find on him is here:

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=books/fr/dorncp

Will his stats appear in the Novel Approach article?

It would be awesome if Dragon could preview the D&D campaign season for the issue's month. The WotC page only shows the information during the month of campaign. Is it logistically possible to get this information in time for the Dragon issue?

If anything, it would be nice to have just one article spotlighting the Campaign Seasons adventures and unique D&D terrain tiles and promo minis? Perhaps when Legacy of the Green Reagant is replaced by Eberron's Mark of Heroes?

For more information:

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=rpga/hq/campaignseasons

Just wanted to add that I love seeing the miniature stuff. I would also like to see more Eberron specific information. There is no information about Duergar in Eberron, and from reading info from Keith Baker and other previews it looks like there won't be for quite some time. This would have been an excellent opportunity to include a small blurb to satisfy Eberron gamers without devoting an entire article to the setting. The same thing can be said for the lupin article.