briguy's page

After a 2 year hiatus (new jobs, new babies, an active Shackled City campaign, players leaving, players joining) we are getting our once-weekly Age of Worms Campaign back on track for what is likely going to be a once-monthly run to the finish.

We left off our party at the end of the Champion Games where, through a combination of DM oversight (I can never quite remember in the heat of battle which bonuses stacks and which do not!) and party creativity and tenacity, the catastrophe was averted and the group were the game champions.

Our rogue abandoned the group with his loot from the Champion Games, (the player having moved off to one of the beautiful Gulf Islands in Canada), replaced now by a newly rolled 11th level archaeological rogue who had been poking around in other cairns in the Cairn Hills and having encountered a few Kyuss Spawn in the process. The brilliantly played Wee-Jas Cleric has also retired, with the player bringing in a newly rolled 11th level paladin who was a close friend of Eligos that had been doing much of Eligos' Age of Worms research for him. He has decided to take on the Wormhunter class as part of his new quest in joining the party. Hopefully the wormhunter paladin will be OK for a party that no longer has a cleric.

So, I'm am gearing up to get this game going again, but this time using Pathfinder rules. All the characters have been re-jigged using the beta rules (I really hope there are not too many changes in the final version!). Is there any advice for how much magic these newly rolled 11th level characters can bring into the game? Given the economics of you have to trade stuff and half-value to get more powerful stuff at full value, it seems that it might be a bit rich to let them buy whatever magic they want for the amount of standard GP a newly rolled 11th level character would have. I'm not sure though.

I am also bracing for the work of sorting things out on the DM side for running Age of Worms as a Pathfinder Advenutre. If anyone has seen the final printed version, are there any significantly different tips on doing DM conversions (page 298-9 in the Beta)? Any other tips? Anyone done this already and might want to share?

For those interested, I'll try to post anything useful up to therpgenius.com and the campaign blog up to http://ageofwormscampaign.blogspot.com/. Wish me luck. I've certainly enjoyed playing Shackled City as a Pathfinder player (currently a fey bloodline sorcerer just entering the Flood Festival, who is one of my favourite characters ever!)

The cleric of Wee Jas in the game I am DMing just sent me a pre-game alert to his intentions to execute the law and attempt to take Racknian down during their next fight in the arena. They have just killed Bozal (and were almost completely pummelled by Bozal's demon friend) and feel they want to do swift justice on Racknian for all the wickedness they have discovered under the arena.

I'm glad to have the information in advance, as I had only prepared for the battle with the flying dwarves and not something potentially much bigger. However, I would love a bit of strategic advice on how to handle it. I'm quite new to this high-level of play, so would really appreciate some tips.

I don't want to cop-out and not have Racknian observing the games that round, nor do I want to have his viewing area somehow magically protected. These seem to be simply too overt meta-game tactics to thwart the direction of the players.

I do think that on the first sign of an anti-Racknian strike, he would leave his viewing place (knowing that the Party is dangerous) and leave his henchmen to "expel" the Party from the games. Perhaps under Okral's lead, and supported by the officious wizard (he's only 7th level), 30 or 40 of the 5th level bodyguards would take to the field and expel the party. Handling that combat may be cumbersome. Is there perhaps more heavy support that Racknian might be able to draw on in such an instance? Would Orkal's men try to kill the party in front of the crowd (clearly Pitchblade would want that), or merely expel them for Racknian to deal with some other way.

The more I think about it, the more I think it looks like TPK if they go ahead with this. I'll try to give all the indications of that being a bad idea, but any strategic advice would be gratefully received.

My PCs have just crawled out of Sodden Hold, having lost their Kord-honouring fighter to the invisible stalkers. The party Cleric, a faithful servant of Wee-jas , has planned a large and impressive public funeral for their hero. I’m stumped on what to charge for it, as I don’t have a very good handle on urban economics in D&D.

First a bit of background. The fighter died a hero, trying to save two others from near death. The party elf wizard had been absconded by the dopplegangers and was out of the picture. The Rogue, Cleric, Fighter and doppleganger elf-wiz had just come back from a very serious entanglement with the giant octopus. The ‘elfs’ spells had ‘failed’ during the octopus fight, and the party asked him to try it out a simple detect magic in the Stalker’s room, which they had not yet been in. The tricky doppleganger muttered the password and failed the spell. The cleric came in and managed to get off the detect magic before being thumped hard by the Invisible Stalkers. A round of attacks ensued with the Stalkers only attacking the rogue and cleric at first. At last, the conspiring dop-elf-wizard turned on the party, sneak attacking the rogue, doing serious damage. Everyone was completely surprised. A massive battle followed, with the rogue and fighter dropping completely dead and the cleric, below 10 HP and almost out of spells, doing a very hasty, invisible, flying retreat out of Sodden Hold. He was not followed. He had, fortunately taken bits from each player early in the Campaign and was able to borrow from Pollard (Eligos’ assistant) the funds for a resurrection for the rogue (who he always spars with, but hopes to redeem). Alas, there were not enough funds for the fighter, so he was lost in battle. The party regrouped, went in and saved the real elf wizard and got thoroughly spooked by the mind flayer foreshadow experience.

Now, before going to search for the mind flayer, the cleric has the idea to sell the 19,000 GP assets of the fighter and hold a big public funeral. He’s contacted some performers from the Blueberry theatre (detailed in the Dragon wormfood article, with which they had a very funny bardic lore experience sorting out Ilthane’s tainted dark vial potions) to re-enact the scenes of the fighter’s life. He contacted the church of Heironeous to organize a big public funeral march procession, and the church of Kord to obtain appropriate miliary-like funerary goods (monuments, tombstone, coffin drapery, etc). Of course, there are also his own diety's interests in death he has long respected. Because they had made contacts with city officials, handing Telekin over with all the revealing papers, there is expected quite a crowd of public officials and others. All of this is in the heavy backdrop of whipping up the public for a new set of potential heros for the champion games.

So, for the big public funeral, with actors, city guards, appropriate donations to both Kord, Heironeous and Wee-jas temples, and the logistics of a Greyhawk festival, does anyone know where I might turn for guiance on costs. I’m thinking it might be appropriately in the 10,000GP range, but I’m really not sure. Advice would be appreciated. Game night is Wednesday.