I'll Admit it. I screwed up the encounter with Allustin. Though I did paint him in a good light, during the encounter at blackwall keep, The human hating elf makes this comment.
"I bet he set a trap."
Because of this little comment, it has changed the party's perception of Allustin. Whenever I mention him, they say "oh, that traitor." When he appeared in the Hall of Harsh Reflections, the players didn't seem surprised. "Oh, I knew it was his fault," they seemed to say.
Now we're in the middle of the Champion's Belt. The players are going to return home over the Blood Desert in about a week, I suppose. How can I change their perception of the Wizard?
Incidentally, the Ranger has left the party, along with her player. Her mark remains.
For this reason, I'm considering having Allustan not teleport away at Blackwall Keep. Instead, a balrog-esque force (perhaps a run-in with Ilthane?) will keep him from aiding the rest of the party during the adventure.
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Allustan is a coward. It isn't all his fault, but he's psychologically susceptible to this disposition.
Allustan had a falling out with his master, Menzorian/Tenser. This is because of moral differences. Tenser is more proactive towards threats, Allustan is more reactive.
Allustan retreated to Diamond Lake to keep and eye on his brother Lanod. He also retreated to Diamond Lake to hide himself from his peers (Eligos, Marzena) as they knew he was a coward. I had to come up with a reason why Allustan changed in the eyes of his peers. He must have had a backbone at one time, otherwise he wouldn't have the levels in wizard that he does. I speculated that he, Eligos and Marzena were "adventuring" at one time, gathering intelligence on some sagely pursuit. Perhaps they were looking for a Wind Duke of Aqaa cairn elsewhere. They encountered a ghost. This ghost not only aged Allustan (why he seems older than Eligos and Marzena), it drained him of his lifeforce. The experience was so harrowing, Allustan has sequestered himself away from the world.
The PCs have slowly allowed Allustan to come out of his shell. At Blackwall Keep, he realizes he isn't ready yet. He runs. This damages his reputation somewhat with the PCs. They ask Marzena about him and learn a little of the ghost background. They empathize, but don't necessarily forgive. Their interaction with Eligos mellows their stance somewhat so by the time they return to Diamond Lake, they are motivated to save Allustan because they fear he cannot save himself.
If you can take some of this and apply it to your current situation, perhaps retroactively, maybe you can save Allustan as a useful NPC in your game.
I changed several things with EaBK, and one of the first things was that Allustan did NOT go with the PCs to the Keep. I think the only reason he goes, in the adventure as written, is that it gives the PCs an opportunity to get to know him and (hopefully) bond with him, since he's an important NPC in later adventures.
In my case, the wizard PC in our group started the game as Allustan's apprentice, and Allustan's house was their "home base" through out the Diamond Lake adventures.
I think as long as you can establish a good relationship between him and the PCs early in the campaign, then his presence at BlackWall keep is unnecessary.
In your case, sounds like you need to do a little damage control. Maybe you can have Allustan return to BlackWall Keep with garrison reinforcements, just in time to save the PCs from another, more deadly, assault on the keep?
Or if not the Keep - maybe he can do SOMETHING useful to help them out, thus winning their trust.
Otherwise, you may need to substitute some other NPC for him in later adventures. For example, if you think your players will choose NOT to go rescue him after returning to Diamond Lake from GreyHawk, then replace him with someone that they DO care about, etc.
I also changed things concerning Allustan.
When the PCs came upon Blackwall Keep, Allustan cast stoneskin on the ranger, fly on himself, and took to the air. His spells made short work of many lizardfolk. Though he's not as gung ho as the PCs, he knew it was better for everyone if he stayed and actually did something to help... at least in my campaign.
I want to remove the 6th module (A Gathering of Winds) and turn Illthane's attack into something more. I'll bump Allustan to three or four levels higher than the PCs (13 or so), and have him handle Icosiol's tomb all by himself. When he emerges from the tomb, spells exhausted, Illthane (much older and bigger in my campaign) will swoop down and strike, carrying off Allustan in an attempt to draw the PCs into the swamp so Illthane's draconic tribe of black-scaled lizardfolk can exact revenge for the PCs slaying of Shukak, one of Illthane's finest broodlings.
I want to use the old DL module Dragons of Despair as Illthane's lair, replacing the draconians with draconic lizardfolk, Khisanth/Onyx with Illthane, and Raistlin with Allustan. ;)
It's true, but the primary motivating factor behind the 6th adventure (AGoW) is finding Allustan. The in-depth exploration of Icosiol's tomb is really an afterthought, though a great dungeon crawl, however. But for more story-motivated players, it's almost totally superfluous.
"Does Allustan matter"? Yes and no. Yes, because of his role for AGoW, but no, because--as mentioned earlier--he could be substituted with any important NPC. While Diamond Lake would certainly benefit from his sagacity, not to mention the destruction of Ilthane in its efforts to rebuild the place, if the PCs won't get him, maybe they can get someone else. How about Marzena, again, on an effort to reunite with Allustan, but suddenly trapped inside Icosiol's tomb, under the threat of Ilthane? I don't know. Anybody.
Allustan filled the role of surrogate mentor for a while in my own game, but was overshadowed the moment Manzorian made the scene, and then joined by Lashonna. I wouldn't force Allustan's role, but I'd make it evident how he is important to Diamond Lake.
I played up Allustan as a coward (in fact I did a whole post about it found here: Allustan the Cowardly? ).
I partially made this successful by playing up the falling out between him and MArzena, having the players walk in as she is walking out of Allustan's house belittling him for his cowardly ways. It worked out well, with one of the players scoffing at him (the Paladin of Hextor), and the other (the Cleric of Wee Jas) trying to support him and tell him he was no coward.
I played this all up to a large extent after they returned to Diamond Lake after defeating Ilthane and saving Allustan in GoW. Allustan sank and cried at his ruined home (a servant boy had died) and waxed poetic as follows:
Without turning, and with his (Allustan's that is) gaze fixed upon the ruin of his house he speaks.
“This age is over. We stand on the razor’s edge my friends. Our time ends, maybe not in days, perhaps not in weeks, but in the coming months, they are to be our last, our last days of joy. This world is overripe and is calling for some hand to crush it, perhaps that hand will be the overgod of the Ebon Triad, perhaps Kyuss, perhaps some other who hides still, I know not. I will tell you what, heroes of Diamond Lake, champions of the Free City, I am going to go and bury that boy, and then I am going to rebuild my home, but not of wood and glass, not with gardens and light. No, I am going to build of rock and stone, with walls thick and strong. Now is not the time for beauty, now is the time for survival, for defending one’s own from the evils that will soon walk this land. Go where you will, I shall hide here, the coward that I am, bar my door and hope these terrors pass this miserable man by, so that he may die, alone, and old."
I kinda tried to push his cowardness into a really dark place there, using the Gathering of Winds, as the mid point adventure, as a place to really get the point across that times were about to get a lot worse, and that the darkness that was on the horizon is now here. Like I said it seemed to work well. Allustan the coward was one of the more fun NPCs for me, along with Celeste the baudy (she seduced the LN Paladin of Hextor, I changed her to a Half-Celestial rather than a Eladrin, and had her follow the chaotic side of her CG alignment, which is making for interesting times as the Paladin of Hextor is a Paladin of Law.)
Anyhow there are my two cents.
I changed several things with EaBK, and one of the first things was that Allustan did NOT go with the PCs to the Keep. I think the only reason he goes, in the adventure as written, is that it gives the PCs an opportunity to get to know him and (hopefully) bond with him, since he's an important NPC in later adventures.
I'm planning to do the same thing. Allustan will not be joining the PCs on their way to Blackwall Keep. There is no reason he should. The party has already got a relatively good bond with the wizard anyway, since the party's mage is using Allustan as a source for his spells and Allustan has helped the party with research and information.
My players were tired of trying to save Allustan by the time they found him in AGoW. That changed shortly afterward - the party fighter got trapped in the room with the inevitable. Allustan DD'ed into the room and got right in the line of fire, giving the others time to dispatch the villain before the fighter bit the dust.
In the battle with the oculus demon, the party mage dropped a fire wall in an inopportune place, sealing all the party members in what amounted to a 5' corridor. The demon simply flew over the wall and started blasting away. Allustan was trapped between the fighter and the demon (and mostly out of spells). The fighter complained, so Allustan simply turned and ran through the wall of flames, taking a ton of damage, then stood on the other side and faced the party, smoldering:
"Now, are you f'n SATISFIED!?"
Things have been relatively smooth since, particularly after he pulled out a wand of Fly to help the party go down the 'toilet', as they called it.
I made Allustan a bit more active. He is an adventurer who retired to be a scholar and keep an eye on his brother. When the party reached blackwall keep, he pulled the players back and told them that he could get help for the keep by using his teleport scroll. The Marshall in the party realized that the keep needed reinforcement now and that party could not hide out and wait for help to arrive without being spotted due the size of the lizardfolk army. After a bit of talk, they group decided on a plan to fight their way to the keep while Allustan went for help. Allustan opened up a path with a fireball then teleported to get reinforcements.
Well my groups wizard kinda looked up to Allustan from the start. I also took all the Kyuss info from the first few adventures and spread it out a little more so that Allustan knew a little more. He did teleport away at Blackwell keep but not before casting Stoneskin on the monk and telling them he had every confidence that they could handle it before he came back with re-enforcements. So for the most part they like him just fine. Now they even feel a little sorry since they accidentally got him killed saving him in the Gathering of Winds. They raised him since they felt so bad. The groups wizard's (a long time D&D gamer) jaw dropped when he told them they had to go see his mentor Tensor. In fact they were more suprised by that than seeing Eligos alive.
I've actually been quite successful at keeping Allustan out of the picture for now. As the PCs were being created, I gave one of them an aunt who was a battlemage in the marsh--Marzena. When the stuff hit the fan at Blackwall Keep, she used sending to contact her nephew (the PC) when she could not reach Allustan (who is researching the Kyuss worms and scrying on his apprentice in the party). The PCs bolted off to Blackwall Keep without even stopping by Allustan's to see if he would help. (Gotta love those go-getters.) So, by-and-large, I have not had to worry about Allustan's motivations and perceptions as being a coward (though I was going to play that card, if necessary; now, the rift between he and Tenser will have to be more philosophical in nature--more along the lines of Tenser being very paranoid about his allies than anything else).
Allustan is a coward. It isn't all his fault, but he's psychologically susceptible to this disposition.
Allustan had a falling out with his master, Menzorian/Tenser. This is because of moral differences. Tenser is more proactive towards threats, Allustan is more reactive.
Allustan retreated to Diamond Lake to keep and eye on his brother Lanod. He also retreated to Diamond Lake to hide himself from his peers (Eligos, Marzena) as they knew he was a coward. I had to come up with a reason why Allustan changed in the eyes of his peers. He must have had a backbone at one time, otherwise he wouldn't have the levels in wizard that he does. I speculated that he, Eligos and Marzena were "adventuring" at one time, gathering intelligence on some sagely pursuit. Perhaps they were looking for a Wind Duke of Aqaa cairn elsewhere. They encountered a ghost. This ghost not only aged Allustan (why he seems older than Eligos and Marzena), it drained him of his lifeforce. The experience was so harrowing, Allustan has sequestered himself away from the world.
The PCs have slowly allowed Allustan to come out of his shell. At Blackwall Keep, he realizes he isn't ready yet. He runs. This damages his reputation somewhat with the PCs. They ask Marzena about him and learn a little of the ghost background. They empathize, but don't necessarily forgive. Their interaction with Eligos mellows their stance somewhat so by the time they return to Diamond Lake, they are motivated to save Allustan because they fear he cannot save himself.
What the heck?!? Allustan isn't a coward. He's just not dumbass enough to stay there with the pc's when he could go back for help, and I bet that if you were alone fighting a FREAKIN' dragon you'd probably run(this makes you smart, not coward) Anyways, what I was wondering is what did you guys do in relation to the corrupted mayor from Diamond Lake; my players intend in taking him and his gang down but how would his brother Allustan react? Seriously.
I looked at Blackwall Keep and thought, "Why is Allustan here if he's just going to run away? The author *knew* this would be a problem, and my player is going to hate it." So I decided he wouldn't go.
The PCs then applied *enormous* amounts of arm-twisting to Allustan to make him come with them.
At that point, I blew off what the module said to do, and simply had him fight alongside them. The player didn't mind, and it seemed a lot more workable. I cannot swallow "It's so urgent for me to go back to town and collect help in 1d4 days that I cannot take 3 rounds to cast Stoneskin and Fireball for you." There's no real danger to him. I felt my player would see this, not as Allustan's cowardice, but as pure railroading.
I had a bad time with Blackwall in general: it ran fine, but only after I made a lot of changes. I had trouble understanding how the soldiers could or would tolerate that thing in the basement; things make more sense if it gets in later. The module knows the PCs may catch up with the lizardfolk prisoner group, but gives no indication who is in that group or how they are travelling (and seems to have forgotten that they must be slowed by the prisoners). It knows an alarm may be spread in the lizardfolk HQ but gives no help on tracking the results, instead preferring to present a useless room-by-room of Blackwall Keep. It has diurnal lizardfolk sitting around in the middle of the day in pitch-dark rooms....
And watch out, because if the PCs let all the eggs get turned to spawn, and then kill them all, you will not be prepared for the level they'll become. The module thinks it is penalizing the PCs for this by denying them a CR8 bonus, but 200 CR1's is a lot more points than a CR8! And since the spawn are confined to a pool which they cannot escape, this is dead easy to do. (My player didn't do it, thankfully, but he pointed out the possibility to me.)
Mary
I thought the whole idea of "Hmm, my old friend who I came to visit has been abducted and will likely be killed in a few days.. I know; I'll run away and come back in a week" thing was extremely unlikely to actually be anyone's thoughts.
So, in my campaign, Allustan accompanied the party to the Lizardfolk tribe, giving as little aid as I could get away with, and then stayed behind to talk to his friend (whose name escapes me at the moment) once they found her.
It seemed to work very well (the PCs still did all the actual work), and really brought him much higher regard in the PC's view than what the module actually wrote (Which would probably have led to them not even going back to Diamond Lake afterwards, much less trying to save him from a Dragon).
Mary: Actually, destroying the "dragon egg" without destroying any Lizardfolk eggs gives them much more XP: 8000 XP to each player, according to the module.
Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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Count me in the camp that reworked Allustan's role in EaBK. As someone suggested on another thread, I had him teleport inside the Keep itself to help shore things up inside. That kept him out of the way and yet still felt like he was being (marginally) useful. Of course, considering what a cakewalk the initial battle is, I can't say it would make a huge difference to the player experience to have him help mop things up.
As for baiting the hook for a Gathering of Winds, maybe the notes held by the sage in the Free City (can't remember his name) indicate that he sent any/all items the PC's left for him to study back to Allustan. Allustan, being the genius he is, took them to the cairn. Thus, the PC's don't need to care about Allustan, they can just be after their stuff, which incidentally, he has.
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What the heck?!? Allustan isn't a coward. He's just not dumbass enough to stay there with the pc's when he could go back for help, and I bet that if you were alone fighting a FREAKIN' dragon you'd probably run(this makes you smart, not coward) Anyways, what I was wondering is what did you guys do in relation to the corrupted mayor from Diamond Lake; my players intend in taking him and his gang down but how would his brother Allustan react? Seriously.
As this and previous threads clearly show, there are numerous ways to handle Allustan that fit any number of logical story parameters. Kudos to everyone that has handled Allustan in a way they are happy with. The author of this thread wasn't happy with the way things were handled, I offered a possible solution.
I'm happy for you, Hellfinger, that your incarnation of Allustan has a backbone and works well in that role. This was my original intention as well after reading The Whispering Cairn and Three Faces of Evil. I, along with others, looked at the subsequent written material and came up with the "coward" background as an explanation. I find that the occasional NPC that doesn't fit the "heroic mentor" expectation adds texture to the game as it challanged the player's preconceived notions. This has worked extremely well for the overall story of the campaign, as Allustan's "graduated" apprentice is really struggling with his shattered image of his former master. It makes for good roleplaying to say the least.
Lanod Neff is something of an embarrassment for Allustan and he keeps an eye on his brother out of familial loyalty. If the PCs attempt to lynch Lanod, I would expect he would attempt to intercede to prevent harm to his brother. As you have emphatically stated, Allustan is a smart man and will likely have contigency plans already prepared for such an issue. Perhaps he teleports his brother away to a safe haven until the proper authorities are involved to assure Lanod will not be lynched. Plenty of corruption can be found within the Free City's government and an act of "vigilantism" by the PCs could get them jailed in the Grand Citadel indefinitely...even if it is the "right" thing to do.
What the heck?!? Allustan isn't a coward. He's just not dumbass enough to stay there with the pc's when he could go back for help, and I bet that if you were alone fighting a FREAKIN' dragon you'd probably run(this makes you smart, not coward) Anyways, what I was wondering is what did you guys do in relation to the corrupted mayor from Diamond Lake; my players intend in taking him and his gang down but how would his brother Allustan react? Seriously.If the PCs attempt to lynch Lanod, I would expect he would attempt to intercede to prevent harm to his brother. As you have emphatically stated, Allustan is a smart man and will likely have contigency plans already prepared for such an issue. Perhaps he teleports his brother away to a safe haven until the proper authorities are involved to assure Lanod will not be lynched....
Wow, what a great idea Rexx. Thanks, I had thought of something more violent but that would ruin his relation with the pcs. Thanks again
I'm curious; did the ending fight with the "dragon egg" actually go as expected for anyone?
My PCs cast Fly, flew over to the egg, gently put it in a bag, took it away and figured out what it was. Then they roasted it on a very large bonfire.
Since it's just sitting there doing nothing, I'm not clear why anyone would attack it. And it is too far from the kobolds to plausibly be caught in an area of effect damage spell, even if the PCs are not trying to save the lizard eggs.
Mary
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I'm curious; did the ending fight with the "dragon egg" actually go as expected for anyone?
Mary
It played perfectly for my PCs. I had to supe-up the Twisted Branch lair as the PCs were all 8th level so there were lots of Ilthane "fingerprints" throughout the lair. When the mud-covered, dragon-touched kobolds snuck-attack most of the party (and they were in sad shape after the chieftain fight), they wanted to exact as much angst-driven frustration on her as they could. So the egg was "schplunked" to have an Alienesque eruption of worms start. They absolutely freaked out. Fortunately, the paladin had a high init. roll and made a DC 25 K.Religion check to guess that his cure disease ability may do something positive. They were sweating bullets now (I had one kobold escape via some magical widget that teleported him away), putting as many eggs at they could in the Heward's Handy Haversack so they could get Hishka and his loyalists out of the lair ASAP before a pissed off Ilthane showed up. I had fun with shadows in the mists throughout that chase-sequence that wasn't. All-in-all, a great end to that particular session.
I'm curious; did the ending fight with the "dragon egg" actually go as expected for anyone?
My PCs cast Fly, flew over to the egg, gently put it in a bag, took it away and figured out what it was. Then they roasted it on a very large bonfire.
Since it's just sitting there doing nothing, I'm not clear why anyone would attack it. And it is too far from the kobolds to plausibly be caught in an area of effect damage spell, even if the PCs are not trying to save the lizard eggs.
Mary
That's about how things went down with my crew. The egg's a little too fishy, I know. In retrospect, I would've done similarly to what Rexx did: have it burst open upon anyone within close proximity to the egg. While this concept needs some refinement, you'd get to use the wonderful new monster at the back of the article, rather than never getting to.