End of AoW(For DM's only) or those who never plan to see the end of the campaign.


Age of Worms Adventure Path


At the end of AoW the Prince of Redhand basically commits suicide. Did anyone else have a different ending than the pseudo-fight?


wraithstrike wrote:
At the end of AoW the Prince of Redhand basically commits suicide. Did anyone else have a different ending than the pseudo-fight?

Spoiler:
Well, I just finished up in TheWhiteKnife's AoW campaign and the Prince defeated one of our 21st lvl Fighters (Tempest build). I believe the Prince was a trip/disarm monkey.

to clarify,

Spoiler:
said fighter killed Hemriss and Zeech found out. So he didnt really feel like going the suicide route.


Well, we didn't actually roll that encounter. Zeech challenged the PC with the hightest authority score (our bard/rogue/something), and fought to the death. I just described the fight, the Oh's and Ah's of the crowd, and Zeech's demise. We didn't feel like rolling initiative after a 3 hour boss fight :)


Yep, we definitely role-played it, just enough to tie up loose ends and see where everyone's PC (and their cohorts) ended up. From memory, I had Zeech challenge the party as a whole, which lead to a PC or her cohort (Melinde the Paladin) taking up the challenge in order to put some Good back into the area. I don't recall if he was killed, but I don't see that he has to be, just defeated.


That was my original intention. To have a role playing only fight that ended with Zeech defeated (not necessarily dead). However the "LG" fighter decided to kill an obviously dominated Hemriss, and I felt that he should receive his comeuppance. But for the standard group, I would recommend just going with a RP fight.


OP: I believe, I noted on this forum already, that Zeech as written has practically no chance of surviving to the end of the campaign, unless the GM is a railroading tyrant of the highest order, or PCs don't care what happens out of dungeons. So this is non-issue, really. I don't plan to use rubber band NPC levels as well, so, unless PCs manage to break the normal sequence in one way or another, the population of Redhand will be near-competely massacred and undeadified by overpowered servants of Kyuss at the time of their arrival from Wormcrawl Fissure, making the entire point of the final challenge by Zeech moot. That said, I practically expect my players to break the sequence - really, if you allowed the BBEG's chief lieutenant to lead you by the nose for several adventures, the consequences should be appropriately horrific.

TheWhiteknife: sicking grudge opponents on the party is bad, and you should feel bad.


The group did make friends at Zeech's party. I would estimate about 3 13-15 level NPC's. One of them has a band(size still undecided) of 8th level NPC's. I will have to read the last part again to decide how much of a dent, if any, it puts into the undead army that strolls in.


@FatR
Look, I dont know if you know this or not, but I try to play my NPC's intelligently. If Zeech finds his daughter dead, what is he going to do? Probably get his personal Hextorian cleric, Vieran Spatlepate, to cast speak with dead on her. Then when he learns the circumstances behind her death, he would more than likely seek revenge by way of a duel. You know thats how Hextor works, right? So it was more that Zeech had a grudge with the player than myself. I have noted from your other posts that you like to play your NPCs as nothing more than bags of hit points and loot, whereas I like to give them motivations and try to actually role play their reactions to events in the game world. I have yet to have a player complain, and I ask them for feedback at the end of every session, so I really dont feel bad.

And where exactly is Zeech statted out that would make him such a cake-walk to 15th level pcs?

Edit: In all honesty, I really did expect my 17th level Zeech to be a cake-walk to the 21st level fighter, but bad tactics were employed, as in the pc decides to root around for and drink a potion of cure moderate wounds in the middle of combat


TheWhiteknife wrote:

@FatR

Look, I dont know if you know this or not, but I try to play my NPC's intelligently.

Intelligence does not help, when no matter how intelligent you are, your only recourse is to fight the other guy anyway, and you don't have power to do so. Neither does motivation. DnD is not the world where you can win just because you want to win really hard.

TheWhiteknife wrote:
And where exactly is Zeech statted out that would make him such a cake-walk to 15th level pcs?

He's paladin 8/blackguard 8. I.e., gimp. Again, you can give him all 18s, and every non-epic item he has slots for, and this will just make him a small threat, instead of a mook.

TheWhiteknife wrote:
Edit: In all honesty, I really did expect my 17th level Zeech to be a cake-walk to the 21st level fighter, but bad tactics were employed, as in the pc decides to root around for and drink a potion of cure moderate wounds in the middle of combat

Oooookay, I don't know how this PC survived up to that point, but if he/she did so, he/she officially deserves to die, and I take my words back. And here I thought that most players would figure out that drinking a potion of CMW in the middle in combat that actually threatens their characters is, generally, not a viable option at level 5.


TheWhiteknife wrote:

@FatR

Look, I dont know if you know this or not, but I try to play my NPC's intelligently. If Zeech finds his daughter dead, what is he going to do? Probably get his personal Hextorian cleric, Vieran Spatlepate, to cast speak with dead on her. Then when he learns the circumstances behind her death, he would more than likely seek revenge by way of a duel. You know thats how Hextor works, right? So it was more that Zeech had a grudge with the player than myself. I have noted from your other posts that you like to play your NPCs as nothing more than bags of hit points and loot, whereas I like to give them motivations and try to actually role play their reactions to events in the game world. I have yet to have a player complain, and I ask them for feedback at the end of every session, so I really dont feel bad.

And where exactly is Zeech statted out that would make him such a cake-walk to 15th level pcs?

Edit: In all honesty, I really did expect my 17th level Zeech to be a cake-walk to the 21st level fighter, but bad tactics were employed, as in the pc decides to root around for and drink a potion of cure moderate wounds in the middle of combat

What is a cure mod going to do against the damage of a 17th level/CR ____?<--Rhetorical question.


you got me. I dunno what the player was thinking, but then again, I dunno what the player was thinking when, after Lashonna was defeated AND the dc15 sense motive check was made, he decided to strike down Hemriss. And I know the PC's are supposed to win, but that doesnt mean that the npc's would. Seriously, there was no way that in my game Zeech would have thrown the fight against the guy that killed his beloved daughter. To do otherwise would have actually broken my player's belief in my game world.


FatR wrote:
TheWhiteknife wrote:

@FatR

Look, I dont know if you know this or not, but I try to play my NPC's intelligently.

Intelligence does not help, when no matter how intelligent you are, your only recourse is to fight the other guy anyway, and you don't have power to do so. Neither does motivation. DnD is not the world where you can win just because you want to win really hard.

TheWhiteknife wrote:
And where exactly is Zeech statted out that would make him such a cake-walk to 15th level pcs?

He's paladin 8/blackguard 8. I.e., gimp. Again, you can give him all 18s, and every non-epic item he has slots for, and this will just make him a small threat, instead of a mook.

TheWhiteknife wrote:
Edit: In all honesty, I really did expect my 17th level Zeech to be a cake-walk to the 21st level fighter, but bad tactics were employed, as in the pc decides to root around for and drink a potion of cure moderate wounds in the middle of combat
Oooookay, I don't know how this PC survived up to that point, but if he/she did so, he/she officially deserves to die, and I take my words back. And here I thought that most players would figure out that drinking a potion of CMW in the middle in combat that actually threatens their characters is, generally, not a viable option at level 5.

1. As far as intelligent NPC's: I probably should have worded this differently. I try to play my NPC's as if they were real living people. I try to give them motivations, wants, and needs that exist no matter what the players do. Zeech loves his daughter. You take her away from him and he will probably try to kill you, no matter how powerful you are. Sure he will do his best to even the odds, but he is going to try to kill you.

2. I thought that was just a suggestion, but no matter. He's a 16th level character that has the wealth that only 20 years of tyranny can bring. Not to mention the kind of allies that wish to see the status quo upheld. (such as the ruling Oligarchy of Greyhawk, since he rules the buffer area between Iuz and Greyhawk/Hardby)

3. see my last post.


Look... Honestly the entire table save for the 21st lvl who fought Zeech was all for the turn of events at the end of TheWhiteKnife's AoW campaign. The fighter killed the dominated daughter after she surrendered once Lashonna was defeated and he ran her thru.

Once we defeated the BBEG and the town was celebrating Zeech approached us and the player who ran the Fighter argued with everyone that he didn't do it but we all knew he did. We were sitting at the same table when he said "I do 'x' amount of damage". He even tried to pawn it off on his cohort. Much arguing ensued amongst the players. TheWhiteKnife didn't push him nearly as much as his party members. Now, he could've just left but he got all huffy and arrogant and accepted the challenge.

The player who quaffed a potion has always been go for broke and hope that the clerics pull his arse out of the fire. He is not one for sound combat tactics. And, considering I played the Healer and it was an agreed-upon Duel till surrender I sat in the stands and watched till I as a player got bored with the one-sided clobberfest.

His tactics against Zeech were horrible and so he was defeated by a lower lvl NPC. I agree that PCs are indeed rockstars in the campaign world but every now and then an NPC who feels wronged will step up and hold them accountable. Zeech was angered by his daughters underhanded demise and challenged her killer and he won. Oh well.

We prevented the Age of Worms and were all pretty stoked... But, one of us got knocked down a peg. You'll have these things when PCs aren't babied by their DM.

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