For out of character discussion and feedback and critique of the module and DM style.
I hope we all learn from this.
I am doing a strategic pivot from earlier ideas and keeping as true to the original story as possible. No need to mess with perfection.
This makes the primary villains orcs. So our ranger can come up with an orcish hatred to change favored enemy (old school D&D common hook was the forcible union of orc and human to make half orc) and our dwarves can use their hatred bonus in combat.
Took a little longer than expected...but Kaelaah, wandering Shoanti sorcerer is here at last... Still some work to do for backstory but priority is gameplay post right now!!!
I know DMs are busy, so I hope to start in earnest by next Monday and get the story moving along for three days. Thanksgiving and the Friday after will not be 'required' posting days.
I've thrown up Fernand d'Apcher's introduction post. Let's get the chatter moving!
Also, I think Fernand is an ESTP - The Doer. It fits with his desire to help crush the Kelish, as well as his CG alignment, his class, his skills, and his overall background.
-Matt
As we wait for GM Blood and maybe even Storymaster to join us, I will increase the story as there is much to the narrative.
If you want to put 'ministats' in the profile so it show up at the top, that is ok. I am hoping you can post ministats in the gameplay posts while in combat spoilered if you like. It makes it easy for me to get all I need from your post.
Hit points, AC, saves, and tracked resources should be fine. But it makes it easy to track how many hps you have in a combat post, as your totals in your profile will change, but a combat post leaves a lasting record.
Here is a sample:
Magic Resistance = DC10
AC: 19; ff 17; Touch: 19
HP=51/51
Ki Pool 11/11
CMD=23 (+4 bull rush and trip when on solid ground)
perfect strike 6/6
Fort Save: +9
Ref Save: +8
Will Save: +13
Matt -- like where Fernand is going. I am in the camp of those who feel rogues need more nice things. I also like the old thieves guild deal, so add this to your character sheet.
Ties to the Brotherhood -- As long as you maintain a good relationship with the brotherhood, each level of rogue you get an untyped +1 bonus to stealth and perception. Note: The brotherhood demands a strict 25% cut of all illicit gains.
One of your buddies just appeared in gameplay. You have access to markets normally closed to others.
Okay, cool. Fernand might be from a well-to-do family, but he's been around Cassomir long enough to know the benefits of being on the good side of capable unbearded.
-Posted with Wayfinder
The cleric has arrived.
The map should be editable by all. It also should have a link in the short campaign tab which appears at the top of the page in blue as current map. We are some story away from needing the map, but am hoping you can all access it.
Glad to have the cleric on board! Welcome to our story. Feel free to post any constructive criticism here too. I have a tough audience, but hope to keep you entertained with story and action.
I did not choose any traits, until I was clear it was allowed. Are we able to choose 1 or 2 traits to tweak the stats?
Everyone will get a bonus feat, which may or may not be the campaign feat. The campaign feat is only available at level 1, but someone may have a specific idea in mind. I steal blatantly from the computer game Neverwinter Nights for the campaign feat. I think a dwarf made a tripping paladin with his bonus feat rather than take Luck of Heroes.
Campaign Feat:
Luck of Heroes--Only Available at Level 1
Sometimes the gods smiled on those put in a difficult situation.
You gain a +1 untyped bonus to all AC (touch and flatfooted too) and a +1 untyped bonus to all saves.
I am skipping traits but adding an extra feat. This one is an option--I recommend it. Probably better than any two traits.
The campaign feat sounds good. In my case, they will be holy bonuses due to my devotion to the Dawnflower.
The plan is to have the trip start off tomorrow.
We will probably break for the Thanksgiving holiday (Thursday to Sunday) and be rolling dice by Monday.
Posted the two weeks up to the exciting first episode.
Feel free to roleplay the two weeks of travel on the trail.
Plan is to break for the Thanksgiving weekend Thursday to Sunday and resume in earnest Monday.
Happy Thanksgiving to all. Hope the story is moving fast enough.
We are all DMs, so chances are you will see some things happening here that take full advantage of Paizo's system.
Hope everyone is having a good holiday weekend--post to come tomorrow.
Here is the exception to Rule 65 that proves it is a rule (all rules must have exceptions) -- Dragon 127 had one of my favorite editorials. I actually managed to get a hold of Tucker's original campaign notes and replicated the kobolds for my home game and ran 'The Kobold Caverns for Levels 9-12'. They were as vicious as advertised. I added small armored personnel carriers for them to drive around in that rolled down ramps in their crowded dungeon. I also added the kobold deity Kurtulmak to the mix--the kobold god of trapmaking.
From Dragon 127, pg. 3
Tucker's kobolds
This month's editorial is about Tucker's kobolds. We get letters on occasion asking for advice on creating high-level AD&D® game adventures, and Tucker's kobolds seem to fit the bill.
Many high-level characters have little to do because they're not challenged. They yawn at tarrasques and must be forcibly kept awake when a lich appears. The DMs involved don't know what to do, so they stop dealing with the problem and the characters go into Character Limbo. Getting to high level is hard, but doing anything once you get there is worse.
One of the key problems in adventure design lies in creating opponents who can challenge powerful characters. Singular monsters like tarrasques and liches are easy to gang up on; the party can concentrate its firepower on the target until the target falls down dead and wiggles its little feet in the air. Designing monsters more powerful than a tarrasque is self-defeating; if the group kills your super-monster, what will you do next—send in its mother? That didn't work on Beowulf, and it probably won't work here.
Worse yet, singular supermonsters rarely have to think. They just use their trusty, predictable claw/claw/bite. This shouldn't be the measure of a campaign. These games fall apart because there's no challenge to them, no mental stimulation - no danger.
In all the games that I've seen, the worst, most horrible, most awful beyond-comparison opponents ever seen were often weaker than the characters who fought them. They were simply well-armed and intelligent beings who were played by the DM to be utterly ruthless and clever. Tucker's kobolds were like that.
Tucker ran an incredibly dangerous dungeon in the days I was stationed at Ft. Bragg, N.C. This dungeon had corridors that changed all of your donkeys into huge flaming demons or dropped the whole party into acid baths, but the demons were wienies compared to the kobolds on Level One. These kobolds were just regular kobolds, with 1-4 hp and all that, but they were mean. When I say they were mean, I mean they were bad, Jim. They graduated magna cum laude from the Sauron Institute for the Criminally Vicious.
When I joined the gaming group, some of the PCs had already met Tucker's kobolds, and they were not eager to repeat the experience. The party leader went over the penciled map of the dungeon and tried to find ways to avoid the little critters, but it was not possible. The group resigned itself to making a run for it through Level One to get to the elevators, where we could go down to Level Ten and fight "okay" monsters like huge flaming demons.
It didn't work. The kobolds caught us about 60' into the dungeon and locked the door behind us and barred it. Then they set the corridor on fire, while we were still in it.
"NOOOOOO!!!" screamed the party leader. "It's THEM! Run!!!"
Thus encouraged, our party scrambled down a side passage, only to be ambushed by more kobolds firing with light crossbows through murder holes in the walls and ceilings. Kobolds with metal armor and shields flung Molotov cocktails at us from the other sides of huge piles of flaming debris, which other kobolds pushed ahead of their formation using long metal poles like broomsticks. There was no mistake about it. These kobolds were bad.
We turned to our group leader for advice.
"AAAAAAGH!!!" he cried, hands clasped over his face to shut out the tactical situation.
We abandoned most of our carried items and donkeys to speed our flight toward the elevators, but we were cut off by kobold snipers who could split-move and fire, ducking back behind stones and corners after launching steel-tipped bolts and arrows, javelins, hand axes, and more flaming oil bottles. We ran into an unexplored section of Level One, taking damage all the time. It was then we discovered that these kobolds had honeycombed the first level with small tunnels to speed their movements. Kobold commandos were everywhere. All of our hirelings died. Most of our henchmen followed. We were next.
I recall we had a 12th-level magic user with us, and we asked him to throw a spell or something. "Blast 'em!" we yelled as we ran. "Fireball 'em! Get those little @#+$%*&!!"
"What, in these narrow corridors? " he yelled back. "You want I should burn us all up instead of them?"
Our panicked flight suddenly took us to a dead-end corridor, where a giant air shaft dropped straight down into unspeakable darkness, far past Level Ten. Here we hastily pounded spikes into the floors and walls, flung ropes over the ledge, and climbed straight down into that unspeakable darkness, because anything we met down there was sure to be better than those kobolds.
We escaped, met some huge flaming demons on Level Ten, and even managed to kill one after about an hour of combat and the lives of half the group. We felt pretty good — but the group leader could not be cheered up.
"We still have to go out the way we came in," he said as he gloomily prepared to divide up the treasure.
Tucker's kobolds were the worst things we could imagine. They ate all our donkeys and took our treasure and did everything they could to make us miserable, but they had style and brains and tenacity and courage. We respected them and loved them, sort of, because they were never boring.
If kobolds could do this to a group of PCs from 6th to 12th level, picture what a few orcs and some low level NPCs could do to a 12th-16th level group, or a gang of mid-level NPCs and monsters to groups of up to 20th level. Then give it a try. Sometimes, it's the little things—used well—that count.
Roger E. Moore
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Point taken, Chainmail.
Sometimes going to the lower levels early is good. (I had to edit this after writing 'sometimes "going down" early is good.')
One of my beefs with the d20 system is the near inability to run Tucker's Kobolds the way we used to back in the 80s & 90s. Nowadays it's swarms and the like that we have to rely on because of the PCs' broken ACs (Tucker's Kobolds have to roll a WHAT to hit?!) and even then the PCs are never caught off guard -- Perception checks and Trap Finding / Trap Sense didn't exist back in those days.
But once, just once, I'd like to see Tucker's Kobolds make a successful comeback -- using RAW.
(About a year ago in my Vampires of Varisia campaign I reintroduced Snyads with Dark Creepers who stole PC equipment in the dungeons and it worked pretty well -- wimpy NPC monsters hindering and frustrating the then-ninth-level PCs. But alas, I had to rework some RAW to make the series of encounters successful.)
OK -- unfortunately without house rules there are two orcs left alive as a horse must squeeze to follow someone down a five foot wide trail and must squeeze to return on a five foot wide trail.
I guess it is easier to make horses more retro horses at ten by five figures than retcon the combat. So as the house rules are in the players' favor, hopefully it is all good.
Plus charging becomes harder with a ten foot wide figure due to: If any line from your starting space to the ending space passes through a square that blocks movement, slows movement, or contains a creature (even an ally), you can't charge.
By RAW a line of a hundred medium cavalry can't charge a line of a hundred infantry and the Budweiser Clydesdales can't pull the big red wagon in twos.
So I guess I hate to depart from RAW, but this will have to be first, and hopefully the last, 'houserule'
Combat is over and you are in mop up part. One action at fleeing goblins possible, but fire control is a priority.
Anyone wanting to put out fire it is a cm roll vs 12cmd as in carrion crown ap. +4 with create water.
Plan to have roleplay until the weekend. May just set up the combat before the holidays.
Buy the way, I am adding some dialogue to the original module, Paul wasn't that twisted.
I may get one post in soon to tide us over till New Year
I am traveling over this week. I will try to post Sunday night.
I got caught up with holidays. Will post soon.
We kick things off with a bang tonight!!!
A bang? I will summon a Holy Hand Grenade!
I'm going to withdraw from this game. My work load has recently increased, and now I'm starting back at school. I'm having a hard time keeping up on all the PBP, so I'm cutting back a bit. Thanks GM Tribute for running us, and I hope you all enjoy the rest of the adventure! Hopefully I will see you all around the boards again someday.
No problem.
Maybe you can save me a space for a dwarf gruff ranger in the new giants ap he said hopefully.
Encounter was built with full party in mind. Caravan workers will have to give more aid now that we lost at least two.
Not too bad for a dying character ;)
Think I am at -1HP after healing.... But all is cool... You see off the orcs, I'll just lie down for a while....
Two posts since Sunday, not good.
HP Dice Roll:
+1 Toughness, +1 Class Advancement
Total = 3
Will advance storyline Monday, may combine groups if we are still slow.
GM, could you mark this one as inactive once folks have moved over? It'll keep my list of campaigns (currently GM'ing five and playing in two) to a more manageable number!
Cheers