Andreas Hempel's page

Ruh-roh Reorge! Is this end of campaign, or are you continuing with some sort of apocalyptic battle against the 10,000 wights infesting the Free City?

It is definitely not the end of the campaign. The two players are thinking of playing a mage-couple from the Free City.

And here we go: my party was defeated by the Apostle of Kyuss.

Name: Teutonia (Human Fighter 5 / Thayan Knight 5)
Place: Free City Arena
Time: Battle against Madtooth the Hungry
Catalyst: Being swallowed whole

Teutonia stood no chance against the Froghemoth. The Rogue luckily survived being swallowed whole, Teutonia had not as much luck.
She was raised on the same evening.

Name: Rogak (probably Lemuria, Half-Orc Wizard 5 / Mage of the Arcane Order 5)
Place: Free City Arena
Time: Battle against The Apostle of Kyuss
Catalyst: Necromantic Acid

Rogak sacrificed himself by using his Benign Transposition spell to switch places with the party Fighter (Teutonia, surrounded by an aura of unholy light heralding the bad things that will happen should she end up in the Apostles belly) and gets picked at by the Apostle. An 8 on the Necromantic Acid die later, he died. Unluckily, Auric already was dying in the belly of the ulgurstasta, therefore the two of them got animated as Spawn of Kyuss.
By the way: the party hit Auric with an empowered Ray of Enfeeblement in the first round of battle (before the Apostle appeared) for a strength penalty of 16. That left Auric completely useless. They basically cut there own flesh there.

Name: Atlantis Lemuria (Human Bard 10)
Place: Free City Arena
Time: Battle against The Apostle of Kyuss
Catalyst: being breathed upon by the Apostle with her half-brother Spawn of Kyuss

When the Apostle finished the transformation of Auric and Rogak to Spawn of Kyuss, it hit Atlantis with the Breath Weapon. 11 points of Con-drain kill the toughest bard. Or so I have heard.

There were two deaths, since I last posted, so let´s get this over with:

Name: Valentin Sunbeam (Human cleric 7, cohort)
Place: Free City Arena
Time: Battle against "The Death´s Avengers" (the Diamond Lake cast)
Catalyst: evil optimizing (tm) on my part ;o)

Description:
Well, Valentin dies again. I pitched my group against Pitch Blade in the first battle of the Champions Games already, so I could get Filge (Dread Necromancer 10), Kullen (Barbarian 9) and a new character (Gravetouched Ghoul Human Cleric 7) in a one-on-one battle against my guys.
It was a great battle, after half of my baddies (supported by two zombies and two skeletons) rushed to meet the party (Quick March, I like you), the party wizard cast a Wall of Force to divide the enemies. After a lot of battling and sweating players, they managed to take the Avengers down, one by one.
But: I gave Filge several feats from Libris Mortis, amongst others the Destruction Retribution. So all the undead burst in a bubble of negative energy. One of those in the end killed Valentin.
Player dialogue right before that:
Wizard: "So, should I transposition him out there and switch places with him?"
Bard (whom the cohort "belongs"): "Nah, he is fine, see: he´ll do a 5-foot-step and heal himself."
Wizard: "Yeah, you´re right. I´ll try to hit them with a lightning bolt instead."

Ah, good times were had by all. Now my players don´t care much about the Apostolic Scrolls and Lahaka yet. That´ll bug them in the end, I think... *eg*

Cohort Name: Valentin Sunbeam
Profession: Human Cleric of Pelor 6
Module: Hall of Harsh Reflections
Cause of Death: Confused Party Fightress

Description: After the Party ignored the Spirit Naga (which had gone invisible) and followed their Drow guide, whom they had suggested into leading them to his boss, into the living cave of the drow.
In the first round, the party fightress drops two Drow (thanks, cleave) with big, meaty hits. But when it is Myrianaas turn, the drow cleric casts her Confusion spell and targets the big, scary fighter-lady without a will save.
Lots of running away on the parts of the parties spellcasters that got a chance to act and a "lucky" 79 on the percentile roll later, Teutonia the killing-machine turns on the cleric, a cohort to the party bard. Ever wondered, what a hasted fighter can do with a full-attack and a cleric with all his hit-points? Drop him. Drop him real dead.
Well, the party decided to use Myrianaas weapon to finance the raising.

Until now I did not have them do anyhting, because I feared my party would be killed. I figured that they would have been ordered to stop the wrong guys from crossing the planks, but since only the doppelganger infiltrator actually stepped on the planks I just let them idle their time away.
My players heard some wind though but did not bother to check, what that was. Don´t know, if anyone suspects anything.

The adventure states them to be superior masonry walls (on p.44, left column), the statistics can be found in the DMG on pp.59-60 (and on the pages suggested in the adventure).

By the way: my players did the exact same thing.

I really like the Tome of Battle, but that is not because it grants powerful possibilities (which it might do, a look on the optimization boards at Wizards turns up some cheesy combos), but because it gives your players the possibility to play cool, "different" fighters.
The battle maneuvers granted give melee-types some options they have not had up to now (fire damage, counter attacks, heck, even Dimension Door-like teleportation), but nothing that is actually new to the game.
The party wizard will still be better at annihilating hordes of minions of at blasting the BBEG with elemental attacks or at teleporting the group to safety. The party cleric is still the primary healer. The party barbarian in rage is still a fearsome power to be reckoned with. The party fighter still has the most feats (and therefore a variety of options). The party rogue will still be responsible for checking for traps and taking out that handful of sneak attack damage.
I do not think, the book presents you with problems. Check with your player, which combos he wants to use, ban or restrict the cheesy ones (anything which sounds wrong to you) and let him have fun with a melee fighter that has really cool stuff at his disposal.

Gaze attacks are basically passive attacks, but can also be used actively with a standard action, then affecting a specific target.
See also SRD: Special Abilities, Gaze Attack

From the description of the Death Wind I assume there is no saving throw. Since it is stated that "all creatures in the area of the Death Wind" and not "all creatures affected by the Death Wind", the saving throw entry is obviously not forgotten, there simply is none.

On the matter of translation:

I translated all the hand-outs to German, since most of my players understand English but are not really comfortable with the language. I winged all the dialogues (Allastor, Rainbarrel Man, Filge...), that worked out ok for me. I read every adventure several times before doing it in order to know about details and pitfalls.

His stats are in the right column on page 81 in Dungeon 132. He is a efreeti aristocrat 3/fighter 8 with a bunch of riding feats.

If I recall correctly, HoHR is for Lvl 7-9. My players plan on buying scrolls, which I most assuredly will allow.
Better prepare for some serious meat-grinding (or have lots of hankies at the ready), if you send your level 5 players into the Sodden Hold.

Thanks for the suggestions, I will let them do it (as I suspected), since they can´t teleport back out anyways (heck, the cleric cohort has to stay behind because a standard scroll of Teleport only allows for three characters to come along) they will have to explore the Sodden Hold.
And if they don´t cooperate, Zyrxog will send his Drow after them. You are right, it´s important to enforce in this adventure that the PC´s are clearly on the defensive.

OK, now I gotta add to this gallery of horror:

PC Name: Chivalrian
Race / Class: Elfish Ranger 3
Adventure: Three Faces of Evil
Location of Death: Temple of Hextor, Guard Room
Catalyst: Longbows are no good in narrow passages.

Circumstances: Tiefling guards beat the sh*t out of the whole party. The rest got captured and should have been sacrificed to the Ebon Aspect. Didn´t work out.

PC Name: Lia
Race / Class: Halfling Rogue 4
Adventure: Three Faces of Evil
Location of Death: Temple of Hextor, Battle Temple
Catalyst: Divine Summon Monster III

Circumstances: The revenge assault on the Hextorites was more successful than the first meeting, but the fiendish ape that Theldrick summoned ripped the party rogue apart.

PC Name: Xeraph
Race / Class: Elfish Ranger 7
Adventure: Hall of Harsh Reflections
Location of Death: Underwater passage in the Sodden Hold
Catalyst: Curiosity
Last Words before going on an extended dive: "Chicken!"

Circumstances: The rogue dove done the shaft in the Sodden Hold and then came back up, claiming that it was too dangerous to simply go on. The ranger (replacement of Chivalrian, s.a.) took the everburning torch, called her a chicken and claimed that real adventurers have to be curios about such things as underwater passages. Then he dove to meet his death in the form a couple tentacles of a giant octopus. The rest of the party (after noticing a cloud of blood ascending the watery shaft) agreed with the rogue about the danger of the shaft and left the Sodden Hold... :o)

My players scried on the captured party member and I described them the scene in the black octagonal room as written (whole party tied to chairs). Now they are thinking of teleporting in to rescue her. My question now is: would you allow this?

After one of the group died in the watery tunnel in the crushing grasp of the giant octopus they were too afraid to continue adventuring, but afterwards the in-group doppelganger was uncovered and now they want their friend back.
The spell descriptions seem to say that you could use the two spells in conjunction. But I fear (and have read about this happening) that they could exploit this tactic (especially in the future) and miss out on the rest of Sodden Hold. What if they simply teleport back out (given they get their hands on a scroll with a CL high enough to transport them all)? What if they make it a habit to scry and teleport? I do not want to railroad them too much, but I see not many opportunities.

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Hi all,

for some time now I am thinking of tweaking the Champion´s Belt gladiatorial fights.

After my players left on kind of good terms with Filge and Smenk in WC (after hitting him hard, they negotiated with Filge for the skeletons and let him live), I had them hear the rumor in the Free City, that Smenk got hold of a manager licence. They just entered the Sodden Hold but are hoping that they can convince Smenk to let them fight for him.

Of course that will not happen...
My first thought was to pump Filge, Kullen and "the Gang" up a bit and pitch them against my players in the first arena fight. Change filge to a Dread Necromancer, make Kullen even stronger and dumber and so on.
I just discovered the Corpsecrafter feat-chain from Libris Mortis, which would make the undead mooks of Filge even scarier.

First question: what would the audience, the Champion´s Games and the city administration say to undead in the fights? Only take "uncivilized" base creatures (Gnolls, Animals, Magical Beasts, Troglodytes...)? Say that those are the remains of condemned criminals? Let the authorities grudgingly accept their existence and the crowd boo the "bad, evil mage"?

Then I thought "What the heck, let´s exchange Filge´s Gang with Pitch Blade." Raknian is taking no chances with the PCs and wants to get them out of the picture as soon as possible. He bought some rounds of truce from the other groups of gladiators so that his battle-dwarfs can concentrate on the PCs.
In exchange I wanted to put a cleric in Filges team, which would hit the front lines of battle and support the undeads with the Necromantic Presence and Necromantic Might feats from Libris Mortis. That should help to toughen the fight.

Next question: what do you think of the idea to introduce Darl Quethos (from LoLR) here already? I do not plan on letting him occur any more until the PC´s see him in LoLR but having them fight him already in the arena (without the Hand of Vecna and stuff) they will hopefully enjoy meeting him again even more.
Smenk would simply have asked around for some cleric that could help his team and Darl is needing money for his next quests.

Last question: I still have to learn about my PC´s tactics, but they will probably have at least some fireball-ish at the ready, when they face a "horde" of undead mooks. What can I do to toughen them against the wizards most favorite tool, area blasting? Any mean DM tricks I can pull out of the box?

Thanks for reading and your suggestions,
Andreas

My 2 Cents:

Stay out of reach of the Melee-Guys, which should be easy, if tehey have no means of flying. Take the Warlock out first, because he will probably hit Ilthane pretty badly with her low touch AC and all. Perhaps swap out the alarm spell of Ilthane for Obscuring Mist, to give the Eldritch Blast a miss chance. With her hide modifier she can also try to use the concealment granted by the mist (or darkness) to hide there and get a surprise attack on the PCs. After using your breath weapon, try to move between two areas of concealment (darkness of obscuring mist) and use your Flyby Attack during the move. If you see the chance, full attack one of the casters, when you drop him, take to the air again.

Hope this helps,
Andreas

Hi everyone,

yesterday my group concluded Encounter at Blackwall Keep. I want to thank Peter Fuesz for his great idea concerning this adventure (detailed in this post: http://paizo.com/dungeon/messageboards/ageOfWorms/archives/howIChangedTheBl ackwallKeepAdventureSPOILERS), my players enjoyed the alternate characters I made up for them immensely. They almost beat up the first Spawn of Kyuss, but luckily I could infest one of the poor soldiers, before the undead went down.
My dilemma (?) started earlier: my players negotiated with Hishka the shaman and agreed to rid the lizardfolk of the kobolds (which only took one fireball, overall pretty anti-climactic battles in this module), so the tribe could relocate. And then they decided to take the dragon egg. So now they have a worm-infested "black dragon egg" in their Handy Haversack and plan to hand it over / sell it to the Mage´s Guild.
What should I let happen? A surprising burst of the egg, because the time for the worms to infest the hatchlings has come? While it is being examined or in the Haversack? Does Ilthane send minions to retrieve the egg? Does it get stolen in the night? Any ideas?

Thanks in advance,
Andreas