Chriton227's page

21 posts. No reviews. No lists. No wishlists.


RSS


We tried a really odd rolling method. It guarantees an average stat of 13, but randomizes the distribution. I had each player roll two sets of stats. All of the sets were made available to all of the characters (so with 5 players each player would be able to choose any of the 10 sets to use for their character). Once a set is chosen, they can swap any two attributes within the set.

The rolling method:

First, number your stats from 1 to 6 (e.g. Str=1, Dex=2, Con=3, Int=4, Wis=5, Cha=6).

Each stat starts with a value of 7. Roll 36 D6. For each die that comes up with a stat's number, increase that stat by 1. for example, if 7 dice came up "1"s, Strength would increase by 7 to 14. If enough dice come up with a single stat to put it over 18, the dice in excess of the 18 are rerolled. If on the reroll they happen to come up the same number, you can let them stand (allowing stats over 18) or force the player to reroll until they come up different (DMs choice, just be consistant).

You can easily adjust the power level up or dow by changing the starting value (up or down from 7) or the number of dice.


SirMarcus wrote:

Well, in another dose of probably unwanted advice, I'll say this...

(snipped for length)

Our games are high powered, the players like to think of their characters as heroes destined to save the world, not commoners who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. We play mainly as a way to relieve stress and socialize. We are all long time gamers (at least 10 years each), good with math, and optimizing (min/maxing, power gaming, choose your description) comes very naturally to us. Are games are high powered, but I don't think that our games are as over the top as you may think. In my campaigns, I have historically used the organic rolling system from the DMG, and I don't add extra treasure or experience to the prepublished adventures I run, and I start the players at the recommended minimums for the adventures. The players are just very good at making the most of what they have.

We each have stressful jobs that require daily excursions into the worlds of corporate and/or government politics and intensive problem analysis and resolution. When we all worked jobs that were fairly mindless (retail, food service, etc.) we tended to spend a lot more time on character development and in-game politics. In many ways gaming is an escapist hobby, and I find it hard to escape into a world that resembles my real life too closely. Many of the gamers I know have had similar shifts in their play styles as they have gotten older and taken on more real-life responsibilities.

I think our play style is intentionally accelerated, in large part due to how little gaming time we have. The days of being in 4 weekly campaigns are long gone, and in the limited time we have we really want to make noticible progress.

I would have liked to look over the Overload before beginning the campaign, but it was significantly delayed until well after the first of the AP came out (Overload posted on Aug 5, I124 supplement posted on June 8, issue arrived late May/early June). I would love to have time to dig though the hundreds of posts currently on the board, or the thousands of posts in the messageboard archive, but my personal time constraints are much of what drew me to the AP in the first place. There is a tremendous amount of useful information and feedback on the site, but it is not easy to identify which threads are going to have useful information, identified issues, or official responses to the issues. The archived information is only available through the search, and there are no common tags to identify threads that will contain errata or discussion on particular adventures. My actual suggestion was that someone consolidate the errata, get official okay on the proposed fixes, and make it available in a location like the official errata link that is on the Dungeon magazine home page.

I don't think you sound harsh, but I do think we come from two very different places. The great thing about our hobby is that we can all play in the way we enjoy most.


Nicolas Logue wrote:
I was also thinking that the lethality of the path may have something to do with the party composition. Bard/Rogue/Warlock/Cleric is a strong combo in some respects, but without a heavy hitter/damage soaker like a Fighter or Barbarian, any adventure can prove too much.

We actually do have a fighter now, he joined about halfway through WC and is the same level as the rest of the party. He is a halberd specialist with a 20 strength (side effect of the odd stat method we used). He hits like a Mack truck, and is a fairly substantial meat shield as well. The warlock is also one of the primary damage dealers in the party (2d6 every round as a ranged touch attack adds up quick), and he makes a great meat shield (he has Toughness and the Troll Blooded Greyhawk regional feat, which bestows Regen 1).

The fighter fell to the dire boar; it can drop a Ftr3 with Con 16 and max hp in two hits without crits (and assuming average rolls for damage and hp, it would drop a Con 18 fighter in 2 hits as well). My party just didn't have enough damage dealing capability to drop it before it started taking out party members, especially once you notice that it stays conscious and keeps fighting until it hits -10 hit points. In four rounds the dire boar took out three party members: the cleric made the mistake of casting while threatened (he trusted his AC more than his Concentration), then was hit a second time (driving him to -14), the fighter got tagged twice, and then the bard was attacked and dropped in a single attack.

I've found that rogues and warmages function best against either single tough targets or large quantities of minor targets, but a small number of moderately tough targets give them trouble. I actually think the party would have given their right arms for a warmage in the Hextor temple just for the AoE damage to clear out the minor targets.


TPK Jay wrote:

I totally understand having limited time to work on a campaign. But here's a few suggestions:

1) Take Dungeon to work with you. Assuming your employers allow the legally-required lunch time, read through the adventure then. Grab a highlighter and some post-its from the company supply cabinet (rob the company, its good for the soul) to make notes.

I've done that some, but I've gotten some really strange looks from people that could have an impact on my future advancement (side effect of working in a rural city in a conservative area). I also have some sort of pathological aversion to marking in books (I even get bothered by writing my name in my books).

TPK Jay wrote:
2) Use that hour-long commute to think about what you read over lunch, think about how to tailor things to your group. Brainstorming doesn't require so much focus as to impair your driving. Taking notes, however, will. If there's a pocket recorder in the supply cabinet, snag it; if not, think about picking one up or call your voice mail on your cell with your notes.

I do spend some time thinking about the game, but my car time is also one of the only times I get true peace and quiet to be able to focus on the more complex issues at work (I'm a programmer). I can't use the cell phone/voice mail trick, since reception is spotty at best (I live in the mountains) and I am on a prepaid plan for budgetary reasons (phone is for emergencies, costs me $0.25/minute to use).

TPK Jay wrote:

3) Find a time where you can work on the campaign at home without interruption. Explain to the fam that this is your alone time, and it's the only thing keeping you from putting round after round into innocent bystanders from a clock tower. As you pointed out D&D is a release for some of us (picturing you boss's face on the orc your character is cleaving in twain is also chicken soup for the soul). Or set the alarm 30 minutes earlier, and work on things before anyone else gets up. Sleep is overrated anyway.

City of Heroes/City of Villains is my current primary stress reliever (thrashing countless enemies in a virtual world can be very therapeutic). I've found that lately game prep stresses me, it's running the game that is the stress reliever. It's also hard to explain to a pair of little girls (4 and 6) that prepping for the game is more important than spending time with them or reading them a bedtime story. I'm definitely more of a night person than a morning person, I have a hard enough time getting up in time to make it to work. I get an hour or two after the kids and wife go to sleep, but that time is often consumed by the daily minutia of life (laundry, dishes, etc.), and if I put off going to bed, I find it almost impossible to fall asleep and then I am worthless at work the next day.

I'm still trying to figure out how to work my schedule, especially since we have another little one on the way. I've actually found that the sessions where things have gone in totally unexpected directions where I was forced to do everything on the fly have been some of the best sessions I've ever run, but I have a hard time committing to that as an intentional style, I don't trust that the spark of creativity will be there on demand.

Our group has tried a variety of game styles and a variety of systems, with just about everyone trying their hand at GMing from time to time. We haven't had any success with the slow-building campaigns or with the more simulationist style (allowing the PCs to explore the world with no real campaign goals). I'm fine with that, different strokes for different folks; I just wish I had recognized that the style didn't mesh with my group before spending several month's worth of our play sessions on it.

***

(side note) I'd like to thank everyone who has taken the time to respond to me. I'm finding that just brain-dumping to the boards is helping me get some perspective on the situation and some of the suggestions that have been made will definitely see some use.


(Please excuse me, I have realized that I can't keep a post short to save my life.)

Erik Mona wrote:
My own party played something like 15 four-hour sessions in Diamond Lake before setting out for Blackwall Keep, so I think this is all a matter of pacing and how much "non-module" stuff you do in between the adventures.

You must play a much slower paced game than most. At that rate (2 adventures in 15 sessions), you are looking at 90 play sessions to complete the campaign. My group plays for 4-5 hours every other week (with occasional cancellations due to illness and holidays), and at that rate it would take almost 4 years of play to complete the campaign. We also tried to pace things so that we could still get RPGA points for the adventures, but we gave up on that when it took us 4 sessions (2 months) to complete WC.

I remember seeing somewhere that the rewards in D&D 3.0/3.5 were geared to allow a group of players to advance from 1st to 20th in a year of weekly 4 hours sessions. The description you present is about half of this pace. If this is what you and your players enjoy, that is great, however I don't believe this is typical of most groups.

I try to maintain a sense of urgency in the game to keep it moving forward. I can't understand how someone could be considered a "hero" when their response to learning about an evil cult beneath their town is "we must stop them...right after I win the Dragon Chess tournament and take a look at the freaks down at the Emporium." The PCs in my game have been to Tidwoad's, the Spinning Giant, the Garrison, Smenk's house, Moonmeadow's house, Parrin's house, the Lakeside stables, the Feral Dog, and other places, but these were incidental to their primary tasks.

There are distinct backstories in my game that I keep in mind, but I use them as backstories, not as the primary plot. To me the primary plot is that events have been set in motion that will end the world as the PCs know it, and they are the only ones who can stop it. Anything that distracts them from this task is threatening the world as a whole.

I've got 5 characters in the group, and each has a distinct backstory and motivations. The warlock is a refugee from the Pale (they thought he was a heretic), the rogue is trying to earn enough money to settle her mother's debts and get her and herself out of working in the Emporium, the cleric is following up on some rumors of odd teachings at the local temple of Cuthbert, the fighter is a guard for Moonmeadow's residence, and the bard happened to pick the wrong person (Smenk) to play a joke on and humiliate in public and now wants to make himself scarce. I use these backgrounds to involve the characters into scenes and adventures directly related to the main plot. I did follow the advice at the beginning of WC and tried to make sure that each character would have a reason why they would want to get out of town. With every character having a reason to want to leave, why would they want to prolong their stay by exploring the town?

My style is less "allow the characters to wander the world developing their backstories", and more "give them a hook, set it good when they bite, and let them drive the campaign in pursuit of the goal". Time spent on a unified goal is time that all of the players are engaged and participating. Time spent focused on a particular character's backstory is time when the rest of the players are sitting around bored because their character is being ignored. The sooner I get a solid hook into the players, the sooner they gel into a group with a sense of purpose and a desire to achieve great things.

It appears that the AoW path is not my style, which is probably why my group is wallowing in 3FoE. They have no sense that they are about to be involved in epic events, the only hint they have received so far is an innocuous looking worm in a glass jar, certainly not a portent of global destruction. Looking at Blackwall Keep, that appears to be where the real hook is set (an infestation is growing, and someone must stop it), but I don't think my party will get there. The hook my party took is the giant Rod of Seven Parts hook in WC, and they really didn't seem to have any interest in the worm. One thing I'm debating doing is shifting gears and dusting off my old copy of Ro7P to run instead of the remainder of the AP.

Everyone has their own style; there is no one correct or perfect play style. For me, it turns out that AoW is just too far from my preferred style for me to enjoy. Maybe someday I'll have the time to modify it to fit my style, and maybe I'll put some live worms into the beginning of the Age of Worms. After all, a lot of fishermen will tell you that a live worm on the hook is great bait. :)


Big Jake wrote:

Is there any information on the Seekers, other than the little bit in The Whispering Cairn? I thought I saw something somewhere else, but I can't recall.

I've been thinking about creating a little tidbit about the Seekers, as well, and I don't want to contradict anything that's been written about them.

There was a fair amount of background on the seekers in the Maure Castle adventure (issue 112).

(edit) I see Erik has beat me to it. :)


First off, I'd like to apologize a bit for my tone in the previous messages. Lack of sleep plus work stress makes for a grumpy GM. I hadn't intended to come across quite as ranty as I did, and I didn't catch the tone until I reread things this morning.

I've not had issues with the lethality of D&D in general, although we do tend to start our normal campaigns at third level just to reduce the amount of time we spend rolling new characters at the early levels where a single lucky die roll from almost any opponent can kill a character. As I've said in a previous post, this player group is usually difficult to challenge; in the mid levels (8-14) I have to throw encounters 2-4 levels above the party for there to be any risk, so in general I don't feel that D&D is a particularly lethal system. In my previous campaigns (most to level 14-18), I don't recall ever having more than a handful (<5) character deaths over the entire course of the campaign.

My games lean toward higher power, but a lot of this comes fom good tactics and conservation of resources by the players (still use 4d6-lowest stats, allow a reroll on hp rolls but the second roll stands, fairly open with supplemental material). I really didn't expect the current game to have a lethality problem, especially since we are trying a new stat rolling method (guarantees an average stat of 13, minimum 7, slight possibility of extraordinary stats, I can provide details if anyone is interested) that ended up with a Str 20 human fighter, and I allowed the Greyhawk regional feats so the Warlock took Troll-Blooded. If we continue, I will add in the Action Points rules from Unearthed Arcana.

I've been discussing the future of the game a lot with my players. They seem ambivalent about continuing, and I am not sure quite how to progress if we continue. The biggest issues for me now are 1) where can the party rest to continue and 2) how to introduce the replacement for the dead character. I really dislike stopping in the middle of an adventure.

One thing that we are considering is shifting to a Living Greyhawk campaign. This would allow me to keep running without an excessive prep time commitment. My biggest hurdle here is that my players really dislike the point buy system, especially the 28pt system dictated by LG.

Other options I have proposed to the players include starting an Eberron campaign (it would be new to everyone), a back-to-basics (core books only, at least to start) Greyhawk campaign, or revisiting some of the classic modules that we have not had an opportunity to play (either under 2nd ed rules or by converting the adventures to 3.5).

I've thought about taking a break from a GM, but trying to play drives me crazy, and I really look forward to the outlet that gaming provides. I've been the primary GM for my gaming groups for well over a decade, so I have a very hard time playing without going stir crazy. I'm constantly seeing things that I would do differently, or trying to chime in to assist the DM when running, or getting distracted because managing a single character requires much less attention than GMing (at least when the focus is on another character).

To the Paizo staff - Have you considered asking on the boards for help in compiling the errata? I'm sure there are a lot of people that would be willing to chip in, especially if they could get definitive rulings on how to fix the more complicated issues. This would allow you to have the erratas available with a minimum of time and/or resource commitment from your staff.


Jeremy Walker wrote:

Errata is a trickier issue. We would love to be able it issue errata for the adventures, but there are two large stumbling blocks.

First (and most important), it is difficult for us to find time to revisit and work on earlier issues of the magazine. We just don't have the time, and our unfulfilled "to do" list has many other more important things on it. Unless it is a major problem that is easily fixed (like the missing text for 130, for example), we just don't have the time. The second problem is that there is really no good place for us to put the errata. As a rule, the web enhancements come out too soon after the release of the magazine to contain errata for it (since we usually don't know what needs fixing at that point). Maybe someday, the resources will be available for us to maintain an index for each adventure in each magazine, that includes things like errata and additions. But for now, that day remains far off.

I'll have to say that that answer surprises me. Paizo has a link on their site specifically for errata (http://paizo.com/dungeon/resources/errata), which seems to me to be the logical place to put it. I may be alone in this, but personally I would have rather had erratas than stat blocks for scores of people in town, especially since there are very few of them where full stat blocks will ever be useful. The errata certainly would have saved me more time in my preparations than what the majority of the Overload did. To me, non-combat NPC stats are easy to wing on the fly. Even just a compilation of the errata presented by the readers on the boards and saved as a PDF would be better than nothing, and would take a minimum amount of time.

It appears that there has been a lot of time spent fleshing out the setting, but the focus seems off. There are lots of details about townsfolk, but WC specifically give the party a base outside of town to minimize the time they spend there, and 3FoE seems to encourage the party to do it in one trip. Blackwall then sends them away from the town entirely. There was a full article on fixing up the abandoned mine house, but then the party doesn't spend much time in Diamond Lake after fixing it up. There was an article detailing all kinds of mine equipment, but then the trip through the mines was glossed over in 3FoE.

Farewell2Kings - If I had the time, that is what I would do, but it seems to me that by the time you read through the adventure, figure out what to keep and what to pitch, and rebuild effectively a new adventure around the remains, you have spent more time than just building a new adventure from scratch.

Crust - The primary official RPGA campaign (Living Greyhawk) does expect the adventures to be run unmodified, and lots of players and DMs around the globe seem to enjoy it just fine. As I said before, I fully expect to have to do a lot of customizations for Dungeon adventures I integrate into my personally developed campaigns, but AoW _IS_ the campaign. I don't expect to have to do a lot of customization to an adventure to make it fit with the campaign it was specifically designed for.

I chose the AP specifically because I am so time limited. I'm married, have two young children, work a full-time job (salary, so often over 40/wk), commute an hour each way to work, and am on-call about 1/4 of the time. I expected something that was billed as "a complete Dungeons & Dragons campaign that will take your adventurers from the down-and-dirty days of 1st level to the heights of power at 20th" (Eric Mona, Dungeon 124, p.10) to be just that - a complete campaign - not a campaign that needs filler adventures, not a framework from which I can build a campaign, not a guide with which to write my own adventures - but a complete campaign.

I normally assume that an adventure is build with a typical party (Fighter/Rogue/Cleric/Wizard) in mind. The party I'm running for is not far off typical, is of the recommended levels, and if anything is over strength (Fighter/Rogue/Cleric/Warlock/Bard), so I did not expect much need for adjustments due to party composition. There is only so much customization I can do in the way of hooks and motivations, since I do not have access to the upcoming adventures. Because of this, I have to rely on the adventure authors for the hooks and tie-ins to the future adventures.

The players are all very experienced and typically have exceptionally good tactics. I frequently get frustrated because of exactly how difficult it is to challenge them (they took out the Terrible Iron Golem in Maure Castle in 2 rounds flat without taking any damage) and I usually have trouble challenging them. It really took me by surprise that they were having so much trouble.

I found the Diadem frustrating because it just had the bare basics, and kept the DM as much in the dark as the players. It mentions that it has additional properties that will become apparent sometime in the future, but no indication of how long they will have to wait to find out, or even the strength/type of the magic aura. For me to try to fill in the details for this introduces the possibility of completely conflicting with significant plot elements of the future adventures. Leaving it a mystery meant telling the bard that his identify spell didn't reveal all magical properties contrary to what the spell description indicates, and that his 30+ bardic knowledge check didn't tell him anything he didn't already know. I admit that this is really a minor issue, but part of what is bothering me is the sheer quantity of minor issues.

The largest part is just how disjointed it feels. I don't expect it to be a perfect fit for all of my players or for my style. I expect it to at least be internally consistent, so that the players and I can develop reasonable expectations. There is a reason why you rarely see a series of novels where each novel is written by a different author, it is hard to maintain enough consistency. A campaign is in many ways like a series of novels.

I admit that most of my ranting is due to frustration with the campaign collapsing, especially after the high expectations I had. I'd like to think that 3FoE is the low point of the quality issues, but when I found something as significant as an entire missing map in Blackwall in the first two minutes skimming the article, it makes that hard to believe.


I’ve Got Reach wrote:

1) I would assume that this is as good as it gets. If you elect not to do the dirty work in pre-reading the adventure with your player’s tendencies and skill level in mind, then

2) You might want to fashion your own modules and avoid the dissatisfying gaming experiences.

I actually do read the adventure through several times (usually 4-5 times) before running it, and I tend to read one adventure ahead. I do try to keep the player's tendencies and character abilities in mind, and I try to adjust to fit, however when my notes on adjustments are longer than the adventure, there is a problem. We switched from weekly to every other week precisely because of time commitments; I did not feel that I had adequate prep time when playing weekly.

I've been a reader of Dungeon and Dragon magazines for nearly 20 years, and I have run more adventures from the pages of Dungeon than I care to count. Most of the biggest irritations to me in the AP are the errors and omissions more than the plot issues. I would have much less issue with this if the author/publisher would take responsibility for the technical issues and issue erratas, but they haven't.

I expect to have to make changes to an adventure to fit my personal campaign, however with the AoW AP, I am attempting to run their campaign. I have not made any changes to the AP to customize it, I am using it as written. I should not need to make significant changes to make one adventure in the AP fit with the next when the adventures are being touted as a cohesive path. To me, in the ideal AP the characters would not be aware of switching from one adventure to the next, they should flow together naturally. I think this is a failing of farming the adventure writing out to a variety of authors.

I am actually discussing with my players where they want to go with the game, and it looks like the AoW will be abandoned by the group. I suspect my expectations for the AP were too high, so when I came across elements that were a little rough, instead of feeling just a little irritated I felt betrayed, as if the authors did not put in the commitment to quality that I have come to expect from Dungeon.


After all the good things I heard about the Shackled City AP, I started AoW with very high hopes. I don't have a lot of prep time, so the APs struck me as a great idea - a full campaign arc and supporting material, packaged up and ready for use.

That was a few months ago. My AoW campaign is now on the verge of complete collapse. We normally play every other week, but we have cancelled the last 3 sessions and to be honest I don't know if I want to run another session of AoW.

SPOILER ALERT

The progress so far: Party of 4 (bard, rogue, warlock, cleric) enter the Whispering Cairn. Near TPK at the Wolf encounter. Rapid identification of the death trap. One of the players commented "who wrote this, Gary Gygax?" Another player is introduced (fighter) bringing the party up to 5. Plot continues as expected until they need to get info from Kullen and crew, at which point another near TPK occurs (should have been a TPK, but I was feeling nice). Party eventually gets to Filge's, ambush him and take him down before his first action. Plot continues as expected to the Wind Warriors fight, which the party enters at 2nd level (I don't know how there is an expectation of being 3rd with the number of easily ignored encounters prior). The Wind Warriors are defeated, but it was another almost TPK.

At this point the party is obviously not enjoying themselves. The Wind Warrior fight was excessive for them, even with me not playing the WWs to their potential. Frequent complaints are heard regarding the difficulty level of the skill checks, encounters, etc.

They decided to continue, so they talked to Allustan and then Smenk. Even having them talk to Smenk at this point felt incredibly contrived, especially after he has been built up in the background materials as thoroughly reprehensible and the party found indication of his involvement with Filge. The players decide to go along with the hook, and a plot is hatched to get them into the mine. They are going to go in posed as some of Smenk's men making a supply delivery with assistance from one of Smenk's men. The players are dumbfounded when they come to the boarded up passage, through which deliveries are apparently frequently made as there is no good source of food and water in the complex. The boards are removed, the party is allowed to pass.

The party takes the elevator down and defeats the tieflings, but not in time to stop them from knocking on the door. They enter the Temple of Hextor, and the fight begins. The commoners are involved, the tiefling guards are notified, the dire boar is released, and yet another almost TPK ensues. The cleric is dead (driven from full to -12 in two hits from the dire boar), the fighter and bard are unconscious and bleeding, the rogue is down to 5 hp and fleeing, and the warlock is single-handedly fighting the dire boar, one remaining guard, and 2 commoners, who have alerted the rest of the complex. The rogue returns and manages to get a potion into the bard, who then heals the fighter while the rogue and warlock finish the fight. Now they are left with the remainder of the temple at full alert, one party member dead, almost out of spells, and almost out of hps. They have no place to rest, are facing a prepared force, and are now of the opinion that the place is a death trap. Bringing in a replacement for the cleric at this point is going to be tough too.

I'm getting frustrated with it. I feel like I have to read through everything as an editor to catch the mistakes, omissions, and plot holes littered throughout the adventures. Things like erroneous room numbers, missing creature numbers, incorrect stat blocks, etc. really should have been caught in the playtesting and editing. At the very least, there should be a single location to download the official errata for the various adventures (the most recent official errata posted is for issue 118). In the time it is taking me to go through and try to fix everything, I could have written my own adventures. Because of the number of mistakes I've found, I now feel the need to recalculate and verify each stat block, lest one of the players catches a mistake during play.

There is no consistent style so far between the adventures, making them feel disjointed. It feels very much like they were written completely independently from just the brief plot outlines, resulting in hooks being developed in one adventure only to be completely ignored in the next and NPCs being portrayed differently between adventures.

I was hoping that the adventures would get better. I looked at Blackwall, and the first thing I noticed is that there is a missing map, unless you count the poster-size map as the map, in which case the location numbers were omitted from the map.

So far there has been nothing to give the players or characters any desire to continue on the plot-line. They don't trust the mine managers (probably rightfully so), they don't trust Allustan (they are convinced that he is secretly helping to keep his corrupt brother in control of the town), they have a diadem that they know virtually nothing about despite having identified it (because the DM knows virtually nothing about it), and the only plot hooks they have shown even a vague interest in are the Rod of Seven Parts hooks that have nothing to do the next few adventures and are really not at all connected to the real plot line.

So, to those of you who have finished 3FoE and played any of the following adventures, does it get any better, or is this as good as it gets?


There is an excellent online map as well. The link is http://melkot.com/locations/cogh/cogh.html


I'm going with the batting-cage design, so there isn't a limitless supply of balls. I talked to the strategic leader of the party today, they are planning on approaching one of the mine managers (looking to go with the most honorable) and offering a deal. The party will supply a limited quantity of spheres on a regular basis to be smelted and combined in with the mine's normal yield, and the party will get a portion of the revenue. They are seeking a 60/40 split of the portion of the revenue generated by the iron spheres. The quantity to be supplied would be gradually increased to prevent anyone from noticing a sudden increase in mine output.

As a result:
1) The flow will be low enough to not unbalance the economy.
2) The source will be obscured; it will just appear as if the mine manager has hit a particularly rich vein
3) This will make an ally of one of the local mine managers
4) Initially this will make the party 100-200 gp/month. Eventually this might increase to 1000/month if the party can figure out how to discretely move tons of iron spheres, which is still well below what they can make adventuring

To me this looks like a win/win situation for everyone, and rewards the players' creativity without unbalancing the game.


My party got a little overconfident. They put the peices together at the Land homestead and decided that they were going to capture Kullen and crew for questioning. They set an ambush between the Feral Dog and where the gang lives. The female rogue was the "bait", pretending to struggle with a stubborn donkey, obviously trying to lure the gang toward the rest of the party with the "vulnerable attractive girl" ploy. The rest of the party was hiding around the corner of a nearby building.

Kullen and crew came upon the scene, more than a little drunk after their night at the Feral Dog. They chatted amongst themselves for a second, then Kullen went to help the rogue. With the rogue distracted by Kullen, Merovinn cast "Charm Person" on the rogue, intending on getting her to accompany the gang back to their abode for a little entertainment. When the rogue's behavior changed and the party Warlock detected a spell effect on her, the rest of the party decided to spring the ambush early. The Warlock managed to hit Merovinn with an eldritch bolt, but the rest of the party spent their suprise round closing.

Merovinn got initiative in the first full round, moved, and Color Sprayed, taking out the party Cleric. Over the course of a few rounds, the party fighter killed Merovinn, Kullen took down the party Fighter and Rogue (both negative and bleeding), Rastophan severly wounded the party Bard, and Todrik moved into position to coup the Cleric and called for the party's surrender. They surrendered, were allowed to bind the wounds of their friends, and Kullen demanded an explanation. The Bard rolled a 29 on his diplomacy, and I allowed that to move Kullen from hostile to indifferent.

After some tense negotiation, the party handed over all of the valuables they had on them and found out where the Land family bones were.

I feel that I went really easy on them. Todrik should have couped the cleric, then Rastophan would have easily mopped up the bard, leaving just the Warlock. The Warlock may have gotten away eventually, he would eventually recover from being left for dead (he has Troll Blooded), but Kullen could have easily run him down.


I'm thinking my group of players is unusually creative and opportunistic. Yesterday they entered area 23 in the Whispering Cairn for the first time. Upon hearing the description of the room, their eyes got big and they immediately started making plans.

They scouted out the room, dealt with the grick, identified the trap (the hard way), and made the expected deal with Alastor.

First step in their plan is going to be to go to the garrison to claim possession of the abandoned house the surrounding terrain. Then they are going to start gathering the iron spheres, carting them out, and selling them on the open market, being careful not to flood the market.

The engineer player in the party ran the number quickly, he figures that there is 150,000gp of iron in the bottom of the room. They also view the trap mechanism as a potentially endless source of more iron spheres. They are trying to figure out how to trigger the trap on a regular basis to maintain their supply. Their worst case plan is to use the Warlock in the party to trip the trap (he has the Troll Blooded feat, making him hard to kill, but severely weakening his effectivenes otherwise).

Does anyone else have players that look for profit in every situation?


I noticed that there is no content listed on the site now. Has something come up?


SirMarcus wrote:

I have the 3ed core books but not the 3.5 so I'm sure this information is probably clearly available for everyone else. But could someone just clue me in on this one simple question -

one of the NPCs is described as possessing a "Robe of Bones (full)". What exactly is a robe of bones, and what does it do?

Wizards/Hasbro has made the SRD available online at http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20/article/srd35, it's really convenient for checking things like this if you don't have the books or if they are at home and you are at work.

From the SRD:
Robe of Bones: This handy item functions much like a robe of useful items for the serious necromancer. It appears to be an unremarkable robe, but a character who dons it notes that it is adorned with small embroidered figures representing undead creatures. Only the wearer of the robe can see the embroidery and recognize them for the creatures they become, and detach them. One figure can be detached each round. Detaching a figure causes it to become an actual undead creature (see the list below). The skeleton or zombie is not under the control of the wearer of the robe, but may be subsequently commanded, rebuked, turned, or destroyed. A newly created robe of bones always has two embroidered figures of each of the following undead:
• Small goblin skeleton
• Medium human commoner skeleton
• Medium wolf skeleton
• Small goblin zombie
• Medium human commoner zombie
• Medium wolf zombie
Moderate necromancy (evil); CL 6th; Craft Wondrous Item, animate dead; Price 2,400 gp; Weight 1 lb.


I’ve Got Reach wrote:


Allow me to add my two cents to the discussion about the high DCs to find and disable traps:

I have no problem with it whatsoever. Our party's Rouge started with two feats being human: Martial Weapon Proficincy and Dodge. This is telling me, the DM, that although the Rouge has a lot of skill points in various skills (and I appreciate that as the DM), he/she isn't necessarily great at any of them. My player's think D&D is a fighting game, and subsequently view Skill Focus and other skill enhancing feats as a waste. Getting back to the point, if the Rouge had taken Skill Focus or any of the other feats, he/she WOULD have been able to find the trap and potentially disable it.

4 ranks plus 1 Ability bonus, plus 2 or 3 for skill focus/type feats.

Feats are in short supply for rogues. She intends to go Invisible Blade, which has two feat prerequisites. With her +1 Int, she can have 10 skills at max ranks. I think she currently has 8 at max and 4 at half max. With that many skills, she would still have to make a choice as to which one(s) would get the skill focus. In my experience, the sheer number of skills a rogue has makes it very unlikely that they will take skill focus, as it would benefit such a narrow subset of their abilities. In the campaigns I have participated in, Skill Focus is used by characters that have one or maybe two critical skills (Concentration for the wizard, perform for the bard, etc.) or by characters that have bonus feats but few skill points.

Her character's back story has her as the daughter of an aging employee of the Emporium who isn't earning as well as she used to. The PC is currently a performer (contortionist & dancer) at the Emporium, but is being pressured to begin working in the more lucrative part of the business. As leverage, the Emporium is claiming that her mother owes 100gp in back rent since she isn't earning enough to cover her keep. With this background, skill focus in search or disable device really doesn't fit the character background. Her search is +5, her disable device is +8 (+4 dex).


Robert Hradek wrote:
For the stone, you could take 20, being that there is no penalty for a failing roll, like say with a trap.

He can't hit the DC by himself (Str +2), and taking 10 or 20 is specifically disallowed for the Aid Another action, so it defaulted back to lots of rolling. Not that I doubted they would eventually hit the numbers, it was just a matter of how long. If they hadn't used their rope and pitons to make a safety net in the passage to area 8 (they reasoned out the trap easily), they could have used the elevator to help pull.

Robert Hradek wrote:


And for the trap, you could use aid another to boost your chance of finding it.

None of the other party members have trapfinding, so they can't aid in the search for traps with DCs over 20. From the SRD: "In cases where the skill restricts who can achieve certain results you can’t aid another to grant a bonus to a

task that your character couldn’t achieve alone."


Timault Azal-Darkwarren wrote:


The statue too hard to topple? Then it's too hard....

At least that is an optional part of the adventure, but the treasure balance is radically altered if the PCs can't get to it.

Timault Azal-Darkwarren wrote:
They didn't find the trap? Then it's sprung and they soon realize they better get better at searching...

The sarcophogus is at least survivable, but it bugs me that the rogue is the only character that is repeatedly expected to make skill checks that require rolls in the high teens to succeed even with max ranks, and if they fail, they are the only ones who get negative consequences.

Timault Azal-Darkwarren wrote:
They don't know how to deal with the beetle swarm? They had better run away and live to fight another day...

If only they could. The only way for the party to run is to abandon the cleric. The cleric is their front line fighter, base move of 20'. The swarm is immune to all weapon attacks and single target effects, so the party has no way to damage it (no AoE spells). Once it comes in contact with the cleric, he will take damage every round and can move fast enough to get away. He will have maybe three rounds to live. The mad slasher is faster than the party, and if they stop to fight it, the beetle swarm will catch the rest of the party. If they don't stop, it will slowly pick off the party members one by one.

I think I made a mistake by suggesting to my players to create well rounded characters. The adventure appears to be designed with broken munchkin characters in mind instead of the default PC power level from the PHB/DMG. I think the AP will be great if the group can make it through the first adventure, but they almost abandoned the AP entirely after the fight with the wolves. They had to rest two days to recover. It's important to challenge the characters and to keep a feeling of danger, but if you don't allow the characters some initial success, it is much harder to firmly set the hook in their interest. Especially in the first encounter of the campaign, the party is still learning how to work together and will be far from making optimal use of their abilities. The only thing that prevented a PC death or two in the wolf fight was that I rolled minimum damage on a critical hit and rolled minimum damage on an AoO when the cleric tried to stand up. I hate to see the PC last less time than it took to create the character.


SPOILER WARNING

I just started running Whispering Cairn last weekend, and my players and I were surprised by the difficulty of making a number of the checks. For example, toppling the stone in the Architect's area (DC 25) required the entire party of four to make strength checks (one primary, three aid another), and the primary still needed to roll a 17+ if all of the other three made their checks (19+ if only 2 of the three made it). Since taking 10 isn't allowed when using Aid Another, we spent a fair amount of time just rolling again and again.

On the sarcophogus in Area 7, it is impossible for our party's rogue to find the trap. The Search DC is 26, she has 1st level max ranks (4) and a +1 Int, and since it is a trap no one else in the party can attempt to aid.

My party also got kicked around by the wolves. No one died, but it was touch and go. We ended the session with a cliff-hankger of the beetle swarm coming up from the Laborer's Quarters, I'm afraid the mad slasher and the beetle swarm will just about wipe them out, especially since they have no area effect damage ability. I don't have the adventure with me to check the base beetle size, but if it is Fine or Diminuitive, the party has no way to inflict damage on the swarm at all (it would be immune to all weapon damage and single target spells and effects).

Normally when I think of DCs for a first-level group, I think of 10 as normal, 15 as challenging, and 20 as difficult.

What was the PC stat assumption behind this module? Standard elite array is 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8 (total +5 modifier); I use a homebrew stat generation system that results in a total modifier of +6 to +9 (average stat 13). The current party makeup is Human Bard 1, Human Rogue 1, Elf Cleric (Cuthbert) 1, and Human Warlock 1. We do have a 5th player joining who will be playing a front-line fighter.


T-Bone wrote:

In case anyone missed it in an earlier thread, koramado has created a web portal to share AoW material. I've posted some magic item illustrations with more to come. Any material shared is greatly appreciated. The address is pasted below.

http://therpgenius.com/Default.aspx?alias=therpgenius.com/ageofworms

Out of curiousity, has anyone contacted Paizo for permission to avoid any IP/copyright issues? After all, even in an OGL product, the maps and such aren't considered open content, and since Dungeon isn't published under the OGL technically none of the content is considered "open".

Not trying to rain on anyone's parade, and I'd love to contribute, but I don't want to put a lot of time into it if it is going to be immediately taken down because copyright issues with Paizo.