Chriton227's page

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?

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?

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.