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I just used skill checks there, along with plenty of roleplay. I didn't feel the interaction merited a skill challenge, because it was relatively short, the player fell for her attentions hook, line and sinker, and he was completely non-combative towards her father when he showed up, and simply fled. All in all its added much mirth to the campaign. She continues to show up every now and then, but her father always seems to be around.
I did one skill challenge that involved finding the trail of the kidnappers through the wilderness, but aside from that, no. My players are not that keen on the idea of skill challenges right now. I am exploring ways to subtly introduce them, but it must be slow and heavily disguised.
Well, the game reason for this change is that 4e encounters involve far more bad guys than 3e does. The plot implications, IMO, are minimal. My assumption is that the imp was growing her force to take part in the final raid on Sandpoint (as referenced by Tsuto's journal), not the initial raid, as Nualia would not have wanted to reveal the secret of the catacombs too early.
The party went back to the room with the undead, and discovered that the black sun had completely 'revived' and regenerated the 2 slain ghouls. The quickly closed the door (again the undead did not pursue) and chose to continue exploring in the hopes of finding another route. They did, but with more undead this time. 1x Deathlock Wight (lvl 4 controller)
This battle was pretty straight forward but the "detonate" ability of the Boneshards brutalized the party. Everyone groaned with the Deathlock Wight 'reanimated' the first of the fallen boneshards, knowing they would have to go through the 'detonate' again. The deathlock wight had leather armor +2 and a staff of the war mage +1 for treasure. Moving on, the party discovered the "cage" of the evistro, who is enclosed a "force cube" and unable to get at them. They moved on and finally discovered the "prison/torture/experimentation" room where the children were being held. Being crafty wererat kobolds (yes, wererat kobolds), they had heard the noise of the evistro being mocked and its resulting anger. Most of them hid, but several (having previous knowledge of intruders) decided to use one of the children as bargaining pieces, and stood menacingly over one of them with his blade at its throat, and said they should not come any closer, or they would kill it (in draconic, which one party member speaks). Apparently, the PCs "don't make deals with terrorists" as the PCs immediately attacked. They took no precautions, didn't even attempt to parley, and managed to get only one PC in initiative off before the wererats attacked, who didn't do enough damage to kill the wererat. So he immediately executed the child. Unfortunate for our 'heroes'. 4x Wererat (aka wererat kobolds) (lvl 3 skirmisher)
The first thing the kobold arcanist did was to release the evistro from its cage, who came tearing up the corridor behind the PCs. Unfortuntely, the first thing in its path was poor Jeva, who was "bloodied" by the beasts attack. The fight with the kobolds was fairly standard, but when Jeva stood up as an 8-year old werewolf, things got interesting. She singled out the party rogue (who had abandoned her in a previous combat with a mocking laugh and disdainful tone) and began to tear him apart. Jeva, Werewolf (lvl 8 brute) Eventually, the party subdued Jeva, and killed all the enemies (the Evistro was spectacularly useless) and collected up the remaining children, and headed back to Sandpoint. Once there, they received xp for completing this quest, and a reward from Mayor Deverin, 100g and a suit of Deathcut Hide armor +1, both from her personal "stash". Mayor Deverin requires Jeva to be locked up in the garrison, as she fears what would happen if such a beast is set loose upon the town. The cleric refuses to leave the poor childs side. Father Zantus has no way to remove her affliction and suggests that Magnimar might have someone who could help. Shalelu shows up, back from her scouting trip, and informs the PCs of the activity at Thistletop. One PC, who happens to be the adopted son (and an elf) of Daverin Hosk (owner of Goblin Squash stables), has a "thing" for Shalelu, who doesn't even remember his name. I had indicated before that Daverin and Shalelu spent time together whenever she was in town before (ostensibly because they're shared dislike of goblins and 'rangery' backgrounds) but the PCs believe that Daverin and Shalelu were "shacking up" so I ran with this, as more drama is a good thing. Now Cael has the hots for his adopted father's elven lover (who is clearly much older than both of them, but doesn't look it). Sheriff Hemlock returns to town with the grim news of only getting a handful of soldiers to reinforce the town. With Shalelu's report on the goblins (and my players all vaccillating on what to do next), the obvious answer is for them to eradicate the goblin menace at Thistletop. Hemlock asks them to go up there and kill everything they see, and eliminate this goblin problem once and for all. The PCs agree, being a mostly bloodthirsty lot, and set off. Shalelu agrees to lead them there, but won't be going with them (because she figures its certain death, and I don't want to mess with an NPC sideshow). The PCs approach from the landside and begin their cleansing of the goblin "fortress".
Okay, time to catch up. I've run several sessions now without posting, so I'll be adding as much of it as I can. When I left off the PCs where in the midst of some ancient Chelaxian catacombs that had been commandeered by a powerful elven (eladrin, technically) wizard and his 'minions', on the trail of a group of missing children from Sandpoint. Since we are pretty much through with this side trek, I'll let the cat out of the bag and say that the dungeon I used was "Rescue At Rivenroar", the first installment of the new Dungeon magazine "Scales of War" AP. The background story to this mod is relatively lackluster, IMO, but it suited my needs quite well, and saved me a ton of prep time (which I desperately needed, as the summer was quite busy for me). Anyhow, after getting mauled by the wraiths, I believe the party retreated to the entrance and rested for the day (extended rest). Unbeknownst to them, the kidnappers were "experimenting" on the children (this ties to one of the PCs backstory) to create "demonic hybrids" and this results in the death of one of the children each day. The players knew time was of the essence (the one player who knew what was going on with these kidnappers had informed everyone). So they go back in the next morning and wander through the next crypt, where some kobolds were looting the dead. The kobold sprang the "trap" in that room, summoning Magma claws, and took pot shots from the darkness. 3x Kobold Slyblades (lvl 4 lurkers)
They found assorted jewelry on the kobolds, and the dwarfs axe was upgraded to a +1 Final Word axe (from Dragon magazine). They next encountered the spider webbed landing where the Ettercap mercenaries of the Master make their dwelling. This was a fairly tough fight, and as usual, the rogue thought he was a tank, and got his behind handed to him. 3x Ettercap Fang Guards (lvl 4 soldier)
The players now knew the danger posed by the spider swarms, and finished them off first as priority. The webspinner was wearing magical cloth armor (Darkleaf +1). I changed the name of the next family crypt to Van Caskerkin, to have a tie to the upcoming encounter with Orik. This crypt was turned into a hobgoblin barracks, and a short fight ensued. 5x Hobgoblin Grunts (lvl 3 minion)
I had no encounter in the Fresco room, but with all the statues and the alter, the players spent a good bit of time under the assumption that the whole place was trapped. Moving down to the next level, the PCs encountered a kobold guard room. 3x Kobold Dragonshields (lvl 2 soldier)
They discovered the kobold priest venerated Asmodeus (part of plot of creating demonic hybrids). The war priest also managed to get away, and warn the next encounter, with the hobgoblin leader, so the PCs did not get a chance to rest, as they chased him all the way there. Sinruth, Hobgoblin chieftain (lvl 2 solo soldier)
The PCs had a tough time dealing with the solo (naturally), but the wild mage did surrender, so they were able to extract some details of what was going on here to him. They spent quite a bit of time attempting to access the Masters bedroom, which was protected by a series of mechanical traps. Magic Crossbow Turret in the hallway before the door (lvl 3 blaster trap)
Once they got in they discovered that the Master did not keep any of his treasure there (being a powerful wizard, and based on the backstory of the villain, he keeps it all with him, something they realized after they got in). Going on information from the kobold, the party continued their search for the missing children. They discovered a room with a large black sun motif inlaid on the floor, guarded by several undead. 2x Ghouls (lvl 5 soldier)
The party's usual tactics of "block the hallway and used ranged attacks" faired poorly here, as the lone defender was quickly overwhelmed by the powerful ghouls. They also realized the black sun seemed to be 'regenerating' the undead. They managed to kill both ghouls but were so wounded they retreated. The undead did not follow, being bound to the room with the black sun. At this point the party rested yet again, and leveled to 3rd level (they had enough xp to level for several encounters, but my 'house rule' is that you can only gain levels after an extended rest).
How did/do you handle the party advancing levels? When did they advance and what level should they be at the end of the first mod? Sorry for the delay in responding, I've been quite busy the last few months with vacations, work and Dragon*Con. I track xps by encounter, and just tell the players when they level. They have no interest in tracking their own xps. As I am adjusting RotRLs to go from 1 to 30th level in 4e, I am estimating that PCs will need to be 6th level when starting Skinsaw Murders, 11th level starting Hook Mountain Massacre (which works well given the increased "level" of Ogres in 4e), 16th level when starting Fortress of the Stone Giants, 21st level when starting Sins of the Saviors, and 26th level when starting Spires of Xin-Shalast. Of course, this means you are going to have to add in quite a few additional encounters, side treks, etc.
The PCs are on the trail of the missing children. I threw in a skill challenge to negotiate the wilderness and follow the tracks successfully, which the party pulled off nearly without a hitch (8 successes with only 1 failure). They also spotted the hobgoblin ambush before it went off, negating the surprise round: 1x Hobgoblin Archer (lvl 3 artillery)
The rangers bow “increased in power” to Flaming +1 (for killing more goblins, don’t you know), plus they found some gold and a healing potion. The heroes found the ruins of an ancient castle in a swamp, on a hill that was quite clearly not natural (made by magic). They followed the trail of the slavers and children to a set of stairs going down into the darkness in these ruins, and it was at this point the Dragonborn recalled having been here before (a link to the backstory he wrote regarding having been in the captivity of a powerful wizard and his kobold minions). The first room was a guard post: 3x Hobgoblin Soldiers (lvl 3 soldiers)
One kobold almost made it out to warn the next room, but the PCs pulled off a bluff check as the wizard could speak goblin. The next room encountered was a barracks. Despite having total surprise, the two sneaky strikers managed to do only like 8 points of damage total between their four rounds of actions before the combat started in earnest. 1x Hobgoblin Soldiers (lvl 3 soldiers)
1 of the kobolds managed to get away across a pit. Whether he warned the next group or just fled remains to be seen… In the next room they found a huge magical “mural” of another ruined castle in a swamp, which turns out to be some sort of teleportation device or portal, as a ochre jelly slides through. That’s not all, as some undead guardians bound to this room join in the fray. This was a very hard fought combat due to the surprise of the specters (due to invisibility) and the fact that they were able to get right up on the PCs and use their area of effect abilities. 1x Ochre Jelly (lvl 3 elite brute)
The ochre jelly had a Duelists Shortsword +1 and some gems inside of it that it had been unable to digest.
The next two games sessions dealt entirely with the dungeon complex underneath Sandpoint. The PCs cleared the entire place without taking even one extended rest, which was pretty impressive. They also made second level, (but did not get the benefits until after an extended rest, so all of these encounters were against 1st level characters, even though the last two are designed for 2nd levels). Also, I increased the relative sizes of just about every encounter area to give more room for everyone to move about. I also increase the size of all the hallways to 10’ wide. Area B1 and B2 were combined into one encounter. Keeping to my goals on minimizing time spent designing encounters, I simply made some changes to existing monsters and changed their descriptions. For Sinspawn, I used the stats for Kruthik, so I would have a variety of monsters to choose, with interesting abilities (to me, it represented more or less powerful version of sinspawn, if they were minions or ‘normal’ creatures). I increased their “damage aura” to 2 squares, and typed it to Necrotic. This encounter consisted of: 6x Sinspawn (Kruthik Young – lvl 2 brutes), 2 in area B1, 2 in area B2, and 2 in the tunnels leading to area B6, so that they would arrive staggered out over several rounds. Area B6 was encountered next, and here I placed “normal” undead instead of Sinspawn, and had them exit from several cells. 5x Zombies (lvl 2 brutes)
Area B9, I changed the pits into more “cells”, and had the zombies located in these, while the mutated goblin was sitting in the middle of the floor in the dark muttering to himself. Savage Berserker is a template from the DMG. 12x Zombie Rotters (lvl 3 minions)
Area B4, there are no vargouilles in the 4e MM, so I put in more Sinspawn, same formula as before: 4x Sinspawn (Kruthik Young – lvl 2 brutes)
Finally, in area B15, this was supposed to be the big “boss” encounter, so I set it up as a level 5 difficulty encounter. I added two ‘secret’ tunnels in rooms ‘A’ and ‘B’ that led back to other areas on the map, so that the bad guys could either flank or retreat as needed. Turns out that was good planning ahead on my part, as the players learned very quickly how to go defensive to minimize damage. This fight turned out very cool and dramatic, as the PCs were still first level and only 1 PC had any Daily powers remaining for the combat. But they succeeded in killing all the bad guys. 1 of the normal sinspawn and 2 lesser sinspawn were not placed on the table, as they were ‘created’ by the runewell on turn 3. For the Imp, I added the ‘Wizard’ class template as suggested in the DMG. Turned out to be a very formidable opponent. 5x Sinspawn (Kruthik Young – lvl 2 brutes)
At this point, I had to break from the normal Burnt Offerings story line, as I need to add in extra levels to maintain my 1-30 progression. Originally, I was going to run Crown of the Kobold King, since several PCs just happened to be orphans, but I just didn’t like the way that module was laid out. I used the basic plot from the module (missing children) since the burned down orphanage was already a part of the PC backgrounds, but went a different route as to who was behind it, tying it into a another PCs background that I can’t reveal yet. Basically, the PCs, having returned to the surface world, discover that five children have been missing since last night. Clearly, the PCs are expected, nay, it is demanded that they go find them, immediately. And now that there is this new ‘threat’ to Sandpoint in the form of the underground tunnels, Mayor Deverin has no troops to spare. The PCs being the heros that they are, ride south to the ruins of the burnt down orphanage, as that is the last place the children were known to be.
My overall goal with converting the combats over to 4e is to 1) minimize the time required by me and 2) match the existing monster ‘theme’s where possible. The former rule means that I’m not going to spend much time making up new monsters, but will just use existing monsters and change their descriptions or slightly alter their abilities. I decided to make the goblin attack a ‘marathon’ combat, with little time to rest between encounters, in order to simulate the quick pace of it. Also, I let the players decide if they had their weapons & armor with them (if it fit their character) for the festival. Several chose to be unarmed/unarmored, which increased the relative challenge level. Encounter 1 became 8x goblin cutters (lvl 1 minions), 3x goblin blackblades (lvl 1 lurkers), and 3 goblin warriors (lvl 1 skirmishers). I had townspeople on the map as targets for the goblins to help motivate PCs to move quickly to help them. 1 blackblade managed to flee. I moved directly into encounter 2, with no time to rest or regain encounter abilities. I had the goblin pyros target a barrel full of oil that was to be used for the bonfire, but they were taken out of action so quickly by the ranged strikers that it didn’t really matter at all. This encounter became: 4x goblin cutters (lvl 1 minions)
The sharpshooter was the only one who managed to get away (I award full xp for enemies that flee, unless I know the PCs will encounter them again later). The PCs were pretty hard pressed at this point, so I allowed them a short rest after this fight. They decided to head back to the dwarves forge (his backstory is that he is a blacksmith in town) to get their gear. On the way, they met up with encounter 3, where aldern foxglove was being attacked by: 8x goblin cutters (lvl 1 minions)
The PCs just barely saved Aldern from an untimely death (ranged strikers shine again) and dealt with the remaining goblins despite the fighter getting dropped in round 1 (mostly because he was unarmored). For treasure, I had them discover that the rangers bow glowed blue around the goblins, and that and the dwarf’s axe were both now +1 weapons. Mayor Deverin rewarded them with 110g and 2 potions of healing. I turned the encounters with the shopkeepers daughter and the monster in the closet into roleplaying only encounters, both of which were very enjoyable (I handwaived the combat with the lone goblin). I also made the boar hunt with Aldern to be roleplaying only, and gave the PCs each a horse as their reward for saving Aldern (worth 75g ea, IIRC). For the glassworks, I combined both the goblins upstairs and Tsuto downstairs into one level 4 encounter. The goblins retreated downstairs after losing three of their number, and had a few rounds headstart on the PCs, due to their balking at running into the dark storage areas. I also increased the size of the storage area downstairs, to give more options during combat, to keep it from being just a slugfest. This turned out to be a good move, as the PCs are really good at slugfests. The encounter involved: 6x goblin cutters (lvl 1 minions)
The hexer and sharpshooter managed to escape down the tunnel, and the party captured Tsuto alive (I must admit that I dislike the way 4e handles “knocking people unconscious”) and delivered him to the garrison for interrogation. The fighter basically had him locked down and prevented him from moving, though he did inflict some pretty decent damage. Most of the goblins were dead at this point, so Tsuto had little assistance. I awarded the party additional xp for rescuing Ameiko. I had Tsuto wearing magic armor for the rogue type, and increased the warlock’s rod to be a rod of dark reward +1, plus they found 20g on Tsuto.
I am currently running the Rise of the Runelords adventure path using 4e rules for a group of 6 players. A couple of them went to Origins, and talked to some Paizo people at their booth, who indicated that they would be interested in knowing how using 4e is working out with their adventure path. So, this will be an ongoing summary of what changes I’ve made to the published adventure to make it fit with 4e rules, and my observations on running it. I’m not sure if any of my players read these forums or not, so I’m not going to post any spoiler info for them, nor will I be focusing on any roleplaying or story aspects of the AP, except where it changed because of some rules related items. Pretty much, this is all about crunchy bits. I ask if you post comments to this thread, to please be cognizant of this fact and don’t post any spoiler information at all. My group and I are pretty well versed on 4e rules. Myself and two other players were in the playtests way back when, and everyone enjoys the new rules. We haven’t made any house rules yet, and I’ve allowed any new rules items from Dragon magazine. The plan is to play all the way to 30th level in this adventure path, so most likely I will have to run several ‘side-treks’ to keep the players leveling throughout, and adjust bad guys to compensate. The party composition is as follows (role): Amber Gaskin: Human Cleric of Sarenrae (leader)
As you can see, with three strikers in the party, this group can dish out some pretty serious damage when they set their minds to it. I was hesitant about allowing Dragonborn, but the player came up with a pretty decent background story, so I ran with it. I told them that Dragonborn would be really rare, and that most folks would shun him, but he’s cool with it. I figure I can probably add some in later in the story as opponents or an interesting roleplaying device. For planning the adventures, I went through and typed out every combat or xp related encounter in the module, and then set about working up a 4e equivalent. In some cases this meant combining two or more encounters, and in others, adding in monsters that were not in the original module. For treasure, I completely disregard most everything in the original, except where story related, as 3.5 and 4e treasure aren’t even remotely similar. After doing this for Burnt Offerings, it was clear that I would need another adventure to keep the PCs at an appropriate level to start the next adventure path, much less to keep them leveling ahead of that expectation (since I have to fit 10 additional levels in there somewhere). Most likely this will be the case for all modules in the AP, so I’ll either have to increase the number of combats or add in additional adventures outside of the published AP. It also became clear that the treasure that I wanted to give out (ie things the PCs would find useful) would not come from vanquished enemies for the most part, as it just didn’t seem to ‘fit’ the enemies. Since a couple of players wrote items into their backstory, I decided to go with the “legacy weapon” route, and just have those items increase in power level as part of the treasure distribution.
I chose the option to convert my remaining issues of Dungeon to the Pathfinder subscription. It told me that I would have enough credit after Dungeon ends to get 3 issues of Pathfinder. However, it said that "Issue #2 ships on <date>". And that my last issue would be Issue #4. What about Issue #1? Is this a glitch or do I have to do something special to get Issue #1? Thanks, Ed
I've been running RHoD from Wizards recently, and have found the pdf with all the stats VERY useful. It's great if you want to use that as a base set to which to apply changes, or just for printing out quick reference cards. I would vote to keep stats as they exist in the magazine now and to publish the stats for non-standard monsters as part of the monthly web enhancement. janxious, where did you find the .pdf of stats for Red Hand of Doom? I looked all over Wizard's website and zippo! Thanks in advance!
Many thanks! Ed P.
Does anyone know if the missing text from Dungeon issue 103 was ever posted anywhere? This is from p.35 of the Glacial Inferno advenure, a side bar talking about the Frozen Soul artifact just trails off. I did a search on paizo's site and the message boards for this but had no luck. Thanks in advance, Ed P. |
