Dr. Pweent's page

Five years from start to finish (with some extended breaks scattered throughout for events such as the birth of children and the release of major operating systems), but we have at long last finished the Age of Worms campaign! Some notes:

- Began Dec 8, 2006; finished Dec 29, 2011.
- Started in D&D 3e; finished in 4e at level 28.
- Ran the campaign in Eberron, with Diamond Lake placed in Karrnath.

Party during Whispering Cairn:
- Octavius (Ocho), changeling Binder
- Weltschmerz, warforged Cleric
- D, warforged Fighter
- Doro d'Jorasco, halfling Warlock
- Karver d'Orien, human ranger

Party during Dawn of a New Age
- Octavius (Ocho), changeling Warlock (Binder pact)
- Gottleib, warforged Invoker (Weltschmerz eventually felt a name change was necessary)
- Gillian (JJ) d'Ghallanda, halfling Artificer
- Angry uncle Ethan d'Orien, human Fighter

We ended the game with four of the five players we began with still playing.

Party fatalities:
- Doro d'Jorasco died in the Ebon Triad's temple under Diamond Lake, charging back into combat with Grallak Kur just after being magically healed the previous turn's near brush with death. Who knew death priests might have a death touch...?

- Karver d'Orien made the mistake of separating from the rest of the party to chase down the fleeing Faceless One in the Ebon Triad's temple. The Faceless One summoned a fiendish ape which rended Karver in two, and ensured the Faceless One's place as the most hated recurring villain of the campaign.

- D was eaten by Madtooth the Hungry, a battle that they were mis-prepared and under-prepared for after some treachery during the Champions' Games. He was reincarnated a half-orc, but found the meat-body transition too shocking, and wandered off to hunt for "his own kind".

- Heilegas was killed in battle with the pit fiend Buldumech, who was guarding the Unlife Vortex (and other treasures) under Alhaster. The party was high enough level to resurrect him for the end battle, but it cost them a day of being holed up in the undead-warded Cathedral of Blessed Rest while things outside went from bad to worse.

In the end, Kyuss was defeated, and the Alhaster spire began to collapse. JJ was already flying off looking for something when the collapse began, and the others quickly put their plans into action - Gottleib grabbed Prince Zeech's unconscious half-fiend daughter Hemriss and leapt off the spire with his ring of Feather Fall; Ocho followed, able to fly under his own power for short period of time; and Angry Uncle Ethan announced he was leaping off too.

GM: "Okay, how are you going to stop yourself from falling?"
Ethan's player: "Um, I have no idea."
GM: "...falling damage at this hight is 55d10."
Ethan's player: "Yeah... I eat it. No! Wait! Ring of the Phoenix! I've never had to use it before! I hit, explode in a fireball, then reform a turn later!"

And that is how you escape in style.

-----

In the aftermath, I mentioned that one person who HADN'T escaped the collapsing tower alive was Prince Zeech -- to which Ocho the Changeling responded, "You know what? I beg to differ." He pulled off a natural 20 with his initial bluff check against Hemriss, and (the surviving population of) the town of Alhaster lived (relatively) happily ever after under "Zeech's" somewhat less oppressive rule.

The two members of dragonmarked houses went on to eventually control their houses, with Ethan managing to stage a family coup to wrest control of the house away from his (condescendingly) fearsome grandmother.

Heilegas took the Rod of Seven Parts with him off to bring LAW to the Demon Wastes.

And I vowed never to commit myself to running a campaign that involved again, nor 3rd or 4th edition D&D at levels so high. It's nice to have that campaign under my belt at last.

Next stops: Shadowrun, Gamma World, Warhammer Fantasy 3rd.

Shortly after getting the Campaign Setting, I decided to set up a Chronicles subscription. I checked in for a while, but each time it wanted to start the subscription with a new copy of the Campaign Setting. Apparently I've waited too long to check again, because now the subscription in my cart wants to start with Into the Darklands, which appears not to be shipping yet (or just starting to ship?).

Any chance I can still get a subscription starting with Gods & Magic, or has that window closed?

Starting from the original iconic, we present Valeros.

Notes
Valeros keeps Dex as his highest attribute before racial mods. Originally outfitted with chainmail, I have given him hide armor here. His stats are identical to what they would be in chain mail except, being light armor, his speed is 6 in hide rather than 5 in chain. Scale mail is also a good choice, raising his AC to 18 and negating his armor check penalty, again at a cost of reducing speed to 5. The armor in his art doesn't scream any particular type to me; I think hide is as good a choice as any.

Two-weapon fighting no longer provides extra attacks, but the Passing Attack power lets Valeros make multiple attacks as he wheels his way through a crowd. And Villain's Menace makes for a nice one-on-one daily capstone.

I was apprehensive about how Valeros would translate to 4e, but I was really pleased by the final results here. He seems like a swift, daring type, capable of buckling a few swashes. I look forward to stating him out at Paragon tier at a later date.

Cosmo / Distinguished Customer Service Representative,

Please cancel my Pathfinder Chronicles subscription. Just Chronicles; please keep my Pathfinder subscription intact.

Thanks.

Since there was a lot of noise about this some time back, I thought I'd let you know that the new font in Curse of the Crimson Throne is much appreciated. I popped open the PDF on my puny 15 inch laptop, started reading, and then realized I hadn't zoomed in yet. I opened Burnt Offerings and viewed them side by side to make sure it wasn't just a placebo effect. Not a bit of it - it's a huge improvement in legibility.

So thanks to Sarah Robinson and all those who had a part in making the change, from the bottom of my desktop real estate and my optometrist's eye charts.

I'm just going for a quick love-in thread here. We're at the halfway point of this module now; the characters have finished with Sodden Hold and are on their way over to the Cold Forge as soon as they finish doing some research on this squid-faced things. We covered Sodden Hold in two big sessions, and I think it's been some of the most concentrated gaming goodness of the adventure path so far.

If I go into depth I'll be here all night, so I just want to call out some of the highlights. First some setting details: I've set the game in Eberron, with the players based in Karrnath for an extra helping of undead and militaristic fetishism. I'm not using all the conversion notes, but I did swap the drow out for dolguants.

So what's been great?

Best Use of Doppelgangers in a D&D Adventure. Somehow, the presence of Changelings in Eberron has even accentuated this. During the frame job in the Crooked House, within a couple of rounds, as the crowd started to turn against the PCs, the cleric shouted at them all, "Haven't you idiots ever heard of changeling assassins??" Our party changeling, from across the room: "Hey! I want you to know that's a hurtful, racist stereotype!" By the end of the fight, when the would-be assassin's corpse shifts back to its natural form: "Oh! Of course, doppelganger assassins are a very real, and serious threat to society."

Did I mention that by this point, the changeling was the character who had been kidnapped and replaced by a doppelganger?

How deep did the doppelganger paranoia get? It got bad enough that one of the characters, Sorra the (Neutral Good) Dragon Shaman, killed an innocent, harmless prisoner for fear he might be a doppelganger.

When the party reached the Sodden Hold cells, they were already wary of more doppelgangers, and the attack by the two prisoner-guards reinforced that. Poor Gattem Wattel was unconscious and nearly dead in his cell. He looked (from 15 feet away, since no one was willing to risk actually entering the cell to check his vitals) like a corpse. Sorra reasoned there were two possibilities: the figure really was dead, or he was a doppelganger trying to trick them. So she went for a simple test: she chucked a dagger into "the body."

One brief, quickly ebbing spurt of arterial blood later, and Sorra has some serious guilt to work through. And, oh, did Octavius the party *cough* changeling rub salt in that wound. A lot.

Other great moments? The group soon run across "themselves" strapped to chairs. "Octavius" looks at them and declares, "Oh, nuh-uh!" and shoots a crossbow bolt into the chest of "his doppelganger." Sorra then turns to "Octavius," hands him her dagger, and says, "Here. Drive this into his brain to finish him off." I should point out at this time that Sorra's player was really getting into playing the guilt over her earlier accidental homicide, and just walked right into this anyway. At any rate - "Octavius" turned the dagger on Sorra instead, to jaws dropping around the table. The rest of the fight played out with little light bulbs going on over the players' heads as they started calling Octavius's player on all the things he had done to get them into trouble over the past two sessions. It was a great moment. Oh, and Sorra externalized all her guilt onto her own doppelganger for the duration of the fight, continuing to beat on "that murdering b!tch!" some time after she was clearly dead.

Finally, the party tried to retreat and rest for another day after rescuing Octavius. By this time, a couple of doppelgangers had escaped into the maze, and so Telakin had been warned. So I switched the order up a bit, and had Zyrxog and his dolgaunt minions arriving just then via the secret passage. Zyrxog mind blasted and shifted out after being seen only by Sorra.

(Which was another fine moment: "The third figure behind the two tentacled monstrosities steps forward from the shadows, and... I'm going to need you to make a Will save here. Actually, first, let's step into the hall while I tell you exactly what you see." On our return: "Okay, my Will save is 21." Players cheer. "Hold on! Um... I'm going to spend an action point on that." Which ALSO drew some apprehensive attention from the table.)

Fighting broke out in the hallway, and the dolgaunts drained her Con down 3 points, and took her HP down to -6, dragged her back into D9, the water control chamber, and tossed her into 40 feet of water.

The fight in the water control chamber was great. Our adamantine-plated warforged cleric risked the AoOs from the dolgaunts to dive into the water after her, and healed her back to consciousness before sinking like an adamantine-plated warforged. We ended up with two separate fights - two characters underwater with no need to breathe trying to hold one of the dolgaunts under long enough to drown it, while the other three characters above killed the remaining dolgaunt, and then engaged with Telakin and his two remaining doppelganger guards, who arrived on scene a few rounds after the fight started. The water control mechanism got activated a couple of times during the fight too, complicating both the surface and underwater fights.

By the end of the fight, three of the five characters had suffered Con drain, two had gone into negative HP (one of them went negative, got healed, and went negative again), and four of the five players were out of action points, but they had defeated all the dolgaunts and doppelgangers without anyone in the party actually dying. At which point Sorra was able to ask, "Where's the third one? The leader, the one with the four tentacles for a mouth, where did it go??" And the other players all had their second round of, "Oh, god, it all makes sense now!" in two sessions. And there was much swearing related to Thralls.

I got email at 2:30 in the morning after the game session from one of the players: "That last session? That was why I play D&D." So anyway, I thought I should offer some of that praise back to the adventure's author. Thanks, Jason!

Tomorrow night they head to the Cold Forge. I've eliminated sorcerers from my campaign and replaced them with warlocks, so Zyrxog's stablock is getting some final revisions. Looking forward to Phase 2!

Bump - anyone? Don't make me regret not going with an attention grabbing subject like OMFG PAIZO GETS IT WRONG!!!

About Karrnath
Without question nor even the merest glimmer of partiality, Karrnath is inarguably the greatest nation to have ever graced the continent of Khorvaire. Birthplace of Karrn the Conqueror, the first human to seriously attempt unification of Khorvaire under one crown. Birthplace of Galifar I, the first to actually succeed in that goal. Home of the Twelve, the arcane council formed by the Dragonmarked houses at the founding of the Kingdom of Galifar. The Karrnathi practically invented military tactics, military discipline, military spirit.

And yet the early days of the Last War did not go well for Karrnath, as other nations, particularly Cyre, brought forth arcane engines which nearly made Karrnath’s indisputably superior armies irrelevant. Suffering grievous losses, King Kaius I put magical bolstering of the military on the fast track. While House Cannith was able to provide pre-sentient models of Warforged, Karrnath found more efficiency in re-animating its own dead. The Blood of Vol was decreed the official state religion of Karrnath. Great strides in necromancy were made, and the revitalized Karrnathi armies struck terror in the nation’s many foes.

Kaius III rose to the throne seven years ago in 991 YK. He set the tone for his controversial reign almost immediately, first by not merely revoking the Blood of Vol’s status as state religion but also banning its practice outright – a stance that practicality has necessarily softened in the years since. And at the same time, he began serious peace overtures with the other nations, in some cases re-opening long-closed diplomatic channels.

Naturally, there were those who took this as a sign of weakness, both internally and externally. The months immediately following saw a renewed rise in attacks on the Karrnath’s borders, while the Order of the Emerald Claw, the crown’s most elite fighting force, attempted to overthrow the young King. Kaius prevailed, though - he holds the crown still, despite the continued efforts of the Emerald Claw, now an outlawed terrorist organization. And his efforts at diplomacy finally bore fruit, though it took the Day of Mourning in 994 YK to finally catalyze all parties to simultaneous talks.

Now, in 998 YK, the people of Karrnath are attempting to define normalcy in the wake of peace. Warforged are reassigned to civilian detail, free beings as stipulated in the Treaty of Thronehold – once they pay off their cost to the military. The undead soldiers are being reassigned to domestic soil. Most go to border garrisons, as the elves of Valenar still test Karrnath’s southern border, and unspeakable things from the Mournland occasionally make their way across the Cyre River into Karrnath. But some of the undead legions have been assigned to various garrisons through the country, on trial as civilian law enforcement. The fact that the nation still lies under martial law eases this transition.