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Truth be told, your "furry" ranger would probably just whine so loudly at his animal companion over how everyone else is so full of "drama" that he actually gets caught and killed by the bad guys. Either that or I'm just not attending the right conventions. You know, the ones with the devil worshiping and the exotic fetish mags with lurid names like "Dungeon" being passed around like candy?
Fewer evil cults in the low level slot, pretty please? I know they can be a lot of fun and easy to explain how they're evil and all, but can't we try something else sometimes?
I'd say I'm foreshadowing a bit: My player's character is going positively crazy over a missing druid and is willing to look for the Library of Last Resort in the Rift Canyon itself in order to find him! Never mind the fact that she's only third level, and tries to call in Manzorian every time a hero is needed (but she can't seem to catch him anywhere and he has yet to return a single one of her messages... jerk! he's probably evil or something) An npc recruit for Whispering Carin was a homesick political exile from Redhand who suffered great indignity at people speaking ill of his poor old Uncle Theldrick. Reference to Lashonna's great accomplishments for good, her somewhat dubious dealings, and wild speculation about her motives have slipped into the occasional conversation about a somewhat related topic. There's already player involvement in the Champion's Games. The campaign started with a horror-style encounter with a weakened spawn of Kyuss. The player character has made a lot of jokes about doppelgangers, although I'm thinking of skipping hall of harsh reflections anyway. Still the idea of one of those jokes turning out to be all too ironic... oh yeah, and I've got a royal succession side plot slowly simmering in the background that deals with the fallout of Zeech's rise to power. Research on the royal family also brings up mention of a great big badass red dragon named Dragotha, who lived in the Rift Canyon until he was slain long ago...
You could suggest, perhaps, letting him borrow some things for the time being so as to use them for greater party survival-inducing effectiveness without transferring actual ownership? I should hate to think he'd have to lease it from them for gold, but if that's what it takes to get things going again... remember, magic items sitting in a bag of holding do you significantly less good than magic items in the hands of a friend
I second the trap finding is good idea. However, I've have a rogue in the party I'm DMing over the first two adventures plus fire opal. The player is slightly frustrated that not quite everything the party blunders across is sneak-attackable. Still, if you're patient, flexible, and clever, a good rogue might serve you well. Similarly, a ranger deeply interested in favored enemy: giant spacefaring hamster might hit a dry spell or two on the path as well. Other ranger ideas, however, could do just fine. See Paladin. An additional cleric (with perhaps a different focus from the first to vary it up) would also hit the spot quite well. IMC, they seem to be well worth their weight in silver dust. This may not sound like reason to you, but in many cases, more can actually be merrier. Paladin, also good idea. Meat shei- er, staunch holders of the very honorable and prestige-laden front line are always quite welcome. This is especially true when you've only got one guy standing between your lower hp or higher risk party members and oodles of damage.
For Diamond Lake in general:
The Feral Dog:
Free City Arena:
Thanks to the other posters who have provided ideas for the yoinking perusal of all.
Amur
and am I the only one who actualy wants poor little Piper?
In the good old summertime... although winter with all that snow could have been used to such great effect. Oh well. But the actual dates are more or less irrelevant to my game.
I went ahead and had them all meet face-to-face in the Carin. The party was all just teenagers, so Auric and Tirra didn't want to harm them. Khellek didn't want to piss his own party off, so he backed down. In stead, when things got heavy, he just cast sleep or colorspray (I forget). They then proceeded to haul the stupid brats back to town to get them home to their parents. The player party reacted by going back into the Carin and taking away all the lanterns, then lying low for a while till the rival party left town. As things stand now they've eventualy made good friends with Tirra (but they don't trust her much further than they can throw her), got into an atheltic rivalry with Auric, and absolutely hate Khellek's guts. It's been a blast!
Hello, all!!! I dont know if this has been answered in a new thread, but I was wondering how all your parties are doing? Fine as wine, high as kites, and getting very friendly with Tirra, who's being a very bad influence on the impressionable young traps expert, thankyou for askin! We're out of Whispering Carin, getting aquainted with 2nd level, and I'm just getting done with letting the party thoroughly enjoy an ungodly ammount of hardcore partying (but with little touches of foreshadowing) on the first trip to the Free City before I let some proverbial other shoes drop them into their next adventure.
Alright, here's the situation:
Now what I've got on my hands is very VERY ticked off necromancer still alive with no spellbook, no zombies, and close ties with Smenk. What I need here is a brilliantly evil plot for revenge to hopefully make a short adventure out of. Any mean and nasty ideas you can come up with would be most appreciated. While I intentionaly made things lighthearted before, the time is now right to take off the kid gloves and lay on some pain.
Don't you sweat it, Guth! Just let the players regulate the flow of information with their own inquisitiveness or lack thereof. That way they always get exactly as much or as little as they're ready to handle. As for the name, it's rediculous... but that's why I sucker-punched my 1st level characters with an overpowering encounter with a kyuss thingie right from the getgo. It set the worms=scary theme, taking the edge of the silliness a bit.
consider: you're Kullen. You fall for the trap. You kick some serious butt. The very nice bard pleads for their lives and offers all their worldly posessions as appeasement. Taking the deal sounds reasonable enough from this point of view, unless he has reason to think they'll just keep hassling him and it'd be easier just to kill them all. and perhaps even more importantly: Would the game have been better if you slaughtered them? Would that have killed somebody's favorite character? Would the loss of the characters who would have died degrade or improve the game? Would the players start immediately thinking there's no risk of death? Would they have started acting timid and unheroic next time 'round if you did it? and last but not least, just imagine: everybody dies but the warlock. New characters made to replace the dead ones *all* do whatever it takes to get that trollblood feat/ability/trait/whatever (please forgive my ignorance)
I have a player that is playing a Soulknife. He asked me if soulknife mind blades shed light. My first instinct would be to say yes, but have I missed something somewhere that says they don't? Go with your gut on these things. It feels better. Here's what I did with a similar prestige class: It glows. It glows brighter as you go up. You do not get a choice on if it glows. You can, however, stop manifesting it, which will put a stop to the glowing, but you can't make attacks with the weapon till you manifest it again (which btw aint that difficult to do). Your milage may, as always, vary from mine, but the player in question liked it just fine and my game felt no negative impact.
I've got, effectively, a four character frist level party. They're having a pretty rough time, but this is an adventure, not a cakewalk. That is, unless we're talking about a man-eating evil cake...
I've not only heard about this, but actualy done it as well. In fact, it's become my weapon of choice as a DM (but that's probably just due to my inability to herd cats)
eh, some players/characters are more interested in these things than others. For what it's worth, I helped my player be more part of the discovery process by pairing up his inquisitive dungeoneer with a bookish apprentice for a best friend, and roleplaying them working together trying to figure things out. There are still some things they'll have to go to Allustan for, but he thinks they should generaly be learning how to figure things out for themselves. This has had interesting side-effects, one of which is distancing Allustan from the party's affairs, so they rely on him a little less. In fact, I think in stead of putting him on the trip to blackwall keep and awkwardly dissappearing him, I might just have him send his apprentice (Allustan has too much important business to attend to in the free city). Of course, she shouldn't go alone, so...
my party consists of: Lia, human female rogue
We're barely into Whispering Carin yet, and already so far: Lia has carved her name into entrance
and last but not least:
dms who are broke and do not use a $500 immage-editing program can always use gimp
I'm trying to think of a reason why a nature-loving evangelical druid would want to join a party of townies (an ex-miner, a sorceror from the Emporium and a changeling rogue). Any ideas anyone? actualy, I had a similar problem. While druids and rangers tend to prefer their own company, maybe knowing a party member would help? Perhaps there's a way for the party help him out in exchange? My player recruited her little tree hugging boyfriend after their last get together ended unexpectedly with much screaming and running and frantic flinging of worms all over the place. After he got her into such a mess, going with her into the carin seemed a fairly reasonable favor for her to ask.
I started the game over the weekend, going toward WC with the rumor of unkillable zombies, but why tell when you can show? *evil grin* My intro strategy: the horror approach alright, my only player my husband, his character is a human female rog 1 named Lia. Her boyfriend Davin (male human drd 1, commutes from the wilderness for the menhirs) offers to take her someplace special. They get all the way there unmolested, we roleplay suff along the way. I play the lovey-dovey sweet and innocent shtick to the hilt. Hubby thinks I'm just establishing their relationship. (oh yeah, that too) The place is very special. Pretty, privacy, presented with all the fairy dust I can muster. There's even a huge clear pond in the middle! sweet! Lia had been complaining about not many good places to swim arround Diamond Lake...(you do NOT want to swim in the lake!) I continue to play it toothache sweet... So she strips down to what she can swim well in (and that means taking off the leather armor and then some, but hey, Davin sure seems to feel it's safe here, and he would know, right?) and enters the pond... Davin, however, is too busy "not looking" like a nice young gentleman who wants to keep his girlfriend to see the hand reach out of the bottom of the pond and snag her by the ankle! roll for initiative! Spawn of Kyuss, of course, with stat's I've provisionaly thrown together just from the descriptions, not realizing there were any, and a few modifications: first, we're on druid sacred ground (hence the "fairy dust" treatment of the "special place") and second, the right time has not yet come for it to break free of it's prison (but close enough, it's just a little weak is all) Still, they found it quite unkillable and barely managed to flee with their lives, beat up, mucky, soaking wet, scared senseless, with a garuntee for nightmares about zombies and worms for quite some time to come. What WAS that thing?! The final combat actualy competed with a baseball game on tv, so I'd say it worked. He's also been searching every monster book in the house trying to find out what the "zombie" realy was... |
