John Jones's page

I think this is the coolest thing ever. Stolen.

Glad you like it. I ran this at level 8. The initial encounters were set to be level 7. The way the XP table breaks around there, I was able to add the same amount of XP for every complication that brought enemies and bump up the encounter level with the first complication card to 9, but then the same amount of XP in enemies only increased the encounter difficulty by 1.

Stick to monsters and opponents that are the player's level, or slightly lower, and use minions freely to make encounters and complications look tougher.

Okay, so, this was a terrible idea that actually seems to be working. I wanted an alternative to random encounters while the PCs were moving around in the ruins that would:
- Put the PC in a bit more control over their encounters by allowing them to risk tougher encounters in exchange for greater rewards
- Give the whole experience of being sent out on patrols into the ruins a sort of vietnam flavor -- PCs are sent out during the day to try to find out what the drow are up to, etc.

I normally am dead set against gimicky meta game mechanics that require the PCs to learn a new mechanic to try to simulate some game/story element. But in this case, by using poker to create the sort of risk/reward tension, it seems like less of a sin (though it's still gimicky) because the players already understand poker mechanics pretty well.

Basically, the PCs get a minimum of 5 cards -- each one determines something about the encounter (setting, mission, starting opponents, special environmental conditions and complications). They start with three cards (the party shares a single hand for each encounter) and get the environmental condition after the first round, and the first complication after the second.

Every round after the second, the PCs can elect to add a complication by drawing another card.

Then, at the end of the encounter, if they completed the mission, they earn a reward based on the poker hand they've built with (best 5 card hand out of all the cards they've drawn).

I should note that we're converting this to 4e, so combats run a little longer (if you tried to run this in 35/PF, you might want to offer complications sooner)

I'll put my detailed notes for the system in spoilers, below, just in case anyone is actually interested.

Player Handout:

DM Notes:

The rewards are based on a sorta careful study of the odds -- the PCs are about 85% likely to get at least a pair if they draw 7 cards -- assuming those extra complications both result in additional enemies, the encounter should only end up being APL+2, so tough, but not impossible. (Also, those long, tougher encounters are not quite so bad because the enemies don't all appear at once)

In one session in which we've used this system so far, the PCs had one very long encounter that developed into a Full House (lots of nice rewards), then two shorter ones that ended when reinforcements arrived -- but the third one was complicated by two flyby attacks by the dragon (drew a joker).

All in all, although our sample is pretty small, we're having a good time with this.

-rg

I'm a Pathfinder subscriber and I wish for you to continue publishing Pathfinder under the OGL. I feel pretty strongly that this version of the game needs to continue seeing 3rd party support and stay alive in the market because it is the best chance RPGs have of continuing long into the future, regardless of whether or not the business that makes the D&D brand remains healthy or not.

Otherwise, I hope that the Pathfinder RPG and 4th edition both enjoy success.

Personally, I'm in the Cake and Eat it camp. I'm very excited about the 4 E system, and at the same time Paizo produces the content I like best, with the production values and support I have learned to love. The ideal for me would be to be able to have Paizo products for my 4E game.

-j

I've slapped together some quick and dirty encounters with a sort of thieves guild run by the Princess of the markets, the unofficial civic leader of the lower city (the mostly lower class Varisian population).

Part of the party's situation at that moment played into my hands quite nicely. They first arrived in Magnimar during the second adventure, and had a dead PC along with them, hoping to hire a raise dead for him. They went to the temple of Desna in the lower city, where a young altar boy saw a couple of the PCs, including the dead one, wearing captured Sihedron medallions. Add to that the idea that the Sihedron murders were going on in Magnimar, too, it made sense that the Princess of the Markets would send someone to investigate.

And, since I have a blast-first-ask-questions-later party, they killed the team of rogues and thugs sent to find out what was going on at the temple.

For the encounter I used a variety of "dagger guild" characters from the DMTOOLS web site: http://www.dmtools.org/

Now that they've returned to the city after the third adventure, they're going to have another run-in with the princess, with whom things have also progressed a bit.

Here's the plan I have: The party killed "angel" at the end of the second adventure, and have been celebrated in Magnimar for their good work defeating the giants and ogres that had taken Fort Rannick, which they now have been given. The Princess, who doesn't forget a slight, sees lots of opportunity there. She plans to ask the PCs to come see her -- when they come to see her she'll be waiting for them in the freezer room below a large inn, where the bodies of the thugs they killed are laid out.

She's going to ask for blood money to compensate her for the loss of her lieutenants, knowing that the PCs are not likely to want to pay it. When they balk at the price, she'll offer some alternatives -- including the right to place some of her people in the staff of Fort Rannick (including a Chamberlin who will run the day-to-day business of the keep), and giving her free passage to operate her smuggling business through that corridor without interference from the party.

She also has a "door number three", something she's been working on ever since the party's first stop in Magnimar. Her agents were the first to arrive on the scene after the fight in the clock tower, and they discovered the dead bodies of the cultists (boring) and the golem and the corpse of Xanesha, the lamia matriarch behind the local cult in Skinsaw Murders. The Princess of the Market (POM) has put her necromancers to work to raise Xanesha as a dread zombie (pulled the template from the Advanced bestiary), and has the zombie trapped in a side chamber -- if a fight breaks out, the party gets to see what's behind door number three. ;)

My plan is for the Princess to be speaking through a decoy in that meeting -- she's in the room posing as one of the lounging thugs in the room, but the mouthpiece that actually speaks to the party is a decoy in disguise. If things go south the POM makes a break for it, releasing the Dread Zombie Xanesha on the way out.

Again, I've fill the room with a variety of prepared Dagger Guild NPCs from the DMTools web site. The only custom work I did myself was apply the Dread Zombie template to Xanesha.

It's just a minor subplot in the campaign that I'm planning another bit of development for before the party returns to Sandpoint for the first part of the Stone Giants adventure, but when I set this thuggish plot against the pomp and circumstance the PCs enjoy in the upper city as the heroes of the wealthy and powerful Chelaxian population, it should help flesh out the city a bit -- and make clear on of the interesting details of the city, the divide between upper and lower.
-rg

My group keeps track of initiative by using the battle grid and minis. All the PC's have 2 identical minis representing their character. One stays on the battlegrid as usual and tracks their position. The other tracks their initiative. When initiative is determined these second minis are placed in order on the battlegrid but right on the edge of the the grid. We have numbers on this edge so their actual initiative number is evident. After the first round I place a mini(s) for their opponents. The advantage of this system is that eveyone can see it and when initiative order is changed it's simple to move a mini to a new position. People delaying or readying actions are placed off the board but still in their relative position to the other minis. When their action occurs they are simply placed back on the board at the appropriate place in the initiative order.

Our group has experimented a bit with a system very much like this -- but instead of an identical mini, we used a small (maybe 1" wide) bit of card with the name of the character on it. We have some plastic stands from old games, but you can also use binder clips (the black ones) pretty easily.

The other DM in our group (we take turns; I'm DMing the odd number adventures) used that system for a long time, and it worked pretty well for him. I was always devoted to my index cards. Now we're both using computers with two monitors and excel spreadsheets to track initiative, and comparing notes on helpful macros and conditional formatting, etc. The conditional formatting is great -- if you use the spreadsheet to also track HP for your creatures, you can create formulas that change the formatting of the creature's name field if the creature is at half HP, quarter HP, or dead. And let me tell you, that little bit of information alone keeps the PC's eyes glued to the screen, waiting the see the results of their attacks . . .

-j

We aren't quite as far along as many of you (just finished Spire) but we've started using some strategies to try to speed up combat. Here's a short list of things we're doing that you might consider:

1. Average damage/healing. It's very easy, in your notes, to prepare ahead of time what the average result is for a given spell. A 10d6 fireball does (3.5x10=)35 hit points of damage, 17 with a successful save. Cutting out the time spent standing over a pile of dice trying to add them up will go a long way towards making things go faster. For us, this is an option the player (or DM) can take before rolling the damage dice. Once you've rolled, you take what the dice give you.

2. Require that, as each player prepares for his turn, that he have the appropriate book opened to the page of the spell or feat or ability he's planning to use. Odds are, if you're not used to playing at this level, you're going to need a reference. Have it ready.

3. Explore options for managing initiative. Index cards are good -- I used them religiously for years, and I'm only now starting to experiment with using excel spreadsheets to manage initiative. I explored a lot of the available initiative trackers that you can download, and in the end I went back to excel, but there are some good ones out there that could really help you keep things moving quickly. Something to shoot for: Have an initiative display that your players can see, somehow. It needs to be easy for you to update as players complete their turns. And it should also be something that your players can see, so they can consistently be aware when their turn is coming up, so they can be prepared.

4. Once you've made sure that it's very easy for your players to know when their turn is coming up, you can consider putting those that are having trouble deciding on their next action into a delay so other players can act while they figure out what their big plan is.

Another thing to keep in mind . . . Combats may take longer because they last longer . . . what I mean is, it's easy to become accustomed to players who can grind through an encounter inside 3-4 rounds. And, at higher levels, battles can still go that quickly. But there are also fights that can last 10 rounds or more, as the players peel away the defenses of their enemies, as damage slowly accumulates, etc. Don't try to measure yourself against the number of battles you get through in a session -- that's not always fair.

As an example, the last two battles in Spires for my group took about 3.5 hours to run. But they were both long, drawn-out battles, and together the two fights totalled more than 25 rounds of combat -- which could easily have represented 7 or 8 less involved encounters.

Other thoughts . . . I haven't played at high levels as much as I have at low and mid levels, so my experience isn't that far off from yours. But in my experience, it is indeed true that spellcasters start to really outshine the other classes. I don't think that it has to be so. What happens at the higher levels, more than anything else, is that gaps between classes that have been growning wider and wider all along, really begin to stand out. At first level, the difference between a fighter's BAB and a mage's is only 1 -- and a few more for strength, etc. But by the time you reach 20th level, the difference can 20 or more points. A 20th level mage, with a dagger, doesn't have a prayer to actually hit a target that is a challenge for a 20th level fighter. Not that the 20th level mage would be doing anything so silly.

BUT . . . each of the classes, played well, can contribute plenty in the end game. (except, perhaps Bards. ;) ) A fighter or barbarian who really understands how to use power attack effectively can be a whirlwind of damage at that level -- and there are plenty of other feats to help that along. The one difference is that spellcasters are constantly getting new spells -- it doesn't take a lot of creativity or skill or imagination to find new, powerful ways to contribute. But the other classes may need to work harder to find ways to remain relevant.

-j

It's a good idea - it'd certainly curtail the summoning - but can Ma'kar actually use a Limited Wish to do this? I seem to recall it's very stringent about what spells can be duplicated, and, as Forbiddance is Cleric 6 (I think), isn't this outside the limits for the spell (...Duplicate any other spell of 5th level or lower, provided the spell is not of a school prohibited to you)?

See, this is exactly why I don't read the spell descriptions very carefully -- they're full of downers like limitations and, you know, the "RAW" . . . . . crap.

All right, back to the drawing board. Thanks, MM. :)

-j

I'm prepping this adventure for our first session on sunday, and I'm also worried that the fights won't be enough of a challenge.

We have a part of 7, and they'll all be 12th level when they start. For the past several adventures the druid's min/maxed summon nature's ally ability has really ruled the battlefield. He has several feats like augment summoning that ramp up his summoned creatures, and they've just been able to mop the floor with most everything the party has encountered.

The one thing about his summoning habits are that he's usually perfectly willing to burn a lot of spells in any given encounter, counting on the party's ability to rest whenever they feel like it.

With those two things in mind, I'm going to play the adventure mostly as written, and allow them to pull out when they feel like they've had enough and want to rest for a day (probably after the battle with the corrupted archons). Once they leave, when they come back the lower level of the spire will be protected by a forbiddance spell (spoofed by Ma'kar with limited wish), which will make most of their summoning spells useless right from the start in the lower level of the dungeon. Actually, my quick and dirty examination of the area of effect makes it look like I can also cover area 3 on the upper level (Chamber of Ascension) with the spell.

I'm debating about how else I would like to see the dungeon react to PCs whe leave and return -- will the outer guardians re-appear?

Two other party members tend to disable encounters pretty quickly. One is a mageslayer/barbarian/scout who moves very fast and is very good at getting himself right next to a caster so the caster can't cast spells at all. With his spiked chain he threatens a large area, can make trip attacks as the caster tries to move away, and basically is very good at taking casters out of the action.

The other is a warlock whose ability to dispel magic every round is key for stripping away the defenses that an NPC has set up. Ma'Kar's caster level is high enough to make that less than automatic, but it's still going to drive me nuts, as usual.

I like that there are other casters and creatures in the mod that these abilities will work against -- that's gives these players a chance to be successful and enjoy their powers (as well as demonstrate them) before I show them an opponent that their powers won't necessarily defeat so easily.

One other question -- I'm not seeing any sign of an effect in the dungeon making the undead there more resistant to turning. I'm inclined to throw in an unhallow effect that covers the whole structure. I may make it something that Ma'Kar can control, uncluding recasting it (as a single casting of unhallow, something he'd again have to spoof with limited wish) so he can add effect to it -- like freedom of movement, after seeing things like the warlock's liberal use of Evard's Black Tentacles.

-rg

Okay, here's another question.

I'm running champion's belt, and my PCs have been exploring a bit, and I'm expecting that they'll do a bit more. I really like the adventure, and we're having a good time, but details on Raknian's manor house seem to be missing.

Obviously the primary threat in the adventure is located in the secret shrine, which is detailed, but the PCs are there trying to investigate Raknian -- they're probably going to want to go into his house sooner or later, and that this point I'd have to wing it.

Is there something I'm missing in the text of the adventure? Something that cuts off access to his house for the PCs? Any suggestions?

-j

My group just discovered the underground temple, killed Bozal and were driven out by the demon. They know about the Ulgurstasta, they know about the scroll, but they have no idea what it's going to take to release it.

This all happened on day two of the tournament. They had to teleport out of the temple, back to their room in the Coenoby. The cool thing is that they snatched Bozal's body, stuffed it in a bag of holding and then snuck back through the tunnels to feed the body to the Ochre Jellies (which they avoided rather than fight).

I was going to have Bozal release the thing during the fight, but he went down way too fast -- critted by the party combat monster after the warlock successfully dispelled the antilife shell. So now I need to decide what Raknian will do to try to secure the temple complex so the ritual can be completed.

Take a look at the list of things that will break the temporal stasis field that protects the scroll -- there are only a few things on the list that the PCs have access to, really, and they're not things most PCs will think of. Odds are, even if they discover the temple and kill Bozal, like my players, they are not going to be able to stop the ritual.

I agree that releasing the ulgurstasta during the final match makes for a great scene, but it might also be too much for the PCs. Think about it. Fighting Auric's warband is going to take a lot of their resources -- and defeating the Ulgurstasta is probably going to also require a full, fresh party. Anyone trying to melee with the beast will be cut up by the tendris, nevermind the things actual attacks. The best way for the party to have a chance to survive and win is going to be for everyone -- or nearly everyone -- to have Freedom of Movement active on them so they cannot be swallowed whole -- but that will require forwarning and preparation time, which the PCs won't have if they've prepared to fight the flesh golems and Auric and Khellek.

I'm the first one in line to railroad or make sacrifices in the game to make the cool things like that final scene come to pass -- and it may yet happen in my game -- but I think that if your players manage to figure out what's going on and find a way to fight that very nasty creature on their own terms, in a way that gives them a better chance to survive, I'd recommend that you let them take it.

In your case, I think that you can always have them finish the tournament -- after all, the adventure does say that the referee wizard is only interested in the games, and will take over and make sure they go on if something happens to Raknian. So even if they defeat they release and defeat the ulgurstasta, they should be able to finish the tournament. You might want to feef up auric's warband a little, to make it a somewhat more interesting fight, but that's all it would take.

-j

I ran into the same issue in my game over the weekend -- worm burrowing and DR.

I'll admit, I think I was working too hard to make it make sense for the worm to burrow, but I latched onto the description of DR that describes some DR as exceptional toughness, and some as instant healing (and the example given of the instant healing sort was demonic DRs, which is the source of Warlock DR).

I will admit that I really, really wanted the worms to be able to burrow. As a DM I was really disappointed with the idea that they would be so easy to shrug off, at least for some characters. So I latched onto the "rapid healing" interpretation and ruled that the worm could still burrow towards the character's brain, but the damage it caused was absorbed by the DR (as the tunnel it was burrowing closed behind it). At this point, I'm not at all sure that was the right decision, but I'm looking for some other references and ideas that will help support that.

You mentioned that a natural armor bonus of +5 is enough to keep out a worm -- where is that reference?

-j

I just rolled initiative for everyone and jumped in to run the whole combat. And it went just fine.

Part of what made it all go "fine" was that the PCs had done a terrible job trying to negotiate with the other teams before the battle. One PC had truly offended Arcane Auriga with lewd advances during the free dinner, and they made no effort to approach anyone else about forming an alliance. Apparently these clowns don't watch survivor. Anyway, that meant that all three teams faced off against the PCs first, which made everything the NPC gladiators did interesting.

Anyway, I should preface this by saying that the group was 6 PCs, mostly 9th level (a few 8s in the mix) so they were roughly at the right APL for the fight.

The battle opened with a barrage from the three elven archers, who nearly killed the party member that had been so rude to them, hitting him 6 out of 6 times. So they started off on their heels Then they were charged by the melee types from the other two teams, and things got hectic quickly.

There would have been one party death without a very timely Delay Death spell (target can't be killed by hit point damage). The others managed to survive, thanks to some pretty canny control of the battlefield. The same hero cleric that saved the party tank with the delay death spell took the elves out of the early rounds of the fight with a Wind wall spell. Once the elves saw that, and saw that the all of the badlands revenge team was inside the wall fighting the PCs EXCEPT for the nasty druid leader, they turned on the druid and managed to kill him -- which both saved the PCs from the elves for a few rounds and kept them from having to deal with the druid. So it wasn't ALL the other three teams against the PCs, but it looked like that at first.

Anyway, they defeated the mercenaries, when the elves came through the wind wall they managed to make short work of them, and forced the surrender of the jinn. It was a lot of fun -- a scary, confusing tough fight with a lot of close calls, but they made it -- in a couple of cases thanks to those swift action spells like close wounds that can really make a difference when the chips are down.

-j

Oh, if only that little revelation had been possible in our campaign. When we played it, the PCs ended up alerting the two harpies in their room. One started to sing to hold the PCs at bay while the other began Paul Revere's ride through the lair -- in a matter of rounds the PCs were caught in a desperate fight with the whole tribe. They were holding choke points in several areas, trying to control the battle, and the one lizardfolk with worms in his guts got lost in the shuffle. Had they spotted the worms, by the time the fighting was over, they would have had no one left in the tribe to react to the information except the old druid, who was one of the few survivors (and the last leader type) of the battle with the party.

I'm co-dming with another DM/player (we take turns, swapping chairs adventure-by-adventure) and we've been using a home-grown downtime system. It's far from perfect, but the idea was that the only classes that seem to really benefit from downtime are wizards, and anyone who has invested in item crafting feats. There isn't much else in the RAW to handle what happens while the rest of the gang is lounging around the inn playing spin-the-flagon with barmaids.

We roll for a number of weeks (1d6 weeks for every 5 levels of APL) to determine how much downtime is available, unless there is some sort of campaign specific reason why it should be a certain amount of time. The downtime rules allow time for the wizards and crafters to do their thing, while anyone else can take on other activities -- gamble, pick pockets, find some sort of work, make a concerted effort to make some new contacts, research new spells, apply for membership in an organization (almost always a requirement to enter a prestige class). We require time spent searching libraries and researching any non-core spell (i.e. a spell compendium spell). We're still trying to make sure that everyone can do something during the down time -- and we're about to test drive a new set of rules designed to handle carousing.

A lot of the intention of the down time rules is to create some connections to NPCs and the communities that the PCs are passing through. We're trying to make the communities seem like real places, and give the PCs some NPC contacts that they can call on when they need help or information.

-jpj

My group found the spawn in the basement when they liberated the keep . . . and I don't care. It defuses part of the mod's end game, but my players are already a bit off the rails anyway, so I'm ad libbing already.

The group took a lizardfolk prisoner and questioned him -- and, among other things, learned about the plague that wiped out an entire generation of young lizardfolk from all tribes in the marshes. Then, during one of the random encounters lizardfolk, one PC shouted out that they would bring back the plauge to wipe them out if they didn't leave the party alone.

That set up my new end game. The PCs yesterday finished wiping out the tribe, managed to save the druid from dying so they could question her, defeated the kobolds (piece of cake) found dragon egg and the loot, and packed it all up to travel. They have the egg packed in a spare chest to protect it, and have started their journey with the rescued prisoners back to the keep.

We ended the session on the morning of their second day of travel back to the keep, when they heard war drums. The drums started on one side, then new cadences started from a couple of other directions, and then finally there was a drum from behind, too. They figured out, in the cadence of the drums, that they believed there was some sort of message being sent back and forth, and I allowed a comprehend languages spell (which had to be prayed for into an empty slot in the cleric's spell list) to decipher some of the dialog of the drums . . . . and they now know that the other tribes of the marsh are being called out to encircle the "bringers of sickness" and even giving their location, although the drums are referring to landmarks the PCs don't recognize. Still, they know they're in trouble, and they have a week to think about it. And they've let the lizardfolk believe that they're responsible for the destruction of an entire generation of eggs . . . . something they're not likely to be taking very well.

Given all of this, and what they don't know about what they're carrying, they're in BIG trouble. And I'm not so worried about the loss of the end game against the spawn in the basement of the keep.

-j

After the second adventure, during a period of down time, the party druid was spending a couple of weeks getting in touch with the animals of the region. Because I wanted to foreshadow illthane, I had him find a mated pair of hawks, one of whom had suffered a terrible fright of some sort, gone completely white, and was refusing to leave it's nest. The hawk couldn't tell him what it had seen, other than a great shadow that had passed over it, but the hawk was starving to death, and it's mate was struggling to try to bring it food and get it to eat, etc. The druid ended up taking the hawk to the Lodge where more sedentary druids and rangers could care for it. But that set up the idea that there was big spooky coming, and that it was in the Diamond Lake area. Whether they tie that to illthane when they find out about the dragon's connection to the Lizardfolk is yet to be seen.

Yeah, the horde of mooks battles were not too hard, in the long run. But that isn't a bad thing.

When I ran it this past weekend, the party fought two battles with the lizardfolk -- one at dusk when they were trying to relieve the fort during the two-pronged attack described in the mod, and a second attack after dark using their portable shields.

I held back the two reserver groups of lizardfolk in the initial attack -- so what they faced in the first attack was 4 squads of 5 regular lizardfolk. The party (6 characters of 4th & 5th level) managed to drive off the first attack, killing about half the lizardfolk and wounding most of the rest.

For the second attack, I made the seige shield things mentioned in the mod into 10' long portable walls. The walls could be moved at half speed by one lizardfolk warrior, and provided complete cover for two, so one could pop out of cover once a round and throw a javelin. For that battle the party had taken up position in the fort, so they were shooting down from the balcony and upper levels at the lizardfolk who had a lot of cover. There was a lot of missing involved, on both sides of the battle, thanks to the high cover modifiers, and a lot of actions readied to shoot at someone popping up to throw a javelin. After a few rounds and a few lizardfolk went down, the LF stopped taking potshots with javelin and just edged forward, trying to work their way up to the fort.

The party dropped a pretty big hammer on the LF at that point -- the druid summoned a bat swarm that broke up a lot of the seige-wall pairs, and a couple of others dropped off the far side of the tower to move around and try to flank the LF. In the end they were tapped out -- had spent all of their spells, used a lot of resources (tanglefoot bags were being tossed around to stop the moving walls in their tracks -- pretty clever use of the TF bag, I thought), but no one had been very close to death -- not many of the PCs had taken any damage at all.

Heh heh -- the one PC I did give a little scare to was the warlock who tried to jump from the walkway to the roof of the barn -- and rolled very badly, ending up on the ground outside the fort. He was attacked by several LF, and by the LF druid's snake. The snake bit him twice, which could have been enough to kill him outright with the poison's damage (Dc 13 fort save, 1d6 con/1d6 con -- two doses of that could have laid him pretty low) but he has Damage Reduction 1, and I rolled 1 for damage on both attacks (so the fangs never broke the skin and the poison was never delivered). The Warlock didn't take much actual damage, but it was still a close enough shave to have been exciting.

Looking ahead, I expect that the LF in the lair -- without the seige walls for cover -- will go down a lot faster. I'm going to do a lot to try to make sure that I'm making listen checks for any LF that have a chance to hear the sounds of nearby combat as the PCs start to fight their way into the lair -- letting them fight their way in piecemeal will be pretty easy. Once the lair is alerted I hope to make it pretty hot for them, and force them to pull back. But, in the long run, players like cutting down a lot of mooks, and it's not a bad thing to let them do once in a while.

-rg

Well, it's entirely possible that they could parley with Hishka . . except that it's a party that tends to fight first and ask questions way later . . . like the next day, maybe, if they're bored.

I'm going to be stretching out the journey to the lair and back with extra wandering encounters . . . and that's a lot of opportunity for the egg to break open. If they can get it back and sell it . . . well, finding a buyer will be interesting all on it's own. And Ilthane is going to find out what happened sooner or later. No doubt about that . . . .

-j

So . . . .

The adventure seems to assume that the PCs will attempt to destroy the dragon egg when they find it. But I'm not so sure that's the case, at least not for my group.

My gang just went through the first part of the adventure -- they saved Blackwall keep from the Lizardman seige -- and now they're gearing up for the hike into the marsh.

Now, in Whispering Cairn they got their hands on the baby owlbear, and rather than try to sell it or just get rid of it, they decided to try to raise it as a pet. I spent a lot of time telling them it would probably not work, but one PC was really hooked on the idea and wouldn't let it go. Eventually Kullen killed the little bugger for them when they left their hideout unguarded.

So now I'm looking ahead and I see that egg. And I KNOW they're going to see that egg as loot -- not as something that needs to be destroyed. So, how would you handle that? What should happen with the egg?

-rg