Rhen's page

Wow, color me impressed with the work you've done, Scott. Very useful stuff and much appreciated! :-)

Hi all, I'm starting up a new campaign in the Tangled Web Community. The game is based in the world of Greyhawk and will center around the module "Return To The Temple of Elemental Evil."

Here's a link to the forum:

http://www.thetangledweb.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=412

If you're interested, register for the forum and post a reply in the recruitment thread.

Rhen

I don't know why the damage bonuses don't match up, though.

According to the Monster Manual (page 69), a Huge Dragon does 2d8 points of damage with its bite, plus the modifier for Strength.

In this case add another +8 to the damage (3 for the amulet, 5 for the power attack).

Perhaps you're adding 1.5x the Strength modifier? If so, that is only the case when the creature has one form of natural attack (like, for instance, a wolf or dire wolf). Likewise the modification for the power attack doubling in the case of a two handed weapon doesn't apply to a natural attack.

Hope this helps,

Rhen

I'm currently running the Age of Worms (set in Eberron) and one of my players is using the Dread Necromancer class. I thought long and hard before allowing him to use this class, since I was worried about the whole "take control of the undead" thing, but, since I only have 3 players and not a fighter type in the group (their heaviest hitter is the Urban Druid's companion which happens to be an animated chair), I figured that they could use the undead to bolster their combat prowess. So far, the only thing he's managed to take control of was the Tomb Mote from the old observatory when the party went to confront Filge.

I'm currently running the Age of Worms with only three players. My PCs are a half-daelkyr dread necromancer (from Heroes of Horror), a changeling urban druid (from Dragon Magazine) and a psiforged psion. The game is set in Eberron, so the PCs have action points, which help out a lot.
I was a little worried about the mortality rates that I had been reading about on these boards, so I ran the gang through an introductory adventure, designed to let them reach 3/4 of the way to 2nd level. We're about halfway through The Whispering Cairn, and all is well so far. My players are very resourceful, so they're doing much better than I expected, even given the fact that they almost immediately made their way to the True Tomb before exploring the lower levels of the Cairn.
The biggest drawback to my party is their lack of a trap-finder. Thus far, they've managed to trigger most of the traps thanks to the urban druid's companion which is an animated chair named Bill (I have an incredibly creative lady playing the urban druid). The party's scout is actually the psion's psicrystal, which has the highest Spot and Listen score of the party and is appropriately named Spot.
We're also using the Death and Dying rules from Unearthed Arcana, since they're in use in our other Eberron campaign. The Age of Worms campaign is running simultaneously with the original Eberron campaign (in which the PCs just hit 13th level) and the lower level characters have already had some guest stars from the other campaign drop in as NPCs. The players, so they tell me, are having a blast.

Rhen

and that there was something special in the works in regards to the last author (i.e. a surprise guest star).

GGG

Actually, James Jacobs posted (In Age of Worms...The Final Chapter) that Tito Leati was writing the 12th adventure.

Rhen

Just started with an introductory adventure that I ran to allow the PCs to be 2nd level to start Whispering Cairn, since there's only 3 of them. The party is (set in Eberron):

Half-blood Daelkyr, Dread Necromancer;

Changeling Urban Druid (from Dragon Magazine);

Psiforged Psion (Seer).

The players are all very experienced and it looks like they're going to have a lot of fun in Diamond Lake. They're certaintly an unusual lot. The Changeling already has three personas floating around town and has an animated chair as her companion. The Dread Necromancer has the Tomb-Tainted Soul feat, so he can heal himself with his touch attack.

Just for the cannibalizable material alone, Age of Worms is five-star stuff.

Not to mention that the storyline is one of the best I've ever read in a campaign...

Thanks, James. As I've said before, I don't want to come across as being overly nitpicky; I really love Dungeon and the direction that you guys have taken it. The storyline and entire premise of the AOW Adventure Path is hands down the best I've ever seen.
Kudos to you guys also for taking the time to participate in discussions such as this. The "human touch" adds immeasurable value to your publications.

Rhen

Artistic license is great; it's what allows all these wonderful adventures to be published in Dungeon every month. Artistic license should be used when it comes to the motivations, territories, and objectives of the creatures encountered therein.
However, the greatest thing about 3.0/3.5 D&D (and what brought me back to the game in the first place) is the balancing act between CR/EL and the player characters. Having the enemies that you are facing "add up" according to the rules is one of the best things that every happened, in my opinion, to the RPG industry. This way, there's no guesswork about whether an encounter will be too tough or too easy. It all "adds up."
Playing fast and loose with the rules leads down a very rocky road. My first campaign that I played in under the 3.0 rules was run by a DM who significantly changed the creatures from the way they were written in the Monster Manual, without considering the balance act. As a result, we had nine character deaths less than halfway through the module "City of the Spider Queen." The campaign ended with a total party kill, but, realistically, the campaign was over long before that, as the players were pretty much disgusted with having to create new characters over and over again.
I am not trying to be overly critical and say that every single encounter must be the way it's written in the Monster Manual. There are ways presented there to vary the encounters to keep the creatures from getting stale. Templates, elite arrays and non-elite arrays are good examples of this. However, when one goes and changes things from the core rules without considering the consequences, then they're into trouble (and I'm not talking about the kobolds here, I personally think they're CR'd too high, but see the thread about the Mind Flayer Sorcerer for a good example).
I have a responsibility to my players to follow the rules. I will thus, in my campaign, rewrite the encounters so that they follow the rules. It's not that big of a deal to me, since I'm changing a lot (I'm running the AP in Eberron, so I have to make some changes). The thing that bothers me, though, is that "artistic license" is being used to justify breaking the rules and I can't agree with that.

Rhen

Edited to correct typos...

According to the Monster Manual, sorcerer is an associated class with the Mind Flayer. The example Mind Flayer Sorcerer 9 that they give in the mind flayer statistics block has a CR or 17 (8 for the mind flayer plus 9 for the sorcerer levels). By that calculation alone, Zyrxog should be a CR 15 encounter by himself. Add in the increased Charisma score (5 points higher Charisma than the standard mind flayers, which increases the DCs of all his powers and spell-like abilities) and the encounter becomes even tougher.
Realistically, there's not many 8th level characters who are going to be able to make a DC 23 Will save, thus, they're going to be stunned everytime Zyrxog uses his mind blast ability, which he can do at will. The classes that have a base save bonus of +6 to Will saves at 8th level, assuming that they have +4 points of additional bonuses to their Will saves, have less than a 50% chance of making that save. Classes like fighter, ranger, barbarian and rogue are going to fail their saves against Zyrxog's mind blast unless they are incredibly lucky.
Add into that the other spell-like abilities which he can use at will (such as Charm Monster, with a DC 0f 20 and Suggestion, with a DC of 19) and Zyrxog is going to totally cream most 8th level parties.
My suggestion, if you want to use a psionic mind flayer, is this: use the psionic mind flayer from Expanded Psionics Handbook as he is written, which makes Zyrxog a CR 8 creature. Since he is determined to destroy the PCs in this encounter rather than use his powers to run away (thus expending all his resources, ie, power points) increase the EL of the encounter to a 12.
At least that way, an average 8th level party has a chance of surviving this encounter.

Rhen

This is incredible, Greyson. Thanks very much for sharing, since I, too, am running the AOW in Eberron. Much better than what I had come up with and I love the way you tied Kyuss' story into the Mark of Death.

Rhen

This would be an adjustment of +4 to two stats, +2 to two stats, +0 to one stat, and -2 to one stat compared with the baseline ability scores listed for kobold straight from the MM.

Well, thanks for the info, but I already thought of that. The difference, which I should have specified in my original post, is 4 points of Dex and 3 points of Wisdom, which doesn't add with the elite "add." Also, there's the Acid Resistance 15, which I assumed comes from Ilthane's elixir (which matches Shukak, the lizard "king"), but doesn't match with the acid resistance granted to Kotabas, the lizardfolk lieutenant, who also drank the elixir.

I know it probably sounds like I'm nitpicking, but I try to be as fair as I possibly can as a DM. My players wouldn't have it any other way.

Rhen

Apologies if this has been discussed before (I used the search feature, but didn't find anything relevant to my question).

My question is this: Is there something other than the Draconic template from Draconomicon going on with these kobolds? I applied the draconic template to the standard kobolds from MM (changing them from warrior to rogue) and my math doesn't quite add up to the stats posted in the adventure. Any advice would be helpful here.

Thanks,

Rhen

MattW, your example of western movies is not applicable to the AOW setting. In just about every western I've seen, the whole premise of the movie is that it takes place in a LAWLESS town, city, etc. Diamond Lake is a LAWFUL society, though not necessarily a GOOD one (in fact, in D&D terms, it is probably a Lawful Evil town).
The confusion here stems from the difference between Law vs. Chaos and Good vs. Evil. In D&D, killing a sentient being is not necessarily an evil act on the moral alignment axis. Depending on the laws of the area in which the killing took place, it may or may not be an unlawful act.
On the moral alignment axis, killing an orc is just as wrong as killing an elf, human, gnome, etc. They are all sentient thinking beings. The example you listed as society labeling it murder is a Law/Chaos thing, not good or evil.
The bottom line for this debate all boils down to what the PCs motivations were in killing Filge. If they did it for expediency's sake, then it is an evil act. If they did it to stop his future evil, just as they would for a rampaging undead creature, then it is not an evil act, but probably is an unlawful one.

I think the telling point here is that they killed him, AFTER he surrendered, but also AFTER they got the information they needed out of him. If they accepted his surrender and then got what they needed from him, the LAWFUL thing to do would be to turn him over to whatever authorities they trust to deal with him. The GOOD thing to do in this situation is not so cut and dry. During their conversation, if the PCs came to the realization that Filge was unredeemably evil and would continue on his necromantic path if released, then I, in my game, would rule that they satisfied their alignments. If, however, the PCs just killed him when they got all the information they needed without determining Filge's chance of redemption, then it was an evil act and should be punished appropriately.

Are there like any psionic variants of the ninja?

Not a psionic ninja, but the WOTC D&D website has a variant rogue that uses psionics and can be found here:

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20040723b

Hope that helps,

Rhen

Deceased: Cys, 5th level Aasimar sorceror

Adventure: The Three Faces of Evil

But, thanks to the bard that is internet messageboards, now Cys will live on forever....

;-)

Rhen

I'm running two gestalted characters through the AP. One is a Raptoran and the other Killorean.

I personally dislike characters with LAs, but that's just me, I guess.

If you are interested I will keep you posted about what I come up with.

Delvesdeep

I would certaintly be interested, Delvesdeep. It's too late for my players in Shackled City to do this, but I'm preparing to run a larger group through Age of Worms, and this approach sounds like a lot of fun.

Rhen

I, for one, would like to see an epic adventure or two, for those players that finished the AP. My players have fallen in love with their characters and it's going to be a shame when we get to the end of the adventure path and we retire the characters.

Let me throw my vote in for Eberron, as soon as my conversions are complete, that is.

Rhen

If anyone wants 'em, I've completed 14 NPC updates for my Eberron campaign (adapted from the Overload). All of the mine managers and some others so far:

As I'm working on converting the AOW to Eberron, I would love to have a copy of this, if you don't mind.

email is rhensl @ bellsouth . net