Thrall of Ao's page

Although I had hoped against hope that this journal would follow the entire adventure path, I saw the proverbial writing on the wall (written in blood magically transmuted by a certain enchanted goblet...) when Dragon was discontinued.

Although I'll miss Tirlandi, anything else James writes will be closely followed and sure to be adored (just make sure to provide a link here).

In any case, I have a small side request, in the interum, or simply when you have some more time (and find out the name of the "new guy/gal" in the party).

If you could be so kind as to post the first line stats (Name/Gender/Race/Class(es)& Level/Short description?) of each of the party members, it would be most appreciated.

Although I could generally guess this info for the "core" party memebers, I'm curious about the specifics. Also, there wasn't a lot of interaction with the new party members who have recently joined, so this only adds to my curiosity/confusion.

If you're feeling REALLY ambitious, you might even post the requested information for ALL party members, past and present!

Thanks and best regards,
-ToA

Bump, bumppe, dump-dump, BUMP, BUMP!

Though you've heard it a lot already James, I'm sure you don't mind my mentioning it again. Excellent journal!!!

It really does go a long way to demonstrate how much quality PC characterization, build, and RP are just as important a contribution to a good game of D&D as the DM's efforts are!

But that's not to discount Eric's work by any means! I've been reading this Journal since the first page, and your work putting together excellent sessions as well as making interisting additions, twists and turns to the plot have undoubtedly contributed to making this what it is today.

I could say more, but I think I've said enough.

Thank you all, and keep up the good work!

Sincerely,
-ToA

Balabar,
Thanks for the quick resonse and thanks for the invite to make further posts here.

I have to say, the resolution to the Kullen encounter was hilarious! I'd even go so far as to say it was the best one I've seen on these boards yet, if not the most morally upright!
"Take one for the team", that my friend is definitely one for the quote books.

I was curious about one thing thought. From the description of the church of St. Cuthbert in DL seems like it would be a little to uptight to allow a "interning" cleric to preach to the masses. Especially with the rather severe and backwards doctorinal views of the head cleric there.
Are you running the church as a little more laid back (for the purposes of your players backstory plot)? Or was the preaching not directly overseen by Weirus?

Also, did you give the players a hard time when the Cleric had to keep casting Zone of Truth, I was sure that the ninja was going to get himself locked up.

Come to think of it, of all the ninja or ninja like PC's I've EVER heard of, your's is the first that I can recall being honest. So honest, infact, that he nearly implicate himself in a crime he didn't commit! Commendable to be sure, but highly unusual...makes me wonder if he has alterior motives.

Regard,
-ToA

Balabar,
Greetings to you and yours. I just wanted to thank you for writing a clear, conscise and enjoyable Campaign Journal, and to encourage you to keep it up.

I hope this message does not come out of turn if you were, by some off chance, attempting to make this Journal uninterupted.

Thanks again,
ToA

PS Something that I mentioned, but didn't spell out in my first post to this thread, primarily in response to James Jacobs post, is that swarms touch AC is the same as their standard AC (in this case 17).

Your arcane casting players might have to find out the hard way, especially with their +0 BAB at 1st level, that hitting with that ray of frost is a lot harder than it looks (I don't even want to think about the attempts made to use shocking grasp...he,he).

-ToA

Not to belabor the point, but even if swarms were (house ruled) to be able to be affected by the sleep spell (such as a hell-wasp swarm since it's "intelligent"), it affects only a number of creatures, which would affect too little of the swarm to have any appreciable effect.

As for acid beetle swarms being immune to acid, I'm 90% sure they are, even though I don't have the stat block right in front of me. Remember, the big ones are squirting streams of acid (if I remember correctly), which would potentially wipe out large portions of their own population if the "babies" weren't immune.

If nothing else, I think this encounter in general and this this creature specifically are a painful reminder to GM's to thoroughly read through pre-written adventures, including moster stat blocks and PARTICULARLY special ability listings (i.e. feats, immunities, etc.)!

This has actually been a growing concern/annoyance of mine, as more and more creatures/NPC's (especially at higher levels) seem to be written with unusual abilities or feats (or PRESTIGE CLASSES) that are from obscure sources and are not even given a reference under their stat. block!

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for more flavor and detail (my players would readily attest to that), but I'm not always going to be able to guess what source book to look in.
The silver lining is that at least they don't abreviate prestige class names anymore.

-ToA

To address the question; you homestly could do either, since, like you, I haven't read about Lolths return (or whatever the resolution to that plot arc was), or what exactly caused her disappearance.

I think something that a lot of GM's do is sweat the details more than they should while in reality, players, just like movie goers, are often more than willing to go to great lenghts to maintain their suspense of disbelief.

You could easily justify a Lolthite cleric (especially a high level one) of discovering a new connection to her Diety that not all other worshippers have. Since most of Lolths flock are inately suspicious and selfish, her new method of connection has not been revealed to the general Drow populace.

Of course, something like this (and the above is just an off hand suggestion) may run contrary to cannon FR history, but that's what happens in these kind of situations when information is scarce (hasn't been released in a source book etc.).
It goes without saying that this is inevitable to occur when you set your game world time line ahead (or played past) the recorded information in the source material.

The truth is, your inevitably going to have to change the game world to suit your needs and everyone's tastes.

Case in point: In my FR based AoW Campaign, TWO of my players, understandably excited about the new "Races of the Dragon" decided that they wanted to be worshipers of Bahamut. This was partially due to their not knowing much about FR Pantheon, and partially due to their wanting to play slightly off beat characters (and get into a particular prestige class).

This of course was a dilema for me because in FR, that diety technically doesn't have any presence. But, after thinking it over and reviewing the source material, I noticed Tiamat WAS past of FR history and pantheon. So I reasoned if the primary evil dragon diety has presence in FR (even if it is in Mulhondra primarily) why wouldn't the "Dragon Father"? So now I have two players (A cleric and a Warmage going for Vassel of Bahamut).

As a small aside regarding drow and AoW, I considered for a time making the Ebon Triad triumverate being made up of all Drow (sub)dietys since they are all so competitive (especially since Lolths disappearance).
It would work really beautifully in the AP as far as I can tell (a little alteration, but that's definitely inevitable for a conversion game anyway), with the location of the cult being underground anyway, and one faction being entirely composed of a drow enslaved underdark race! Plus, how cool would drow cultists be?

I'm still toying with the idea, but am generally shying away from it due to the possibility of the AP evolving into an underdark campaign. For some players, at the first sight of Drow a crusade would immediately be launched to scour the underdark of their "taint" (or immediately joining their cause...), effectively derailing the game without a judicious amount of GM interference, which IMO, at least when it comes to plot development, is generally unpleasant for both parties.

Regards,
ToA

Something of note on this which I have yet to see mentioned on these boards (which is suprising) is that the swarms touch AC is the same as it's standard AC, something even I, as a GM, didn't know about swarms.

When I (as a player) played through the encounter, my GM forgot to allow the save for half against the acid damage, and ruled that I only did splash damage when I missed with my alchemists fire (althought the swarms AC is 17 or 18).

My question is; since the swarm effectively takes up 4 squares, isn't it impossible (unless one rolls a 1 or incredibly low) to miss with a grenade like weapon?

Seems fair to me considering our party started out at 2nd level, was short a party member during this encounter, and I used up all three vials of my alchemists fire forcing a retreat with our unconscious cleric in tow.

-ToA

Hello all.
First off, since this is my first post I just want to thank Eric Mona and everyone else at Paizo for doing such a great job on the magazine and everything else from Paizo.

Now that my gushing is out of the way, I'll put my two cents in on this topic.

This subject has actually been addressed at least once before, in a slightly different way. IMHO, I don't think the overload really takes in the full scope of the FR setting, particularly the strong effect the Pantheon has on the settings inhabitants and subsequently the PC's.

After reading all the adventures thoroughly up to CB, and after reading the discussions on threads related to this subject, I came up with solutions to most of the issues of cross over.

1. As it was mentioned in this thread, I also made "Diamond Lake" (Daggerfall in my game) an off the map mining town, run nominally by the nearby town of Daggerford. It kind of becomes their across the river scumb-bag dumping ground, where they send all the people they don't want in their city.
Regarding other local's in the AP, I'm fine with Waterdeep being the Freecity, all other local's will be dealt with later.

2. I've run a few pre-adventures in which I worked a few clues as to what was going on into them, as well as leveled up my PC's so they can have a chance of better handling the challenges faced in the AP.

3. I found the "dead three" idea for the Ebon Triad intriguing, but ultimately not very accessable (not a whole lot of info on them), and mostly because I just couldn't see the Faceless One being a Murkul worshiper.
I decided to use a triumverate that used gods who were in decline, or who were up and coming, and one of which that isn't entirely evil. I'll post the ones I decided upon later, as I can't recall all of them off the top of my head.

That about covers everything. I look forward to any feedback.

-ToA