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10 posts. Alias of jgillfeather.


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How does he DO that? (CoBI Spoilers)

Not a big fan of randomly assigning NPC's abilities or spell effects for no apparent reason - in the interests of something resembling in game consistency, maybe make it a potion?

Khala's supposed to be a super-duper Alchemist, am sure there are rules in an old Dragon somewhere for creating potions with high-level spells.

You could then play up the alchemy lab at the end, maybe swap out some of the skinwalkers stuff for other high-level potions...

Triple20!
How does he DO that? (CoBI Spoilers)

Well spotted!

Spoiler:

We've yet to play CoBI, and I remember reading this an thinking, yeah, he's a demon, so Greater Teleport - which he doesn't have. Checked the Fiend Folio entry, is not there, and Tanar'ri do not get it by default. This is kind of a big deal, as the Temple encounters assume he got away and warned them.

You could have him use his assume shape power to change into a Lizardman or something else that can swim, or maybe even a humanoid with wings of some type, and get away that way. He's a lot higher HD than the base creature, so you could easily assume he's seen a lot different humanoids, and well, eaten them...

Swimming in the lake, of course, presents a few dangers of its own (well, one really big one, anyway).

Triple20!
Sanity rules for Savage Tide

I think it can add some atmosphere if used sparingly.

Spoiler:

in ours i touched on it a little with Olangru and the fog (really just played up the Wisdom loss from the dreams etc)

Later on in Lightless Depth, i introduced some really basic rules when they first saw Golismorga -

SAN Check!

The sights, sounds & smells of this aberrant place are….reducing your calm

Make a DC 10 Will save, or take one point of temporary Wisdom damage.

If this is not the first time you’ve made a SAN check today, increase the DC by 1 for every other SAN check you’ve made today.

If you gain spells based on Wisdom and the drop in Wisdom reduces your bonus spells, immediately roll to randomly determine which spell slot you lose (it may well be slot you’ve used up already)

If the Wisdom reduction places your Wisdom below the required bonus to cast spells of a specific level, you lose all spells of that level. The minimum Wisdom required to cast Divine spells is 10 + spell level.

You can regain lost Wisdom by magic or by resting somewhere… safe. Note if you lost spells by Wis. loss, and regain it naturally, you do not regain any lost spells until you re-memorise (if restored by Magic, the spells are regained immediately).

Please inform the DM if your Wisdom is becomes 3 or less

They're prompted to make checks in the city when the building's start screaming, or when they see a Neh-Thalggu for the first time etc

Is not meant to be debilitating, just really to build up some tension.

Once they're back out of the city, i will no longer apply the rules (wel,, until maybe the Maw...)
Diplomecy is tough in The Lightless Depths...

Hi Lord Snow,

its a standard Diplomacy check - PHB pg 72.

Spoiler:

You set his initial attitude by how well they play the sea skirl thingo, and then its up to them to get him from whatever he starts at up to at least Friendly - at which point he lets the players ship go to the cave.

If they make it to Helpful, he lets any Farshore ship sail past (important if they are, say, expecting the Blue Nixie or the Hellfish back at from Sasserine sometime in the future, which is why Lavinia sent them there...)

So if they make the Perform Check and he's indifferent, DC 15 to get to Friendly (pretty much guaranteed if they hand over the loot) and DC 30 for Helpful.

Rat’s End and the Hellfish

Sorry to drift back on topic - in ours it wasn't much of an issue; we had already set the idea of crew minimums etc using Stormwrack, and whilst a few of the PC's knew how to sail, few of the Colonists did, and Lord Mayor Manthalay Meravanchi (LMMM) declared that no-one was running away from the fight (and the Nixie had already left). In the end, there simply aren't enough people on the isle with the skills to sail a ship that big anywhere.

Of course, this didn't stop LMMM from sending the Hellfish "out on patrol" just prior to the Fleet's arrival i.e. stationed on the far side of the island, just in case things didn't go well...

It's a long way to the top (of the plateau) if you wanna Vrock & Roll..

Triple20!
Savage Tide Glories (opposite of the Obituaries thread)

Not sure whether to put this one in the Glories or Obituaries thread, but I'm opting for Glories (at least for the Jade Ravens)

Tides of Dread, The Crimson Fleet attack on Farshore.

Our Heroes -

"Pilli" - a prince of the Olman in the Amedio (Ranger\Paladin\Knight of the Evening Star (custom PrC for Quetzalcoatl) and Toto of the Kirikuka (cohort, m. Olman Cleric)

Lord Chauncelcleer - Ambassador-at-large from Sasserine (m. human Wizard)

Jasadin Durkan, of the Ruby Spire (f. human Cleric of WeeJass), and her advisor, Aeryn (cohort, f. human cleric)

Grout, an "Adventurer" (m. human Rogue\Streetfighter)

Krunk, the Leaping Orc (m 1/2 Orc Barbarian\Scout)

Sishash, King of the Lizard People (? lizard-person, Barbarian\Fighter)

The battle was progressing nicely - Our Heroes, stationed on the northern end of town, had beaten back several waves of pirates, and eventually killed the Golems, without any losses.

Lord Chauncelcleer, levitating, noted that the southern flank was not going so well, several fireballs having cleared the defenders from the barricades and the pirates had entered town.

Quickly making their way south, they enter the main town square just as the Vrock's appear in the air above them. To Our Heroes, this appears to be their moment to shine - Pilli especially, armed with Smite, a Holy Greatclub, and Evil Outsiders as a favoured enemy should make short work of these Fiends.

Unfortunately, two of the Vrock succeed in summoning another of their kind, and these two are sent to intercept the now flying Pilli and Sishash (now wielding a blessed axe). Sishash fails against both the stunning screech of the creatures and the Spores, Pilli neatly side steps them, recognising that the ritual the remaining the birds appear to be performing can't be anything good, flies up to engage.

Despite several successful Smites, the three Vrock succeed in completing the Dance of Ruin, and People Die.

Now surrounded by Vrock, the survivors cluster around Jasadin Durkan, who attempts to read the blessed Scroll of Recall that will whisk them back to Sasserine - and fails. Pilli, Durkan, Krunk and Sishash fall to the claws of the Vrock, but take all but one with them.

Grout, a firm believer in discretion being the better part of valour, eludes the Vrock with his Ring of Invisibility, and hides inside the nearby grain silo. The Vrock, soon losing interest, wanders off to wreak havoc elsewhere.

Now for the Glory

Next session - we rejoin at Farshore with the final scene; not for the first time, my players are now playing Lavinia and some of the Jade Ravens, each of whom i have bumped up a level.

Vanthus (or the evil parasite wearing his skin) confronts Lavinia and her small cluster of defenders (Tolin, Liamae, Zan, and looking on invisibly, Grout)

Round One

Lavinia hurls abuse at Vanthus, and stands ready to defend herself.

Vanthus, flying, flaps a little closer, readying to start Suggesting things to the defenders. He ends up only 5' away laterally, but 15' up.

Grout, for reasons known only to himself, sneaks around behind the defenders, and attempts to attract Liamae's attention (Fail)

Liamae, with her new 2nd-level Favoured Soul spells, casts Hold Person on Vanthus - natural 20 for Spell Resistance, Vanthus rolls a 3 for his Will save, and crashes to the ground, 5' away from the defenders, helpless.

Zan - 5' step, Coup-de-Grace, with magic weapon (defeating Vanthus's DR) and Sneak Attack. 27 points, making Vanthus' Fort DC 37. He rolls a natural 20, phew.

Tolin - 5' step, Coup-de-Grace, with magic weapon. Vanthus fails, dies.

Unbelievable. It took longer to print out character sheets for the Ravens than it did for them to kill him.

The Jade Ravens are the true Heroes of the Savage Tide
Shrine of Demogorgon (pictures)

Hi all,

couldn't agree more - enlarged versions of the map pictures are a great playing aid.

Was struggling for a while with how to re-size the pic's to the right grid-size, then created a 25mm grid in Visio, then copy-pasted the unlabelled versions of the maps from the Supplement, and re-sized until the grid on the map matched the grid on the visio page. You'll still need to join at least 4 pages together. Visio was easy as the ruler view is built into the page, but anything where you can easily draw an exact grid, and then insert an image under the grid would do.

And yes, helps to have access to a $30,000 colour copier ;]

Finally - for Shrine of Demogorgon, i can't recommend a Barrel of Monkeys highly enough - monkey statues, swarms of fiendish baboons, you name it..

Triple20!
Scarlet Brotherhood plot threads (SPOILERS)

Howdy all,

On the SB topic, was wondering if anyone can point me towards any material on what "mental" powers the Brotherhood might have access to?

Have seen the "Splintered Mind" article in Dragon# 281, and looking through the Expanded Psionic thingo, ThrallHerd & Fist of Zuoken (although under a different God, of course) seem to fit the bill, but nothing specific.

However, i don't really want to introduce Psionics into the campaign, and the material in The Scarlet Brotherhood suggests they use drugs and magic, so maybe the Officer of Thralls has a lot of Enchanter/Monks in its ranks?

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Triple20!
Olangru Creepiness [Spoilers!]

Just finished Fogmire, for the second time. If the Golem starts making 4 attacks against one character, people are gonna die..

For creepiness, stole several of the ideas from this thread, as well as actually wrote out the dreams they were having each night - some examples below, when they were making will saves they would have flash backs to the dream (my kingdom for a screaming monkey mp3). I also didn't tell them they were taking Wisdom damage - one of my (now ex-) players couldn't grasp the idea of not just casting L. Restoration every time i modified his character sheet for him, so instead every time he cast his highest level spells (he was a cleric), i rolled to see if it went off (queue monkey scream)
________________________________________________________________________

You Dream.

A dark, steaming jungle. Water drips from twisted, sickening trees. Things writhe in the detritus on the jungle floor. Beyond the jungle you can hear the crash of the sea, and dark clouds hover above wave-washed rocky islands.

Something crashes through the jungle, something huge. You turn to run, and trip, and <snap>

________________________________________________________________________

You Dream.

A dark, steaming jungle. Water drips from twisted, sickening trees. Things writhe in the detritus on the jungle floor. Beyond the jungle you can hear the crash of the sea, and dark clouds hover above wave-washed rocky islands.

Perhaps you could get your directions by climbing one of these trees – climbing up, you get a good look at the storm tossed islands far out to sea.

You miss, however, the two-headed snake slowly winding its way around your legs.
________________________________________________________________________

You Dream.

A dark, storm-tossed sea, your tiny dinghy all but sunk.

You wake with the foul taste of seaweed and sand in your mouth. The salt in your eyes makes it difficult to make out the details of the figures looking down at you.

Its not until they start to drag you towards the nearby jungle that you clearly see their demonic, orange-furred grins.
Sea Wyvern's Wake, what to do on the voyage.

If you're group is like mine, once they get hold of a second ship (capturing the Purity's Prow from the Brotherhood pirates), all hell will break loose :

Amella (being played as a PC), now Captain of the 'Prow, starts a recruiting drive to steal crew/supplies from the other ships

The Kordites (2 in the party), bored/sick of the long voyage, agree to crew for Amella, as long as they can run "competitions" on the deck.

"The First Rule of Fight Ship is there are No Gnomes on Fight Ship"

Fishing. For Shipbreaker crabs. Using the ship itself to run them over.

I only did one major side-trek however, on Ruja i played an old Dungeon mag (#49) module called "The Dark Place". Truly creepy module, however i slightly underestimated the 3.5 conversion of the Gacholoth, almost had a TPK. Gave the party a taste of fighting demons, and a glimpse in Gaping Maw through the planar gate spell in the module.