bromleylaerchenheim's page

Our Party (halfway through Tempest Rising searching the spy):

Captain Sandara Quinn (meanwhile lvl 5 cleric). The Party and I agreed to have the PC take on the NPC after her original character (a halfling Rouge - the cook and helping Hand of Ambrose) was swalloed in one gulp from the devilfish in the caverns in Wormwood mutiny. After the mutiny, the PCs collaborativly agreed to make Sandara the new captain as she was the best sailor.

The other crewmember are:

Queepeg, male human barbarian 5. He got pirate-like married to Lady Smithee.

Wiski, female catfolk ranger (freebooter)5. Of course, she beats everbody on climbing the masts. As most cats, she´s a Coward and tends to climb as high as possible pempering foes with arrows and insults.

Xhu-Hu, male human ninjy 5. He is no Tian but was raised as one. He is a perfect Acrobat and killer and just recently is playing around with his alchemy lab - but not always to full success...

The we have two Undine Brothers, one water-druid 5 and one sorcerer 5 with the aquatic bloodline.

Hi Kor
just my Kudos: I downloaded your sheet and entered a standard character. I must say that this is one of the most comprehensive fan Excel sheet I ve ever seen. And I do know what kind of work that is...
Keep up that excellent work & thanks so much!

Dear DMs,

my AoW campaign is about to come to an end after 18 months of play. Unfortunatly it seems that the ending will be not as fortunate as it should be and I feel that an unfortunate mishap will ruin the experience of the campaign to both players and DM.

Here is what happend:

My group just killed Dragotha (man, what a fight!). Then they scryed Lashonna. Spontanelously I decided that they spot Lashonna together with some blessed angels and some Kyuss knights on top of the Alhaster spire doing some praying to the Kyuss monolith. The group so should get an impression on the thuner storm above Alhaster, the chaos going around in the streets and so on...

Unfortunalty they spontaneously decided to power themselves up and teleport to the spire right away to confront Lashonna! According to the information given in the module, going directly to the top of the spire without killing Kyuss minions first and doing several other things will really make the task impossible to kill Kyuss. Well, Lyashonna goes down in a single round as she spoiled 2 saves (I rolled a 2 and a 4!): The psion made 340 HP using a maximized augmented Disintegrate followed by a lucky sunburst from the wizard for another 60 HP.
The group then has some trouble fighting the Kyuss knights and the angels as they lack melee power.
We finished that evening play with Kyuss starting to emerge from its prision leaving the players with still several angels and knighs and some other minions coming from lower levels of the spire to aid their master.

What I do not want is to get the PCs defeated next evening. I want to come to a heroic ending, but how to help them without spoiling the game? Divine interaction is not the right way :)

One idea is to let Manzorian emerge using a timestop or something to bring them the Sphere of Anhiliation. I also might rule to deprive Kyuss of some of his divine powers as if the PCs has managed to fullfill all the other tasks of the module.

Any suggestions?

Wie funktioniert die Pathfinder Bestellung nach Deutschland? Wird mit Kreditkarte abgerechnet? Bekommt man nur eine pdf oder auch eine Druckversion?

Ist gar kein Problem. Kreditkarte und Du bekommst das Original sicher nach Haus geliefert.

Right after coming to Alhaster, I let the PCs witness the execution of two traitors, Raknian and his Assassin cohort. (Great idea stolen from another post here somewhere. Many thanks to the author!) Shortly thereafter the crowd was scattered by Blessed Angels and the PCs overhears some peasants complaining about the "police force".
The PCs then come to investigate the burned down church very quickly, only to get shshsh´t away by a Blessed Angel.
This opening of PoH was enough to make the PCs very, very carefull.

The banquet does not work with my PCs and came out to be rather boring so I cut it down to the final meeting with Lashonna.

My party of 6 is quiete far in the path without a rogue. They "only" have a bard that focusses his skill points on perform, Bluff, Sense Motive and so on, but very little on Open Lock and such.

You see, its possible without the sneaky stuff..

Hierophantasm wrote:

Another cast a light spell on a coin, and put it in his mouth, allowing him to shut or open his mouth to provide illumination as needed, without having to spare a hand slot. (Technically, it should have still illuminated within his mouth, but it was so darned clever, I went with it.)

I have a player who does this all the time. He fights with twin whips and keeps the coin in his teeth for light.

Has anybody ever tried to run around more than a minute with a dime in his mouth beside wading into combat or be engaged in other physical action? You normally should roll a Reflex save every few seconds not to swallow it or let it drop off your mouth AND a Fortitude save vs drowning in mouth-water AND a Will save against the urge to spit out that metallic tasting stuff.

I'm running in Eberron, so I switched out all the blue dragons for a bunch of copper dragons (

Why that?

Your post actually highlights a dilemma I am expecting to face when my group made it to the games:

Why - the heck - should a ranger kill birds for sports?

I Love prismatic spray...

And our wizard also did not made his save vs plane shift - too bad. I decided that he should not have an easy way back as otherwiese the effect of the spell is just of hom having a few rounds of combat off.

As we are playing on Eberron I ruled that Dolurrh, the domain of the dead was his destination. As per the Campaing source book, there is actually no way back from Dolurrh.

However: after spending a few weeks of game time the group finally met their wizward again on their way to Alhaster. All they noticed was his slightly altered attidude and his pale skin... I made him a vampire, the daywalker style, that uses make up to be able to walk around in sunlight. And yes, this opens up a few roleplaying opportunities within the group. The cleric knows but struggles with himself if he should destroy him or save him somehow. Our Psion Kalashtar lady who is in love with the wizard is looking for ways to help him and most others did not yet noticed...

very cool story, Strachan!
Sounds that you and your party had lots of fun.

My party has the same troubles with the box and is still carrying the thing with them - unopened - and they are in Alhaster now! They hired a high level thief to open the box but that guy miserably failed his discable trap check. They used the box to trap Ilthane with a very good placed Bluff check in GoW.

As with Raknian, there is a fine post somewhere els in this group. Where somebody let Raknian and his assassin cohort be publically executed by Prince Zeech in PoR. I used this when my group get to Alhaster and it has a great effect on the partys mood.

Read through the treasures of the previous modules. My group collected some of the art works in their bag of holding, such as the miniature cities from TWC or the paintings found in TSoLS. This stuff fits well for Zeech.

My group took a two way strategy as some are in the cenoby while others are outside in Free City.
From those who are IN the Changeling morved into Tirra and successfully bluffed and convinced Auric to collaborate.
From those outside one befriended Tirra and convinced her that Aurics life is in terrible danger and that she should help them influence him.
Both were successfull and so they teamed with Aurics band before the final fight. They convinced him about Raknians evil plans, showed him around to the secret chambers (where Bozahl and Ulgur was slain) and came to the conclusion that need to end the fight to come close enough to Raknian to catch him. ´
Once Raknias is cought they would bring some evidence to his involvement in nasty plans (such as the girls ring and others).
So the last fight was a fake which was made dramatic to impress the audiance (using gladiatorial rules) but with the PCs win the belt.

1. If a player is to roll up on a higher starter level, I give them the appropriate amout of money to buy his equipment. No PC will reach 10th level without some magic stuff.. The DMG gives some advice on starting money for higher levels.

2. I let it totally up to the party to decide what their level of support for a new fellow might be. In fact: Who decides that they will LIKE the new guy? Or trust him? Would they give him tons of magic stuff if he was a NPC? Let the new PC first proove his loyality and then the players will start sharing their stuff.

Folks, I as the DM have a problem with a possible misunderstanding of the storyboard of Spire of Long Shadows and any forthcoming modules. It is regarding the AoW prophecy detailing that the re-unification of the tri-partitite spirit will one of the two last events heralding the coming of Kyuss.
The PCs are about to learn during the visions of SoLS that this might happen. Later in the path they will met Balakardes ghost and - if they are clever - they will count one and one together and prevent his ghost to be one again though successfully stop the course of events towards the AoW!

Am I misinterpreting something or will a clever group (which my definitly is) have a chance to save the day at an relativly early stage of the path?

Enter this min-maxer. He’ll likely use “Miracle” to somehow bypass this invincibility, and that’s exactly what I want him to do, but at a great cost: his life. I know that the acceptance of this course of action is dependant on the player and the DM – player relationship, but I’d like to know how you all would react to the DM asking you to hand over your character sheet permanently (albeit in a glorious manner) and the DM handing you an NPC to run as a stand in for the final fight….

I like your idea and in my earlier gaming life (some 20 years ago :)) I had a very similar situation: I almost hoped that there will be a player self-sacrificing to rescue his friends or to save the day.

We just finished round one of the Champion's belt and the toughest encounters have been:

The acid beetles in whispering cairn
Mimics and Octopus in HoHR

SPOILER

Interesting: Both encounters are cakewalks for my group. The mimica were dispatched quickly and the octopus has ben cirumvented: they figured out that the lower level lies under the upper level (well, obviously) so they used their Dungeneering skills to guess which rooms lay above each other. They then used the pit in the mimics room to dig through the floor which was a cool idea as the ceiling could only be a few inches thick (due to the pit). So it was a cakewalk through investigation and proper thinking, which I like most.

What´s the problem with clever players capturing villians instead of killing them? In any case this would make the game far more interesting than yust quick kills. If your players are playing for 20+ years I assume that they are quiete mature. No wonder that they try to find out more advanced methods of dealing with the modules objectives. In fact, this is D&D where it is at its best! Remember, there is a reason why the game designers made skills like Bluff, Diplomacy and Sense Motive.
However, have in mind, that most of the bosses in AoW (and most bosses at any high level campaign) are of exeptional intelligence. So they should not be easy to foil or trick.
On the other hand, even in higher levels a combat will rarely last more than 2-4 rounds and for its outcome it really does not matter if the PCs kills the villian with 2-3 blows dealing 100 HP each or with just a clever trick, e.g. by pushing a non-flyer over the edge of a cliff or something.
(SPOILER: read this to see how my group overcomes my well prepared dragon encounter with ease using a well placed bluff http://paizo.com/dungeon/messageboards/ageOfWorms/ilthaneWhatWouldYouDo& ;page=1&source=rss#119442)

SPOLIER SPOILER SPOILER

How Ilthane gets killed...

Well, Ilthane decided to wait outside the cairn on PCs and Alustan to return. She made herself comfortable at a distance of 100 yards in an underbrush and allowed herself a nap while her mass charmed reptiles functioned as her eyes and ears.
So everything the players noticed while examin the cairn entrance were a few lizards but they did not bring 1 and 1 together. The druid shaped into a bat and flew around outside and finally spotted the dragon well hidden in the bushes.
This was the moment when I put the Gargantuan Black Dragon Icon "mini" on the battlemap which in fact had the effect to totally demoralize the players .. he he ..
Now comes a longer discussion on how to prevent a fight but due to the lack of teleport spells they decided to negotiate using Wall of Forces to prevent hostile movements.
They offered the Rod of 7 Parts piece for a withdrawel and Ilthane agreed (of course with no intention to let them go without a fight). Then the group came up with the following idea: From TCB they still carried Bozahls trapped chest with them which they did not manage to open yet but of which they new that is was heavily trapped. (In fact it already had sucked in an unlucky rogue hireling.) So they successfully bluffed (thanks to the bards great bluff skill) Ilthane that the rod is inside that chest.
The instant Ilthane triumphantly grabs the chest with the intention to melt some PCs with her breahth weapon the very next second, roaring something like "you fools! now feel my wrath!" the magic of the chest instantly sucks the dragon inside.
I found that a very good and climatic ending for that module and Ilthane.

Its great to play other classes but in the end all are specialised core classes to some extend. The most powerfull characters are high level single core class. Every prestige or alternate classe substitutes one benefit against another and most of the time it specialises the character on one aspect with the effect of degrading his abilities on others.

Ilthane surprised and nearly routed my PCs at the beginning of TWC. The group manages barely to enter the cairn and decided to rout the caverns first in hope to find something to defeat the dragon later on.
They are now through the adventure with one task left: Ilthane.
Now, as the DM, I am a little bit unsure how to handle the dragon. Ilthane is much too clever just to wait outside and wait for a well prepared party to battle. So if you have any good suggestions how Ilthane might deal with this situation, any thoughts are welcome.
Actually I think about having Ilthane messing around with Diamond Lake again and holding some hostages or so...

We use dry-erase battlemaps.
To handle initiative I use a wooden three-fold DM screen. Because it is 1 inch thick I added an initiative band that could be read from both sides of the screen. I use board marker pins with different colours to represent player and monster init. So everyone could see when it is his turn.
On the DM side the init-band has a dry erase mat where I can note spell durations or effects.

Helps a lot...

>> poss spoilers ahead <<

This chest has become a interesting sidetrek in my campaign. Our party lacks a "real" rogue, they only have a rogue/bard. So they decided to stuff the chest into their bag of holding for later examination.

Between TCB and TGoW they consulted a high-level rogue in Sharn (Freeport) with the help of Tirra who has some connections to local thief guilds. The deal was an upfront payment of 5000 GM plus first choice for the rogue on the contents of the chest. Unfortunatly the rogue fumbles on his disable device roll and was sucked in... :) and the party put the chest back in their bag.

While in TGoW their fighter was captured by Flycatcher and broaught to the shadow plane. The group agreed to kill the true ghule but was successfull in confincing that they need their strongest fighter to do so. They offered the chest as a deposit and Flycatcher agreed.

Lets see how this will end...

Well, I like heavy armored dwarven sailors... They are great swimmers but prefer only one direction: downwards :-)

It was a memorable fight :-)
Even that my group knows that there might be a black dragon lurking the beast struck them nearly completly by surprise and unprepared. A few seconds before the dragons attack, most of the horses and animal companions fled. Because Ilthane strikes not from the Cairn but from behind, she gets a surprise round and was able to catch half of the party with their breath weapon. Because she was high on initiative whe got a second breath attack before anybody could react properly.
Ilthane than hovered above a fighter to make a snap attack. The party wizard desperatly fireballd her which makes the fighter suffer as well. Ilthane made her save and only gets 15 damage - this in fact was the only damage the party was able to inflict!
The groups psion never touches the dragons mind because Ilthane was able to made each save. The wizard never rolls high enough to beat hers SR. The fighter did not gets close enough.
Whenever a PCs wants to drink a potion (healing potions most of the time) they mostly failed the save against the dragons corrupt water ability.
After nearly disloving an animal companion and the druid with a third brath attack from afar, Ilthane wents into melee with the fighter. In her first round she misses her bite attack. The fighter was not able to hit her. In the second round she unleashes a full 7 attack volley on the fighter dropping him to minus 9.
The party than decides to flee into the Cairn which makes a pretty interesting chase. All went in but they now that the dragon will be waiting outside...

It was a memorable fight leaving high level PCs trembling in terror. That is how I ever wanted to play a fierce dragon that stood above any monster that normally gets killed in 6 to 24 seconds.

(As the party has 6 10th level PCs, I upped the dragon one age level)

It is not necessary to enter the games if the PCs manage it to kill Bozhal and the Ulgur any other way (the players are just skipping a lot of fun..). The way your PCs are doing it sounds great.
Confronting the Ulgur is tough, at least I was thinking that unless my PCs cleric comes up with an array of turning-powerups like Consecrate and Hallow and blasts the Ulgur with just one good roll...
The chest trap is great. My group did found out that the trap is a heavy one and left the chest untouched. In fact they put in into a bag of holding and hired a high level rogue for some money and giving him first choice on the content. Unfortunatly the self-confident but foolish rogue fumbled his Disable TRap roll and became a new figure on the chest decoratives... :-)
My group then decides to store the chest away for a while...

No it was neither Ehonna nor Olidammara who granted the spell, it was Kyuss himself who through the powers of the dark citadel has found some ways to reach into the minds of some beings in the material world from his demiplane prison. I found it a good idea to resurrect that poor rogue and use him as a puppet later in the campaign. e.g. he could be misguided by false visions or - if the Kyuss mind could not be exocised before the climax of the campaing - could be used as a spy on the group revealing tactics and powerups before it comes to the final battle.

Would you mind telling me why an evil group should go through the all the modules of the adventure path and for what reason?
If I would have evil plans in mind I would seek to align myself with the various factions (Ebon Triad, Raknian, whoever) and would try to get the best out of the alliance. Maybe and after total world domination one or two kingdoms would then fall to my hands...

Some places you should up. Most not.

I agree to this. My group of 7 is slightly overweighted towards spellcasters (2 druids, 1 cleric, 1 bard, 1 psion, 1 wizard, 1 fighter) and they are very well prepared to get through most encounters easily. Where enemies can make use of the terrain against the PCs (eg the grimlock cave in 3FE) they have a really hard time.

(Note, I use a variant raise dead that costs 2 points of Con instead of level loss so they haven't lost any levels, but letting them get a little more treasure and XP will help shore up the deficiency in hp.)

That brings me to another discussion point: Our cleric just hits 9th level and is now capable of raising dead. I feel that this takes the horror and drama out of character death. Who is afraid if he would be raised anyway?

We play in Eberron, so I ruled that the only clergy that could raise dead are the ones that worship the Keeper. The Keeper is one of the dark six which oposes the six good gods the PCs usually worship.
I do not deny the good priest to pray for a Raise Dead spell but he has to pray to the Keeper and has to argue and convinc e him to release the dead bodys soul. So that is not an impossible task, but it is something similar to let a Christian pray Moslemic: The pries has to act against his core believes and must also perform the rituals in a proper way. That is quiet a roleplaying exercise!

The other way is to bring the dead body to a Keeper temple and - again roleplaying - ask for help.

How are you guys handling this?

bromleylaerchenheim wrote:

Luckily the cleric was well prepared to fight undead, so he casts Hallow at the Ulgurs champer followed by a Consecrate.

Doesn't Hallow take, like, 24 hours to cast, as well as have pretty hefty material component costs?

ooops you re right. But anyway, it was a cool combination of spells and nice tactic, so I would have ruled to let them go with it. Beside, they defeated Bozhal 2 nihgts before, so they could have had plenty of time for preparation if they had the idea earlier.

Regarding matierials, we do not use this rule. I know that this would slightly overbalance spells but the rule counts for both, players and NPCs so that´s fair enough.
I hate "shopping sessions" and reducing material-management by simply maintaining lists and cash reserves is not really valuable for the game play.

SPOILERS AHEAD...

We had a gread climax of the module yesterday with teh Ulgur being terminated prior to the last fight.
Until yesterday my party was struggling heavy with losses and disqualified team members. In fact only 5 of 7 PCs were left in the Cenoby and unfortunalty two of them players were off yesterday which leaves 3 PCs for the fight. Two more PCs were acting outside the arena.

The night before the final battle the party successfully manages to convince Auric to help them confronting the Ulgur. That was only possible with a trick (the Changling mimics Tirra :-))
However Khellek and the groups cleric together destroyed the sphere and freed the Ulgur. Luckily the cleric was well prepared to fight undead, so he casts Hallow at the Ulgurs champer followed by a Consecrate. This gaves him a +7 on CHA checks while turning. As she is a SUN domain cleric she also could perform a Greater Turning. Together with a lucky die roll this sends the Ulgur faster to oblivion than he could belch out a few Kyuss zombies.
Auric was so impressed that he agrees to the following plan: To not foil the games (which might cause a riot) and to have a chance to accuse Raknian with all his foils, he agrees to fight a fake in the arena which should result in the PCs victory. During the then following ceremony the PCs would have a good chance to grab Raknian and accuse him officially.
It worked that way and Raknian plus followers were sentenced to death by teh citys council. Well done, adventurers!

Your post highlights one underestimated aspect of this mod: Why for gods sake does the Free City council tolerates a ghoul invested warren (even if it is sealed away from the Cenoby)? Following the rules of D&D Game Mastery there will be at least one other entrance to the warrens and sometimes it will make another exciting adventure having ghouls invading the city streets.

After fighting a few ghouls my players group explored the warrens and I had to portrait horribly scenes to prevent them from exploring deeper and fighting ghouls for the next few playing sessions. However, the players connected the warrens to Raknians plans. I picked up this idea and am about to flash up the final battle a bit:

While some players are operating from within the arena, two (one exiled from the arena after disqualification and one dead-PC replacement) are acting from outside. These two are about to mobilize the Free City military and warn them of a forthcoming apostle climax plus undead invasion. Sure, nobody trusts their words but anyway the officials are at least a bit warned and prepared. So for the final battle, not only the Ulgurtasta will emerge but also the warrens gates will opened into the cenoby releasing hundreds of undeads to the arena complex. It will result in a major battle men vs undead and PCs vs Ulgurtasta and this scenario really helps to give all the gladiators and Auric´s something to battle with while the PCs can concentrate on the real evil here, the Apostl.

Who doesn't want to unleash a medieval version of "Dawn of The Dead" on their campaign world?

What if Raknian sacrifices himself to the Apostle to fulfill the prophecy? He has fighter levels and he was once a Champion at the games.
Oooooh, that's good. >.>
*Writes it down*

THAT is quit an idea! That gives Raknian a much more dramatical role (ending) than just letting him slip away... Very cool idea!

It says, that the summoning of the Ulgurtasta using the Apostolic Scrolls finally needs "the blood of a champion".

So what does that mean for the climax of that module when the beast tunnels to the arena floor with respect to the outcome of the last arena battle?

Option 1: The fight between Auric and the PCs is still going on. So Auric is the champion still?

Option 2: The PCs defeated Auric (by disabling him) but are not yet declared winner by the master of games. Who is champion now?

Option 3: Is there a way to avoid having a champion at all and would that spoil the evil guys plans?
e.g. the PC concince brave Auric to voluntarily lay down the belt - there will be no this-year champion anymore
e.g. the PC kill Auric prior to the fight so the actual champion is killed with no successor

... I am just wondering if there is a way to avoid the railroaded climax of the module as otherwise, killing Bozhal, destroying the scrolls etc will not really have an impact on the flow of the adventure.

I replaced pithblade with a w´forged fighter lvl 10 and a w´forged titan (he he). Because my group counts seven people I just added a w´forged artificer lvl 10 that was simply used to power up the titan and the fighter.

I changed Aurics warband a little. I made Auric dragonmarked (can´t remember which house by now) so he is able to use dimension door to jump nicely in the back of the players wizeard... Khellek remains a wizard but got a fey artificer levels as well. So is great to power up the leatherworkers a bit (so the constructs gets DR/adamant and such...)

Generally spoken... I find identification of magical items as boring for the rpg as constantly counting cp´s for food, taking notes of how many mundane arrows are left behind or paying the bartender for the drink.
But for the rules, my players could use whatever they like to identify items, i.e. Identify spell (unfortunatly it uses up a spell slot), scrolls or wands (if they can affort it) or high-DC Know: Arcana, Bardic Knowledge or Spellcraft checks. Anything that is logical and does not hinder the flow of the game.

The party lost their paladin to Bozhal and their Warforged fighter has been disqualified (see other post) - that leaves the party with only 5 (psion, druid, wizard, bard and cleric) for the last round. Clearly they will have little chance vs Auric but that does not matter as the fight will not go to the end and when the ulgurtasta shows up, the ´forged and the paladin-replacement can join the fight from the outside.

(spoiler)

We had a near-TPK last Tuesday in the Champions Belt while battling Frogemoth. Here´s how it goes:
The party was successfully fooled to power up on fire-spells etc and also powered up on their tank, the warforged fighter who was expected to deal with the frog singlehandly with some firepower support.
When Talabir made his speech the player noticed that he was about to steal time and made them waste some power-up spells, the warforged loosed his temper and charged (!) Talabir (not to attack but to threaten him). Actually it was a Zidane-like overacting that resulted in instant disqualification for him.
The rest of the party, now lacking both, the tank and offensive spells, completly looses the colour out of their faces and this was the point where I truly expected a TPK for them.
...
In the first one or two rounds of combat, it became obviously that all fire-based spells were nearly useless. The only other fighter was the cleric who will not stand more than one round in combat. Luckily the psion successfully spelled Crisis of Breath with a very unlucky save by the frog and this sends him down after the stupid monster made another jump. A coup-de-grace by the bard gave the rest.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Worms

When will we see the first documentary on Discovery Channel on Kyuss or the Ebon Triad cult?

I decided that those who surrendered were still eligible for the next round, assuming their team won. An interesting tactic this makes possible - a team could have a low-level spellcaster or two on their roster, whose sole job is to cast a few buffing spells, then promptly "surrender" once the fight ends

I used this tactic for my replacement of Pitch Blade, which was a Warforged Titan (I bought the mini for this and it scared the PCs to deaths :)), a Warforged Fighter lvl 10 and a Warfoged Artificer lvl 10. The Artificer buffed both tanks and than surrendered - very much to the surprise of the PCs who were focussed on destroying the "wizard" at an instant.

The changeling rouge approaches a grimlock guard in 3FoE. To do this he shapechanged into a grimlock - just to make sure his disguise is perfect.
However... Grimlocks are blind...

--

During the same session, after meeting the mad Grimlock cleric, one of our players notices:
"Why does that Grimlock disguise himself with Beholder eyes and paints his body? Whom does he want to impress, they are all blind?"

My group first met Tirra at the Dog´s basement during a dog-fight (where our 1st lvl Druid had the chance to heal and rescue a half-blood wolf, his later companion). Tirra and a few others were engaged in a dart game (which she won easily) and our elf paladin (sadly deceased yesterday - pls read in another post) immediatly started to flirt heavily.

Later our warforgend fighter engaged Auric but found out that Auric, who also has fought in the Last War (Eberron players do know what I am talking about) and did had some nasty experiences with the ´forged. This conversation nearly ended in a tavern brawl if not for some smoothing tunes by my groups bard.

During CB Tirra approached my group and offered her special deal but for some reasons my group ignored Khellek and Auric, even if these are the last ones standing in the arena underground.

Names: Talabir, Valenar Elf Paladin with holy double-scimitar

Adventure: Champions Belt
Cause: takes his duties to fight evil a little to serious

Talabir recognized two evil sources behind the double door so he prepared himself to rush in and destroy whatever lies ahead. Doors open he (and the group) spotted a tiefling cleric with an evil grin and an unholy weapon plus... the Scrolls!

Talabir emanates a war cry and charges the cleric but was blocked by some invinsible barrier. The cleric points his finger at the elf and a black unnatural force strikes him. He would have been lucky to resist the effects of the Harm spell if not his earlier attempt to crush the scrolls with his scimitar would had resulted in a negative energy backlash that reduced his life energy dramatically...

I skipped BK completly as I found that it did not contribute much to the AoW story - beside the egg chamber. Here is what I´ve done:

On their trip from Diamond Lage to Free City the group made stop at a wayside tavern and found the innkeepers wife in distress. They told the PCs that their husband came back from woodcutting the other day and was stragly disformed. She managed to lock him away in a cellar room. The PCs doublechecked and found out that poor innkeeper has been transformed into a Kyuss zombie. The PCs druid had a chat with the innkeepers horse and let the horse guide they way into the woods where the innkeeper left the horse alone.
There the PCs found the egg chamber that the innkeeper unfortunatly had discovered (which causes his infection). The kobolds and dragon eggs were destroyed by the PCs and will now meet an angry Ilthane sometimes.

Very cool suggestions.
UNfortunatly my group just killed the Pitch Blade so that leaves only the assassin as an option. And yes, its a cool idea to let him plot for a nasty ambush either on a PC alone or an the group.
The akilith will definitly guard the entrance and Bozal will be well prepared from now on.
Thanks - folks

I mentioned that somewhere else in this board but because it just fitrs the thread:

I enlisted my partys rogue/bard who is a Changeling (race with minor shapechange abilities). I gave the player nearly most of the maps and information on the hideout and let him "guide" the party in each and every nastie that was available. As it is the rogues job, he scouts a´head and rolled some Search, Spot and LIsten checks and reports back to the party "no nothing ahead - the road is safe" - later - "what? a trap? must have had a very high DC" he he

Atch, letting the akilith guard the entrance is a nice idea - I will propably do that.
And yes, the cleric should try to find out who it was and throw in some nasties to them.
Thanks so far.

Eventually my group found the dump-entrance to the hidden shrine level and killed several Kyuss zombies and the Morgh. Then they decided to stop advancing (in fact approaching the tiefling cleric), recover, do the next days arena battle and return the other day.
Now that leaves me with the villians discovering that their lair has been invaded and how.
What do you think should happen next? How should Raknian or the cleric handle this situation? Should they recruit new undead from the sewers? Should they release the Ulgurtasta? Should they command red-shirts down there to protect the entrance?
Any ideas welcome.

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

John, you are absolutly right. Just from the start my group is suspecting that the source of evil is located in Raknians manor. Not only because it is located just next to the arena. So they tried to investigate the manor through various ways and find a way to get in. Because there are no details on the manor (and because it is a dead-end anyway) I let them find out that the manor is heavily protected through magic and huge forces of guards. So far the group has not found a way to get into it.