denigreur's page

First PC death of my campaign after a dozen of close call

Name of PC: Lu Bu
Class/Level: Bloodrager 8th
Adventure: Rannick Fort
Catalyst: Jaagrath Kreeg
Story: Originally planning a scouting mission to oversee the fort, the group decided to turn in a full scale assault of the fort. After grueling fighting from the bottow to the top. The group overstretched a little bit and barely cleared the fort with everyone either unconcious or below 15 hp.
Alas, Lu Bu with a squeaky AC and 10 HP went and confronted a bloody Jaagrath that finished him with one swoop of his human-bane ogre hook.

May he rest in pieces.

What? seriously? A AAA videogame, 6 years in development, employing an army of developers is $70 and this is $120?

It depend on the number of users.

If you think it's too high, don't buy it. You can always build the campaign yourself. It's part of the fun.

But to be honest. as someone who ran a Kingmaker campaign over VTT spanning 4 years, 200 sessions of 2 hours and a half. The amount of prep needed in a full adventure path in time cost isn't even close to that 120$.

I must have spent 250 hours just doing maps for Kingmaker over 4 years.
I'm not talking about handouts, the overland map exploration, the kingdom building that I did over google drive in sheets. Token making, monster sheets import.

If I had the option to buy that would have been a no brainer. I'm lucky, it's just 2 hours of my salary to save couples hundreds of hours of prep for sure

I'm not 100% sure I understand the description of positioning but I'll attempt a diagram.

XE
EO

X is the PC, E are two enemies, and O is the open space they'd like to move to, preferably by 5ft stepping.

Barring any special abilities by the enemies that might stop them from moving (such as the Stand Still feat, only Stand Still wouldn't actually work in the case of a 5ft step because it doesn't provoke).

Nothing in the rules for 5ft steps prevent this.

And the reason why you can't 5ft diagonally through a corner is because you would be attempting to move through a wall.

I think you've made an incorrect ruling.

Thanks.

Hi,

Quick question.
Rules are indicating that you can make a 5 foot step diagonally. Not when there is a corner, but yes if there an opponent :

You can’t move diagonally past a corner (even by taking a 5-foot step). You can move diagonally past a creature, even an opponent.

What if there is 2 opponent and you want to slide in ? As two ennemies in East position and South position are considered adjacent for purposes of cleave and other stuff, i was ruling in that case than you couldn't slip in between them to make a 5 foot step.
But now, one of my player is trying to challenge me on this. I have a quick answer for him on that. But I was wondering if I messed up my initial ruling on the inability to go through that diagonal between two enemies was the right one, or you should be able, I couldn't find anything related to that in the core.

If the shaman was able to target spells on the melee he did not have total cover.

That's actually a good point. It goes both way.

I had a situation yesterday in my game as a GM.
My group were fighting a bunch of boggards in tunnels and caverns. The melee characters were holding a choke point in a corridor and boggards were piling into them to attack. The boggard's shaman was hanging back his followers and was slinging spells.

But our ranger, with Improved Precise Shot, was mainly ignoring all the soft cover provided by creatures and striking the priest hard and fast and he force him to retreat.

I'm looking back at the situation and i'm wondering if in that case, i should have ruled that the mass of creatures both allied and enemies would constitute as total cover at this point. My players are arguing that RAW, it shouldn't be anything but still be soft cover.

I haven't seen something in the rules stating anything about mass of enemies providing more cover. Have I missed something or there is nothing in rules changing that 1 creatures or 20 creatures gives the same cover.

Name: Arya River
Role: Cohort and sister of the General Jon River
Race: Human
Class/Level: Ninja 7
Adventure: Blood for Blood
Location: Fort Drelev
Catalyst: An unfortunate desintegrate
The Gory Details: Not knowing how to infiltrate the fort, the General sent his sister to scout. She was supposed to scout the secret entrance revealed by Satinder, but she got ahead of herself and scouted the Fort.

She turned invisible, found info on the Giants in the middle of the night. But little she knew, she tripped an alarm spell on the balcony of the fort's tower. Not wanting to open the locks on the doors of the balcony, she decided to fully use her spider climb potion and started to peak insides the windows of that second floor.

Unfortunately, the tripped alarm spell warned Imeckus Stroon who was watching for intruders. And when he saw the little thief peaking through her windows, all he wanted was to capture her for interrogation. But she won the initiative. And she was a student of the Prometheus's school of running in a straight light. She just dropped down to the floor, disguised as a raccoon. Imeckus didn't want the intruder to leave unharmed, he unleashed his disintegrate spell which turned the noisy Arya in a pile of dust.

Her brother don't know of her fate. But they found her equipment in the secret stash of the basement. Not knowing that the Fort is aware that forces are upon them. The fight is raging on in the Fort at the moment.

Just to come around on that.

I finally resolved the issue by moving things around a little bit.
I've brought the Rushlight tournamement right away at the beginning of book 4. Since they had a bit more of a relationship with Irovetti, they were more eager to attend the tournamement than it would have been after book 4. They took it, line and sinker.

I didn't chance anything, they're a very capable group. They managed to win the tournament even if they were lower level. After the tournament, I had a courrier ride in with a message of the their advisor, stating that they had troop movement in the North (Brevoy and Restov) and not knowing the Advisor (the General was at the Tournamenet), they moved their armies to camp near their northern border as a show of strength.

On their way back to their capital, I had them met with the Numesti's daughter in the middle of the swamp. She was only hours in front of the assault on Tatlzford. They really felt the urgency to defend it.

It was perfect. Thanks for the input guys, you gave a couple of things to think about. They're playing commandos right now in Drelev, might plant the idea that Mivon is behind all of this.

That's actually a super good idea. I must admit their sight are fixated on the North with the rumors of civil war. Might be a good idea to pull their armies up north and then have Drelev attack Tatzlford.

Might use that to divide their attention. Thanks for the feedback !

I've finished the third book and my players, are cleaning up hexes in the East at the moment. But I'm kind of conflicted by the next step.

Tatlzford and Varnhold are already annexed. Civil war is brewing up north. They've met Irovetti and Mivon, among others, at the Outlaw Council months prior. I've turned Mivon as antagonist as I didn't want Pitax to be an obvious opponent and I'm running Irovetti as a despote who's afraid that the PC are the Nymph's puppets who wants to do her bidding, instead of being the puppet himself.

So far, so good. I've hinted at Nyrissa multiple times (more clues than the AP, plus Oracle of Time in my group wakes up near the House at the end of Time near her. They're super paranoid about her, they think Vordakai was a puppet and they don't know everything about the eyes and they think it's linked to Nyrissa.

But that also means that they're preparing for trouble. They have fortifications in all their cities, they have standing armies in all of them (protect the capital, protect from Mivon at the East and prepare for trouble up north in case of Civil War.) (Large human armies x 3)

Running the module as it is, would means that the attack on Tatlzford would fail miserably (which I can live with easily), but any hints pointing towards Pitax, I fear that it would means armies movement to take back Drelev right off the bat and forcing ahead towards Pitax for a confrontation, which would jeopardized a lot on how Chapter 4 and 5 play. Right now, i'm thinking a lot about a war of deception, having no mention of Pitax as they make Mivon as the sponsor behind the attack on Drelev and leave my PC grasping at straw while Mivon refute any involvement. I'd probably throw the tournament at the same time to confuse the PC even more with that invitation from Irovetti, after all they met him at the Outlaw Council and they know that diplomatic links exists. But since, those have major effects on the whole module, i'm a bit conflicted about all this.

I've read a bit on the boards, but I'd like feedback from the community, see how you ran it, and how your groups have reacted ? Any one had their group reacts with their armies at their back while dealing with Drelev ?

Thanks for your inputs guys, that's how I was reading it as well. Just like blahpers said, it kind of made me look at it twice.

I'm running a Strange Aeons campaign and one of my players brought me a Hex he wants to use.

The Hex in question is Swine :

Benefit(s): The witch can partially transform an enemy into a pig. The effects of the transformation are mostly cosmetic and do not change the creature’s size category or overall shape, but the affected creature takes a –2 penalty on Will saving throws for a number of rounds equal to the witch’s Intelligence modifier (Will negates). At 8th level, the affected creature’s hands (or paws) turn into hooves, preventing it from using claw attacks or taking any action that would require the creature to use its fingers.

My understanding is that it's like the others minor hexes, 30 feet. Where i'm not entirely sure, is that past level 8 (my players are 10th level), the line blurs on what exactly the Hex is doing.

Does it entirely remove attacks or simply give hoof attacks ?
Also, it should bother the target to use weapons, items handling and also use spells with somatic.

Am I reading it correctly ? I'm bringing it forward to see others opinion, couldn't find anything on the board.

Something feels off here, I've had players who said the same thing but really they were powergaming and trying to milk crafting (which is broken anyway) for it was worth. But you know your players better than me.

The dreamlands, ritual, and boat trip are honestly all less scary than the last book. If they're really digging their heels in, I'd both hint that the dreamlands really aren't as fatal as they're worried, and place some kind of time restraint. Give them time to craft, but not forever without consequences...

No, I wouldn't put it that way.

If they want to wait and see then let them arrive at Cassomir. They can still complete the Dream quests at Cassomir but will have to essentially "gauntlet" them since there won't be any ship events to break up the dream segments.

It also depends how much you told them at the end of Book 2.

** spoiler omitted **

They know that Lowls is after the Necronomicon, but beside that, they only know he went to Cassomir and that more information is through the caravanserai.

But even then, they're relunctant to go in the dreams.

I love the research part. But I'm stuck in a loop with my players.
They researched the journals, they know Lowls tracks lead there and I've more than hinted that.

But now, they're stuck into a thinking process that brought them to :
- Dreamland - Scary
- Ritual - Scary
- Boat - scary

So basically, i'm stuck with a group that doesn't want to go to the caravanserai unless they buff to every possibility (I have a silvered throne shaman with a 2 month plan of crafting), including items to buff his knowledge to complete the ritual (and funny thing they're not even priority items in the list).

Since that's a major blocker for the rest of the adventure, you see where i'm stuck.

Add to that that the players are scared to do the ritual on the boat.

And they want to research the books to milk everything they can on the dreamlands and caravansera. I tried to have them think back by asking, okay but what are you looking for. And they're arguing they should have information from reading them. I kind of gave them a chance and a bonus for thinking about the Shadow's Ship book when they spotted the Bloodwind near Illmarsh and they milk it and were surprise to find that the ritual can bring them to it and understand that the visit to the caravanserai will bring them to locations they need to visit.

But they're still stuck in the mindset of waiting for the 2 months of crafting and wait and see. I took the time to expose the whole thing to them, but they still won't budge.

Anyone else had that issue ? I'm curious to hear how you dealt with it.

I had a TPK yesterday in the Shadow Clock.

Name of PCs: Aleora
Class/Level: Half-Elf Storm Druid 7

Name of PCs: Eliasse
Class/Level: Human Sorcerer 7 (Fire Elemental bloodline)

Name of PCs: Dodoltir
Class/Level: Oread Barbarian 7

Name of PCs: Fafine
Class/Level: Elven Ranger 7

Adventure: Skinsaw Murders
Catalyst: Shadowclock Fight
Story: After wiping the sawmill without a sweat, the gang felt pretty confident. The druid even went up the clock as a buzzard to spy on Xanesha while they were trying to go up from the bottom. With a good use of message, she knew they were in trouble so she attacked in a pincer to kill the faceless stalker on her own.

They had the time to heal properly then face Xanesha. But she just did mince work of them. The caster couldn't get spells to work properly, on around 30 spells casted (lots of Aggressive Thunderball and Flaming Sphere tries), barely 5 got in which Xanesha easily evaded with her high Reflex saves. The error came in when the barbarian retreated in the corner of the room instead of leaving down the stairs to heal. That gave Xanesha the opportunity to protect the stairs and with Combat Reflexes, they were doomed trying to quit.

Poor Sorcerer player, it's his second character death in a week, he lost his Mutation Warrior in one of my other weekly game, Strange Aeons.

Name: Luther Horton
Race/Class/Level: Human Mutagen Warrior 4

The Thrushmoor Terror

Got killed by the Revenant. The group went to investigate the Old Chapel at midnight their first day in town.
Luther was the one I picked as the killer of Klyn. They could have done a better job but at some point, they just tried to ran away even if I told them that he moved waaay too fast for their taste. The witch and the investigator just ran. The warrior couldn't move fast enough and their shaman couldn't do anything to save him, and almost died trying as well.

Started running it last year. PLaying the CRPG. Aiglos made a bunch of good comments, so i'll go another way. Emphasis on dudemeister change to Hargulka.

My main comment :
- Fill the empty hexes.

I don't run it on a per book to book basis. I let my players loose. Made a gigantic map of all the AP.
But when you do that, it made me realize quickly there is a big gap of 2 or 3 hexes with absolutely nothing in them between maps of each module. And I realized while running the confined first module, that empty hexes annoys my player. So I borrowed heavily from the CRPG and added stuff on my own to fill the empty spaces.

Also, I borrowed the banquet element of the coronation of the baroness in my game from the CRPG to fill empty role in their kingdom. Combined it with ideas from this board on how to propose BP for the kingdoms by accepting deals and fill position at the same time. It force some of my players who seldom roleplay usually. Two of my players deemed it the single greatest gaming session of our last 10 years. So I guess it could be worthwhile to have a look into instead of giving a flat 50 BP.