dodo's page

We finished SCAP.

Two of the original players made it all the way through the campaign, ending with a level 19 arch-mage evoker, and a level 18 spell-thief rogue. Also on board were our bard/sorc, our cleric, and our Barbarian/Fighter.

After years of making fun of the cleric for taking Turn undead feats and even some levels of a prestige class in a campaign focused on evil outsiders, in the third round of fighting he turned Dark Myrakul, who then went down like a chump.

The battle with Adimarchus lasted 8 hours. In the end one of his aspects had 9 negative levels and the other had 23 (!!) negative levels. His snake appendages couldn't even hit anything anymore, and the spell thief had stolen all his spell-like abilities so he was down to Detect Good. Yippee!!

Nidrama and Fario both died in Skullrot. The bard died twice in the fight with Adimarchus, but quick use of the revivication spell kept him on the field. He had the smoking eye, after all. The arch-mage took both an implosion spell and a disintegrate and sucked it all into his rod of absorption. In the end, it was massive damage from the Barbarian that brought Adimarchus down.

So everyone really had a moment to shine in the last battle. There were close calls. And once Adimarchus disappeared they went back to Occipitus and had a long discussion about whether to throw him into the plasma jet or not. In the end, the Barb said, "Will you all please SHUT UP!" and tossed him in.

The bard is now in charge of Occipitus at level 20. The spell thief has turned chaotic evil because of his tribulations on Carceri and spends his time in the shadows in Cauldron making sure no thieves' guild ever takes hold there again. The arch-mage and the cleric are spending the next 20 years arguing over whether to use the Soul Pillars or destroy them. Eventually the cleric will gather the people and resources he needs to destroy them, and then a great war will break out among the Powers of the continent.

The Barbarian has headed west. His best friend used to be the "little guy" (spell thief) but since getting back his friend has changed and pushed him away. Eventually he will find an entire city of wild gnomes in the jungles, and he will become their protector. Most importantly, he will have an entire city of "little buddies."

And now, years after everyone else, we begin our first Pathfinder campaign.

The sheer amount of text each month coming my way is somewhat overwhelming. I'm looking at the August order and boy, that's a lot of stuff to read.

I'm already seriously behind. I just finished reading the Guide to Korvosa and Pathfinder #7. So I've just started AP #2 and Paizo is finishing it. Reading a Pathfinder book is roughly equivalent to reading a 300-page paperback novel, and frankly, I still read a whole bunch of books.

I think I could just read Pathfinder and keep up with Paizo's publishing schedule, except when they send me a hardcover and three other books in a single month.

Don't even get me started on running these things. I'm still running SCAP, and have been for the last three or four years.

So do you skim this stuff? Look at the pretty pictures? Are you all speed readers? What's the deal?

Well now that the party has unfettered access to the Soul Pillars, and the evoker and bard are willing to bend their morals a bit to ask lots of questions, the lawful good cleric of St. Cuthbert has decided (rightly so) that the Soul Pillars are an abomination.

He wants to destroy them.

So, I would consider them a major artifact chock full of all sorts of necromantic and divination magic, how would a party go about destroying them?

Last night in our second playtest Our Fearless Party went up against some Darkmantles (MM pg 38). If the darkmantle hits with its slam attack it can then "attempt to start a grapple as a free action without provoking an attack of opportunity. If it wins the grapple check, it attaches to the opponent's head and can constrict."

My darkmantles found grappling much harder under the new rules (or I was rolling poorly) as it only happened once in 5 rounds of 2 darkmantles attacking.

The one time it did happen, the darkmantle only beat the player's roll by one, which would make them "Held." On page 42 that says, "your target cannot move to a space that is not adjacent without first breaking the grapple, but is otherwise unaffected."

So here I have a player who has a darkmantle on his head (like a hat?) that can constrict, thus doing damage, but he is otherwise unaffected EXCEPT for the fact that he can't move more than 5 feet? The one thing he should be able to do is run around like a crazy man. I think of these things like facehuggers from Alien, and this basically sets off my "common sense" alarm. If you've got a leathery octopus on your face that is choking the life out of you, your attacking ability should be affected.

It was exactly the opposite of the common sense view of what was happening.

This adventure I'm running is grapple and trip check heavy (lots of wolves), and I'd like to echo what others have said-- the new CMB rules are no less complicated than the old ones, they're just differently complicated.

Last night we played D0 - Hollow's Last Hope using Pathfinder. We had a dwarven fighter, a human cleric, a halfling rogue, and an elven wizard. I DM'd and I didn't really do any work on converting monsters to Pathfinder (though they didn't really encounter that much.)

For those unfamiliar with the adventure, the first half is a wilderness romp followed by a pretty classic dungeon crawl. We got through the first half last night. There are a number of skill-based challenges (convincing people to give you information, making your way through a forest in the correct direction, seeing hidden things).

The skill system as it stands doesn't seem to work right. If someone had the appropriate skill, then they were super experts and could beat the DC easily, but if the skill wasn't one they had picked, then they would try it untrained, in which case the DC was pretty challenging. If it was a skill that couldn't be used untrained, they'd shrug and just do without.

One of my players was running the fighter and cleric and decided to make them both dumb as rocks. That meant they got one skill choice each (-1 Int modifier). The fighter took Survival, and the cleric took Heal. Survival was great for some things, but without any Knowledge (nature) he just didn't even know what some things were. So, for instance, they found some Glow Moss on some rocks. No one had Knowledge (nature) so they had no idea what it was, but the fighter very easily got it off the rock and wrapped it in a damp cloth.

We ran 4 combat encounters, and only one seemed to put the players in any kind of jeopardy. They went up against the Tatzlwyrm which is a CR2 monster and the only reason it even did damage to anyone was because it surprised them and won initiative, so it got two attacks (one of which failed) before they could even react. They then beat it dead in another round (it would have been a single round, but the fighter missed the first time).

There's a pretty deadly feat combo with Power Attack and Overhand Chop at least at 1st level. The fighter's first attack was a full Power Attack and an Overhand Chop. If it hit, it would do 20+ damage and pretty much kill whatever he was aiming at. The Overhand Chop makes you do one attack as a full round action, but if you're 1st level and only have one attack, it's not really a sacrifice.

A question came up over whether the rogue could sneak attack an animated cauldron. Constructs are no longer immune to sneak attacks so it came down to whether or not the rogue could see a "weak spot." The player was arguing that there certainly are weak spots on cauldrons-- you could potentially see a crack, or where one of the feet joins the actual bowl. I ruled that the cauldron was homogeneous, and he couldn't see a weak spot, but I think this change will make for many arguments around many tables.

The interesting thing is I ran this same adventure a week ago with straight 3.5 rules, and in every one of these encounters there was a great sense of jeopardy and use of skills throughout the module. Yes, the wizard spent most of his time unconscious, and the rogue couldn't hit to save his life (literally), but those were sources of entertainment for the group. With Pathfinder it felt more like 3rd level characters were waltzing through a 1st level adventure and just laying waste to it without paying too much attention.

For our next session I'm going to beef up the monsters so they might provide a bit of a challenge.

After a number of party deaths, my players were feeling a bit overwhelmed by the SCAP, so, after raiding the church of Wee Jas, they decided to go back to Occipitus, grab all the shiny things they saw in the Plain of Cysts, and track that black dragon back to his lair, and presumably his hoard.

So they did. But for a couple of nights before they did, the bard went from tavern to tavern performing the story of how the Blue Duke bowed down to Nabthatoron at the Battle of Redgorge, and how Lord Vhalantru is not the lawful leader of Cauldron.

Basic rabble rousing, then the party headed off to Occipitus for 2 weeks.

They come back to Cauldron to find the Tipped Tankard overrun by low-level bards (about 50 of them). The bard took the leadership feat, so his followers have arrived. He teaches them an abridged version of his "Ballad of the Battle of Redgorge" and sends them into the city.

Meanwhile, the party wizard has a scrying list of people he's checking on every morning. He gets to his day for checking on Vitriss Bale, and poor Vitriss rolls a 1 on his Will save. The wizards sees a dragon skeleton with a greenish tinge talking to a pillar made of grayish white flesh. He puts two and two together and, understandably, poops his pants (figuratively).

So they're not much interested in going to Kurran Kurral. When they get back from Occipitus, Fellian (who has become a cohort) gets the telepathic call from Meerthan about Fario and we start on Lords of Oblivion. They save Fario and put house Rhiavadi under surveillance.

The rogue follows Kazmojen (who is replacing Adrick Garthun IMC) leaving House Rhiavadi, and misses his Listen check, so instead of hearing Kaz grumbling about how everyone's waiting for Lord Ashmantle and they'll give him 2 more days until they hold the meeting without him, only hears "Lord Ashmantle."

Meanwhile the bard sends half of his followers off to take over the Lucky Monkey, and the wizard researches Kurran Kural and finds out where it is. The party decides to head off to Kurran Kural!!!

Argh. So long background leading to a request for advice: I've set the LoO meeting at House Rhiavadi for 2 more days. The party could quite easily be at Kurran Kural longer than that, so they'll miss the big meeting. If so, the wannabe Cagewrights are going to come after them.

Step 1: The Blue Duke and Kazmojen lead the Town Guard (who they now run) on a massacre of the remaining bards at the Tipped Tankard.

Step 2: A simultaneous assault on Fario, Fellian, and Meerthan at the Drunken Morkoth by Khyron Bonesworn and Velior Thazo that should pretty much kill all three of them.

Wait one day for the party to show themselves, if not, target more of the party's known associates (Skie, another assassin strike on Shensen who's now in Redgorge, Jenya).

I'm hesitant to run these things "in the background" while the party is away dungeoneering, but I find it ludicrous from a story point of view to postpone the LoO meeting indefinitely until the party can be a part of it. They're going to miss a big reveal for the campaign overall (the Cagewright plot), and I'm afraid of the larger implications of having them miss the meeting, then basically having the Striders wiped out as a political force and its impact on Foundation of Flame.

So any thoughts? How do I keep the bad guys moving their plot along w/o screwing over the big reveal the party needs?

Hi,

I just bought the pdf of Dungeon #139, which started the Savage Tide AP.

The original issue came with a fold out map of the city of Sasserine, but the pdf doesn't include it.

Is there any way to get a pdf version of this map?

So I've got to thinking about bringing back some of my villains that got away. Here's my list:

Kazmojen - last seen fleeing into the underdark. If the Blue Duke gets killed in the Battle of Redgorge, he's our new captain of the city guard.

Skaven Umbermead - Got away from the Kopru ruins, but the party killed the mooks tasked with hauling his books up. First contracted the Last Laugh to rob the party wizard's room and get the books back. They failed. He led the second strike, killing the wizard's mimic and reclaiming his books. Probably going to come back again as a Cagewright wannabe in Lords of Oblivion.

Gutterut, the Quasit made something of a nuisance of himself at the end of Flood Season. After trying to get the spider climbing fighter to fall (and getting bashed for his trouble), he decided to use his wand of water control to raise the water in the lake outside the Kopru ruins. Made for a nail-biter to see whether the spider-climbing fighter could get everyone to safety before the water got high enough to let the kopru pull the plate-mailed cleric under. They made it just in time. Gutterut will probably be back with Nabthateron's army to cause some mischief on the walls of Redgorge.

Dhorlot, the black dragon never even met the party. There are plenty of other dragons, so he won't be coming after them.

Olomasta, half-fey green hag fled after her two sisters were killed. She complained to Nabthateron about the party, but when she told Nabby that the party now had Alakast, well, he ripped her in half. She probably won't be coming back (mostly because I think hags are a pain to run.)

Nabthateron will definitely be back, and leading a demon force to finally obliterate Redgorge.

So who got away from your party and how do you plan on bringing them back?

When we broke last time, my party was standing in the Starry Mirror room. They killed the nerra rogue and there's a wall of force between them and four pissed-off nerra, who are pacing like Obi Wan watching Qui Gon get shish-kebabed.

So they're almost tapped out. Believe it or not they have a bunch of sonic spells saved up (the new bard asked the evoker to take them because he can amp them), which they'll probably use to take out the nerra. If they don't take days of game time to solve the Starry Mirror, they'll find Alex and want to head back to Redgorge ASAP. The evoker has a teleport left, so will probably grab Alex and blip out.

Ole Nabby isn't going to like that, so should tp in before they abscond with the paladin, BUT, according to the text, "Ideally, the PCs shouldn't be faced with this encounter unless they are fully healed and rested, with all of their spells prepared for the day."

I don't see any way the party is going to rest in Alex's vault. So the text suggests that if the party is tapped out, I should send Nidrama in, but that kind of sucks. Any ideas or suggestions? I had thought to have Alex REALLY want to stay, but since his sanity is in doubt (and they've already been through this with Zenith), they'll probably just bop him on the head and get him back to town.

I hate teleport.

Maybe Nidrama's voice in their head and they get the equivalent of a night's rest? Maybe a side effect of going through the mirror is a night's rest? Any help would be appreciated.

The rogue in my party actually passed the civil service exams (bluff check gave him assist of +2, then an Intelligence check DC 20) to become a tax collector in Cauldron. I've now given him a Big Book of Tax Law and a month to study it before the new taxes go into effect.

He wants to study the BBoTL and figure out ways to embezzle funds. We've gone far afield from "kill things, take their stuff" here, and I'm wondering if anyone has any advice on how to run some white collar crime in DnD.

The best part is that he'll be the tax collector the party is accompanying to Maavu's Warehouse when the Umber Hulk attacks at the start of chapter four, but I've got to figure out how much money he can (or can't) embezzle until we get to that point. He's basically got two months of tax collecting before we get to the UH attack.

My players have just completed Flood Season and are in the midst of the Flood Festival (they pretty much ignored the festival at the beginning and went straight after the wands, so I'm letting them experience it after the Kopru ruins crawl). I've substituted a Hero's Feast for the Demonskar Ball and plan on using the ball on the winter solstice instead.

So I've basically got to get the party from October 20 to late March, early April when Zenith starts. Aside from just waving your hands and saying, "It was a cold and rainy winter, but it passes uneventfully" what did the rest of you do for this time gap? I'm looking less for encounters and more for things that get them more info and ties to Cauldron.

Ideas so far:

Dancing lessons with Madame Rubanskaya at Bluecrater Academy to prepare for the Demonskar Ball. Each lesson will reduce the DC of their perform check so they'll be able to do various dances without screwing up. Best of all, I get to put the party's half-orc fighter in a dance class with six year old girls in tutus.

At the Hero's Feast the mayor will announce his new revenue building laws, starting with an adventurer's tax. Alex Tercival will, of course, support these taxes and be the first to pony up the money. The Stormblades will follow suit since they're all from aristocratic families and don't need the loot so much. Hopefully the party will follow suit. Cauldron's heroes will then be asked to embark on a PR campaign of support for the new taxes. This will include standing on the stage and smiling while nobles give speeches about the new city improvement plans and the need for new revenues, accompanying tax collectors and giving out signed souvenir posters to good taxpayers, and other such things. These will be totally uneventful excursions which will then pave the way for the party to accompany a tax collector to Maavu's warehouse for the umber hulk attack.

The cleric will be periodically asked to partake in flood prevention with the wands. Just a simple, "Today is spent keeping the flood waters back."

I'm interested in getting more involvement from Jil and the Last Laugh. Skaven Umbermead ended up escaping in Flood Season, but the party has ended up with his complete library. The mage in the party is holding on to it because it's slightly water damaged and he hopes to read it all and gain some knowledges from it. Skaven negotiated a ransom for two of the wands with the Stormblades (via the Last Laugh) and is still in town. He can use some of that money to arrange for the Last Laugh to get his books and papers back. The party could come back from the Hero's Ball to find their rooms ransacked. Investigation ensues.

Any other ideas? What did you do at this point?

Well last night the party took on Tarkilar and barely survived. The Evoker's flaming spheres are what got them out alive (half-orc fighter was held, and no one else could get through Tark's damage reduction.)

So they know they've cleared the dungeon, and they're ready to leave with only four of the wands (one is still in the pit of water with the ooze swarm, two got away when Skaven escaped and cut the gondola rope, and Gutterut has the last one.)

They're going to try to rest first, then escape-- except the dominated fighter is going to be compelled to go to the beach to get his "reward" which will give the Kopru one last chance to dominate another party member. If the Kopru succeeds then it will be fighter and thief vs. cleric and evoker at the last Battle of the Beach. If the Kopru fails I'm tempted to have the fighter remove his armor and "come for a swim" to take him out rather than a straight fighter vs. thief, cleric, and evoker.

And then there's Gutterut, hovering about trying to cause mischief. So-- given that situation, can anyone recommend some devilish mischief for him to wreak?

There's poisoning someone while they're fighting amongst themselves...

The party also plans to use their potion of spider climb for the fighter to carry each of the other party members around the walls and up to the ledge to escape. I think it would be funny for Gutterut to interfere with an encumbered (carrying party member) spider-climbing fighter while he's stuck 50+ feet up on a wall.

If the fighter manages to make a Will save vs. being dominated when he's told to either attack the other party members or go swimming AND the thief makes his Will save vs. dominated + another one for doing something against his nature, then there could be a Kopru fight, but there's no way the Kopru's coming out of the water, and I can't imagine the party going in of their own free will.

I'm running Flood Season now and I'm two sessions into the Kopru Ruins. The first session the players made it to the beach without setting off the alarm, got into the ruins and went straight to the mook barracks. Killed a bunch of mooks then retreated to the ledge to rest.

This is where I start thinking that if I were a bandit mook of the Ebon Triad I would have quit as soon as they said I was going to be living in these slimy, stinky ruins. I've still got a bunch of mooks left, so I give them a couple of hours to discover the carnage in the barracks. Then another hour to alert the complex (and that's pretty generous) and find out that the intruders have left. Then Triel and Skaven confer, Skaven will take a contingent of mooks out to the beach and use arcane eye to look around. He discovers the PC's snoozing on the ledge (with a watch set who didn't see the arcane eye), but the cage is on the PC's side.

So what's the plan? They can't move the cage, as it will immediately alert the intruders. The rogue mooks would never make it climbing the rope and they know it. They can't cut the rope, as it's their only way out, and they're not going anywhere near the water because of the Skulvyn (which they don't know is dead because it's a summoned creature that would have gone poof when it was killed).

So they give all the mooks bows, and have them wait for the cage to move. Skaven and Triel each keep some mooks in reserve (3 fighters for Skaven, and 4 rogues for Triel) and if it all goes bad, hope someone gets away to warn them. It's not a great plan, but it's the best I can come up with over a week of thinking about it.

The PC's are warned by the Kopru (the fighter is dominated) and they make a barrier of the boards, ride on down behind cover and slaughter the mooks. Then they head towards Triel's section of the complex and, big fight later, she and her mook rearguard are dead too. So now the PC's are going to go back to the ledge and rest again, so Skaven will have plenty of time to plan if he's going to mount a defense.

Frankly if I were Skaven, I'd order the remaining mooks (3 fighters, 1 rogue) to cut the rope, and when they objected, tell them I have a plan for escape. While they were doing that I'd cast invisibility, and spider climb my way out of there leaving the mooks to their fate. The only problem I see with that is Skaven likes his spiders and has a bunch of stuff that he'd probably like to keep, but alive w/o stuff is better than dead like Triel.

Basically this bandit gang has only one way out, and the party is camped there, blocking it. Ascending to take them out is suicide, they've killed most of your comrades and one of your leaders, so what are you going to do?

Up until now, my characters have seemed to be lagging behind on xp. This was mostly because in Life's Bazaar we had 5 players, plus Fario and Fellian occasionally, and later Maple and the other freed rogue/fighter (forget her name) all sharing xp.

So going into Flood Season the PC's were still 3rd level. That was fine, I ran a barroom brawl with the Stormblades (our rogue ended up giving Todd a hotfoot and he's now known in some circles as "Hot Toddy"), gave them XP for that, and edged them right up to 4th (they were less than 100 xp short, so I just ad hoc'ed them to 4th.) It seemed pretty clear that The Lucky Monkey was for 4th level PC's and the Kopru Ruins was for 5th. The got through the LM and didn't level-- which seemed par for the course thus far, so went into Kopru Ruins about 250xp short of 5th.

So we've just finished our second session in the Kopru Ruins. The first session was basically the Skulvyn and then a bunch of Mooks. That gets them enough xp to level to 5th (it puts them right smack dab in the middle of 5th level). They retreat to the ledge on the other side of the lake and rest (which brings me to another problem-- which I'll get to after this question).

Last night the rest of the mooks set up an ambush (after Skaven arcane eye'd them all sleeping) on the beach. Totally ineffective archery for all six rounds of the PC's crossing (they used the spare boards to tie together a barricade in the cage and then hid behind it for 1/2 cover). 10 of the 11 mooks are slaughtered, one running away to warn the higher ups. At this point Skaven has a personal bodyguard reserve of 3 fighter mooks, and Triel has her 4 rogue mooks, there's the fleeing rogue mook that joined up with Skaven's party, but that's it (and the undead guy is just nuts and not bothering with the defense of the lair).

So they head towards Triel and big fight later Triel and her 4 rogue mooks are dead. So last night I figure out the xp and it's another 2000+xp each (even docking the beach mook fight to 2/3 xp because they had help from the Kopru). That puts them just into 6th level. Given that they've still got to do all the spider stuff and all the undead stuff, I can see them well into 7th by the time they finish Flood Season.

Up until now the xp has been working out to be a little stingy, I don't think I'm calculating wrong (this is the first 3.x campaign that I've run) does anyone have any help or explanation for this? I don't want to just arbitrarily not give them xp to keep them at the right levels for the adventures, but this seems off.

Here are the details of xp from last night:

10 mooks (CR2) at 500xp each = 5000 x 2/3 because they had help = 3334
750 for the CR3 trap on Triel's door.
2000 for the 4 rogue mooks with Triel
3000 for Triel

So 2270xp to each PC which levels them to 6th after one session at 5th.