kirkspencer's page

We are about to start this part of the adventure. (There are two strong GMs in our group, and the two of us have agreed to alternate the role, an adventure at a time.)

Melira not only knowing but getting onto the boat made no sense to me in the game as written. However, I made it work for me with a minor side-trip.

See, the party has all that loot, particularly giant-sized armor. And Trunau just does not have funds to buy that stuff from them. The merchants in Vigil, however, do.

Vigil is about 30 more miles each way - a day downstream, and about 3 coming back up. And when they hit town the fact someone is selling giant gear - and that there may be some people pointing them out as the subjects of the recent news from Trunau - mean that Melira sees them. She's there because it's a good stop on the way from Freetown to Trunau.

A little coin, a little work with some questions and other checks, and she finds out enough to know the party plans to board the keelboat again for a trip upriver.

Just a day in Vigil closes the gap for me.

Thanks to all.

I decided to play it straight. The assassins prefer to gang up and ran it that way. It went badly for the assassins.

They chose to take on the paladin and fighter first. The paladin on first watch saw the attempt to slip the lock. And the second try. And the third, by which time he'd awakened the fighter and they'd positioned themselves. The fighter yanked open the door. Four assassins were surprised. (The gm now changes dice.) The paladin shield bashes the assassin in the door and drops her in place. He takes a five foot step back and holds action. The fighter steps up, shrugs off the only successful attack of opportunity, and repositions the assassin in front of him into the attack range of the paladin. The assassin whimpers.

The rogue/cleric in the room three doors down successfully hears the ruckus of the surprise round awakens the spellslinger, and moves to the hall. The spellslinger gets up.

And three assassins take a swing at the fighter. One hits, and the fighter shrugs off the poison.

In order: The rogue moves down the hall behind one of the assassins, swings, and misses. The spellslinger moves into the hall, uses an ability to add damage, then rolls a natural 20 followed by a natural 20. (gm says if he rolls another 20 in a row the player will be required to chance dice. Player smiles at gm, and rolls a 19.) the damage done is phenomenal, leaving the rogue next to a near headless corpse. The paladin strikes at the assassin in the room using nonlethal damage, leaving her barely standing. The fighter finishes dropping her.

The last assassin blinks at suddenly being the last man standing, draws and burns a smokestick (attack of opportunity misses) and with an acrobatic leap avoids the attack of the rogue. The spellslinger calmly aims, pulls the trigger, and has his pistol jam. Pursuit is aborted when the fighter says to let him go so his sort know what a bad deal it is to attack the party.

Note that I made a couple of rules errors in there, but did not retrofit as the story worked and nobody was majorly broken by it.

Some points - not definitive, just my thoughts.

Problem 1 seems to me to not exist if the assault begins as everyone is gathered at Rodrik's funeral. Which is how I interpreted the intent.

Problem 2, yeah. My solution is that this one doesn't happen because Kurst already gave them marching orders and took off for combat. If I /really/ need someone to say "hey, rescue people while you run through the quarter," I'll 'name that NPC'.

This, by the way, removes the ugliest points of 3 and 4, that "Kurst just came through here, right?"

Problem 5, interpretation. The portcullis got dropped late. Remember that Skreed led a group of saboteurs, and jamming these gates would sit fairly high on the 'remove obstacles to the attack' list. It does beg the question why Kurst and his team didn't stop to help fix or guard, but I can wave that (tunnel vision, thought there were plenty, didn't even stop to ask, etc.)

Problem 6, sorta agree. On the other hand I've got a bunch of players who are now rolling on combat, and the flaming boulder comes crashing near them - possibly killing some of the arriving militia. Barring player cussedness (which happens) there's probably not much more motivation required. Why are rocks dropping there? Because the crew is hitting the white crosses in town in the hopes of breaking something open. But yeah, it's interpretation and a fix.