koboldstyle's page

Please can someone who had already converted the Vanishing disease to 4e help me with some ideas? I'm unhappy about my attemps.

I'm also working to make a decent Pyllrak Shyraat, the durzagon, without success.
Ciao
Mario

I ended up dropping the Vanishing Disease in my campaign.

For Pyllrak I just used the stats for the Duergar Theurge from Thunderspire Labyrinth - since 4e Duergar have durzagon elements (beard quills, etc) I thought it worked just fine.

Here's my version of Kazmojen.

So kiznit in your game Ghelve is the only "healty" gnome still living in Cauldron? All the other gnome NPCs (Skie, etc.) became humans and halfings?

No, there are other healthy gnomes in Cauldron as well, though they are few and far between. The PCs haven't encountered Skie yet so I haven't really decided what to do with her.

How do you fix the half-orcs? Do you replace some of them with tielfings or not?

Half-orcs are still just half-orcs and orcs. I've made it clear that Cauldron is a borderlands, multi-cultural city, where tieflings, dragonborn, dwarves, and even the occasional goblin or orc might be seen (though shunned)and rub shoulders throughout the city.

That great picture of Fallcrest in the 4eDMG I think really captured the spirit of Cauldron, so I showed it to my players:

And do you add/replace some dragonborn NPC?

Not as yet, no, but I imagine I will. I did sort of re-do the Stormblades, adding a 5th to match the number of PCs:

Annah Taskerhill - Human Wizard 4
Cora Lathenmire - Tiefling Ranger 4
Todd Vanderboren - Half-elf Warlock 4
Zachary Aslaxin II - Human Cleric of Kord 4
Black Dougal - Dwarven Fighter 4

Once I've built 4e NPC conversions of them, I'll post 'em if you like.

GNOME IDEAS NEEDED:

The gnome clans that founded Cauldron with Surabar may simply be a split subrace that avoid the Feywild (returning to the classical gnome background) but:

- anyone as some other idea about how adapt the 4e gnomes in SCAP?

- what about the monster entry gnome entry rules? Anyone has some chagne ready?

- what about gnome PCs?

Ciao
Mario

The atmosphere of the abandoned gnome city of Jzadirune has actually really fit in with the 4th edition flavor changes. I've been playing up the locksmith Keygan Ghelve as sort of an orphan of a disappearing race - in this case the gnome race disappearing back to the Feywild mysteriously, which ties in nicely with the Vanishing.

When the players first discovered the staircase down to Jzadirune, I added an extra cavern and a "Great Door" with a riddle to sort of tie the place in with the Feywild.

I had this idea that the Dark Creepers were "Shadowfell" versions of the Feytouched gnomes, so instead of Creepers and Skulks as (somewhat) conflicting forces in the dungeon, this time it was Creepers and Gnomes (who had been tainted by the Vanishing and were thus the Gnome Skulks as presented in the 4eMM). I've been playing up the gnomish skulks as sort of tragic figures tormented by their loss and the Dark Creepers are very much the bad guys, working for a Shadar-Kai and for Kazmojen.

The first riddle I wrote up really tried to play up Jzadirune as this place caught between the Fey and the Shadow:

This fiery mountain
is a temple of birth
Two siblings has it
on either side of the earth.
One who is dark,
a son without sun,
and the other so wild,
her laughter hearts won.
O where did they go,
her children so soon?
If you seek to enter,
know the loss of Jzadirune...

However I decided that I was getting caught up in trying to shoehorn too much 4e fluff into the place so I ended up using this simpler riddle:

A great tree of stone
grows out of a mountain
where a river of fire
can explode like a fountain.
And as leaves of ash follow
and silence shows ruin,
where wilst thou be safe,
O children of Jzadirune?

And there are 8 sockets spelling the letters STORY FOE

The players figured out relatively easily that they could touch the sockets in the right order to spell out FEYROOTS which let them into Jzadirune and nicely hinted that the gnomes were leaving the world to live in the Feywild. I was pretty pleased with using a puzzle to work in some of the 4e flavor without being too heavy-handed.

I'd probably be okay with letting a PC play a gnome, and I think there'd be great roleplaying opportunities to explore some of the possibilities concerning the idea of the gnomes being a truly vanishing race the world over.

By the way, Keygan Ghelve doesn't have a kidnapped familiar, it's a kidnapped minion, a badger named Starbrow. I've even had him talking like Francis the gnome from the 4e video. :D

I've already started 4e Shackled City. Cauldron seemed to fit well in the points of light setting, and my players have been wanting a city-based campaign for a while.

We're about a third through Life's Bazaar (players have explored maybe 50% of Jzadirune). You can read some synopsis on this thread at Circvs Maximvs (you may need an account to access these days).

Believe it or not, I was hoping to convert it mostly on the fly or with minimum prep work, and to do that has involved deviating a fair bit from the adventure with regards to monster encounters and whatnot, i.e. flipping through the 4eMM and looking for similar monster types and encounter levels and just "swapping out", considering Paizo's love for custom and obscure monsters and wacky templating (skulks, ragomuffyns and half-dwarf-half-trolls, for example). It's been a little bit difficult considering that some of that is what makes the adventure so cool :D, in essence, I've been making the adventure more boring (sorry, Adventure Path authors), but the excitement of the new edition seems to be compensating.

Converting traps seemed daunting at first (all those gear-doors) but ended up being pretty easy.

My recommendation (at least if you're a lazy DM like me) is to break the adventure down into manageable 4e encounters - splitting the dungeon into sections, say - and think of it that way. For example:

Encounter 1 - Back Alley fight with thugs rescuing the priest.
Encounter 2 - Skill challenges at the Orphanage and at Ghelve's.
Encounter 3 - Fight at Ghelve's shop (I swapped the skulk with a pair of Dark Creepers from the MM).
Encounter 4 - Entrance to Jzadirune (I put together an encounter with a "vanished" gnome and a bunch of dire rats and rat minions).
Encounter 5 and so on - Gnomish factory in Jzadirune (gotta swap that Grell with something, 4e's grells are too nasty), Gnome throne room, Alchemist's Labratory, or gnomish halls, etc.

Definitely A. I'm always eager to try something new, and I believe 3.5 needs a lot of "fixing".

That being said, may un-convert down the road if 4.0 just doesn't capture what we enjoy, and plan to still run retro games, try some OD&D or WFRP, do a D20 Modern campaign, etc. etc.

Love everything you guys do. Thanks for the continued commitment to D&D - you guys rock!

Hi kiznit,

Your subscription to the GameMastery Modules has been canceled. I believe that we're looking into adding a cancel feature some time in the future, but it's somewhere on the long list of things Gary has to do.

Cool thanks!

Hey, I too was looking for a way to cancel my Gamemastery Module subscription (I want to keep my Pathfinder subscription, though). I just can't afford both, and Pathfinder definitely seems to be the cooler of the two.

It doesn't look like there's any easy way to turn off the subscription on the "My Subscriptions" page. Any chance of fixing that? Thanks!