So I finished reading Prince of Redhand last night. It's quite good - I think I'll be yanking it to use in my home game with some slight modifications. But Rhorsk makes no sense to me.
Specifically, I can't understand how a 9th level cleric has to resort to canabalism, and then starve after that. Why didn't he simply cast create food and water? I guess I'm not seeing why he'd opt to eat dead bodies instead of just casting a simple 3rd level spell once a day.
So I finished reading Prince of Redhand last night. It's quite good - I think I'll be yanking it to use in my home game with some slight modifications. But Rhorsk makes no sense to me.
Specifically, I can't understand how a 9th level cleric has to resort to canabalism, and then starve after that. Why didn't he simply cast create food and water? I guess I'm not seeing why he'd opt to eat dead bodies instead of just casting a simple 3rd level spell once a day.
It's funny how many loopholes there are in a high level adventure. Good catch, dude.
If anyone asks, maybe you can add a little backstory about the priest. I'm thinking that when he arrived in Alhaster, he was stern, cold, adn unforgiving. Bandits and other nefarious sorts were afriad of him. St. Cuthbert began to take hold, and a few laws were enacted on the God's behalf.
When a 14-year old girl was caught stealing food in the rectory, the current Alhaster Law sugessted that she have a hand removed. Instead, the priest felt pity, as well as some other stirrings. He fed her, clothed her, and eventually took her um, . . . you know. They went into the basement, as a way to hide his shame.
That night of the connsumation, in his ultimate moment of weakness, the bandits chose to attack. It turns out that the 14-year old girl was actually one of them, sent in to distract him while they robbed the place.
He tried to go upstared to overturn the collapsed stair and defend his temple, but he found that St. Cuthbert had left him due to his actions. Trapped and angry, he killed the girl, who wasn't able to escape the basement either.
Ironically, days later, with no spells and no options, the girl's body was the first one he ate (as it was the freshest). Meanwhile, any laws he had worked for were overturned with Zeech's ascension. The failure of stern St. Cuthbert to take hold led the way to Hextor, and the Blessed Angels.
As for the priest, Cuthbert's judgement was final. His disobediance at ignoring the retribution of a broken law in favor of satiating hunger. . . came back full circle. The first thing he ate was her hand.
Good backstory! I hope my copy arrives soon so I can see the front-story!
Creative Director
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Stupid cleric spells ruining cool plot elements...
My favorite way to handle this problem (and what I'll probably add if we do a hardcover version) is to simply say that when Rhorsk was trapped in the basement, he was too low level to cast create food and water. In the years after he became trapped and switched religions, he's gained several levels.
*nods*
I thought of that; create food and water is a 3rd level spell, so for that explanation to work he'd have to be 4th level or less when he got trapped. If you go with 4th, he'd need to gain 5 levels in the time since he was trapped. Not completely unreasonable, I suppose.
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Creative Director
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*nods*
I thought of that; create food and water is a 3rd level spell, so for that explanation to work he'd have to be 4th level or less when he got trapped. If you go with 4th, he'd need to gain 5 levels in the time since he was trapped. Not completely unreasonable, I suppose.
Absolutely not unreasonable. Rhorsk got trapped about when Zeech took over. Which was about 15 years ago, if I remember right. 5 level in 15 years is child's play, especially compared to the PCs, who'll probaly hit 20 in less than 1.
That's a good point.
I guess another plus with that explaination is that it only takes about ten seconds to mollify a questioning player and DM. Adding an "alignment change" backstory (as was my suggestion) only causes more words to appear on the page, which the PCs will never get to learn about anyway.