Just finished running Drakthar's Way for my party, and they killed Drakthar in the second round of combat, first time he tried to ambush them. The elven wizard with the bat familiar has like a +12 listen and was able to hear Drakthar's approach. When they realized in the first round that he had DR, the two clerics in the party got their wands of cure moderate and cure light out and let him have it. One dead Drakthar. Of course they found his lair after that and, just to be extra sure, stabbed him through the heart with the silver tipped spear, cut off his head, doused his head in holy water and his body in lantern oil, and burned the body.
The only problem the party had was from the initial goblin ambush, when the party's half-elf monk ate it from a scorching ray that critted. Dropped him to -11.
The two mercenaries, last encounter they had in the dungeon as they were looking around for some exp so two of the members would level up, fell in the second round too. The sorcerer was rushed by half the party while he was summoning, and before his summon spell got off, two summoned creatures of the party flanked and killed him, one of the creatures scoring a crit. Augment summoning goes far in the damage department, with level two summons dealing 11-12 points on average. The tiefling was flanked and sneak attacked, and then finished by the party's halfling cleric casting an inflict moderate wounds (they love the inflict spells).
It was the first encounter with him. They didn't have any means of bypassing DR, I just happen to have three seperate characters in the party with levels of cleric and they ganged up and cured him to death. He didn't have time to use the wolf form. He tried to sneak up on the party from the ledge but the necromancer/cleric heard him (elf with bat familiar) and the party wasn't surprised. First round he escaped damage and jumped down to lay waste on the party ranger with his mace or whatever, and was pretty much instantly flanked and cured to death the following round. Had a cure moderate roll for something like 18 or 19 (augment healing feat), and he saved against that, but failed in his save against the cure light wounds wand, which knocked him into gaseous form.
The party knew they were looking for a vampire. One of the party members hired a sage to translate the goblin from the vandalized sites, and "Drakthar is dead. Long live Drakthar!" coupled with "Drakthar has bat ears" really gave it away. I wouldn't let the party look up how to kill a vampire, but they knew silver through the heart and chopping off its head from Dracula and folklore and what not, and then the holy water only made sense to them. Burning it was really just the rogue wanting to do something to the body as well.
I like your group lol - my group I'm sure is heading for a TPK becuase umm yea no body believes in playing a cleric. And they're heading for a fight with Ike in the Cathedral of Wee Jas in the Secret of the Soul Pillars adventure.
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I posted about this once already, but I'll add a little more depth.
When my party entered Drakthar's Way, they only knew they were looking for the goblin's leader. I gave Drak a 10% chance to show up each encounter, and occasionally in between encounters. He must have been sleeping, because the group went from the bathhouse to the base of the mountain without encountering him. Then a spell of Comprehend Languages translated the goblin writing that said 'vampire', so they went back to town to prepare.
A few silver weapons and many holy water vials later, they returned to the caverns and began searching. This time Drakthar got the drop on them, and summoned 5 swarms of bats to whittle away their health. He chose to sneak carefully up and try to Dominate the dwarf barbarian during the chaos.
The party took a lot of damage from the bats, with the rogue/monk beating them out of the air with some degree of success. The cleric's Lesser Vigor kept him up and protected from bleeding. The dwarf at first failed his save against the Dominating gaze, but the paladin used an immediate action spell to give him another chance. Sure enough, he resisted the second time, making Drakthar blink. Dwarf swings and misses.
The next round, the paladin and barbarian flanked Drakthar and failed to hit his high AC. The cleric added to the paladin's chances (since the paladin's greatsword was the only silvered and magic weapon in the party) with a Bull's Strength. Drak slapped the barbarian with his morningstar, nearly dropping him.
Final round, the paladin declares Smite and hits, scoring 22 points of damage. Drakthar goes poof, everybody cheers. Without a lucky roll in that round, or possibly the next, this would have been a loss. The barbarian was going to sunder the vampire's wooden shield, but his AC was still very high. The rogue chose wisely in dealing with the bat swarms, since his fists did normal damage to them. The saving grace is Drak's 14 hitpoints, which gives him a very small window to rely on his fast healing 5.
I should also point out that when I'm running a BBEG, I like to stick to the tactics suggested for the encounter. I went for the bat swarms and Dominate, and then fell back on Drak's determination to drop one foe before retreating. After all, the barbarian was close to passing out during most of the encounter, so he -looked- like easy pickings.
The cleric correctly identified the need to destroy the vampire in his coffin (Knowledge:Religion), so the search continued for another 15 minutes until it was found.
They were quite happy with Drakthar's treasure trove too, but later spent most of it preparing for the Demonskar Ball.
The party knew they were looking for a vampire. One of the party members hired a sage to translate the goblin from the vandalized sites, and "Drakthar is dead. Long live Drakthar!" coupled with "Drakthar has bat ears" really gave it away. I wouldn't let the party look up how to kill a vampire, but they knew silver through the heart and chopping off its head from Dracula and folklore and what not, and then the holy water only made sense to them. Burning it was really just the rogue wanting to do something to the body as well.
This is really a situation of player knowledge vs. character knowledge. Sure the players know to cut off a vampire's head or stab him through the heart from watching Buffy, Angel and the countless Dracula movies, but the characters might not have known this (without a relevant Knowledge [religion] check, of course).
And "bat ears" really describes bugbears more than "vampires."
This is really a situation of player knowledge vs. character knowledge. Sure the players know to cut off a vampire's head or stab him through the heart from watching Buffy, Angel and the countless Dracula movies, but the characters might not have known this (without a relevant Knowledge [religion] check, of course).And "bat ears" really describes bugbears more than "vampires."
Well, like I mentioned, one of the players is running a long shadowed necromancer/cleric who is absolutely obsessed with undead. He wants to become an undead himself before the end of the campaign (he's LN, not evil, he's just obsessed with undead). I figured that the average adventurer knows enough about vampires to know that they're hard to kill, and with two other clerics in the party, as well as a ranger with knowledge (dungeoneering), which in my campaign allows players to know useful hints about creatures with a DC 15 + CR check, they were going to figure it out eventually anyway.
And the ranger actually had three of the things translated, those two, and the "Drakthar is the fog" one. The first one gave away that he was undead, and references to bats and fog...
I'm not complaining about how good my players are at killing things (half the party is pretty seasoned in DnD), I'm just amazed at how fast they killed Drakthar. It was probably my fault for not taking them seriously as a threat. I seriously thought Drakthar was going to really run straight through them unopposed. I don't see how anything in Flood Season can challenge them now. I start that tomorrow, so I'll let you guys know.
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Well, I hope Drakthar lasts longer in my game. Last week they got sidetracked thanks to the wererats.(One of my players was bit and failed the save and began freaking out that his character was going to become an NPC, so I had them rushing to find a cleric powerful enough to cast heal and cure him of the lycanthropy.) So we left off with them outside the bathhouse.
One of my characters got bit by Tongueeater today and has contracted lycanthropy. I don't know if she's going to have it removed or not. If she doesn't, she'll regret it, for sure. I don't know about making her player an NPC or not.
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One of my characters got bit by Tongueeater today and has contracted lycanthropy. I don't know if she's going to have it removed or not. If she doesn't, she'll regret it, for sure. I don't know about making her player an NPC or not.
The lycanthropy text says that you eventually become the alignment of the lycanthrope that bit you, and we don't allow CE or NE in our games. The truth is though, I was going to allow the player to retrain to gain ranks in Control Shape and allow him to continue playing his character until he could find a cure, most likely creating a sidetrek adventure after Drakthar's Way. He is the one who freaked out though and started panicking convincing the rest of the party that they needed to help him cure his lycanthropy before it even took effect.
The wererats infected a character in our group(the player doesn't realize it yet though). Our party had a difficult time fighting them and are all about purchasing silver weapons now and are even considering delving back into Jzaridune in hopes of finding treasures they missed. they have no idea who Drakthar is at this point, although they have had the various grafitti translated. They just haven't put it together.
A cure for lycanthropy shouldn't be to easy IMO, any ideas for a side treck?
For my group the graffetti was a big clue to Drakthar's nature and after the run in with the were-rats in the bath house they decided to wait a day and pool cash to buy a silver weapon for the main tank (there were also one or two floating around in Life's Bazaar). With 2 clerics, a paladin and sister Jenya at the temple they had a decent chance to know something about vampires (via Knowledge: religion).
He ambushed them three times and retreated as soon as they started casting. Twice he nearly killed the Aisimar Paladin (once tossing him off of that rope bridge) so they returned to the surface. On their third encounter with him, in the cavern below is coffin, he dominated the Dwarf spiked-chain fighter who nearly wiped out the group. 3 players dog-piled the dwarf while the Duskblade got real lucky with a few "Kilgore's Fire bolts" and took down Drakthar.
Drak's got a huge AC vs mundane attacks but very few HP so a steady volley of magic missiles or ranged touch attacks really nuters him.
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The wererats infected a character in our group(the player doesn't realize it yet though). Our party had a difficult time fighting them and are all about purchasing silver weapons now and are even considering delving back into Jzaridune in hopes of finding treasures they missed. they have no idea who Drakthar is at this point, although they have had the various grafitti translated. They just haven't put it together.
A cure for lycanthropy shouldn't be to easy IMO, any ideas for a side treck?
Well, the idea I was going to use was that the players would find out that a caravan of Pelor's Radiant Servants were transporting a relic known as The Shroud of Pelor, said to have the power to cure any affliction. The caravan was making a stop in Cauldron before heading to Sasserine to catch a ship to wherever, when someone stole the Shroud in the middle of the night. The players, having begun to make a name for themselves in investigation thanks to the success of their last two adventures, are asked to help find the Shroud, in return the Church of Pelor will allow them to use the Shroud and reward them with a small number of healing items appropriate to each character (no more than 750gp each). I was going to have the shroud have been taken by a young man who wanted to use the Shroud to cure his fiancee who seems to have contracted some strange curse after she bought a magic wand. (My party never learned that some of the items they found in Jzardirune were cursed and sold them) I was going to have the party receive a divination from the Clerics of Pelor that would state "The Shroud rests in the hands of one who seeks to save love from Vanishing." Some small research and Gather Information checks should point them on the right track.
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Co-owner - Battlegrounds to Board Games
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One of my characters got bit by Tongueeater today and has contracted lycanthropy. I don't know if she's going to have it removed or not. If she doesn't, she'll regret it, for sure. I don't know about making her player an NPC or not.
Tongue eater is an afflicted lycantherope himself and is not capable of turning the PC's into were-baboons. If you look at his statblock I believe he does not have "curse of Lycanthropy" which only natural born lycanthropes get which allows them to transmit the disease with the bite. Secondly he only has DR 5/silver which is consistant with sfflicted lycantheropes, natural lycanthropes have DR 10/silver. You could let the player fear that the disease has been contracted or just make him a natural lycanthrope and up his DR 10/silver. I don't think there is any difference in challenge rating between a natural and an afflicted lycanthrope anyway.
Not an issue with Tongueater now. Party instantly went back to town and cured the PC, pulling the party gold recovered from the inn. I'll keep that in mind from here on out though, about the lycanthropy and inflicted and natural.
