On friday my PC's encountered Rowyn Kellani in the LD guildhall and it was such a fun encounter that I thought I would tell about it.
They got to Rowyn's lounge fairly early on in their assault on the guildhall, simply because they happened to go that way. She introduced herself and said how impressed with them for what they had accomplished so far. She offered them jobs, paying substantially more than what Lavinia was paying. (Not that she knew exactly how much they're being paid by Lavinia, of course, but she made a nice offer.) The party paladin (he's a paladin of freedom from Unearthed Arcana) was unimpressed with her offer and the half-orc fighter druid who was freed from slavery by the paladin generally follows his lead in social situations. But the CN rogue/swashbuckler seemed to be considering it. There was a fun discussion between the party and Rowyn as she tried to convince them to work for her, rather then against her. She then offered to give up Vanthus to them if they would join her.
At this point I brought in a Skill Trick from Complete Scoundrel. It gives a spellcaster to conceal their spellcasting if they succeed on a sleight of hand check opposed by Spot Checks. I made the Spot checks for the PC's in secret, so as not to alert the players. (They don't metagame, but I still find it's better to do stuff like that in secret because some amount of metagaming is very hard to avoid in a sitution like that.) I was worried when the druid got a 27 on his spot check, but then Rowyn rolled a 20, and with her Sleight of Hand modifier easily beat the druid's spot check. I should mention that we use the gestalt system and I changed Rowyn to a Beguiler/Rogue instead of a Bard/Rogue. (I believe James Jacobs suggested that in a thread on gestalt STAP--thanks James!)
Rowyn concealed her casting of Charm Person on the rogue/swashbuckler and he failed his save. (Well, they didn't know he made a save they just knew I told him to roll a d20.) I took the player aside and told him that his character now regarded Rowyn as a close friend. The player handled this very well. Rather than playing it as obvious, as many players do, saying "She's my friend and I won't allow you to harm her!" he played it from a selfish angle along the lines of "If she's gonna give us Vanthus, which is what we were hired to do, and pay us a good sum in addition, then why shouldn't we work for her?" He played it so well that even though the other players knew he had made an undetermined d20 roll and I had taken him aside, they still thought he might have legitimately turned on them. After a bit more talking, the half-orc grew impatient and simply tried to take Rowyn's head off with his falchion. The battle ensued with the charmed character fighting on Rowyn and Gut Tugger's side. Rowyn failed her save against Cause Fear cast by the cleric and when she attempted to flee she was brought to the negatives by the attacks of opportunity from the paladin and the druid. The druid got a crit on his AoO. The party then managed to kill Gut Tugger and drop the charmed character to the negatives, knocking him unconscous. The cleric/wizard cast Detect Magic on him and seeing an enchantment aura explained to the other characters that he was probably enspelled by Rowyn. The party is now planning on turning Rowyn over to the authorities, and of course she will escape from jail in the future so she can show up for The Sea Wyvern's wake.
All in all, it was a great encounter that the party loved and had a lot of fun with. By choosing a morally ambigous party member to charm Rowyn was able to drive a real wedge in the party. (The paladin still doesn't quite trust the rogue/swashbuckler.)
I have to say that Complete Scoundrel was a big help in this encounter and recommend it to all who are running STAP. It's a very appropriate book for this campaign.
I also wanna thank James Jacobs for designing a great encounter. The party is loving TINH so far.
I must say - well done! I haven't yet started this AP yet, and probably won't get the chance to for some time (I'm in the middle of a campaign, and I'm going to have a heck of a time convincing my players to start something new), but just reading what's come out so far gives me chills. There is so much good stuff to mine here, and I'm so jazzed to run it. I will definitely have to add liberally from the Complete Scoundrel - I'm so enamored with that book. Of course, I've always been a bit of a skill monkey, and that book is crack to skill monkeys. :-)
Thanks! Yeah, Complete Scoundrel is a really good book. Some of the stuff is broken, there are one or two skill tricks that I'm not allowing but I like most of them and the overall concept of them is great.
It was really nice that her spell worked, because Nemien Roblach had awful luck. He did a color spray that would have removed half the party for seven rounds, then I remembered (was reminded, actually) to make his Concentration check and he failed. Then he failed his next Concentration check. And all that with Combat Casting, to boot! Sometimes the luck doesn't go your way, so it's nice when it does.