My party just finished There Is No Honor last session and it went really well. They even paused to speak with Rowyn but decided to remain loyal to Lavinia in the end. Unfortunately they managed to kill Rowyn before she could get away in gaseous form which kind of stinks but that’s the breaks I suppose. After the session they were discussing their next move and one of them says this:
“Hey, why don’t we just take over this taxidermist’s hall since he isn’t coming back? Heck, why not use the Lotus Dragon’s hideout too?”
The party had captured Nemien and he gave up the location of the guild and told the party he just wanted to leave town in one piece. How would the people of Sasserine react if the players tried to do this? I assume his place would be taken over by the city and auctioned off but I am open to suggestions.
Do I need to be concerned about substituting someone for Rowyn later on or just leave those encounters out? I really like the encounters she provides in Sea Wyvern’s Wake but I wonder if it’s too cheesy to use another NPC (possibly trying to get revenge for Rowyn’s death) in her place?
The party plans to give Lavinia back her 8600 gp and I’d like to reward the group accordingly. I think they each have somewhere around 2500- 3000 gp after raiding the guildhall. I like the idea of having a private banquet for the PCs where she has gifts for them (and perhaps some noble clothing for them as well- for the Dawn Council banquet). I was thinking of giving the fighters a +1 weapon each, the sorcerer a wand of magic missiles (3rd caster level), the rogue a Heward’s Handy Haversack, and the NPC cleric a +1 mithral chain shirt. If I do this I would not give them the 1000 gp bonus mentioned at the end of the adventure. Either that or give them the gold and reduce the values of the gift (items) reward accordingly. Anyone have any thoughts?
My group has taken to Lavinia rather well though no one has expressed an interest in her romantically yet. They mentioned several times when talking to Rowyn how she gives them bonuses often and genuinely seem to enjoy working for her. One of the players insists she is protected at all times (bodyguard type) but unfortunately for him he is a half- orc with a 6 charisma. I guess we’ll have to see how things progress but so far the campaign is going well.
It is a guildhall, not Nemien's private resisdence right? If so, I'd think the rest of the guild would want to claim it. And they'd probably not be happy about a secret undergound lair right below their guildhall. Or try to claim it themselves.
On the other hand, the PCs are going to be leaving Sasserine soon. Might be fun to let them have it for a while.
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My party more or less ignored the guild hall entirely, but did indeed claim the LD hideout as their own after clearing out the inhabitants. They even kept the ixits under their employ (and gave them a raise) to guard the water entrance.
I figure Nemien still runs the Guildhall but nothing else, the PC's gave him no reason to do otherwise.
As for the Sea Wyvern expedition, I'm just using Roywn's mother in her place. I figured she'd want revenge after what the PC's did to her daughter (yes my party was able to kill her before she escaped as well, and even managed to convince Gut Tugger to join them) I'm just using Rowyn's stats for Heldrath. The printed material says that Heldrath gives up on the PC's after the ambush fails with the stiltwalkers: I say different. :)
As for the Sea Wyvern expedition, I'm just using Roywn's mother in her place. I figured she'd want revenge after what the PC's did to her daughter (yes my party was able to kill her before she escaped as well, and even managed to convince Gut Tugger to join them) I'm just using Rowyn's stats for Heldrath. The printed material says that Heldrath gives up on the PC's after the ambush fails with the stiltwalkers: I say different. :)
That's an angle that I didn't think about. The party did kill their daughter after all. Perhaps I can manage to keep Diamondback alive for the task from the Bullywug Gambit. Then I can advance her as mentioned in the other thread I read about her:)
Fun, fun, fun...
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Yeah, Diamondback is a bad@$$ too. I tried REAL hard to allow her to escape but she got tangled up with our cleric who specializes in grapple attacks. Her escape artist allowed her to escape every time, but she also took damage every time, and the escape artist took her whole move action so she couldn't really escape. She just seemed way too cool to be a one-off encounter, fire and forget kind of villainess. But alas, my party is pretty tough.
That's why grapple is broken. You can have a bad ass with a sword lose to a wrestler evrytime. NEVER HAPPENS IN THE REAL WORLD. The dude with the knife always wins. I make grapplers hit the persons real armor class (none of this touch BS) and the armed person always gets a AoO which he adds the damage to the grapple.
No need for that last part - if the defender's AoO succeeds and deals damage, the grapple attempt fails automatically.
Grappling in D&D is just as good as grappling in the real world. A competent, skilled, or Pelor forbid specialist grappler will own just about anybody, sword or not. Most weapon disarm moves are easier to do with an open hand, and it is very true that a big sword does little good in a tight grapple.
I've known a lot of martial artists myself, trained with some really skilled ones, and learned enough to know just how little I know compared to them. Even the Judo sensei said to never get in a grapple if the other guy looks like he wants to get his hands on you.
D&D just brings in the fact that spells, race, items, etc, can make you even better at grappling than anyone in the real world could hope to be. Big monsters like kraken and T-Rexs exploit that same advantage. Anyone who's ever watched a snake constrict a mouse can see that it's just a flat out effective way to kill prey.
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What you're saying is true, Black Bard, to a point...on the other hand, for a guy to get that good at grappling, they have to spend a SIGNIFICANT amount of time training for it. A D&D character can MOSTLY be a cleric, but with a feat or two, he's also a grappling master.
But on the other hand, it's a heroic game and these are heroic characters. And most importantly, it's a game, not a life simulation...it's not going to be perfectly accurate, and to be honest, we probably wouldn't like it to be.