RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32
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Hi there, i just bought my copy of D1 from my FLGS, and started digging into it. From what i see, its very well-written and i really enjoy the "designers notes" sidebars, they clear up a lot.
You forgot one, however ;) Jeva is a nice, and very athmospheric early villain/enemy. However, i am a bit at a loss at how to handle her without turning it into a very frustrating TPK. While the matrons silver daggers are a clue to her true nature, its far from obvious.
Any thoughts on how to prevent her from just ripping out the throats of silver-bearing PCs at night, then merrily slaughtering the rest?
Hi there, i just bought my copy of D1 from my FLGS, and started digging into it. From what i see, its very well-written and i really enjoy the "designers notes" sidebars, they clear up a lot.
You forgot one, however ;) Jeva is a nice, and very athmospheric early villain/enemy. However, i am a bit at a loss at how to handle her without turning it into a very frustrating TPK. While the matrons silver daggers are a clue to her true nature, its far from obvious.
Any thoughts on how to prevent her from just ripping out the throats of silver-bearing PCs at night, then merrily slaughtering the rest?
It should be fairly obvious from all the clues in the basement to be alert for a lycanthrope. If the party misses all these clues then they deserve to get punished. The players would probably even agree in hindsight. When I ran it they ran from the spiders and decided to close the trapdoor and not get distracted from their quest to find the children. When they found Jeva they split the party sending two of them back to town with the little girl- to allow them to move faster they took off their armour and took it in turns carrying the poor waif. They were a might surprised when the girl they were piggybacking turned into a werewolf. One died the other was knocked unconscious but stabilised. Because I am soft I allowed Jeva to leave them until the rest of the party turned up at which time she attacked. Due to not having many hit points she was chased off. These types of memorable goof ups are as fun as the brilliant successes- the players all accepted it was a fair cop.
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...they split the party...And with that ill-wrought decision they guaranteed at least one of them would die...
Rule #1 of Adventuring: NEVER split the party.
Rule #2: Innocent waifs are innocent maybe 3% of the time.Rule #3: Ways for party members to use spells like expeditious retreat are vital if the group is stupid enough to split up. (I don't need to outrun the werewolf, I just need to outrun you.)
Rule #4: Sending the self-sacrificing noble heroes first will let the rest of the party survive, particularly if the cowardly rogue is in the back as a clueless shield for the casters.
Yeah. I often say "we split up" as a joke when confronted with a creepy and potentially dangerous scenario. I think if I seriously said, "Um, we split up and we take off our armor" I would expect most DMs to feed me my own @ss on a ciabatta.
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Yeah. I often say "we split up" as a joke when confronted with a creepy and potentially dangerous scenario. I think if I seriously said, "Um, we split up and we take off our armor" I would expect most DMs to feed me my own @ss on a ciabatta.
Any player of mine foolish enough to go haring off alone will be kobold food in short order, with one exception; if they seperate as part of a plan to set up an ambush, thry have a fighting chance as long as it isn't shot to hell by an idiot's maneuver (such as one legendary session where a 'bait' character decided that since he was bait, he should be drawing attention and began blasting on his signal whistle as loud as he could, drawing an entire kobold tribe from their above-ground encampment...)
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Rule #2: Innocent waifs are innocent maybe 3% of the time.Unless I'm the GM, in which case it's more like 98% of the time. ;)
Which, combined with the predictable Evil Fiend GMs, leaves the average at 3%.
Me, there's even odds, depending on where the players are... I find it far more entertaining to see how many people I can leave traumatized by half a dozen kobolds.
With Jeva, I had the party help her as the poor unfortunate survivor of the orphanage. She told the group of the kobold that took the children, as she would like the PCs to track them down and then she can feed on all of them. What the group did was try to take her back to the Hollows, part way there she decided to attack them. Two of the PCs had the daggers from the orphanage and one had the manacles. Between the three and the spell-caster, they manage to hurt her enough that she decided to run away. I let her escape as I plan on her bringing back other werewolves to harrass the party and also to act as a medium between two of my mods for the ongoing campaign.