So I ran the final battle of Tides of Dread today.
The final encounter with Vanthus looked something like this (I will be adding the full details of the game session to my campaign journal over the course of the week see- a canuk runs savage tide)
Vanthus shows up. Three PCs are near Lavinia, as they knew from divinations that Vanthus might be coming for her.
Two PCs are out at sea scuttling ships.
Vanthus is flying and says his greetings to his sister and tries to dominate her but fails.
The PCs in the area are pretty much grounded and busy fighting pirates, while one of them is fighting the Yuan Ti wizard.
Vanthus next casts mass suggestion the cleric fails his save and finds himself feeling very dirty and needing a bath in the harbor. He runs off and leaps off the pier.
Conjurer has expended most of her spells already but casts a glitterdust at Vanthus penetrating spell resistance. Vanthus fails his save and is blinded.
Vanthus pulls out the pearl and threatens to drop it if anyone attacks him, hoping to buy time and let the spell effect wear off. Gish PC keeps firing adamantine crossbow bolts at the stoneskinned Yuan-Ti wizard, PC cleric is still bathing in the harbor and PC conjurer decides to go ahead and magic missile Vanthus.
Vanthus drops pearl. He is hovering above one of the waterfront warehouses and with no one nearby to do anything it shatters on the roof and starts sputtering gas. The PCs know the pearl is dangerous, but their characters have come in post Bullywug gambit and even the players don't remember the details of how Vanthus' journal described it working. They ingore the sputtering pearl and focus on dealing with the wizard (who keeps fireballing them with his wand) and a blinded Vanthus. They eventually manage to kill the blinded Vanthus through a combination of spells, ranged attacks, and a paladin (NPC) that the cleric casts airwalk on after finishing his bath. In the same round they land the killing blow against Vanthus the sputtering pearl explodes.
One of the PCs (Czar the grappler) had run off to search for Vessarlin because he was so badly heart and the PC zombie master cleric was useless as healer. That player had brought in his conjurer a backup character that filled the spot of Liamae from the Jade ravens. Poor Czar, though not near the battle failed his save and was turned into a savage creature.
Now the heroes are up to their necks in Savage critters, but have a couple of empty ships they can retreat to and plan what to do next.
Something simmiliar happend to my group, and the campaign took a decidly darker turn. They found a journal detailing the location of the source of the pearls and continued on as the modules allowed but with no safe haven and no place to resupply, as noone wanted to risk a misstep on the t-port back to the mainland. Pirates captured the vessles they sent the survivors back on, so they had double the reason to go to skuttlecove. Now my group is finishing up EoME and Lavinia is a sullen destitute(The Dawn Councel ruled that the Vanderborn holdings be liquidated to pay reperations to those who died on farshore) ex-noble who is just trying to stop The plans Vanthus was a part of to try to restore what is left of thier family name. Also it should make Igiwiliv's (sp?) post path plans easire.
I could see our a campaign proceeding somewhere along those lines as well. It will be interesting to see how it goes from here.
Something simmiliar happend to my group, and the campaign took a decidly darker turn. They found a journal detailing the location of the source of the pearls and continued on as the modules allowed but with no safe haven and no place to resupply, as noone wanted to risk a misstep on the t-port back to the mainland. Pirates captured the vessles they sent the survivors back on, so they had double the reason to go to skuttlecove. Now my group is finishing up EoME and Lavinia is a sullen destitute(The Dawn Councel ruled that the Vanderborn holdings be liquidated to pay reperations to those who died on farshore) ex-noble who is just trying to stop The plans Vanthus was a part of to try to restore what is left of thier family name. Also it should make Igiwiliv's (sp?) post path plans easire.
Kewl... I can only hope that my players (who have developed an alarming tendency towards paying attention to details of late) forego that information and suddenly find themselves awash in savage mooks and fellow PC's ...
It was a most joyous occasion for me. They weren't as happy; go figure...
Kewl... I can only hope that my players (who have developed an alarming tendency towards paying attention to details of late) forego that information and suddenly find themselves awash in savage mooks and fellow PC's ...
In a way this is good though--it is a good nasty reminder of how much they don't want this plot to succeed. I mean, the more go off the more horrors they spawn.
In a way this is good though--it is a good nasty reminder of how much they don't want this plot to succeed. I mean, the more go off the more horrors they spawn.
Absolutely - I rather hope to hose them repeatedly with goof ups such as these.
And PH Dungeon, the vrock mobile assault squad is something I will definitely steal ... the as-written assault on Farshore by the bad guys seems kind of tame from a brief re-read of it.
And, well, what can I say, they're vrocks, they have nifty nasty abilities, and ... they're vrocks. RAWRK!!
Here's another little bit of nasitness I threw in. When I statted up the V'sslerain or however you spell his snakey name. I made him a wizard giving him access to higher level spells. I decided to go for a reptilian and demonic theme with him, so I gave him gutsnake, but I stacked with with Balor Nimbus, so when his gut snake is grappling in addition to the regular crushing damage it automatically inflicts 6d6 fire each round- nasty combo. It played out really well. He was a total bastard, and probably caused more damage to the party then any other character.
Anyhow I'll be posting my campaign journal soon and you can read how it played out. It ended up being a tricky fight to run. I had two game tables going at one time. Some of the players were out trashing ships and the others were defending the shore, so I sat them at a separate table away from the shore group. It made for a lot of running back and forth on my part, but it was pretty cool because the players out smashing ships didn't real know how the other group was doing. It was great when the shadow pearl went off because the group of players who were on scuttling detail had just finished mopping up the defenders on the Brine Harlot and were thinking about going back to shore to see how the others were doing, when suddenly they see this massive magical explosion radiate out from the docks and wash over them. They just started cursing. It was great.
..., when suddenly they see this massive magical explosion radiate out from the docks and wash over them. They just started cursing. It was great.
LOL nice job.