I recently picked up Classic Monsters Revisited, and of course I’m really enjoying it; but after reading the bugbear section it made me wish I had done more with Bruthazmus. Which made me wish I had done more with all the villains in Burnt Offerings in general.
One of the problems with dnd adventures is that it is very difficult to present a villain at one point in the story and then later have the PC’s fight them. Generally speaking the first time you meet a villain is the last time you meet them as well. It really adds something to the game if the PC's have some personal experience with the bad guys before they attack them.
So I’ve been trying to think of ways that I could bring Bruthazmus, Nualia, Orik, and maybe Lyrie into the story earlier. The only place I can think is during the Festival. It would make sense to me that Nualia would risk going back to town to retrieve her father’s bones. She hated enough to kill him; I could see her hating him enough to dig him up personally. And she could wear a mask, maybe even a Skinsaw mask to continue the tie in with the next book?
At any rate, if I did this I’m trying to figure out what’s the best way to pull it off, with a few things in mind:
One: the PC’s have to feel like they accomplished something, not feel 100% defeated. Firstly, because it’s a bad way to start the campaign and also because I still want to run Part Two with them as town heroes.
Two: I want the PC’s to recognize the villains later, maybe even interact with at least one of them.
One of my ideas is to have one of the party members have a mentor, they are 1st level characters, so the idea is that they are just leaving their training and are now off on their own. One of the players, preferably someone of the fighter/ranger/barbarian type, would still have their teacher with them. The mentor could be the one who brings them into Sandpoint, maybe this person used to live there and was well liked by people like Belor, Ameiko, and Shalelu. During the initial attack by the goblins, the mentor splits up to cover more ground, instructing the player character to help as many of the townsfolk as he/she can.
Then during Die, Dog, Die, the players can see the north gate of the city, where the mentor is fighting Orik in melee combat. At first it’s just the two of them and the mentor is winning, so the PC’s don’t have to worry, it’s just letting them know what else is going on. Then they look back and the mentor is fighting Nualia and Bruthazmus at the same time, while an injured Orik is off to the side with a group of horses.
Now maybe Bruth attacks from behind, or Nualia does her Lamashtu’s Mark ability, but something distracts the mentor just as the PC is watching and then the Nualia kills the mentor in a way that not even raise dead can bring back, such as beheading.
If the party attempts to get closer Bruth stays behind with his bow and shoots at them as the others ride off. If they continue pursuit, then maybe I can have a cool scene in the woods with Bruth stalking them and playing with them, but never attacking, sort of how the Bugbears are described in CMR.
Another idea is to have the party face off against the villains directly during the festival, but frankly I’m not sure how to do that and not have 1) the party is defeated or killed, 2) the party accidentally kills Nualia or at least prevents escape, or 3) the party feels cheated, like there was no way for them to win. I don’t have a problem if the party is able to kill off any of the other characters (Orik, Lyrie). And I’d want to keep Tsuso out of this so that he’s not considered a villain when his sister sends him the note later on in the adventure.
If someone has an idea beyond any of these, or comments on how they’ve handled bringing a villain into the plot early, please do so. Or if you can think of any reasons not to do this as well.
Thanks,
Mike
Nualia has to be reserved for character origin stories, I think.
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The Grave Robbers
"Grave Robbers! See them?" the peasant pointed at the crowd using shovels in the graveyard at night.
The Masked Nualia looked up.
"Hold them off!"
DM Advice: Nualia employes local hoods to help dig up a grave. When the PCs show she orders her thugs to hold them off while she makes a getaway. That way she is only seen from a distance and their next encounter will be where she is only vaguely familiar.
I wanted to somehow get early use of the thugs who die horribly at the beginning of Volume Two, but it never fit. They could be digging in the cemetery though, if you're looking for that sort of link.
First off, thanks for the link to Upping Nualia, I hadn't read that one yet and it was really helpful. In regards to the skinsaw mask, hmm. I hadn't thought of that. They're priests of murder, and maybe the mask needs to be just for them. I do think it would be neat to tie them in together, maybe thur Tsuso as suggested, she did work with them for a while in Magnimar. And it would be neat to foreshadow them a bit before Skinsaw.
I like the graverobbing idea on some level, but not sure if I'd want to do it or not yet. Simply that the whole attack on the town in many ways was a smoke screen (pardon the pun) to stealing the body, so a graverobbing moment would require a mild rewrite. Mild because I don't think the party would ever know that.
One idea that did come to mind after reading the graverobbing comment was on Nualia's thugs. Using the Yeth hounds. Except they can't handle sunlight, so they would have to be used in the nighttime.
I both love and hate monsters like Yeth Hounds. I hardly see them used, and they have some neat things to them. All that I like. What I hate is that they have a DR 10/Silver and unlike the werewolf, very few people would know this. So that means a much harder fight, even if the party has silver weapons, and most likely an awkard moment of roll Knowledge: you just remembered their weak against silver.
I really liked the thugs from Skinsaw too. I had them show up in Burnt Offerings, they knew and were sort of rivals to the party Rogue. They didn't really like each other, but never got in a fight or anything. I wish I had used them more, but the story kind of left them behind.
My villains all seem to get away. By the time we approach the end of the path the bad guys are either going to have to be killing each other off or else there's going to be no room anywhere for the PCs.
My villains all seem to get away. By the time we approach the end of the path the bad guys are either going to have to be killing each other off or else there's going to be no room anywhere for the PCs.
We ended up RotRL with a substantial number of erstwhile villains *in the party*: Aldern, Athroxis, and a substantial number of Athroxis' minions. Would have had the leaders of the giantish factions under Mokmurian, too, if it wasn't for that pesky Rune Giant special ability.
About the only time that the PCs weren't trying to recruit the villains was in Hook Mountain. For some reason....
Mary