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Sorry for those of you who though this was going to be a 'how-to', it's more of a 'how do?'
My players, mostly new to DnD, have played through D0, Hollow's Last Hope, made a bit of a name for themselves in town, and have a bard in the party. They've certainly heard the Ballad of Glintaxe a number of times.
When the party defeated Graypelt, I even used some frightened miner kobolds running up the stairs to get away from 'Glintaxe' to prevent merging of the module with D1, Crown of the Kobold King. Terrified themselves, they followed the kobolds' lead and high-tailed it out of there to prepare.
Long story short, all they know of what is below the top level of the dwarven monastery is this 'Glintaxe'. They've spent the last three or four sessions planning between themselves how to take out a 'ghost'. The cleric has prepared only 'undead-related' spells. The wizard's stocked up on magic missile scrolls. He's excited to use his 'channel energy' ability against the thing.
As I've mentioned, they're new to the game, and so have never fought a ghost. Likewise, they've never fought a Gelatinous Cube, either.
We game tonight, having left the game on 'pause' at the top of the stairs.
How do I make them not KILL ME after the jig is up? How did your parties handle it? I'll give a full report later.
The best way to deal with a Gelatinous Cube is with two pieces of bread. Yummy!
So my last post wasn't overly helpful (unless you're facing a GC in real life....)
As long as you play this encounter as fairly as possible, given the "newness" of your players, this could be an encounter they'll remember for years to come, in a positive way, win or lose. Gelantinous Cubes are one of the funniest monsters in the game.
"Hey Bill, remember that time we had to pull your floating corpse out of that Gelatinous Cube?"
Do you have the D&D Mini for the GC? It may be worth investing in one off of eBay for just this occasion. Start with something representing the "Ghost" and then after a round or two (however long it takes), replace it with the GC Mini. Classic!
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When I ran this online, I made several references to the ghosts' unholy aura, and allowed perception checks every time people interacted with it. The nice thing about GCs is they have an extremely low AC, so I allowed attacks against the "ghost" to target the GC. Also, they move extremely slowly, so running away and regrouping is a good tactic against them.
I described how the arrow "struck" the plate mail, only to watch in horror as the "aura" disintegrated the shaft and feathers, leaving the arrowhead behind, how the magic missile impacted the "aura", lighting the corridor in a 10' radius around the "ghost" up.
Also, remember that once they actually spot the GC (beating its Stealth/Hide with their Perception/Spot checks), anyone with Knowledge Dungeoneering can attempt a check to identify what they're really facing.
If they're really disappointed with not having to face a "real" ghost, consider making Glintaxe (the axe) something really special, like a legacy weapon. The person who ends up with the axe will tell the story for years.
Sorry for those of you who though this was going to be a 'how-to', it's more of a 'how do?'
My players, mostly new to DnD, have played through D0, Hollow's Last Hope, made a bit of a name for themselves in town, and have a bard in the party. They've certainly heard the Ballad of Glintaxe a number of times.
When the party defeated Graypelt, I even used some frightened miner kobolds running up the stairs to get away from 'Glintaxe' to prevent merging of the module with D1, Crown of the Kobold King. Terrified themselves, they followed the kobolds' lead and high-tailed it out of there to prepare.
Long story short, all they know of what is below the top level of the dwarven monastery is this 'Glintaxe'. They've spent the last three or four sessions planning between themselves how to take out a 'ghost'. The cleric has prepared only 'undead-related' spells. The wizard's stocked up on magic missile scrolls. He's excited to use his 'channel energy' ability against the thing.
As I've mentioned, they're new to the game, and so have never fought a ghost. Likewise, they've never fought a Gelatinous Cube, either.
We game tonight, having left the game on 'pause' at the top of the stairs.
How do I make them not KILL ME after the jig is up? How did your parties handle it? I'll give a full report later.
LOL! Can't wait for the report! :-)
Suckas!
How do I make them not KILL ME after the jig is up? How did your parties handle it?
Sorry.
You're done for.
Please return to character creation.
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My player thought it was a ghost but was more focused upon the children. Having realised how slowly the 'ghost' was 'drifting' up and down the passageway they simply circled around it.
The adventurers returned later to cleanse the unexplored areas of the dungeon and got to discover a gelatinous cube (the player's first one).
and that is how the author says you should handle it, pointing, laughing and calling the players suckas!LOL! Can't wait for the report! :-)
Suckas!
Ha! No! Not at all! I was just being a douchebag.
Actually what I would do is have Glintaxe come at them in a long corridor so they have plenty of time to figure out he is not what he seems. They hurl holy water to no effect (it just sizzles away 10 feet from him...that should scare the metagamers!) that way they get a chance to realize what is going on. Also anyone with Knowledge (dungeoneering) and or Knowledge (religion) should get rolls to figure out something is amiss as well.
That's what I did when I playtested Crown.
and that is how the author says you should handle it, pointing, laughing and calling the players suckas!LOL! Can't wait for the report! :-)
Suckas!
Ha! No! Not at all! I was just being a douchebag.
Actually what I would do is have Glintaxe come at them in a long corridor so they have plenty of time to figure out he is not what he seems. They hurl holy water to no effect (it just sizzles away 10 feet from him...that should scare the metagamers!) that way they get a chance to realize what is going on. Also anyone with Knowledge (dungeoneering) and or Knowledge (religion) should get rolls to figure out something is amiss as well.
That's what I did when I playtested Crown.
[threadjack]
I'm sure going to miss Iron DM this year. I was at Sensai's table in '07 and witnessed him defeat Dreads firsthand. :)
[/threadjack]
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Ah, the report finally surfaces:
A quick breakdown of the party structure and history;
Logan, LE Human Male Monk 2
Erasmus, LN Human Male Illusionist 2
Kevlin, CN Gnome Male Bard 1/Rogue 1
Yama, CN Human Female Ranger 2
Dard, CN Half-Elf Male Cleric of Calistria 2
To be fair, the party doesn't even really care about the children. They are interested in adventuring, and making a name for themselves in and around Falcon's Hollow as a reflection of power. They care little about the town; we ran D0 Hollow's Last Hope, and upon gathering the ingredients for the cure and allowing Laurel to synthesize it for distribution, Logan choked the life out of her. They proceded to shove her in a barrel in the basement of Roots and Remedies, fill it with vinegar and seal it up. She's still pickling down there. With ample use of Disguise-based magic, they impersonated her and distributed the remedy themselves, making a decent profit off of it. A nasty lot.
Yama splits her time between being a trail-guide and a bounty-hunter for the Lumber Consortium. She reports directly to Varmos Harg, who has charged her with finding Kreed's kid. He blames the group, and Yama, for filling the children's head with stories of adventure north of the town. Her skills are useful, and the group responds well to the promise of coin as reward.
But they've heard a number of stories of their own. Hearing the frightened kobolds invoke the name of Glintaxe had them poke around a bit in town, where they learned more of the tale of the Dwarf's misadventure. It consumed them. They spent several sessions planning the demise of Glintaxe. Defeating a legend is worth a legend of your own, after all.
Entering the second level of Droskar's Crag, they happened upon some mining kobolds and their guards. They effortlessly dispatched all of these kobolds, caring little for their pleas of help or mercy. The ranger used her skills to determine which paths from this first room would lead them to Glintaxe, analyzing the movements of the kobolds' footprints. Heading west, they scouted the long corridor and were rewarded when they spied a shimmering suit of armour slowly shambling down the hall. They were about to engage it when they second-guessed themselves and fled into the nearest room, locking the door behind them.
Of course, all this commotion attracted the attention of the five stirges nesting in this room. They quickly set upon the party and drained most of their blood before buzzing off through a crack in the ceiling to nest. (they have an impressive racial bonus to grapple. Yikes!)
They exited the room and came face-to-face with the ghostly form of the deceased dwarf (at which point they retreated back into the room to regroup and come up with a plan). The ranger was first to leap into the corridor, using her mobility to stay away from the unholy creature. Her arrows sizzled before they reached the armour of the dwarf (and she rolled a 1 on her knowledge: dungeoneering check), leaving her dumbfounded and terrified (both the player and the character). Erasmus was next, using the other door to exit on the other side of the corridor, flanking Glintaxe. He unleashed a Magic Missile against the thing, and saw it merely illuminate the corridor as it collided several feet in front of the armour. Confused, he began to hurriedly flip through his collection of scrolls for a solution.
The Cleric, (who made the whole table chuckle everytime initiative was called and so changed his name quickly thereafter) tried to recall some lore on Ghosts. He shared what he knew about such foul creatures, and none of it seemed to fit with what they were experiencing. Desperate to drive off this undead menace, he Channeled Energy to drive the creature back. It was ineffectual (and the player blamed it on his 7 charisma. I didn't reveal that it actually healed the Gelatinous cube somewhat).
It wasn't until the next round, where Erasmus approached the hovering suit of armour and released a gout of flame from his hands, that the party saw the cube illuminated and quivering in pain. Kevlin, who had been hiding in the stirge room the whole time with Jeva and the fox, emerged and related some information that he had heard in passing of such hungry oozes.
The Gelatinous Cube responded to Erasmus in kind, swallowing the poor wizard whole. Logan leaped into the fray, punching his way to the sizzling form of the illusionist. He managed to wrench Erasmus free of the cube, and the party used their mobility to make short work of the cube after that.
The next room the party explored contained the peaceful and mostly dormant shocker lizards. (Which the party antagonized for no reason, and brought everyone except Logan to ~-20hp. Jaws dropped and my players protested: “I have never seen anything in a dungeon that wasn't hostile and not meant for me to fight.” I chalked it up to a learning experience and retconned the damage into non-lethal; they were dragged away by the monk as the lizards yipped in annoyance)
I chalked it up to a learning experience and retconned the damage into non-lethal; they were dragged away by the monk as the lizards yipped in annoyance)
For shame! For such a crime there is only one punishment. Death by Snu Snu!
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Jaws dropped and my players protested: “I have never seen anything in a dungeon that wasn't hostile and not meant for me to fight.”
Pshaw, I'd have told them, "Well then I guess your next characters won't metagame so much." and made them make new characters.
I had some players in my RotR game who knew they were supposed to sneak past the goblins to try and take out the leaders. Instead the first goblins they came upon they decided to Attack and kill all the goblins they spotted. I sure as shooting didn't retcon any of their deaths subsequently.
As long as one person survives, it's not a TPK, right? The campaign can soldier on...!
But, great story, thanks for telling us how it turned out. Fantastic misdirection.
As long as one person survives, it's not a TPK, right? The campaign can soldier on...!
Ah, words of wisdom!
More than 20 years ago, when I was running Keep on the Borderlands, the priests of the Shrine of Evil Chaos slaughtered every member of the party... except one, whom they took prisoner. They then foolishly let their guard down long enough to let that prisoner escape. The PC then recruited another party, which killed the priests. And so began the first truly successful campaign I ever ran in my life.
In a different BECMI campaign, when some monsters killed one PC and captured the survivors, tying those survivors up and leaving them in a guarded room, I just wanted to relocate the whole campaign in order to run a different adventure. So I had a magic portal appear right there and transport the party hundreds and hundreds of miles away. But the PCs, technically, didn't know whether their teammate was dead. So they decided to make the long journey back to find out - something I hadn't expected them to do. Of course, they had several adventures along the way, and when I no longer wanted them to continue the journey, I simply had an NPC magically show them the truth.
Hey, for that matter, even a TPK need not end a campaign. I once read a post (on a different site, I think) written by someone who had felt bitter about a TPK when it happened, but then the players all made PCs who wanted to avenge the first party. The resulting storyline actually proved MORE satisfying than if the TPK hadn't happened.
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Hmm, I don't think it was a weak move on my part. Doing non-lethal damage is certainly within the power of the Shocker Lizards, and at those numbers, still serious.
Also, considering their current strength level (all are missing at least some CON from the stirges, the wizard threw a lot of spells at the GC, the cleric's channeled plenty) this is still a s*#!ty place to be in. Add to that the need to press on in order to find the children, and it's still a huge penalty to them (for metagaming) without wiping them off the map.
As I said, they're newer players and they'll certainly approach further encounters a little differently from now on. Lesson learned, for sure.
I'm just a little worried about how they are going to take out the kobold king from here....
I think we'll run the new AP if they die....Got the PDF today! Delicious.
[threadjack]
I'm sure going to miss Iron DM this year. I was at Sensai's table in '07 and witnessed him defeat Dreads firsthand. :)
[/threadjack]
'07? Did I happen to pelt you with a big 20-sided plushie die and then give you a shiny necklace or some Gamemastery item cards for your troubles? I was the tall fellow with long hair running around assaulting and rewarding people for rolling crits. Daigle was there too, right by my side and punishing gamers with flair.
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How do I make them not KILL ME after the jig is up? How did your parties handle it? I'll give a full report later.
I just ran this part of the module the other week and my party loved how glintaxe turned out to be GC, they were totally thrown off. One of the things I mentioned was when Glintaxe approached, the ground and walls before it sizzled. When they casted faerie fire, I gave the hint that the 'square' around Glintaxe became more illuminated. Someone did fire an arrow at the cube and I made the similar effect from reading on this thread of the arrow 'slowing down' before Glintaxe and then dissolving into thin air... Basically one stood his ground and managed not to be engulfed and they eventually figured it out and finished it off. Overall, it was a fun little encounter.
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When I ran my players through this encounter, I read the descriptive text just as it's written, everyone rolled for initiative, and the Paladin went first. Assuming it was undead, she used her Lay On Hands ability in an attempt to pump it full of positive energy. The Paladin failed her saving throw and became paralyzed.
Perception checks for all! My more experienced players know to put ranks into every Knowledge skill they can, and quickly deduced the true nature of Glintaxe. Their quick thinking saved the poor, paralyzed Paladin just in the nick of time. My wife is the one playing the Paladin. She was not happy with me.
I may have to buy her love back with a Holy Avenger sword somewhere down the line.
I WANT TO RUN THIS NOW. Have one player who is scarred to death of GC due to an incident in a 2nd edition game, the one where you have to go after the orb of dragonkind. The other player has never seen or heard of one, he's new and i'm sure he will stand a good chance of being swallowed
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I WANT TO RUN THIS NOW. Have one player who is scarred to death of GC due to an incident in a 2nd edition game, the one where you have to go after the orb of dragonkind. The other player has never seen or heard of one, he's new and i'm sure he will stand a good chance of being swallowed
Just be prepared for the following:
My PCs went back up to the well and took the time to clean-up the armor and axe. The next thing I know, my dwarf barbarian/2 is wearing armor worth 10,500 gp (+9 to his AC) and weilding a +1 battleaxe worth 2,310 gp. He has upgraded it since then and I'm still dealing with his high AC.