So after years of careful poking and prodding of my local warhammer group, sever fresh young pieces of gaming fruit have fallen into my oh so patient clutches...Three guys who have all had some degree of experience with D&D and plenty of experience RPGing in general have been discovered, and propperly tempted with hints and wifs of Pathfinder. This plus an old gaming friend of mine from back in the day when third edition came out (though we'd both been playing longer, neither of us knew the other gamed until then...up till that point we were just drinking buddies) gives me the propper numbers to begin things.
Our local necron player, Kevin, is playing an elvin cleric of Cayden Cailean, he's going to be a rear of the party type with his elvin bow proficiency and buffing/healing spells. One of our local guard players, Trever, is playing a human fighter who is the upfront-man, with a greatsword, power attack, and cleave. A multi army owner who seems to favor chaos named Kolten is playing a tengu monk that will also be upfront and in the thick of things, taking advantage of the tengu's ability to use swords (specifically the elvin curved blade) until his unarmed damage get's higher. Lastly we have my buddy vic, who mostly plays orcs these days, but has chaos and guard, and is running a dwarven wizard with a terribly low armor class, and will likely be at the back of the party with kevin, pelting villians and monsters with a light crossbow and ranged spells.
So we have all the basis covered near as I can tell. No propper rogue, but if what I've seen so far is ture, anyone can search for traps as long as they're not magical...so that will leave spell casting to locating the mystical devices of doom. Two front line warriors should be able to handel most melee challenges, though I do look forward to surrounding the party with the Thistletop goblins, and later doing likewise with the Hook Mt ogres. One cleric for buffing and a couple healing burts will hopefully keep the party patched up well enough, and I'll be suggesting the crafting of wands of cure to supliment. A stout little arcane caster should be able to handel the artillery requirements, though I'm concerned that he's going to rely too much on his "dwarven toughness" to see him through having such a low (11) AC.
This coming saturday we'll be starting Burnt Offerings, so I need to get up and atit as far as getting the players up to date on the setting info. Last night we made characters, and I spoke a little of the setting and coming adventure, but not enough to truely get them propperly educated.
Some of us have reservations on some of the changes brough on by Pathfinder. The dwarven wizard doesn't feel you have enough control when it comes to skills. A couple of the feats got not quite frustrated looks when the specifics were discovered (namely cleave and power attack). Over all though people seem to like what they've seen of it. One particular odity was the thought of throwing a slashing only dagger, and how you would describe the injury. Wasn't so much a complaint, as a WTF!?
Still need to go over Burnt Offerings and update the monsters to PFRPG, though I've got the goblins from the bestiary preview. I'll probably work on sin spawn next, though I need to write up the classed goblins before I forget...and gobling dogs... I was thinking of changing Nualia to a sorcerer instead of a cleric, but likely won't. I know for sure I'm going to change Ironbriar from Skinsaw Murders quite a bit, making him an elderly half elf and changing him to a noble from Green Ronin.
Killer. Thanks for the link. I found that a while back and wanted to use it, but forgot to bookmark it. Now I won't have to write my own letter up.
Yeah, skinsaw shouldn't be too hard to mesh. No women characters, but I imagine Alderan (sp?) and our cleric of the party god should probably hit it off pretty well. As for Hook Mt I'm hoping to have one of the classed badguys at the end of the first adventure get taken alive and need to be transported to Magnimar for prosicution by our friendly neighborhood serial killer judge. Saw the idea in another post and rather liked it. So I'll be encouraging taking prisoners as we go through the adventure.
Haven't gotten a chance to write anything up really, just study the bard class for the warchanter conversion. Maybe tonight.
So, today was my group’s first session in the Rise of the Runelord adventure path. Things went smooth enough I suppose, though they could have gone better. I haven’t ran a game (other than for my sister and nephew) in years, and am quite rusty to say the least. Several of the roleplaying scenes (especially where they party was approached to save Aimeko) were very forced. That should get better as I get back into the habit.
The first session saw the party get all the way up to and through the glass-works, though much of the “local heroes” section was skipped as I totally butchered the timeline. We’ll come back and do several of those encounters after I read through the adventure better. Tsuto was taken out almost immediately by the party’s monk with subdual damage, as they actually freed his sister first and she asked them to stop him without killing him. Part of it was I didn’t expect the party to get this far, so I hadn’t converted him over and only eyeballed his skill bonuses. His perception should have been higher, which would have allowed him to hear the monk coming and not been surprised. Ahhwell. I wanted him taken alive so the party could transport him to Magnimar and be introduced to judge Ironbriiar, I just wish he could have gotten some licks of his own in first. Likely I’ll have him escape and take revenge. Or have him sentenced to the Black Arrows…so he can get his fight in during Hook Mt.
The party cleric couldn’t hardly hit to save his life, and is inexperienced enough that he’s not using his spells as best he can. Going to have to look through what he could be using and give him some advice. The party fighter was power attacking every attack, until he finally got the picture that he didn’t need the extra damage against the goblins. I brought the monk to 0 hit points twice I think, surprising everyone with just how nasty the goblins were. Our ranger was killing things left and right with his bow, as goblin was his favored enemy. Plus two to hit and damage is devastating.
Overall I thought the grunt bad guys wound up pretty scary and the classed bad guys were much softer than I was expecting. This had a lot to do with not so stellar tactics on my part, as well as irritatingly good rolls on their part (against the named guys). Some of the poor tactics were on purpose, such as one of the goblin pyros throwing a burning cat at the fighter instead of charging…a goblin charging out of melee with the fighter towards the cleric after she did a healing burst…a goblin climbing up ontop of a table to look for a new weapon after his dog slicer broke on the monk. It was pretty funny when the cleric did that healing burst though, as they had only brought the goblin commando down to -1...and she burst for three thinking all the standing goblins hadn’t been hurt yet. The commando hops back up with two hit points and proceeds to torment the fighter some more while the monk repeatedly missed him. The way I run things is if you have a PC class and a name you go to negative con before dying, just like a PC…if you’re just a goon, then you dye at 0.
Aldren was saved and offered his boar hunt, which was accepted, though I think they felt more that they had to than wanted to. The cleric of the drinking god (really need to memorize his name) wound up being an elvin woman with a higher than average charisma…or in other words, perfect. Should lead nicely into Skinsaw.
Hemlock and gang are off in Magnimar trying to recruit help with the goblins, so when the party returns to town with Tsuto they’re going to have to put him in the jail and hope the remaining guardsmen can keep him contained for a few days. While they’re waiting I’ll probably pull the “farmer’s daughter” encounter on someone. I was supprised with the number of above average charismas in my little party. Lowest is a ten, and that’s the elvin ranger. Plenty of potential targets for whatsherslut to seek out.
After Hemlock returns the party will need to travel to Magnimar with Tsuto so he can be tried and sentenced by Justice Ironbriar. I might have a city encounter or two to give people a taste of the metropolitan life before we get there on business.
Second session went much better than the first. Still getting back into the groove, but the adventure ran noticably more smooth this go around. Finaly I had a "I forget his name, but the bugbear in Thistletop was talked about most of the session as the "bastard of the evening". Ripnuget got his licks in as well, though doing significantly less damage, he was more considered frustrating than dangerous with his AC20.
We left off with everyone in the glassworks, Tsuto tied up and knocked out, the goblins dead, and the party pumped up by their victory. The got the prisoner back to town and locked up after explaining the situation to some of the evening guards. They checked on Amieko and found her safe and secure back in the Rusty Dragon. Later that night the tengu monk was wondering around town as he often does, and came across a pair of merchants who's horse was ganked by greenskins. That morning the went out tracking the horse and goblins.
The party ranger spotted the scene of the crime easy enough, and noticed a stealthy bugbear was with the goblins, possibly leading them. When they got closer to the goblin lair he noticed some human sized foot prints joined the goblins, but couldn't tell if they were "with" the goblins or following them. Eventually they made it to Thistletop, and found a path through all the briars. Just as they were about to enter, out steps a human traveler from the woods.
He introduces himself as the onwer of the horse, and asks that the party join him in rescuing his stolen property. Sceptical, the party agrees, though everyone decides to keep one eye on their new "friend".
Many goblins die, the DM fudges the location of just about everything as he didn't study up on the adventure (again), and a good time is had by all. They find the horse, and chop a way through the thistles to get the beast back to town. (Is it just me or is it not explained very well how the goblins got the horse through all that?).
Remembering how beat up the merchants who initiated this little quest were the monk suggests looking for them at the church/hospital, to get the ownership of the horse figured out. While walking through town the new comer dissapears and makes his way to the Hagfish, where a roudy night of chuging fishtank water begins.
The horse is returned to the propper owner, a reward is given, and everyone breaths a sigh of relief (I'm a little tight with gold in this campaign, and people were becoming concerned). The ranger goes to bed, and the cleric, fighter, and monk all end up at the hagfish to join in the drinking of the hagwater, and to rib the new rogue about how they sold "his" horse.
Hemlock returns and as informed of Tsuto's involvement in the raid, the murder of his father and workers, and the assault on thistletop. He thanks the party for their good deeds, asks that they continue their purge of the Thistletop goblins, and informs them of two potential missions they could help him with. These smugler's tunnels will probably need to be investigated, though Hemlock is sending some guardsmen to check out the glassworks. The second is transporting Tsuto to Magnimar se he might stand trial.
Things ended after a second assault on Thistletop, which saw more goblin ears collected, and Ripnuget brought down eventually. The first scary encounter was with the bugbear, after the party split up. The monk and rogue went off to investigate one path, which lead them to a pantry of sorts, while everyone else wound up in the room with the bunyp lair. The bugbear announced his presence by shooting the rogue in the back, who dropped and pretended to die. His ruse worked so well the monk believed it and charged into the bugbear and traded misses for several rounds, doing a little damage here and there. Eventually the bugbear got a hit, and took well over half the monk's hitpoints...seeing the seriousness of the situation the rogue hopped up and got into flanking position.
In the sacrifice room the party witnesses one of the goblins get thrown down the hole, and used that as an opportunity to make their attack. The goblins folded easily enough, and everyone charged up to the sound of combat coming from the pantry. Just as they arrived the bugbear finally went down, but not before dropping the rogue to negatives. The cleric healed everyone, making sure that all the badguys were dead this time before using the burst.
The next encounter was Ripnugget and about half a dozen goblins. Mostly it was a fun combat, though it started to drag a little as hardly anyone could hit the head goblin. Another group circled around from behind and caught the party in a thistle hall, while Ripnugget and another goblin acted like the anvil.
Session ended after everyone got back to town. Next is going to be the prissoner transfer. I'll wrtie more on that a little later.
Thank you for the interest and ideas. I'm going to have a body or two show up when they finally get to Magnimar, though things have transpired that change those plans a little.
Third session was finally, after very long last, played. With illness/finals/pet catastrophies/hollidays going on, things have become very difficult, but we will continue to play this out until the campaign is finished.
With the APG playtest going on, I offered my group an opportunity to make new characters as long as they were of the new classes, and had one person interested. Our elvin ranger is now a halfling bone oracle/summoner. Some of the NPCs have been/will be changed around as well, so I can have some fun with the new classes to.
Last sunday we got together with two members of the original group, plus a new arival from our Warhammer group, who's been wanting to try out RPGs. The newguy made an elvin necromancer, and the two originals are the human fighter and halfing oracle/summoner. I justified the two new characters (though the player was the same, we had to introduce the halfling as if he were knew) by saying they were adventurers from distant Falcon's Hollow (was going to run that a few weekends ago when a lot of people couldn't show) and were introduced to the party by sherif Hemlock.
The party had two goals, both of which needed handling in a timely manner. Tsuto needed to be transported to Magnimar, and Thistletop needed to be cleared out. The half of the group who didn't show up (human rogue, tengu monk, elvin cleric, and the elvin ranger) volunteered to escort Tsuto to prison, while the remainder decided to tackle Thistletop.
When they were about three quarters of the way back to the goblin tribe's lair the party encountered a lone goblin dressed rather oddly just off the side of the path. Wearing a badger skin cloak and weilding a gnarled old tree branch with a metal spear tip on one end, the goblin introduced himself as shaman of the tribe they were on their way to eradicate. He offered them an alternate idea. Slay the "stupid angle woman and her stupid long shank friends" who corrupted the mind of the tribes chief, and he could insure the goblins would pester Sandpoint no longer. After a bit of back and fourth the party agreed, fully expecting the goblins to go on the offensive as soon as Nualia and company were down. They learned that the "stupid angle lady" had a nasty pet, like a big dog, but bigger and scarier.
They took their time going through the bottom level of Thistletop, desperately looking for treasure, as everyone is really feeling the lack of coin by this point. I added in a few things here and there, mostly because I was getting tired of esentialy empty rooms. Eventually they made it to the room Nualia and Lyrie were in, having a discussion about the death of the bugbear (I forget his name), and what they needed to do when the adventurer's came back.
Nualia and Lyrie noticed the party outside the door (sucessful perception check, against a group of armed individuals who made no attempt at stealth) and began quietly casting buffing spells. The party listened at the door, heared the whispered spell casting, and the panting of a large doglike animal, and began casting their own buffing spells...The image of the two groups, seperated only by a door, frantically casting spells to make them more likely to kill eachother was awesome.
Once everyone was ready, the fighter burst into the room, followed by a ghoul touch spectral hand that hit Nualia right off the bat, and our party's eidolon. Lyrie had cast invisibility right from the start, and so the party only saw nualia and a hyena themed eidolon. I changed Nualia to a summoner3/fighter2 and armed her with two master work kukris instead of the bastard sword.
As is typical of a named NPC in my running of this adventure path, Nualia wiffed her fortitude save against the ghoul touch, and was paralized for three rounds. The fighter ran in and hacked the holy hell out of her, the two eidolons engaged eachother, and lyrie appeared when she pelted the necromancer with an acid splash.
Next round the fighter coup de graced Nualia, bringing her to -2 (though they only saw her go down, and thought she was dead, not dying), the party eidolon butchered the hyena eidolon, and Lyrie gave up.
Gotta run...but I'll post the rest soon.
After the fight the group searched Nualia (and found very little, as I wasn't finished statting her up unfortunately) and took most of Lyrrie's gear. They bound the mage, thinking she was the summoner, and started asking questions. They were told she was just hired to investigate the Thasilonian ruins, and that Nualia was the big boss lady (yet another named NPC bada$$ that dropped like an alcohol stained prom dress...). She showed them arround, and they systematically looted the entire complex...which earned them plenty of notes and journals, and very very little treasure.
Heading back to town and selling off what they could (luckily the party fighter, who is normaly not the most social person, wound up doing the trading, so I gave them a "heroes of Sandpoint" discount, for him being part of the raid). Scrolls and potions got distributed, Lyrrie's spell book was confiscated by the party necromancer, who was anoyed to find out the number of spells she had of his bared schools, and all the villians weapons went to getting the fighter some better armor and a masterwork great sword.
We were going to run through the Catecomes of Wrath, but ended up not having time.
Observations...
I'm not fond of the Summoner class as it is. I think the eidolon is very hard to get a grasp on, and causes several issues with game play. More on that at a different day.
Burnt Offerings is a very cool adventure, though I wish I would have prepared for it a lot better. There's much more going on than I originally thought, and if I run it again with a different group, I'm going to go through and take extensive notes while reading it to keep everything straight.
There is very little treasure in this. My party isn't the type to strip armor and weapons off goblins and try and sell them...So beyond getting paid for rescuing the horse from Thistletop...they've gotten whatever treasure the named NPCs had, and that's about it. Leading to a third level party with no masterwork weapons on the fighter. I'm not sure if we're missing something or what's going on, but it's getting frustrating.
Things are running smoother, but I find myself rushing the roleplaying scenes, which is leaving us hopping from one dungeon to the next. Not sure if it's just that I'm pumped to get to Skinsaw...or I'm just not excited to play shop keepers and town folk. Always been a much better player than DM.
After much complication and finagling of schedules, we managed to get together and game last Sunday. Our last session saw the elvin necromancer (he finally named his character, though I forgot to write down the name), Thistledown (the Halfling bone oracle/summoner), and Adrian (human fighter) in the Catacombs of Wrath. The party had just finished with the zero gravity room, which was rewound to get the returning tengu monk back in with everyone.
Not long ago the elvin ranger, tengu monk, Argento (human rogue), and elvin cleric took a defeated Tsuto to Magnimar to stand trial. The player of the elvin ranger opted to change characters for the playtest, and created Thisteldown. The elvin cleric is unable to game with us do to work and school schedules. I wanted to run something separate for the tengu monk and Argento, but never got the opportunity…so when they both arrived today to game (at separate times of course) I improved. After the trial, which was overseen by Ironbriar, Tsuto was sentenced to life in the black arrows, and the Skinsaw cult was alerted to the activities of our heroes. Cultists were dispatched to attack the heroes before they left Magnimar, and successfully captured the tengu monk and killing the elvin ranger (though I might change that eventually, got some ideas to incorporate some Mulhavoc books, and this gives me a unique opportunity). The elvin cleric is MIA (his player may be able to rejoin us eventually, so I didn’t want to outright kill of the character…that and we need a cleric, so I might run it as an NPC). Argento fought his way free, and returned to Sandpoint. The tengu monk was magically bound and also returned to Sandpoint, specifically the Catacombs of Wrath. Erylium was planning on sacrificing him to Lamashtu at some point, and had him thrown into the zero gravity room until a more convient time.
Our young orc player (war hammer 40k orcs) joined us as well, creating a human bard/barbarian. Thorg I believe was the chosen name. Thinking fast, I had Thorg learn of someone interested in hiring mercenary types located in some smuggler’s tunnels under the glasworks, and was half way through a job interview which was going poorly when the party came upon Erylium’s cathedral.
Erylium (which was heavy modified) was a distinct change of pace for this group. Up until now, very few encounters have lasted more than a hand full of rounds, where the little witch lasted probably close to two full minutes of game turns. She could not get a spell off in melee though to save her life….which was very frustrating. She did summon one improved sinspawn (I went through and reconverted them, not liking what I ended up with the first time), which was taken down fairly easily by the eidolon, fighter, and monk…though it lasted an entire round and a half being beaten upon by all three.
If I run this adventure path again, I’m going to keep Erylium as a witch, though I’ll give her a better assortment of combat abilities. She cast grease once, which worked nowhere near as effectively as I thought it would (assuming I’m reading it right), had a summon monster spell disrupted by the fighter or monk (can’t remember) and an invisibility ability disrupted by the monk. After that she took a withdraw action to get across the room, and was promptly dazed by the necromancer, kicked solidly by the monk, and swatted like a fly against a nearby wall by the fighter. Then of course she was promptly mutilated by the death obsessed Halfling in is eternal quest to take trophies.
Being that I don’t award experience, instead just leveling up when appropriate, the party decided to quietly shut the door to the vargoule after locating it…not wanting to have another fight with a small flying pest.
I told them this was the end of the first book, and that they should expect to have roughly a week of downtime. Which they decided to spend in the southern farm lands looking for the Sandpoint Devil. Instead they found the Hambly farm, and much hilarity insued.
The began by looking for signes of an abandoned farm, somewhere they could attempt to bait the SPD with one of the party members horses. Asking around got info about the Hambly farm, which no one had heared much from in the last week, and was locked up tight upon inspection by one of the local young lads. The party travels down to investigate themselves. Argento and the monk lead the way into investigating the house, while Thorg decided to go check out one of the scarecrows…with his sword. Deciding to cut it in half before any sort of a preemptive check. Just so happened that’s where one of the Hambly children was hung up and slowly turning into a ghoul. I ruled that being that they came so early, most of the already turned scarecrows hadn’t actually turned yet, and here was one of them. The attack hits, and twelve points of damage was dealt to the boy, slicing him neatly in two. Expecting to feel the unresisting softness of straw, Throg was absolutely horrified when he was sprayed with blood instead…
In the farm house, the group finds Mr. Hambly laid out nude and obviously cut up a bit (again, I didn’t read the adventure well enough before I ran it, so didn’t know he was supposed to be clothed with a note pined to him…which was instead found under him). Argento ended up downstairs, snooping around, Thistledown made his way to the pantry and stocked up on food and spices, while the tengu monk inspected the body.
Back at the dead scarecrow area Adrian, the elvin necromancer, and Thorg are examining the body, and discovering it has some sort of disease. There are claw marks and bite marks on the boys back, but he was very much alive (if unconscious) when he was cloven in twain. The elvin necromancer decides to see what’s going on in the house, and walks in right as the tengu monk finds a piece of parchment under the corpse, and Argento comes running up from the root cellar screaming that the building is on fire.
I’ve no idea what the point was, other than I think his player was coming to the conclusion that they had found everything they were going to, but Argento lit the house on fire from the basement. He started another fire later that day, again, for no discernable purpose.
People leave the farm house, investigate the barn, and find nothing. This gets the group curious as to the condition of the rest of the scarecrows…which I will continue with another day.
On the subject of eidolons, some of the playtests Darkjoy has been reporting on the playtest forum have indicated that a pure classed summoner with an eidolon with pounce and multiple tentacles is one way to go for PC deaths. I think he was lining up something with multiple arms and crossbows for his next playtest though...
As to the treasure, I'm not sure how expected wealth by level compares between 3.5 (for which the first adventure path was written) and PFRPG. I know because any XP cost ceased to be involved in manufacturing most magical equipment in PFRPG though, the gp price (both to manufacture and to purchase) went up instead, so any rewards/treasures listed which has a simple cash value given for a 3.5 adventure is worth less in terms of what magic it can be exchanged for in PFRPG.
As a thought, possibly there might be some sort of bounty (he is a murderer of a prominent Sandpoint citizen, after all, who might have powerful friends in Magnimar) on Tsuto's head for his delivery to Magnimar, if you need another way to get cash/equipment to your party.Someone else suggested on one of the threads for Hook Mountain that local good-aligned temples might offer rewards (in terms of items or cash) in exchange for 'evil' (whether actually literally so, or just put to vile uses) magical items being turned in to them to be destroyed. There were several unpleasant ogre hooks lying around in the third module, which aren't a lot of use to most PCs....
I think it'll be a while before I throw another summoner at the party, though I will keep that idea in mind.
I've mostly just thrown in extra items here and there, though I need to start keeping tabs on how much I give the party, so I don't end up over compensating. The temple hauling in "evil" items is really cool though. I'm going to eventually run Banewarrens (not in this campaign, but likely with this group), so that could have some lead ins...
All of the named NPCs have been heavily converted over...and I'd like to get their stats up here at some point. Might have to work on that between classes.
I'll get caught up with the (psudo)play by play in the coming week...but right now the party is getting ready to head to Foxglove manner. It's a little earlier than I would have liked, but I think it'll still work out. They don't have the key, but I can either have them attacked by the ghoul who's holding it before they get there, or just let them break in.
No worries on the distracted part...I'm working, going to school, and just had a baby (well, the girlfriend just had the baby, I just got to watch)...so I understand distraction ;)
It's not so much that he's lighting fires to clear out encounter locations...I think he was lighting it to get the party moving. He's a little on the "what are we doing standing around?!" side...and most everyone else is a little on the drag their feet side (in various ways).
I have seen the thread you wwere talking about. Sounds like everyone and their dog wanted to burn down Thistletop. It got talked about in my group, but I told them it had been raining recently and most of the briar patch was pretty green and alive. I thought about letting them do it, and then telling them just how little experience they earn for lighting a fire...and hinting at the amount of treasure they could have just destroyed. Lighting the place on fire is all well and good (done it plenty of times myself in various campaigns...and parties) but has consequences.