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Okay so after a long slump of no gaming I got a new group together, there are 3 core players, myself and two others. Both of the others Grey and Kris, are new players to the game, I got them involved in the Beta playtest and we are now running the final rules. As of right now we are running through Skinsaw murders, but I'm going to do some backtracking and try and post as much as I remember so that this is a complete story journal, I love talking about the game so if you read this and would like to comment or suggest things please feel free, even if you are not involved in my game because I often fountain off of ideas others give me.
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First off the houserules for our campaign.
Healing that raises your hit points above 0 makes you fully functional again, just as if you'd never been reduced to 0 or fewer hit points. If it raises you to an amount less than or equal to your con modifier in negative hitpoints you are disabled and stable.
You can also become disabled when recovering from dying. In this case, it's a step toward recovery, and you can have fewer than 0 hit points (see Stable Characters and Recovery).
If your hit point total is negative, but not equal to or greater than your Constitution score, you're dying.
Some conditions (negative HP less than your con modifier, limb loss) can leave you concious while dying.
A dying character rolls a d20 on his initiative mark, and checks his result to the following chart.
1: Character Dies
2-10: Condition Worsens
11-19: Condition Same
20: Character recovers to 0 HP and regains consciousness.
Condition Worsens: a characters condition can worsen 3 times, on the third time it worsens the character dies, these rolls do not need to be consecutive.
Condition Same: If a characters condition remains the same for 3 consecutive rounds the character stabilizes and begins recovery. Otherwise this roll means that the character remains in his current state.
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Now the Characters
Landon LG Human Sorcerer 1
An outspoken magician with a slight flair for the dramatic, easily liked and very likable
Mal N Elf Ranger 1
A quiet, somewhat introverted man, he is nonetheless very faithful to his allies always ready to step in and take the blows of the enemy whenever needed.
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Raid on Sandpoint: The characters had quite a lot of fun, they learned a bit about golarion gods watching the parade. Got to sample food from the different hotels in the area, and were watching the ceremonies as the goblins attacked. Belor having been giving a speech a little bit earlier was also in the square and the three kinda wound up joining forces the two PCs naturally following behind the sheriff. They managed to make it through the fight relatively safely. Very heroic even working to push the flaming cart (despite the heat and damage) into an open area where it wouldn't burn anything while people formed a bucket line to put out the fire. They also rescued Aldern who invited them on a boar hunt.
Boar Hunt: So I decided to play this out and have the players actually fight a boar. Aldern was with them and actually made decent use of his javelins. Boars are tough with that ferocity feature. The players not competent horsemen had decided to go on foot, which may have been a bad idea if you know anything about boars. The boar after taking an acid splash charged Landon and after one or two gores he went down. Mal and Aldern manage to take down the boar and Mal stabilized Landon and used a makeshift stretcher to cart Landon back to town for healing. I made a big deal over it since they fought a tough CR creature and they wound up getting it weighed at the hagfish and getting their names in the record book as the people who caught the largest boar in sandpoint adding to their reputations as heroes.
In the interim before the glassworks the heroes when getting their boar weighed were invited back to the hagfish to try the challenge, Mal the one seen as tougher threw up the water, but Landon to everyones surprise managed to hold it down and add his name to the board of people who beat the challange. Mal got involved with Ven Vinders daughter and failed every check running out of the store with his shirt off and leading to be known as a womanizer in town :) This reputation had only been increased by his drunken one night stand with one of the less attractive waitresses at the hagfish earlier lol.
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Glass works:So as a bit of backstory, Landon had been playing the field having a hard time deciding between pursuing Ameiko and Rynshin. So when Ameiko got kidnapped he immediately went to the glassworks with Mal not even taking the time to find the guards, they did however come across two, and they sent one guard down to the garrison to get more guards (Belor of course being gone) while the they take the one guard with them into their investigation. They stayed hidden in the glassworks when they saw the goblins for a while and when a half elf appeared they decided it was time to take action (previous interogation with captured goblins revealed at least one "pointy eared longshanks" had been involved in the attack on sandpoint) So they charge in, and in the fight Tsuto takes down the guard they are with, and tries to get Mal before taking some damage and going running downstairs (acrobatics to avoid AoOs then second move action while Mal and Landon go to try and heal the guard who has already died). So Landon and Mal go after Tsuto and follow him into the tunnel. Now because of the way they chose to go, the first door they investigated had the tunnel to the catacombs of wrath. Which they take after a survival check to find out tsuto did come this way. Unfortunately they didn't bother to search the other rooms leaving Ameiko tied up in the basement, luckily the guards they sent for earlier came and found her while Landon and Mal were getting their asses handed to them by a sinspawn. When Ameiko found out that Landon could have saved her but instead of saving her went after her brother, it made her put him into the "Friend Zone". In the meantime the sinspawn actually took Mal down but Landon had run back and got the guards and rushed them back down the tunnel to save him. They defeated the sinspawn and grabbed Mals unconcious body taking him back to the glassworks where they sent for the healer. Mal and Landon decide after some healing to hold off having guards guard the entrance to the tunnel so they could go in. At this point they hit level 2.
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Catacombs of Wrath So the next day saw the arrival of Belor back to sandpoint with his green guards (it really was a coincidence of timing that the glassworks happened the day before he got back, the party being busy with roleplaying stuff). So the guys get Belor to join them for the trip into the catacombs, and having heard and spoken with Deverin Hosk at the goblin squash stables, they knew he could kick some goblin ass so they asked him to come along as well. So they go down into the glassworks and fight some sinspawn, and some zombies, Deverin at this point grumbling about how their fighting monsters not goblins. After the encounter with the vargouilles attack (Mal gets kissed and fails his save), Deverin chickens out and says he's had enough and that if they want to fight goblins he'll join em, but that he's not getting killed by monsters in a bunch of caves. Leaving Belor, Mal, and Landon to make their way into the dungeon to fight Nualia. Who proceeds to whoop their buts, after they get Belor's sword shattered, and the sinspawn do damage, they manage to kill off the sinspawn, but not until loosing one of Landon's ears to a crit fumble. Leaving Nualia who can't hurt them too much, but is almost impossible to hit. (Being new players they weren't thinking of using CMBs, so to help them out I had Belor do it to give them the idea) Once Belor grabbed Nualia, Mal assisted in drowning her.
The players afterwards go to sell off their treasure, Nualia's dagger of course being more expensive than the towns GP limit meant they couldn't sell it, but I allowed Landon to roll a diplomacy check to trade it for Vansaya since he wanted the crossbow. Then as they were leaving the timing struck and Mal had his first step in the transformation into Vargouille. It got bad, the players didn't know what to do and started running around like chickens with their heads cut off, before thinking after the problem progressed further (to the point where he had sprouted bat wing ears and tentacles freaking out the people of town) of seeing the priest.
Normally there is no way to stop varguiolle transformation, but since we only had two players, I'm not a fan of save or dies as much. Four players I wouldn't have minded, but just two, nah. So I let a break curse scroll cure Mal. However as a result of getting so far into the progress of transformation, Mal was from then on bald and lacking in the eyebrow, eyelash, and facial hair department (if there was ever a dust storm effect or similar I would've given him a -1 penalty to the save due to lack of eyelashes lol, it never came up). Nothing like and eerily hairless head to make a person really get into character.
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Oh some houserules I've forgotten.
D12 chart
1: left foot at ankle
2: left leg at knee
3: left leg at hip
4: right foot at ankle
5: right leg at knee
6: right leg at hip
7: left hand at wrist
8: left arm at elbow
9: left arm at shoulder
10: right hand at wrist
11: right arm at elbow
12: right arm at shoulder
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Important note, after the catacombs the party got to level 3, Mal went ranger 3 and Landon went Favored Soul 1 becoming a Sorcerer/Favored Soul in service of Ironi. (when the appropriate time comes he will be swapping out his favored soul levels for those of Oracle for playtesting)
Thistletop Whoo boy what a wild ride, So before going to the thistle they get some help. Shelelu agrees to go with them into the thistle, so does Belor (leaving his #2 in command while he's gone) the party deciding they want one more person who's stealthy so based off of discussions with Belor they go and meet Sabyl, in trying to get her to join them she deluges them with questions, Landon is driven nuts by this and hates her, Mal finds her absolutely fascinating, hillarious. Anywho so the party of 5 goes to the thistle and begins sneaking around the tunnels, so far so good. Then they peek around a corner and see some goblins, well instead of sneaking around and getting past them, the heroes decide to quickly take them out, charging in. Into the refugee camp with approx. 10 goblins. Who of course start screaming and fighting alerting Gogmurt who sends his animal messenger, starts casting spells, releases the goblin dogs and sends them and his firepelt out down various tunnels. While gogmurt is doing this the party handles the gobbos pretty easy, but then they start traveling back through the thistle tunnels, where they get pincered by goblin dogs. Normally they'd wipe the floor with them, but because they are all medium they're taking penalties due to the thistle, well to try and out manuever them Sable and Shelelu try to go down a different tunnel to circle around, and run straight into the firpelt animal companion. Who turns Sabyl into a fine red mist with his pounce, shelelu tries to fall back and rejoin the party only to have Gogmurt double team her. Meanwhile Belor is at the front of the other tunnel trying to kill off the goblin dogs and after all but one are left mal and landon turn and try to aid shelelu. Finally they kill his AnCo and send Gogmurt running, and thinking they are done with him they take some time to heal, while gogmurt converts all his spells into summon nature's ally and attacks with a second wave of beasties. Luckily the party has better luck this time and even manage to capture gogmurt but whoo boy did they pay for it. Sabyl dead, and most of their healing gone. So they go to the bridge and tie a rope around their end, then cut the rope and rest to recoup their strength. Of course Gogmurt having raised the alarm the goblins see this and attempt to send a party out to repair the bridge and kill the people, but at range and out of the thistle, My party quickly hands the archers their collective asses and prevent any escape. So while they recoup their wounds, the goblins and the people on the island prepare...
to be continued.
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Thistletop Pt. 2: This is a sad sad day for adventuring, Mal has fallen to the goblin warchief Ripnugget. Leaving Gogmurt tied up and gagged, literally hanging over the pit that holds the Bunyip. The heroes pulled up the rope holding the bridge and resecuring it (thereby negating the trap). The goblins already knowing the heroes were coming, those remaining all piled into the throne room. As Landon and Mal stepped into the room, Ripnugget told them that Landon had earned the right to negotiate, of course turning on him the second he stepped forward. Belor being the type he is had refused healing the night before, leaving him weakened for todays fight and when he charged forward to get to ripnugget his guards were able to take him down. Mal seeing the need stepped forward into the breach with his great axe, but with Belor down the party was lacking in power ripnugget used his gecko to climb the ceiling avoiding mal and attacking landon and shelelu while the better goblin guards started focusing on Mal. Mal killed of most of the weaker ones, but before he could finish them off he fell to a vicious blow. Landon knowing that Belor had been down longer struggled through, luckily there were enough goblins left when Mal went down that the goblins fighting him, rather than fight, figured ripnugget had things in hand and started looting Mal's corpse. This opening was all Landon needed, he ran over to Belor and brought him up, Belor got up and attacked Ripnugget and between him and shelelu they took down the goblin cheiftan, Mal was just one turn away from healing and Landon would save him but the stabilization check came up and the dreaded one reared his ugly head. Mal the Ranger died. After seeing their leader fall the remaining goblins tried to run, but in their anger the party pursued and cut down all the fleeing goblins. Then severely injured they pulled back off the island and set to rest again realizing that Ripnugget was still alive they tied him up and set him with Gogmurt. During this time the enemy tried a new tactic to get to the bridge, they brought tables from somewhere in the fort and used them as cover to attempt to fix the bridge, but even this got them no-where as the heroes were simply to good at ranged combat eventually the enemy retreated back into the fort.
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Thistletop Pt. 3 So we had new players join the group, my wife and two others. At this point I decided that since the PCs group had been gone for two days, that the mayor would get a group of those green recruits and send them out to find out what happened. My wife was a warmage (her character was a one shot) and the two new players chose monk and fighter. All started at level 3 (one level lower than the current party because Landon managed to level up to 4 last session now he is a sorcerer 3/favored soul 1) as they were being summoned by the mayor a sneaky little halfling rogue followed them and listened in, offering his services in exchange for a reward (Mal's player's new character) seeing the advantage of someone who could sneak into her house unnoticed she agreed for him to go with them (figuring if nothing else he could sneak in, confirm whether or not the party was dead and sneak out). They set off on the morning and actually manage to find the party before they crossed over the bridge (the party wasted a lot of time arguing over what they should do with their two prisoners). So that actually makes it easier for the party as Belor agrees to stay and guard the prisoners while the new and improved party goes into the fort.
Having dealt with the goblins they only encountered the concubines on the second level, which they killed easily and without hesitation despite the fact that they were cowarding in the corner. Then they found the goblin babies in the other room in cages. They decided to go ahead and kill those as well, not even taking the time to take them out of the cages and do it humanely but rather litterally taking the fighters glaive and ramming it through the bars killing them one at a time while the others have to watch (I gave them a point of sloth for that since I considered it taking the easy way out). So the party descends farther and straight into the awaiting ambush of Nualia, Tsuto, Brathazmus, Lyrie, and the mercenary guy who's name I can't remember, and the yeth hounds. The fight starts heavily in the bad guys favor, the fighters sword gets shattered, the Yeth hounds cause the Monk to run in fear. the rogue tries to sneak around and gets surprised by a hiding Brathazmus. Lyrie then starts magic missle wanding. Then my wifes character turns the tables around on the baddies, since they got the good guys in a choke point first wave of hounds and the mercenary all got caught in the wifes hail of stone and she rolled decent damage. Enough to drop the fighter and the hound. Nualia steps forward to try and heal the mercenary who turned out to be dead so she cast an inflict spell instead on the fighter. The fighter actually decides to do something crazy and charges across the room to the altar striking Lyrie who was hiding behind it sniping the party with magic missles. His one strike power attack one hit kills her. meanwhile Landon and the rogue take out tsuto. And the wife hits nualia with a stone rain. She heals Tsuto while the second wave of yeth hounds takes on the fighter in the back of the room. Brathazmus takes shelelu down, while Landon and my wife both team up striking Nualia with another magic missle and a stone rain the badly injured halfling gets feared by the yeth hounds fighting the fighters bay. Nualia tells the group to focus on taking my wifes character out and heals herself. At this point the monks fear finally wore off and he comes charging back in just in time to get in the way of the party closing on my wife, enabling her and landon to double team nualia one last time which drops her. Tsuto Acrobatics to my wife and strikes at her while brathazmus, with Tsuto and the monk in the way, can't get to my wife so he attacks the monk. My wife takes tsuto down with her sword while Landon heals her wounds. Meanwhile the fighter has killed one of the yeth hounds, but the last hound drops him. Brathazmus attacks my wife, dropping her character. While landon heals the halfling. The halfling and the monk surround Brathazmus while Landon takes out the last Yeth hound with his last magic missle. At this point seeing himself outnumbered Brathazmus surrenders while Landon heals those who had fallen, when Shelelu sees a manacled brathazmus she cuts him down. The party does not object.
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Thistletop Pt. 4:So having defeated the main force the PCs decide to explore more of thistletop. When they get to the Tentamorts layer they completely fail spot checks and the tentamort stings the halfling, ouch, I believe he had a whopping 3 con after that, just barely not killed. So now the PCs are on their toes, the halfling is in no condition to search for traps so the fighter takes the lead. They get to the chamber where the undead begin strength draining them, and try to fight, but they quickly get str drained and have to run, carrying the now 0 str halfling (poor guy took sooo much ability drain that session). With no spells, and a ton of ability damage the group decides that's it, and leave. When they get to Balor they get a little upset because there is only one goblin prisoner. When questioned Belor tells them how the two goblins got into a fight and in their yelling at each other, it became aparent that Gogmurt had nothing to do with the raid on sandpoint and in fact had opposed the whole thing from the start. So once gogmurt reaffirmed his promise that he would make his tribe leave the town alone once the party removed the human leaders he let gogmurt go. The party a little upset takes it in stride not bothering to mention to belor that they had just slaughtered every last man woman and child in Gogmurt's tribe. And they return to Sandpoint where once it's realized that they were successful and ripnugget is taken to the prison a feast is held in their honor along with a mourning ceremony for the loss of Mal.
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Aftermath: so after about two weeks of pure hero worship from the town a song comes drifting in one morning, a goblin song that everyone in Sandpoint hears, a song about the heroes killing a tribe and that they could have left things peacefully. People are worried, but no attack is made so they show due caution and go about their day. The heroes keep an eye out but nothing happens. The next morning the song comes back, this time there's a new verse that says every day a child is going to die until the heroes come to the thistle. Sure enough, it is soon discovered that a child is missing. Rather than go after the child, the heroes have all the women and children gathered into warehouses on the pier, and set a heavy guard, while staying in one of the warehouses themselves. This upsets the father who wants them to go after his son, but when the heroes refuse he tries to go himself. The heroes convince Belor (who actually wants to go after the kid) to lock up the father for his own benefit. The next morning it turns out that a young man, a rookie in the guard is missing, and the song adds that if the heroes don't come then sandpoint is going to burn. At this point the heroes realize that if they don't go more victims will just be lost, especially since there are no signs of struggle where the victims disappear. So the heroes head off to the thistle. Since the last fight in the thistle was such a pain, rather than work their way through the tunnels, they instead hack their way through even though it takes several hours. Using the magic weapons they've accumulated they start cutting their way in. After a fight with some intelligent wolves that they handily defeat they get to where the bridge used to be, and wind up in a fight with a few assasin vines and a giant venus flytrap thing. Have I mentioned that the thislte is twice its normal size and that where it used to be a brigde the thistle itself has grown into its own bridge and overtaken the island fort as well?
The heroes then encounter Gogmurt on the other side of the bridge, with a giant wolf-like monster (Malfeshnekor) holding the young guard captive with a hand around his throat. By the way, the child from the day before is there, or at least, his head on a pike. So Gogmurt says he'll trade the guard-boy for the party to throw down their weapons and come across. The party refuses, but Belor offers to trade himself for the boy. The party goes nuts, refusing to let him do it, bluffing and diplomacizing with Belor until they finally convince him not to go. At this point the party fighter attempts to shoot malfeshnekor. Normally the -4 for a miss would have negated the chance of hitting the boy, but malfeshnekor had expected something like this and had a readied action to move the boy. If the fighter had rolled to hit malfy and succeeded fine, but he missed, and not by enough to just shoot wide. So the arrow strikes the boy. This does not go over well gogmurt tells them to just come and get him. Then he and Malfy back into the tunnels where a few seconds later the boys head comes flying through the air to land on the ground by their side of the bridge. This makes Belor furious and he attempts to cross the bridge intent on killing both, however the party restrains him with grapples and talk him into letting them rest and that they'll go in the next day. This time its thistle so they can't cut the bridge like they did last time. So they set up a double guard. Two people on the lookout while others rest. First watch is the fighter and the rogue both with good perception, both of which fail to spot the invisible Malfy and Gogmurt sneaking across the bridge.
So the sleeping PCs get a perception to react to being attacked (malfy and gogmurt were going to coup de grace the sleeping people to start combat)both the monk and Belor actually manage to roll high enough to wake even with the -10 penalty (the monk got woken by malfy's drool lol) so instead of coup de grace its just surprise round. Belor swings his sword wild from prone and actually managed to succesfully target and hit gogmurt who then burns him in response. Gogmurt by the way looks terrible, it looks like he hasn't eaten in the two weeks since the party last saw him and he has used stone it appears to hack strange runes in his flesh. Belor's sword really hurt him though so he backs off after burning and gets stabbed by the rogue. So the fighter, Belor, and the monk gang up on Malfy, who then kills the monk, and I mean below the death threshold in negative HP killed, not falls bleeding and bleeds out killed. Meanwhile when the sorcerer attempts to cast Magic Missle on Malfy, an Imp suddenly appears from invisible next to him stinging him with its tail. The rogue drops Gogmurt (which weakens the Imp who was benefitting from AnCo boosts)and he and the sorcerer focus on fighting the Imp while Belor and the fighter are traiding blows with Malfy. After about three more rounds Gogmurt's body begins to thrash and shake, those who see it watch as the head bloodily rips free from the body pulling the spine out along with it, which then the body stops moving, but head and spine thrash and wriggle on the ground for a few seconds before slithering off into the woods (thus is the goblin snake born on Golarion), the rogue attempts to strike it as it flees, but misses. Malfy drops the fighter, and between Malfy and Belor they don't have 10HP, so it's litterally down to who lands the next blow. Which is Belor (just barely)Dropping Malfy, the Imp seeing his allies defeated decides to fly off.
This is the chance Landon needs and he rushes to the fighter's side administering healing. Just in the knick of time too, because he was still taking damage from chill metal cast by Gogmurt, and was down to -10 of a possible -12. So with the fighter in the negatives, the monk dead, Belor with about 3hp, and the sorcerer poisoned from the imp, the party just barely managed to squeeze out a victory.
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The day from hell: So the PCs go on a trip to Magnimar, and have what we have affectionately coined, the day from hell. Since the lost coast road is such a frequented road I decided that there would only be a 10% chance of a random encounter. The way I do random encounters is once per day of travel, if they have an encounter roll again. They had 4 encounters in one day. First encounter easy enough, bandits, and I made them low level so that the PCs could see how far along they've come, they used to have trouble with goblins, now they can kill a group of 8 humans. So I roll and they hit below 10% again. So I have a bugbear attack, fighter takes some damage, and now the party has used up some healing and resources. So I roll again, less than 10%. This time I make it non-combat, I rolled randomly to determine what they encounter, and I rolled for a Satyr, so they make their save against his charm person pipe, and every last one of them fails the will save. So they follow him into his fairy circle into a trial. See in a random encounter earlier in the game the PCs had a chance to save a fairy being attacked by goblins. But they wouldn't go into the woods so the goblins were able to kill the fairy and run off with only minor losses. The fey court wasn't happy about this cowardice when the PCs later take on the entire fortress of goblins to save human lives. So Landon (the only surviving PC from the original group involved in that fight) is found guilty and tasked with saving 3 lives within a year. (They don't know that it's something that's worked right into the story with the kreeg Ogre-kin) This upsets Landon and now whenever he heals an ally he tries to count it as a life saved lol. Anyways, so they're released from the fey court and I roll for random encounter. I roll a nightmare, and instead I decide that it's the perfect chance to introduce them to the sandpoint devil, who kicks their asses, I played it up by having them get caught in the obscuring mist and wait about a minute while every once in a while they made out a spout of flame above them. Really played up the fear factor before the assault. But they do manage to do some damage to it before fleeing (not much) considering that they came upon it eating, I decided to say that the devil decided that the meal it had was enough and they weren't worth pursuing because they could actually hurt it when there was much easier prey to be had. Finally I roll above 10% and they end their day hurt badly and claiming how crazy the trip had been. They only have one more random encounter on the trip and I decided to make it a traveling minstrel, who they luckily mentioned their attack by the sandpoint devil (the minstrel made the knowledge check based off of their description. Before then they had no idea what the f!$# they fought) so now their reputation will spread having survived an attack by the sandpoint devil. Anywho they make it to Magnimar and do their buying and selling.
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Skinsaw begins: Man so the player of the fighter had his 4th kid and had to leave the group (4 kids and he thought he'd have free time lol). So while in magnimar he got written out (turned out that he knocked up a woman and had promised to marry her last time in magnimar, so when he came back he was unexpectedly tracked down, and is being taken to court for breach of promise). Later the players are going to find his name amongst those that were killed by the brother's of 7 since he was a greedy guy, but that hasn't come yet. Anywho, So they get their stuff sold and return to sandpoint finding out upon return that there have been some murders and being asked to help investigate by the new sheriff. This party as it turns out is immune to red herrings. So every attempt to get them to suspect different people didn't pan out and the investigations went point a, no I don't really think it's him. Point b, no I don't think it's really him, etc. They managed to take out the crazy guy and he was sent to sandpoint for treatment (they didn't kill him), but they didn't even suspect that maybe Habe was somehow involved (when I ran this as a one shot for halloween the different players were absolutely sure it was Habe). The next day Farmer Grump came into town and that set them off to the farm.
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The farm: So the party took the six guards with them. As they traveled to the farm I let them get to know the guards (Naming even inconsequential NPCs is very important to making the party care about them) So the first encounter with the scarecrows goes easily for the party. They take out the first set of ghouls easily. But then they get the idea to just shoot the scarecrows from a distance. Landon immediately regretted that decision when the scarecrow screamed and bled after being shot. Landon healed the person and they fought and killed one of the then released scarecrows, but the scream and the fighting drew some other ghouls who fought but one managed to flee, running off to gather other ghouls. So the party continues to head towards the farm, but one of the guards fails his spot check and they'd spread out a little, so the party suddenly notices that they are one member short. In the next fight with ghouls in the fields one ghoul scores a critical on a guard and bites his throat right out. The party beats them, but is down to the PCs and 4 guards by the time they get into the farmhouse. Here the fighting gets ridiculously intense as in the first round two guards get paralyzed, in the second round Skye gets paralyzed. In the third round one guard comes out from paralysis (lucky 1 on the rounds) but another guard gets paralyzed. and that's the way it went. I don't think they had a single round where half the force wasn't paralyzed. Two more guards fell in that fight, however the guard that was originally taken was found paralyzed in the barn and is saved (party doesn't know he's infected). Landon and every surviving guard wound up infected with ghoul fever, and a great time was had by all.
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Aldern's House Forgive me, it's been a while since we played this part so I'm just going to describe what I remember happening without going into detail too much.
So the first time the players go to the house they are by themselves, meaning that it's two players and a hell of a lot of universal haunts. They do a decent job of exploring the upper floors. The funniest of happenings is the haunt designed to make a player think another PC is their child and run them out of the house. It's hilarious because it hit the halfling who then repeatedly tried to pull the human out claiming guy twice his height was his "daughter" pretty funny stuff. They come across the revenant and after a short debate they shatter the mirror and cover the shards with a cloak. A lucky roll on a strength check and she broke the manacles they had bound her with beforehand and off she went into the tunnels. They follow her down into the basement and since they were running they managed to make it through all the rooms with haunts they hadn't explored before the haunts could activate. Meaning they managed to run through three or four haunts straight into the waiting arms of the ghouls.
Lets just say this group has bad luck with disease rolls. It wasn't pretty, however they did manage to defeat the ghouls and go in to face Aldern. Since Iesha was torn apart Aldern only had about half his HP, and when he saw the PCs he attacked but then the damage taken made Aldern take over and give the PCs time to heal. However they mentioned the skinsaw man and the battle resumed. However healed up they were able to finish him off. Very close battle though.
The PCs run back to town, determined to come back and finish looting the place. However it turns out they are incapacitated for 3-4 days as they recover from ghoul fever and Vorel's Phage. They reunite with two of the guards they saved from the farm who agree to travel with them and they begin the next leg of their journey.
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Aldern's House pt. 2 So this time the curses they ran through the first time got them good. The party came back with two NPCs town guards in tow. And after re-exploring the first floor were joined by the monk of a new player. After first dealing pretty well with the rat swarm through creative use of stairs and smokesticks (Blind mice smell smoke and think fire :D) they then got into the haunted areas of the basement. One of the NPCs got affected by a curse that made him want to go rescue his children and fight anyone who tries to stop him. The other NPC tried and got hit with a crit. I draw the crit card, he's struck blind. Well so much for those two NPCs as the one has to stay behind with the blind one now once the curse wore off.
So they re-explore and fight the ghoul bat which they avoided in their first trip down the rabbit hole, and man what a cinematic fight. First the monk gets paralyzed almost right away. Then the rogue who deals damage gets mauled in return. The monk gets his movement back and stuns it, then the rogue gets healed by the theurge. The rogue and the monk get taken down after dealing some more damage and the theurge is all that's left, so he gets the things attention by shooting it with magic missiles making it follow him down the tunnel that it has to squeeze through. So this thing is right on the Theurge's tail, the theurge is retreating while having a flaming sphere follow the bat from behind (and because of the squeezing it finally starts failing some reflex saves) when he can take a moment he'll shoot it with a magic missile, and right as it's about to catch up with him and take him down (Lots of damage vs. Low HP) the theurge takes it down with a magic missile. I swear it was like a scene pulled straight out of a movie it was so great. Anyways, that was the last enemy they missed from the last time, so they finish gathering goodies, trying their best to avoid haunts and get the hell out of there.
Sounds like you have a couple of good core players and occasional visitors at your table.
Hope that they can handle the tougher cases coming ahead of them with only two!
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Magnimar: Okay so the party of 3 heads into Magnimar after a few days R&R from disease (This time the monk was the one diseased). They make their way immediately to Aldern house and get very confused when Aldern greets them at the door. They come inside and begin telling him cautiously of the events at the misgivings and Aldern asks them to come into the drawing room. Well the monk character holds back out of mistrust so the Faceless stalkers use the opportunity by slamming the door to the drawing room shut and throwing the latch, leaving the rogue and theurge seperated in the room with them, and leaving the monk locked in the greeting room. The monk begins trying to break in with str checks, the first one fails as the rogue and theurge (who can't cast for being threatened) flank one of the stalkers and in a flurry of full attacks really hurt it. The stalkers flank the rogue hitting him hard, which brings the monk around to another check, which fails again as the rogue yells "You have to hit it harder!". Well the rogue manages to hurt the injured stalker enough that it backs out after hitting back, leaving the theurge free to take it down with a magic missle. However the rogue is now badly hurt. The monk fails again to break down the door. The rogue and theurge now yell out "Harder" now sounding exasperated. The theurge heals the rogue, but the remaining stalker has backed into a corner where it can't be flanked, and the rogue doesn't have the feint feats. So now they both deal piddling damage, but the faceless stalker is hitting harder and the theurge can tell he'll be locked down healing the rogue. That's when the monk bursts through the door finally and closes in. the rogue gets another minor hit in and the stalker takes him close to 0. the theurge heals the rogue again, and then the monk gets in a stunning fist, which allows the rogue to sneak full attack which finishes off the monster. So even though the monk was out of the fight four rounds, he managed to bust in and save the day in a very cinematic manner.
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Seven's Sawmill Well the PCs investigate clues and this leads them to go to the shadow to hopefully get in contact with "someone" who can hopefully give them more info. They get attacked by some ruffians who they easily route and even manage to capture one. Who in exchange for his life gets them in contact with the Sczarni (sp?). They manage to learn that the brothers of seven are actually real and a cult of murderers. Well the PCs decide to stake out the sawmill on the night that a drop for Aldern was supposed to happen. Actually making the drop for him in his stead. I decided that the reason the drop was on that night was because that was the night of their meeting. So all the cultists sans 4 who were out gathering their prey would be in the mill and on one floor in a ritual. I also added a secret tunnel that the 4 would use to bring in their victim. Well the PCs decided to go down first instead of up and found the secret tunnel. Which made them run into the 4 hunters returning with their prey (Which i decided to stray from the module and make Gorboras the lord mayor himself). Well they get in a fight and manage to take out 3 but the 4 manages to get away and run into the sawmill. The party give chase without healing and they run into the whole group of skinsaw men including the judge...
So the PCs are pretty screwed. The monk has like 20 hp from the last fight, and hoping to trick them when they use command on him walks into the room instead of fighting on the narrow stairwell in order to prevent flanking. And oh lord he goes down in like two rounds. Luckily I decided that the judge was curious to know who these interlopers were so he ordered his men to take the monk alive. Well they don't have stabilize and they aren't prepared for heal checks, so instead they try to use a potion to cure him enough not to bleed out. Well funnily enough, the party fearing that the potion might turn him undead or something continue to interupt the people trying to administer potions, and because they're near the stairs only a handful of the priests can get to them at any given time. However they do begin tumbling into places and forcing the party to split up, and the rogue who had leveled up and taken improved feint is managing to hold his own (very high AC and touch AC), the only reason they do anything at all is that the judge figure his cultists can handle it and hasn't taken participation yet. Well between the theurge and the rogue they manage to take down enough of the potion healing clerics, that the judge decided to step forward and heal him.
And here's where I made the mistake that probably saved the party's life. I missed that the judge had stabilize and instead cast a cure light wounds, and rolled max on it which was enough to erase both the lethal and non-lethal damage enough that the monk woke up. He uses acrobatics (I allow a successful acrobatics to move through a threatened area check at -4 to allow a prone character to take a 5 foot step as a move action) to scoot far enough away to drink a potion and actually fight. This gives the rogue some flanking and he turns into a blender. After taking out two more clerics the rogue goes for the judge with the monk which causes the judge to take to the fight. First he suggests that the rogue go hide and heal himself up (so as not to give the rogue a bonus to resist he made a reasonable suggestion) the rogue fails and the judge begins focusing on the monk. At this point there are about 5 enemies left. Two clerics have pinned the theurge in a corner (can't flank) and have been whittling him down (he managed to cast defensively to get up mage armor and shield and was using a flaming sphere for offense which wasn't working because the clerics were making their saves). One cleric had run to a corner because he was badly hurt and out of spells, one cleric was helping the judge fight the monk, but a really good flurry takes out the cleric and leaves the judge. For three rounds the rogue hid while the monk and the judge exchanged blows. The monk made quite a few saves, but just as the rogue used up his last healing potion and I said that meant his suggestion wore off (he had done all he could to obey it and had no more healing, the suggestion had been go hide to heal yourself, not go hide and heal yourself, I made that intentional mistake to not completely kill the players). He runs back to join combat just as the monk gets taken down by an inflict spell from the judge. Well now the party is pretty bad shape, the theurge is still pinned, the monk is down, and the judge and the rogue are about = in hp, but the judge has spells left, and now the one hurt cleric seeing just the judge and the rogue fighting decides to help the judge by flanking.
And then the miracles begin. The monk rolls a 20 on his stabilization check and manages to quaff another potion then join the rogue. The rogue kills the hurt cleric leaving a tag team on the judge and the theurge finally kills one of the two clerics pinning him so that he can now 5 foot step and cast. The cleric left with him fails a reflex save from the shpere and gets burned badly so he runs.
3-1 against the good judge. Judge cast unholy blight. Monk fails save and goes down again, rogue and theurge make their saves. Theurge heals monk, rogue attacks judge, who channels negative energy which almost kills monk. Then miracle #2 monk rolls another 20 on stabilization check. Which gets him up and the theurge heals the monk to fighting capacity. Channel energy drops the theurge. Now we are in one hell of a situation. No more magic healing for the party. Now the PCs are hurt badly, but so is the judge, who has only one spell left a cure. So he, not knowing how much longer he can fight them calls out for parlay. The very hurt pcs agree. The judge tells them that if they take their hurt companion and leave he will allow them to live (figuring he can escape via the secret exit not knowing the pcs know about it as the cleric who provided warning only had one round to yell out a warning before the PCs followed him in). The concession is that they cast no spells and take no actions against him. The PCs hoping to get away before the theurge dies gather him up and here's were miracle #3 happens. While they are carrying him down the stairs the theurge stabilizes on a nat 20 and wakes up. So as the judge cast a heal on himself, the theurge casts heal on himself. The judge hearing them cast (which broke their agreement) runs down the stairs and channels. This drops the rogue and the theurge and leaves the monk in desperation. The monk grapples the judge, the judge thinking he'll squeeze out easily is surprised when he fails to escape (I made him try to break free instead of channel because I figured he'd be confident of escaping then rolled for crap even with his rather high escape artist check +9 IIRC). The monk pins the judge with his next action.
The judge now can't even channel if he wanted to and fails to break free again, so the player asks me if he can try for a choke hold or submission or something anything. He's at 1 HP with two players who have now failed two stabilization rolls. So I tell him I'll allow him to attempt a choke hold as part of the pin for a -10 penalty (which equates to a -5 once you factor in the +5 bonus for maintaining the grapple). The player kisses his dice and rolls. 19, judge's constitution check to stay conscious (using the suffocation rules) rolled a 2. Judge passes out. Rogue and Theurge both make a stay the same roll. Monk rushes to theurge (5ft step), pulls the healing potion from the theurges belt and administers it. Rogue rolls his 3rd get worse result and dies. and that's where we wrapped it up.
So with one mistake on my part, and some increadibly lucky stabilization rolls, the party managed to pull out a victory with only 1 hp being the difference between life and death. Man what an amazing amazing session. I will fully admit that I didn't have the clerics living up to their full tactical potential (allowing for them to make poor decisions because of confidence in # and ability, having some hold off and wait while their brethren fought only stepping in when it was apparent that they needed help, and the judge staying out of the fight for the majority to enjoy the show and carefully observe the PCs) but even so, the fight was barely survived and required the goddess of luck be on the PCs side. A lot of fun was had by all and the session wrapped up with a great time had by all (even the sad rogue player who's now had both of the two character deaths in the game, when by all rights but for luck, the monk should have been the one who was dead).
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Well I think I need to explain some alterations to the setting so that this next part I tell you about makes sense.
I want the players to be the heroes. And I'm sorry, the one disconnect I have in golarion is how even in a town with a couple of 5th- 9th level characters, the PCs are treated like amazing heroes after only 1-2 fights. Just doesn't make sense to me.
Also I like low magic worlds and think NPC classes exist for a reason. So in my world, only the hero's and the real villians do enough insane s&#! to earn PC levels. Everyone else in the world is built with NPC levels. I've developed an Acolyte class that's an arcane equivalent to the Adept. and a series of NPC class only feats to mimic certain class features only weaker (sneak attack, monk fist damage, etc.). I build every NPC with these. Also I read a really good article once about expectations in DnD that explained how skills start being better than normal human capabilities at 5th level (a character with acrobatics at level 6 can beat both world records for high and long jump etc.) And so using that as a guide I decided on a level cap 98% of the people in the world are 5th level or lower. Anyone higher than that is someone who's done amazing legendary things and is someone you've probably heard of, or has lead and extraordinary life. The max any non-villian NPC can ever attain is 9th level.
This means that almost all the named NPC in sandpoint from burnt offerings had to be rebuilt in order to fit within the rules. Belor became a 4th level warrior. Madame vishanti became an adept2/expert 1. The paladin at the merchantile league became a warrior 3 etc.)
This has three big effects:
1) Magic power in this world is significantly lower. Adepts don't get unlimited orisons, clerics (what npcs call clerics but are actually adpets) don't channel energy and have only ever heard of channeling from stories of their saints etc. A level 5 adept/acolyte only has 2nd level spells. This means that most people consider 2nd/3rd level spell to be the penultimate displays of arcane power. Archmages are level 7 acolytes casting level 3 spells.
2) Magic item buying and selling had to be altered to reflect the small amount of magic in the world (meaning most magic items are relics of thasilon ancient civilizations, and not crafty adepts or bards running around crafting all the time, in fact potions/scrolls are pretty much the only things readily available). I love Pathfinder random magic item tables, in fact, all I do is ignore the first section that says you can buy any item under this gp limit, and instead just use the random tables to determine what can be found in a town. This means magic items you find become much more important than the ones you buy as you can't garuntee to find useful items in town. This also makes craft feats that much more important and powerful.
3) The PCs are heroes and people notice from low levels that these guys stand out and have abilities above the ken of normal lives.
If NPCs or Player who start with NPC levels travel with the party they keep two pools of XP their regular level XP and their adventuring XP. When you get enough adventuring XP to equal the level of XP it'd take to level up you may buy out the previous level as a character class level.
For example, belor fought with the party in the catacombs as a 4th level warrior. His normal XP was 6500, while in the catacombs with the party he earned 1500xp. This was added to his 6500 making him have 8000xp to reach 5th level. He also has 1500 adventuring xp which is enough to be 2nd level meaning he was able to retrain his 1st level of warrior with a level of fighter, making him fighter 1/Warrior 3. If he then earned 2400 in the thistle, his total XP would be 10400 allowing him to take level 5 which since it was earned with the party, can be a fighter level, and his adventuring XP would be 3900 which is enough for 3rd level making him buy out his second warrior level, leaving Belor as a 3rd level fighter/2nd level warrior.
Anyways I wanted to explain that so that the aftermath of Skye's death and the PCs actions makes more sense.
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the aftermath So the PCs start gathering up the stuff from the fight, after a quick detect magic to locate magical goods Landon (the theurge) goes and unties the mayor. He then escorts Golboras to get some guards and as a group they return to investigate the cleared out Sawmill. They don't know this, but the 1 escaped skinsaw man ran to Xanesha to tell her what happened, and in classic villian style he was crushed to death anaconda style by her in snake form for his failure. They show the guards the chest and all its contents (as reward all of the contents not relevant to the case were given to the PCs as reward for discovering the cult after a day or two to make sure they weren't evidence, all except the masks which were sent to the church of Sarenrae to be destroyed). The PC want to stay behind and investigate, but they know that they had access to a scroll of raise dead in sandpoint (I had gotten lucky on the random rolls) they had been saving up to use to bring Mal back). Knowing they couldn't find one in magnimar they decide they need to take Skye back to Sandpoint and use the scroll on him. However they break the code on the book before they leave. Meaning that the guards aren't going to wait for the PCs to return seeing as how that one escaped cleric could cause the whole operation to flee. The PC decide that this one is one they'll have to leave to the guards, and ride off to sandpoint.
Now sandpoint didn't actually have the scroll, if the PCs could raise the money Abstalar could get the scroll brought in. But the PCs learn that it will take a week or so to get an appropriate diamond shipped from magnimar and to let church officials gather so that this once in a lifetime miracle (keep in mind with my world power a 5th level cleric spell is a rare and powerful item and thus very important to the church). Knowing this they leave Skye's body hoping to get back to magnimar in time to hopefully help the guards.
They weren't. 50 guards went to the shadow clock 15 returned. The shadow clock collapsed and the giant monster the guards fought got away while unconfirmed rumors swirl that before the collapse something was seen flying away though no guards managed to get further than half up the stairs before the tower collapsed.
Knowing they missed the big fight Landon decides he wants to get back to sandpoint to see the ritual that brings Skye back, while Cao (the monk) agrees to stay in sandpoint and sell items. The party earned enough xp that when they get skye raised Landon and Skye are now 7th level, one full rogue the other sorcerer 4/oracle 3 (skye has 1 negative level) and Cao is 6th level but has earned enough XP with the group to buy out his aristocrat levels and is now full monk.
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Don't split the party So now Cao is in Magnimar and Landon is in Sandpoint. Cao begins selling off the gear that the party had obtained. By the way, they've already heard from Golboras that he would like them to go to Fort Rannick and accepted. He decides to sell and buy some stuff on the sczarni's black market and after leaving he's confronted by the ruffian who had led him there, who apparently wants to settle the score with Cao now that he's one on one. Cao manages to intimidate him into running off and decides to see if he can do something to join the sczarni in order to prevent any more retributions. The contact says he'll look in to what they might need from Cao, and tell him they'll put out a warning that Cao is dangerous and not to be trifled with. Satisfied Cao leaves. He had waited till night to contact the Sczarni so it was about midnight and he decides that he'll check out the shadow clocks ruins. When he gets there he sees a few pools of blood that drag into the remains of the ground floor structure. Sneaking closer he gets inside and sees 4 guards bodies lying in an area of cleared out rubble and the scarecrow digging through rubble calling out for it's mother. Well a few very succesful bluff checks later and he's leading the Scarecrow to a guardstation he knows houses a few guards. Well as they are in the shadows just a couple yards from the guards he attempts to lie that he needs to get closer, and finally fails his bluff. The scarecrow gets pissed and it tries to kill him. Cao calls out to the guards and the fight is on. Now this fight lasted approx 13 rounds at the end of it all of the monks ki is exhausted about 12-13 more guards had been killed (The scarecrow could 1-hit kill guards). And ended with Cao repeatedly grappling the scarecrow. Now every time he grappled he'd just get thrown off on the Scarecrows turn, but he kept using up the scarecrows standard action leaving it for the guards to whittle it down an hp at a time since I think the most any guard managed to deal to it was 2. Death by papercuts. But the monk is now starting to fall in love with CMBs. The next day while still hurt from the night before the ruffian comes back again, this time nothing will scare him off and because the scarecrow had hurt him so badly the day before, Cao wound up tactically retreating from the fight. Fed up with this he asked his contact what to do and was informed that it wasn't important, he could kill the punk. So that night he goes to a dinner party hosted by the mayor, where he recieves the party's reward of 6000gp for saving the mayors life. The next day he decides he's done with revenge attempts, heads into the shadow and starts calling out for the ruffian, who when finally confronts him tells him they can settle this in an arena where the monk can't run. Well in the arena it's a pretty even matched fight thanks to the ruffian quaffing some potions but in the end he gets choke holded and put down.
Landon in sandpoint has a completely different experience. He took leadership as his 7th level feat and so we roleplayed out his getting his cohort and followers, and then skyes revival.
Wow, that's it. We are now caught up and this goes from memories to day after the game reporting of events as they stand. We are starting AP #3 tonight and tomorrow I'll post what happened.
Skye is revived
Landon & his Sister are now ready for what's next
Cao returns to sandpoint with a story to tell and a bag of gold to be split.
The Party is
Cao monk 6 (will level this session)
Landon Sorcerer (arcane bloodline) 4/Oracle (Flame) 3
Skye Rogue 7
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So one last supplementary note before we game. Landon got vansaya and spent the XWP feat to use it as well as point blank shot and soon will take precise shot. I decided to reward that dedication to a sub-par path by making (unbeknownst to the players or the NPCs) Vansaya a legacy weapon which he finally unlocked the first ritual with the fight at the sawmill. And is uber excited to use the spell storing property.
And the fight in the sawmill was a once in a lifetime skin of the teeth victory, the kind that the legacy weapon book says legacy weapons are founded on. So I made his bracers of armor (the only item Cao had on himself) found a legacy and he's custom building his item as we go. Right now he has one power on his bracers, the ability to enter a choke hold three times a day if he already has someone pinned.
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Travel Time Every rare once in a while you roll amazing things on the random magic weapons chart. I actually had to think up an explanation to explain the fact that there were so many magic items, and such great ones. So the explanation is that there was a small tremor in the town caused a minor shift underneath the old light, Brodert came across a chest filled with ancient relics of thasilon. And so when the PCs got to town, there were people who had gotten ahold of the items clamoring to sell them to the PCs. As well as some actual powerful items that the Mayor was holding to give to the PCs. Also one of the PCs took leadership as his 7th level feat and when he got into town he found that in fact the "detective agency" they talked about had in fact been started by an enterprising "stunted" (Golarion for midget or little person) who had noticed people asking about the heroes being detectives while they were gone and started doing detective things in their stead. In the three weeks the PCs were gone in magnimar this guy had gotten their house converted into their home/office. and had hired out the guards who had gone with the PCs into the misgivings, to be detectives (since they were no longer guards what with the one being blind and the other having quit out of guilt to take care of the blind one). Basically I gave him his followers in a fun surprise for the PCs. So now they get all kinds of odd jobs from people in town. So the PCs take time to buy up gear, Cao the monk convinces the mayor to have a council meeting instead of an auction to determine the fate of Sabyl's monestary and thanks to his reputation as a new member of the heroes and his offer to pay the city for the building but lease it out as a monestary still, he now has a monestary of his own.
So anyways after about a week in town, the PCs decide to journey to turtleback ferry, they have a mostly uneventful trip. One day wolves attack, but they seem more interested in going after the horses and manage to kill one, while being handily handed their asses by the PCs. Then one night they had trolls attack late into the night. And we wrapped up on the seventh day of their nine day journey. With one more random encounter about to take place.
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Travel Time cont. So for todays game I rolled the random encounters for their travels, and came up with a dire tiger. The party fails to spot the tiger hiding in the bushes on the roadside and thus gets a nasty surprise round. The Tiger attacks the horse ridden by an NPC traveling with the party, in 1 round he turns the horse into a fine red mist. The party all make their checks to control their mounts (now down to two horses and a riding dog, Cao and Shelelu share a horse and Landon and Cynthia, his cohort/sister share the other, the halfling rides the riding dog), so they are mounted as the tiger who won the initiative, attacks the horse being ridden by Landon/Cynthia. Once again, full attack turns the horse into a fine red mist and both characters fail their soft fall checks, falling prone and taking damage. So the halfling goes and charges his riding dog in, but both miss. The monk fails his check to quick dismount and uses his round to close with the beast. Shelelu dismounts and fires her bow, hitting, and the horse runs off. Landon stands and tries to hit the Tiger with a flaming sphere, but the tiger easily avoids the sphere (had to roll a 2 to fail), while cynthia gets up and checks on the NPC. The NPC gets up and runs into the bushes to hide. So on the second round I roll randomly to decide which of the two the tiger would target (dog or halfling) and roll the dog. Tiger full attacks and turns the dog into a fine red mist. Halfling makes his ride check and soft falls/quick dismounts, in response the halfling attempts to tumble to flanking position, but fails (first time ever failed) taking a vicious AoO then attacks dealing sneak attack damage. While Cao pummels the Tiger with a ki point flurry. The tiger responds to Cao by full attacking him, hitting both claws, a rake, and his bite attack. Cao falls, 1 round and he went from full to negative. After some more harrowing combat and some good healing from cynthia and landon the Tiger attempts to run. But Cao chases it getting hit by the tiger to the point that he's staggered, but as the tiger runs from him, he takes an AoO falling unconcious while the tiger drops dead from bleed in the next round.
So A new player joined us this session and because of the rules I use for my world, I encourage players joining at higher levels to chose monstrous races. For ease of working her into the story I encouraged her to choose a fey creature, which of course out of all the options given to her, she chose pixie. So I adjusted the stat bonuses to player levels (-2 Str, +2 Dex, +2 Int) and gave her an additional fey HD and 1 level of ranger. I helped her limit her options for favored enemy to animal, human, giant, or plant. She chose giant. And I houseruled her invisibility to be as per the spell invisible rather than greater invisibility. I'll go into further details tomorrow (work to be done)
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Travel Time cont. So after the tiger attack the party moves on, only to encounter 3 shamblers that surprise them (bad perception checks) and get the surprise round. So the first shambler hits the last horse left, and hurts it bad grappling it. Cao is hit by the second shambler and grappled, but he escapes on his round. And the third doesn't get an attack because it's too far away so it closes. The party swings into action, cynthia heals cao. Landon despite knowing that these things (knowledge check succeeded) are resistant to fire, tries to burn them anyways with his flaming sphere and Skye tries to hurt the one with the horse, dealing minor damage. The shambler with the horse kills it and starts dragging it off, the other shambler that closed seeing the easy meal also grabs ahold and they tear it in half and begin wandering off with it. the last shambler attacks cynthia (the cohort cleric) and grapples her, cao enters the grapple hoping to turn it's attention to him while landon and shelelu pepper it with bolts and arrows. the NPC accompanying them falls back afraid to hide in the bushes since they come alive and attack. Skye runs around behind the shambler and sneak attacks it. Then in the next round only one person made the spot check to notice mushrooms popping up about 20 feet away and suddenly there's a pixie appearing and shooting at the shambler, with the help of the pixie they obliterate it, but now they've lost all their horses (increasing travel time). They introduced themselves to the pixie who has joined them to help Landon get out of his sentence because she felt it was undeserved. They've made it to Pendaka and that's where we wrapped up.
As for the new pixie player, she's super excited to get started. I've created a HD progression for pixie that mimics a class leveling, so she gets to choose at level ups whether to take more pixie HD or more ranger levels.