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A Lamashtu worshiping wizard and a Paladin of Irori? A morally questionable doctor of Asmodeus and a quick fingered halfling? SPIDERS?! CHAOS!!!!
The campaign has begun!
Campaigns of Nethys: Serpent's Skull
As my players don't read this section of the board (or rather, they shouldn't be) I will be using this thread to document my own experiences GMing this Adventure Path. More to come!
Arodus 10th
Can't sleep, the spiders will eat me.
Can't sleep, the spiders will eat me.
Can't sleep, the spiders will eat me.
Can't sleep...(and so on)
I'd really like to hear an OOC account of what caused this.
Thanks for getting your players to do this! Great stuff!
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I really should post on this before our next game, so here I go!
First of all, two of the players (the Cleric and Rogue) posted their full journals in the link above. They are both awesome and deserve a read. Here is my summary of the events from the GM perspective.
My players, KEEP OUT. Also, spoilers!
The Characters:
Right off the bat I knew the characters in this game were going to be interesting. Josh Frost was playing a tall elven conjurer (LN) named Arceso with a Scottish accent who was mostly quiet in the early parts of the game. The different thing with him is that he worshiped Lamashtu for her mastery over monsters. He was tied to the story as being a Courier. Coming from Ilizmagorti, I made the decision that the package he was carrying was for the Red Mantis contact in Sargava, which they would run into in Book 2. As Jourdan's rogue tied into the Red Mantis as well, I secretly joined these guys at the start (secret for Josh at least). More on that later.
Mark Moreland was playing a Paladin of Irori named Aman Tor who sounded like Batman (deep husky voice) and which he planned to multiclass into Monk. This led to him having to split up his ability scores a lot early on due to each class needing their own things, but I think he did pretty well. He is the only Good character in the party, and with the other ones I had anticipated him being at odds with the other three. Strangely enough, this is not how it ended up going down. He also chose Courier, but wanted more of an NPC to tie him to the group then a package, kind of like an escort. He came from Varisia, so I gave him the option of going on as added protection for the captain, escorting the gnome bard, or protecting the Varisian female scholar. He chose the latter, playing up the 'protect the woman' idea of chivalry.
Jeff was the newest player to the game, having only played one Society game prior to this, and opted to make a Cleric. I talked to him about the domains and he eventually settled on Inevitable (being a very Lawful Neutral kinda guy) and Deception. Asmodeus satisfied these options and he made his character, Dr. Brahms (LN Cleric). His background (unknown to the other players) involved him being an apprentice to a famous Taldan surgeon, who doubled as a member in the Lion Blades. Seeking to test Jeff's PC and needing a spy in Cheliax, the head doctor sent Jeff's PC off to Cheliax to join the church of Asmodeus and spy on things. Jeff's openness to religions and willingness to serve the crown went well, and eventually he received more of a note that Azlanti ruins were rumored to be in Sargava and his Taldan contacts wished him to investigate. He went to one of the cities in the Shallows to ask around and then boarded the Jenivere soon after.
Lastly was Jourdan, a friend of mine from a lot of my older campaigns, including Age of Worms. He is a goofy player, but knows the rules pretty well and always had a bit of underlying strategy. His character in this game was Whistlin' Jak, a CN Rogue that was the latest in a line of secret halfling assassins who whistled while they stalked. His background involved him being recruited by the last Whistlin' Jak, but he disappeared before he could finish Jourdan's training. Seeking more ways to learn, he looked into the Red Mantis on Ilizmagorti. The person he spoke with saw an opportunity to make sure Josh's character delivered the package, so she sent Jourdan along to keep an eye on him. Jourdan stowed away on the Jenivere and off they went.
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Session One
The first session opened on the boat. We had a small bit of interaction, mostly introducing characters to each other, but I wanted to jump right into the action. I had everyone roll a Fort save for the dinner, including our stowaway (who still ate the same food when he snuck in, his Stealth was something huge like +14 after all!) I did have whoever got the highest save get the opportunity to roll a Perception check to see that Ieana (if that's her name... I have the hardest time remembering it) was not passing out, and in fact seemed to have the hint of a smile.
When they started to wake up, there were three of those crab things attacking. I allowed Jourdan to have one dagger on him with a sleight of hand check (a hidden weapon the first mate didn't see when gathering gear) and he started going to town on the crabs. In the first two combats he actually proved the most valuable melee combatant. Aman Tor was good at melee as well but not rolling very well, and mostly served to provide a flank for Jak. Jak, for his other trait, took the improved flanking one that gave him +3 to flank instead of +2, and finished off two crabs in this battle with one sneak attack. The last one was finished off by a combination of acid splash from Arceso and crossbow bolts from the good Doctor.
There was some interaction with the other NPCs while the PCs tried to figure out where they were. No one rolled high enough to determine they were on the Shiv, so I had Sasha figure it out and tell them. They got some info about it (Arceso knowing everything, which he mostly kept to himself until later) and decided to head out to the wreckage of the Jenivere to recover some gear.
As some of you know, I use a projector for my gaming setup, and thus need maps for everything before hand. If you use MapTool or something similar, definitely make it a priority to get maps for this. There are no maps for any of the shipwrecks (of which there are tons), the camp, the jungle random encounters, what have you. I was hoping for at least one boat map, but sadly none were provided. Thankfully there was a very good PDF on Paizo.Com by a third party that had good island and shipwreck maps, which I'd be happy to link if anyone was curious.
So they got to the Jenivere and started exploring. I decided whoever had the highest Perception check would be the one to 'find' the larger sea-scorpion and thus get to act in the same surprise round as it. Much like the earlier fights, Jak did the majority of the damage (with Aman Tor providing a flank) while the Doctor just missed with his crossbow and Arceso flung a few acid splashes at it. They soon killed it, though Jak had taken a good amount of damage. The Doctor, serving Asmodeus, could not channel positive energy and instead just had negative, but he did prepare Cure Light and Infernal Healing. The latter is an awesome spell that only Asmodeus worshipers can take, giving the recipient fast healing 1 for 1 minute. For post-battle healing, it is far superior to a cure light wounds (1d8+1, average of 5.5 healing versus 10) and even is almost as good as a cure moderate wounds at 3rd level (2d8+3, average of 12 versus 10). The main problem is that it involves putting devil blood in the wound, so Aman Tor was likely to refuse it's application. Thankfully he had his own healing, so that might not be a worry.
The party continued to search the ship, finding the maps, charts, logs, and other treasures. Jak made a point of palming a few small items. He had stolen the gnome bard NPC's gold pouch earlier (I gave him a small pouch of 20 gp) and stole one of the cleric's cure light wounds potions. While some people might get annoyed at this behavior, it actually worked out well. All the players were ok with it as he never took anything horrible, and even with the cure light wounds potion he ended up using it on the Doctor later on.
As it was, the party soon flip-flopped my expectations. I expected the Lamashtan worshiping wizard, the Asmodeus worshiping cleric, and the Red Mantis admiring rogue to be at odds with the Paladin. As it ended up, it was the three Lawful characters at odds with the one Chaotic character, not really trusting him. They didn't see half of what he took, but he was constantly bluffing, pretended to be a priest (he had 6 different holy symbols on him), and a number of other things. He was caught in the act of bluffing once or twice, and that combined with the fact that he wasn't on the ship made them suspicious. Arceso mused that he may had been on the island before they arrived, while the Doctor thought he was a stowaway. There was one particularly hilarious exchange where Jak pulled out a holy symbol of Asmodeus and said that he was a worshiper too, immediately followed by Jeff patting himself down and saying "um, is my holy symbol still here?" We all shared a laugh.
The group found the dead cook and first mate, and the doctor found all the first mate wounds. He determined that a rapier did some damage before he died later of poison and stings, and the party was on the look out for people with rapiers (which included the Captain, Sasha, and I think the gnome).
They made their way back with the bodies and gear, waiting for low tide to get back across the rocks easier. They made a small raft out of some timber to float the gear, which, after a random roll, made it back safely.
The NPCs had already started on the camp and finished a couple hours later. The PCs (except Aman) declined to help, as they did the dangerous work of investigating the ship.
At this point we went into 'evening RP' as they settled down and I explained the concept of boosting morale, assigning jobs, etc. At the start, everyone except the gnome was Unfriendly, with the gnome being Indifferent.
Jask was almost immediately boosted to Friendly. Jak took the keys from the paladin and used them to unlock Jask's manacles, but Aman Tor immediately relocked them as he wasn't sure yet about his innocence. After some persuasion from the group, he made Jask swear to stand trial as planned in Sargava if he were freed, and Jask agreed. Jask was freed and became Friendly towards the party (though I secretly noted he was still Indifferent towards Aman Tor) and pulled them aside to tell them that if they wished to help prove his innocence, a ship that had wrecked on this island might have some proof. The party noted it, and from then on Aman Tor became much more interested in finding out if the other NPCs had 'quests' for them.
Throughout the night Aman Tor worked at raising most of the NPCs up to Indifferent. The female brawler half-elf was there at one point thanks to the Rum that the group found on the ship, and even playfully slugged Arceso (doing non-lethal damage) at one point as he slyly hit on her. When he became more brazen by slapping her ass with prestidigitation, she slugged him for real and took him to 1 HP (and then only because the elven wizard had 13 hp at level 1, geebus). He responded angrily with an acid splash. Although it missed, the lethal act was still enough to bring her back down to Unfriendly, and she promptly retired.
This brings up a thing I have with PCs. To me, I see a lethal act like an acid splash as its real world counterpart, its like throwing acid at someone. Yes, she attacked him with a lethal punch, but 1. She was drunk, and 2. I don't think that people often realize how much damage an unarmed attack can do. So, even though she was a fighter built for unarmed, she still saw a Punch as less aggressive then someone flinging acid in her face. I'd be interested to hear other viewpoints though.
The party rested, having a small encounter with a couple deadly vipers in the night that were promptly dispatched, one getting away with 0 hit points after a single critical arrow. In the morning, Aman Tor spoke with the brawler and apologized for Arceso, bringing her back up to Indifferent. I think that everyone was Indifferent at this point, with the exception of Ishirou (still Unfriendly) and Jask (Friendly). They assigned all but Ishirou a job to do while they were gone and then headed off west, thinking that if they headed southwest enough they'd hit the lighthouse (not knowing that west was a dead end).
They came across a snake den first off, which I decided was where the two snakes came from in the night (despite a den only usually having one snake). For fun, I told them that there was one dead snake inside with an arrow in its body. They promptly recovered it and I allowed them to have one arrow with snake venom on it. Hooray!
Continuing on, they found the first other shipwreck and explored it. There was no undead, but also no treasure. Pretty quick. We were running out of time (in real life) so they opted to rest nearby, as they were a bit too far out from camp.
During the night, they were attacked by a spider swarm. Now, up until now, there had been a couple comments that Jeff should really have taken Channel Positive energy for the extra healing. While that might have helped in other situations, it was his possessing of Channel Negative that saved them here, as no one else had anyway to damage them. They swarmed over Jeff at the start, causing him to fail a couple distraction rolls and take a lot of damage, bringing him close to passing out. Jak saved him with a cure light potion once he got away from the swarm, and Aman Tor tried stomping on them to distract the swarm and make himself the primary target. He succeeded, and the Doctor used three bursts to kill them (he did good damage on the first one but rolled low on the second two). Their damage was high, the Doctor had taken a bit of Str damage (nothing a night of sleep wouldn't help), but they were alive. They slept, and we ended the session there, leaving off with me telling Jak that the wound he took from the sea scorpion hadn't healed quite properly and was starting to sprout some strange blue mushrooms...
Overall a lot of fun. Josh's Arceso didn't summon anything yet, but I have a feeling it was because he wanted to hang onto them for big battles. Jourdan was definitely the main damage dealer with Jak, with Mark's Aman usually providing the flank or distraction (though he was also the 'good' diplomacy guy). Jeff didn't provide a lot of offensive help with his healer until the swarm battle, though his heals did prove quite helpful.
Next game is in two days, so more will come soon!
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With the third game coming up tonight, I probably should talk about the second one before then. So here goes:
Session Two
We opened this session by having the group play some of the NPCs back at camp as the recently dead crew of the Jenivere came back to attack them as zombies. The players didn't take to this as well as I had hoped, so we kind of brushed over it quickly to get back to the main cast. You can read more about it on Josh Frost's facebook feed here.
When we got back to the party, they had just woken up after the spider swarm attack. Some of them had some bad nightmares, but they were not too worried. They continued to head west until they got to a ridge and could see the entire bay of Smuggler's Shiv laid out before them. Though it was raining, Arceso still spotted a plume of smoke coming from the south and was able to mark it on their map (at this point they only had two 'known' locations in the south revealed, the plume of smoke area which was the Lighthouse, and the large mountain in the southeast).
The party decided to head back east along the south coast and fought some dimorphodons at cliff side. These things proved to be quite dangerous to the group, especially with their poison, and did some damage before being killed. Continuing on they found another camp, along with a wandering monster. I decided to have these two things be fighting each other when they arrived, so they came upon the scene to see some dimorphodons dive-bombing some dire rats. The rats were fleeing the scene, of course, right into the party. Being scared, they attacked, but the party mopped up the group, Dr Brahm's channel negative doing a decent amount of damage.
Afterwards, the party was pretty beat up and it was getting late. They decided to force march just so they could get back to camp. On the way back, they heard some strange noises as the first sign of the deadly chupacabra manifested itself. Whistlin' Jak went to investigate and found a blood drained monkey hanging in a lone tree, along with some distant and strange flapping.
When they finally arrived back at camp, they spoke with the NPCs who told them about the ship's crew returning as undead. They also got Sasha up to Friendly and found her quest to get a dimorphodon. Aerys was also brought up to Friendly and shared her desire to rid herself of her alcoholism with the berries to Dr. Brahm. At this point only Ishiro and the gnome remained unfriendly.
Aman Tor spent most of the night on watch with Aerys, and they both got the feeling that something was watching them. Additionally, Whistlin Jak had a strange dream about this as well. They found a couple blood-drained birds in that spot in the morning and were starting to worry. It turned out that disease was still running wild though. The party never assigned a medic (having Jask be the Hunter) and both Arceso and Dr. Brahms contracted Boot Foot. This slowed them down and hurt their Dex a little, but neither made a good enough check to know the other way of curing it, so they continued. They found a nest to the south with a single dimorphodon and fought it until the thing went unconscious, then having Dr. Brahms stabilize it. They returned it to Sasha and spent the rest of the day in camp, learning the techniques of the Red Mantis. They really seemed to like this additional reward, and it gave them a lot more incentive to complete the other quests.
The next day, Dr. Brahms remembered a different way to cure Boot Foot, by burning the affected area or shearing off the skin. He suggested this drastic treatment and, as both his and Arceso's speed was reduced to 10 ft., they both agreed. Dr. Brahms sheared the skin off, scalpal in hand, and Jask healed them both quickly afterwards. They decided to spend the day resting in camp after that so the nerves in their feet could properly heal, and worked on improving relations with the NPCs. Both the gnome and Ishiro still were not Friendly yet though, so their quests remained out of reach.
Finally the party left camp the next day, deciding to set out south along the inner coast towards the smoke. Almost immediately upon leaving in the early morning, they heard the flap of wings. Arceso was caught off guard as a large blood-drained goat slammed into his chest and knocked him to the ground. Aman Tor tried to spy the thing, and did see a winged beast flying off in the distance, but failed to hit it with his bow. Ignoring this insult, they continued south and fought a giant crab at its lair, then rested.
I should note at this point that it is a very good idea to spice things up between the nests and encounters. These can get really tiresome after a time, and it is unfortunate that the party really does need these small battles to level up enough. Otherwise, a low level party could get in a lot of trouble by heading to the lighthouse too early.
The next day Arceso woke up with dysentery, though he made his first Fort save to avoid damage and handled the worst of it (technically, he shouldn't have contracted the disease at all, but I wanted to get him back for the Facebook post, hehe). The party continued on and fought another giant crab. These monsters were probably not as dangerous as the dimorphodons, although they could do a fierce amount of damage if not disposed of early on. They soon learned that it is probably best to hang back and shoot at it with ranged attacks, letting it come to them, instead of charging into melee.
The group continued and found the trail, along with the abandoned camp on the bay coast. They found the strange zombie woman with yellow fungus and Aman Tor happily used his first smite evil to destroy her, having not had an opportunity until now. They continued from there, following the trail to the southwest. Aman Tor, in the lead, found the first trap and was taken into negatives from it. These traps, if not found, are HARSH! Thankfully they still had a number of potions and were able to cut him down. Jak was nominated to take the lead and they started moving at half pace along the trail. Unfortunately, Jak's perception was a low roll and he got caught in the next trap, also taking a good amount of damage. Their last healing barely got him up into the positive range and they opted to head north to the coast to rest.
Unfortunately, the exact hex they moved into happened to be another giant crab. They handled this one much better then the others, and set up camp to rest. Around midnight they were attacked AGAIN by a group of dire rats, which they didn't have *too* much trouble with. This turned out to be a blessing, as it put them within tens of XP away from level 2. I was magnanimous and granted them the level, allowing them to gain some precious hit points and various other bonuses. I expect their survivability to go up quite a bit now that they have survived level 1.
I plan on seeing how the NPC's morale is doing tonight. Jask is the only one who is Optimistic (or whatever the highest is) so his isn't changing anymore, but there were one or two who were very close to panicking. I kind of hope I roll low and one of them flees out of the camp, as I plan to have a cannibal patrol capture him and be a 'wandering monster' if the party spots some cannibals later. Couple cannibals holding a large stick, NPC tied to it. Fun times.
More later!