So last week I started running Trial of the Beast, and our players made it till the end of day one of the trail and have just begun investigating vorkstag and grines chem works. However I thought i would share a few funny moments that happened through the game.
My party consists of:
Nicola - Human Alchemist 5
Ronyar - Dwarf Cavalier 5
Fletch - Elf Ranger 5
Kelvar - Human Rogue 1/Gunslinger 4
So as the trial is set to start Gustov suggest that one of the PCS take the stand and present the evidence of what they had found. The Darkvision Extract, the human mask, the crocodile bite, and the six robbed graves. The Players select Ronyar because he had the highest dilomancy check of +7. They also decided to lead with the crocodile bite because it was the most obvious of the clues (+10 bonus) so as Ronyar is giving his speach about how there is no mark on the beast shoulder, he rolled his diplomacy check... 2 ....grand total of 19.
The party was aware that the DC was 20, so when they seen a 19 they collectivitly dropped there heads. Then the 3 others took off out of the court room and began searching the city for a potion or scroll of eagles spendor to raise Ronyar's charisma. All they found was a scroll; and hurried back to the court house. While it won't help him today they hope that day 2 and 3 will go better.
The rest of the evidence was hit or miss, with Ronyar passing 2 of the remaining 3 checks.
The Second event occured around one of our breaks. After day 1 of the trial was over the players decided to follow up on the leads of the surgical tools they found in the Morast Boneyard. However, with 1d4 hours for each check and only little time to investigate Herstag the party decided to split up, with Ronyar, Nicola, and Fletch heading to the ghost town, leaving Kelvar to track down leads. Everything was going fine until he came to Radniche shop. Now every check to get information proved worthless until Kelvar came up with the idea to give him a bribe.
He created 2 pouches, one with 10g, the other with 10 copper. He placed the copper pouch on the table, but with Radniche greed, he wanted more. So Kelvar placed his second pouch on the table. Then he took out his gun and placed it on the table and said "Do you know what this is?" to which Radniche replied "Yes. Its a rare gun" Kelvar smiled and said "Good!" then picked up the gun and held it point blank at Radniche head.
I had him make an intimidate check with +20 because of how well it played out, and right before Kelvar decided to leave, he head the gun back at Radniche head, smiled and reached down and picked up the pouch with the gold in it and left to scout out the chem works until the rest of the party got back from Herstag.
Please share some of your funny stories.
|
Reposted from the GM Reference Thread for 'Trial':
Ok, so Karb Island Sactuary Ruins...
Party finds the 3' wide hole and takes the Mission Impossible routine instead of climbing down. Of course, they all taunt whatever is stinking at the bottom of the hole, so when the Rogue's head pops in, 4 leaping readied claw slashes go off. All fails. The group yanks the Rogue out of the hole as the Ghasts start pursuit up the hole.
Round 2, there are 2 ghasts in the shaft, the Pal proceeds to bull rush them with the butt of his longspear back down the shaft (falling damage ensues). Stealth Fun time starts when the Oracle casts Obscuring mist so that the last bit of mist is level with the roof in the basement. The Rogue goes back down and gets a readied bite to the face and manages to kill one hanging from the ceiling.
The other three jump to kill and one manages to paralyze her. The group pulls her back up and the ghasts give chase again. This time, though, they kill the one at the top of the hole (stench makes the paralyzed rogue sickened too), causing it to fall onto its buddies. The Barbarian finishes it off by doing a cannonball into the hole, knocking the two remaining ghasts off of their grips only to fall back to the floor below.
The falling damage killed one of the ghasts, and the barbarian attacked from prone, doing in the final ghast.
My group is all in agreement that this has been the best fight yet.
|
The PCs came to aid the town by ridding it of zombies. During clean up and escorting various towns folk home or to security the wizard was isolated with Mort, the town simpleton. The wizard had several run ins with Mort and they had become acquainted. What the wiz wasn't ready for was Mort talking coherently and knowing intimate details about his name and family ancestry. Freaked the wizard out so much he color sprayed Mort in town square. A few towns folk saw the ordeal from a short distance and called for the sheriff. Needless to say the wizard didn't exactly make any friends. He just stood there saying, "but....but....but."
When ever I think of this scene I laugh out loud. I can hear the theme song from Curb your Enthusiasm as the wizard tries to explain why he color sprayed the town's simpleton.
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Hergstag
Revisting Hergstag after the trial to take care of the rest of the wraiths...
The party bashes in all the windows of House #1, and proceeds to break the roof chasing the wraithspawn (its early morning, nice and sunny).
After that long ordeal, the party decides to burn the town down, make their work a lot easier. Hours later, I just give it to them for creativity. Brother swarm also ate it from a smite and another hit.
Schloss Caromarc
Shortly after killing one party member, two trolls stomp down the gatehouse stairs to find more noms. Oh look, a delicious, barely armored Oracle!
*Poof* Obscuring Mist
"Hey, where'd my food go?" *hunting the oracle down*
*Ghost Sound* "AAAAH!" *moving sound toward the cliff-side
*Failed Save* "WAIT FOOD!" *Chases*
...
...
*Wiley Coyote Moment*
*Splash*
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Schloss Caromarc
Shortly after killing one party member, two trolls stomp down the gatehouse stairs to find more noms. Oh look, a delicious, barely armored Oracle!
*Poof* Obscuring Mist
"Hey, where'd my food go?" *hunting the oracle down*
*Ghost Sound* "AAAAH!" *moving sound toward the cliff-side
*Failed Save* "WAIT FOOD!" *Chases*
...
...
*Wiley Coyote Moment*
*Splash*
You should have them come back up the cliff angry as sin at some point later.
Haunting of Harrowstone - The First Combat of the Campaign
or
The Perils of Dramatic PausesGM: Before you the ground in the graveyard begins to swell upward. It cracks and churns! And suddenly, up from the ground come--
[DRAMATIC PAUSE]
PC:--a bubblin' crude?
While exploring Harrowstone the first thing my female half-orc cleric of Gorum decided to do when they came to the bathroom next to the Warden's office was to answer the call of nature. Despite the fact that it was A) out of order and B) was dusty and disgusting.
To further the ridicularity I decided she should have an encounter with a group of orbs, she failed her will save as the orbs bobbed menacingly above her, and leaped up from her business and out the door and landed in the midst of the group with her britches down.
Much laughing was had.
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
This is more of a spill over of comedy rather than a direct result, but my GM for the Carrion Crown Campaign is also one of our local PFS GM's as well. While he has been gaining a lot of experiance GMing in the last year, he's still not on the diabolical level of some of my past GMs and so he doesn't have the wealth of experiance to deal with some of the things players come up with. Case in point, we are at PFS the night before we play Carrion Crown. We're in the werewolf module, near the end of it I believe, though I can't confirm it, for a point of reference. We're playing PFS in the Records of Neverwar series and my group encounters skeleton champions. I'd just picked up a Wand of Command undead, and finding myself lacking options in a particular fight I opt to utilize it against the skeleton champion. They could only fail the save on a 3 or less, but, much to the chargin of the GM, 2 of the 5 skeleton champions in the module boned their roles and suddenly a relatively challenging module became a cake walk. Fast foreward to the next night, the Carrion Crown Campaign. We're wandering into buildings of some forgotten town and getting into random encounters like crazy. The GM is actually trying to get us up another level before the end of the module, but he leaves everything up to the tables. So we encounter this one group that has a treasure drop of a wand of command undead. The GM's eyes bug out, "No! No, I'm not going through that again, No!. You can have the equivalent value in gems, but you're not going to steal anymore of my skeletons." So we get the gems. The next encounter" Again!, No!" converted to gems. By the end of the night 7 wands had been converted to gems and the GM is just openly complaining "Are you kidding me!". The irony continues the 2 weeks later where in another portion of the Neverwar series I snag one of his Morgs. Small moral of the story, GMs will carry over grudges from one campaign to the next, so be nice to them and try not mocking them with the enemies formerly under their control.
|
The post above mine makes me almost feel like mine isn't worth posting, but here goes:
1) The Paladin in our party pimped out the Oracle to Councilman Gharen Muricar in exchange for access to the town records, and help reading them. She only has to go on one date, but the old letch is excited for it.
2) This one is sort of meta, we stared our campaign just after halloween and I grabbed some fake blood on sale. I wanted to have the writing on the monument be 1) memorable, 2) spooky, so I pardoned myself to the washroom at one point and smeared a big arse V in fake blood on my bathroom mirror. I decided that who ever actually sees it first, would have the event of it being found kicked off around their character, and then I waited. Maybe 30-40 minutes later, the guy at the table who is a paramedic wanders off to the washroom, and back. Instead of anyone else who would have gotten maybe a good fright out of it, he says nonchalantly as he comes back, "You would be surprised how often in a week I see that for real." It was still memorable, but I was kind of hoping for an "EEEEK." The townsfolk had to provide that for us.
|
|
I don't know why but part 2had me nearly in tears, mainly because I have a friend that does crime scene cleanup.. (after the cops and such are done) and I can just picture him reacting the same way.
The post above mine makes me almost feel like mine isn't worth posting, but here goes:
1) The Paladin in our party pimped out the Oracle to Councilman Gharen Muricar in exchange for access to the town records, and help reading them. She only has to go on one date, but the old letch is excited for it.
2) This one is sort of meta, we stared our campaign just after halloween and I grabbed some fake blood on sale. I wanted to have the writing on the monument be 1) memorable, 2) spooky, so I pardoned myself to the washroom at one point and smeared a big arse V in fake blood on my bathroom mirror. I decided that who ever actually sees it first, would have the event of it being found kicked off around their character, and then I waited. Maybe 30-40 minutes later, the guy at the table who is a paramedic wanders off to the washroom, and back. Instead of anyone else who would have gotten maybe a good fright out of it, he says nonchalantly as he comes back, "You would be surprised how often in a week I see that for real." It was still memorable, but I was kind of hoping for an "EEEEK." The townsfolk had to provide that for us.
My players are punching holes in Horrowstone because exploring the prison is too unhip for them.
Just awesome, all. Keep these coming. :)
Funniest moments:
Harrowstone; during the fight with the fire skeletons by my daughter OOC and laughing while playing a battle Oracle : Water-based, flaming, kamikazi skeletons using fisticuffs? Most awesome encounter ever!
Trial of the Beast: our Duskblade kept pulling out the poacher's face and flashing it until I finally had the court confiscate it.
They're in the Shloss right now and I'm looking forward to their meeting with the Count, our Wizard from a crime family is already planning a little blackmail.
The Silent Hill portion of Broken Moon.
Curate with two festrogs come around the corner like giant hunting dogs trailing a scent.
Snuff sniff sniff snuff sniff.
PCs hide inside a building, make average stealth checks. One of the festrogs catches a scent and starts coming toward the building.
The Summoner goes 'oh crap'. The Inquisitor points a wand of Ghost Sound out the window and sends sounds of conversation down the road. Festrogs roll a 1 and a 4 on their will saves and bolt off, howling like idiot bloodhounds.
Curate makes her save and stands in the middle of the road, shouting and swearing.
Behind her a Large and shiny gold, silver, and jade serpent slithers in the gloom. The Eidolon rolls nat 20 on stealth and the curate doesn't notice until...
Veli landed a solid bite to the curate and begins a grapple. He squeezes her with such force that she never gets to act as he successfully constricts the life out of her, landing another bite to crush her utterly.
And then he beings to feed.
The Summoner and Inquisitor just stand there going 'eewww'.
The curate never even got to have an action.
The Eidolon is swallowing the curate when the Inquisitor remembers... "Wait, wasn't she wearing armor?"
At the insistence of the Summoner the Eidolon glares with a long-suffering look and vomits up the curate's mangled body.
The Summoner lets him eat the curate once she's been looted.
The Inquisitor then grabs the Summoner's head. "So when Veli eats something, where does it all go when you go to sleep? Does it end up in here?" Inquisitor looks in irate Summoner's ear.
I still haven't told the Inquisitor where Veli's meals go.
|
|
Feldgrau
The party had just finished a rather brutal exchange with Duristan and the Jezeldans, when, while exploring the Mill's upper floor, noticed an army of skeletons (oh, and there's two non-skeletors inside!).
I had the 12 skeletons at town square bunched up with a column of 4 and a column of 2 on either side of the adjacent curates. The party did a bit of planning, buffed themselves with some speed spells, then the paladin ran up as fast as he could (with expeditious retreat), initiatives were rolled (the Pal went first!), and with all his might, he ran up so that he could catch all twelve skeletons, yelled "Derka Derka Cayden Jihad!" and burst healed against the skeletons, dusting all twelve! We proceeded to play America (****) Yeah! from Team America World Police as the group reeled southward to avoid the arrows from the skeletons atop the tower.
Many of my characters are mechanically minded, so while they'll have solid and cool concepts of who their character is, a lot of that person's history if very much fudged or not really considerered.
That made a few of my players squirm during cross-examination by the prosecutor in the Trial of the beast (basic questions such as where you come from, how do you know this for a fact etc.etc.etc.)
It's funny seeing them freak out about the littleist thing.
Also: the following quote from one of my players: "Court is boring, my character is going to get drunk." Then the player goes home. (he needed to leave anyways, I just thought the delivery was pretty great.)
Burst healed against the skeletons, dusting all twelve!
As an homage to the Ravenloft adventure Feast of Goblyns the first draft of the AP's outline called for 180 skeletons in Feldgrau.
As ludicrous as that is. I knew I should have stuck with that. ;P
What's awesome, though, is that this is EXACTLY the way we wanted this to work. We could have made these skeletons much more of a threat, but wanted to make sure clerics and paladins got a chance to feel totally badass. That's even my we ordered that picture of Seelah in this volume.
Good show!
The first encounter in Haunting of Harrowstone:
Lodi Carene, following Tramora's lead, steps up, makes some more mollifying yet still intimidating comments: gets a 4.
Dok, trying to rescue the situation, makes an Intimidate roll: gets a 1.
The peasants attack en masse. Because of initiative order, held actions, crit hits and attacks of opportunity, Lodi straight-up kills 2 peasants before anyone realizes they're doing nonlethal damage. Party changes tactics accordingly, except for Tramora (whose player is quite drunk) who goes on to kill two more peasants and slices up Hephenus something fierce, who flees.
Two peasants break through the player's cordon and overturn Lorrimor's casket dumping his corpse on the ground. Tramora goes ballistic.
(I had to throw away the Trust mechanic by the end of the first session.)
Father Grimburrow intervenes, calms everybody down and heals up all the wounded peasants except for the two that Lodi slew.
Tramora spends the rest of the game going around town buying empty bottles and flasks of oil. I'm trying not to pay any attention to him, but eventually he persuades Lodi and Elzbeth to accompany him on a midnight excursion where he...burns down Gibs's shack in the middle of the night, murdering the possessed peasant in cold blood!
The rest of the party is horrified; Tramora cackles with glee!
Out of game, I tell Tramora that he has committed an evil act and one that doesn't even make any sense. Tramora's character responds: "I told you I was modelling him on Gary XXXX. If a bunch of thugs went to one of Gary's friend's father's funeral and dumped the body on the ground, what would Gary do?" I had to concede that Gary, indeed, would burn down their house.
Killing Gibs up front meant that I had to do some fast improving, obviously. I also spent the whole next two gaming sessions making the party pay for Tramora's actions. Finally, though, I made Gibs's burning skeleton appear when the townhouse caught on fire and attack Tramora. Afterwards, the party was able to make some incredible Diplomacy rolls and were able to convince the town that even though they didn't know Gibs had been up to some horrible stuff, he had been, and the town shouldn't hold it against the adventurers. They also dumped all of their money into trust funds for the widowed and orphaned townsfolk, so, eventually, it was all good.
Moral of this story: When you have new players coming to your game, have them make their character before hand instead of at the table because that just gives the old players more time to drink before the game begins!
One that cracks me up was the Fashionista Gamers over on RPGMP3 - download the first ep off the forums, its funny as.
GM asks them to share their recollections of the professor...
The male half orc decides to share...
"The Professor was Morkills (Morkill always refers to himself in the 3rd person) first lover..."
The GM did a great job of conveying that you could hear a pin drop!
Laughs all round, especially when the GM controlled Cleric tried to comfort the distraught Kendra...
"He loved the ladies!, oh yes he did, I remember we were out one day... and I said, Oh please Professor that one is young enough to be your daughter...".
...I don't think I'll be able to run that part of the game with a straight face now. This is going to be awesome.
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
So at the Trial of the Beast, the PCs on the defense team decide to submit into evidence the skinned face they found in the boat near the Morast boneyard. That's good evidence that somebody else was there, right?
But wait, they think! Maybe the prosecution will argue that the Beast might have been the one wearing the face as a mask. We'd better establish that he can't have done that.
There's only one solution: request that the court attempt to fit the face over the Beast's head. It turns out the Beast's head is way too big! Therefore, the defense team shouts,
"IF THE FACE DON'T FIT, YOU MUST ACQUIT!"
|
|
Trial of the Beast
Schloss Caromarc
The party's Wolf Shifter loves breaking open doors. When they get there and he breaks a few, they run into the Beast. When he breaks open one last door, the Beast made his way over to him, grabs him by the front of the shirt and lifts him off his feet, telling him to 'no break Father's house or I break you.' The Wolf Shifter agreed rather quickly, wimpering in the process. Satisfied, the Beast let him go and petted him on the head before going about his business. It was only after the Beast had moved along that the Wolf Shifter let out a loud scream of pain.
As it turned out, the Wolf Shifter wasn't wearing a shirt and had an extremely hairy chest... Had being the operative word.
I had to append to this line of posts as it fits the subject of this post rather than starting a new one. But I had to share at least one funny moment with our current party (and I added more just because they were fun).
The group consists of Menasius, a human Paladin/cleric of Sarenrae from Restov, Brevoy; Alaric, a dhampir undead bloodline sorcerer from Caliphas; and Zalura, a changeling Varisian hedge witch/Harrower who has lived in Ustalav; and for the first book, Kamira, a half-elf Bard from Taldor.
|
RPG Superstar 2015 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2013 Top 16
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Haunting of Harrowstone, Event #5, Smoldering Revenge.
The Ravengro Town Hall is on fire. Vorza, the life oracle, played by Mrs. Bell, is surrounded by fire and being attacked by a flaming skull. She decides to beat a hasty retreat. She has been putting out fires with a curtain she tore down from an adjacent window. Beleaguered, she wraps herself in the curtain to protect herself from broken glass and leaps out the window. The flaming skull follows and resumes the attack.
Vorza is out of spells and channels due to an expedition into Harrowstone earlier that day. She has the haunted curse, so she can't afford to spend a round drawing a weapon. But she's still holding this curtain...
She throws the curtain over the flaming skull (winning a combat maneuver check for grapple), then proceeds to beat the skull to powder by flailing it, in the curtain, against the side of the town hall.
One of the top 5 funniest moments I have seen in over 20 years of gaming.
Haunting of Harrowstone, the burial of Professor Lorrimor
After everyone else, the Osirian barbarian, Tsutsmos, starts to speak.
"I knew him. Him a strong man, much valor, much vitality. Great man, him, strong. Much life in him, much manliness. No sin of man strange to him."
At this point, I was basically starting to go overboard... we had spoken that they'd drunk with the professor, but this doesn't sound like drunkenness. Yet, his charisma check is high enough that most people around are moved. So I decide to roll with it and have the people of Harrowstone more or less accept it, coming from a weird foreigner like the barbarian.
Some time later, Kendra Lorrimor speaks with him in her house.
"Should I know of any siblings of mine?"
"Miss, you beautiful and pure, very nice. Just say sheep gut strong, take care of problem."
Beginning of Book 4, with the WW agent in the Livery -
I read off the description of the "old man" fixing a wagon wheel. The party's 24 strength Ranger promptly announces that he's walking over to the wagon and picking it up to help the "old man"
Which of course immediately reveals the pair of ghoul rogues hiding under the wagon.
The ghouls, the ranger, and the WW agent all just kind of stare at each other, and then all hell breaks loose.
The ranger was also an extremely lucky SOB - Out of 6 attacks, (4 from the agent, 2 from the ghouls who stood up) only two of them hit. He probably would've immediately died if two more hits had landed.
|
|
Raknor proceeds to interrogate them, by heating up a silver dagger and knocking out their teeth, then searing the wound closed. He then states that he will rape and kill the werewolf that doesn't talk first.... So after Raknor makes good on his threat, the packleader tells them what's going on at the stairs of the moon. .
So Raknor, he is CE, or NE? And I think if the bite of a werewolf can transfer the curse, I would imagine so would eating the heart? Raknor should, if he claims the pack leadership of shudderwood, should probably either stay in shudderwood, or be hunted down by any reasonable good member of the party who watched the grizzly torture, rape and murder play out.
Ashes at Dawn, in the Nobleman's Stitch:
When the PCs first arrived in Caliphas, they came via a teleport. My PCs are very lazy and didn't want to walk all the way there (this is what they get for being led around the nose by a spoiled Chelaxian wizard/necromancer who leads the party.)
As such, I did not have a very good opportunity to introduce them to Barliss Rask, the dullahan. The first opportunity I got was when the party's fighter decided to wander the streets alone, and I chose to have Barliss assail the fighter openly on the streets. The PCs were all in the Majestic around the corner and were near enough to the commotion to get there in a few rounds, and I opted to have this very "open" encounter in the public eye in order to raise the level of danger and tension in the adventure (if the Whispering Way is getting this open about their activities, we must be getting too close for their comfort!)
Anyway, I gave Barliss a lot of bluster. Mostly because I enjoyed speaking into an empty plastic cup in order to give his voice the "hollow" sound I imagine a dullahan has. The party then got the impression that Barliss was something of an overconfident blowhard because of the way I had him speak. So I ran with it. He nearly killed the fighter in the streets to try to get the Raven's Head, but when the wizard came along and tried to Dismiss his Nightmare, it was time to Plane Shift out of there. Thus, he became a constant threat hanging over the PCs' heads while they gathered information and explored Caliphas. They pledged themselves against the Scooby Doo method and refused to go anywhere alone for fear of being picked off by a loquacious headless horseman.
Fast forward to their attempt to confront Radvir at the Nobleman's Stitch: they entered the shop in broad daylight, attempting to cause a large enough fuss with some well-placed fire in order to get the customers to panic and flee the very busy "department store" style tailor's shop. In the process of doing this, they get into a fight with the charmed guards and a couple of the vampiric spellcasters keeping themselves out of direct sunlight, and just as the wizard went down, I had the PCs made listen checks.
Those who succeeded: "It sounds like the guard cavalry might be arriving outside. You hear hooves on the cobblestones."
Player: "How many horses?"
Me: "Just one."
A collective "oh crap" moment as the players struggle to pick up the pieces, and on the next round Barliss dramatically crashes through a front window of the Nobleman's Stitch, demanding the Raven's Head, which was nearly clearly brandished by one of the characters who had used it to bash in the skull of one of the charmed guards.
This is when the humorous thing happened: my little gnome summoner gets smart and casts Control Summoned Creature on the Nightmare. Since the textual wording indicated Shenaleure was indeed a summoned creature, she failed the save and it worked. He told her to attack the rider. So before Barliss has a chance to just route the party in this crazy tailor's shop encounter, Shenaleure threw Barliss off and kicked him. Barliss, a little shaken, stood and moved away from Shenaleure, getting kicked again in the process, and deciding that he was going to have to get the Raven's Head on foot if his nightmare was too spooked to be a proper mount. He had no idea the Nightmare was under the gnome's control.
So on the next round, the gnome gives Shenaleure a simple instruction: "shift yourself and the dullahan to the Celestial plane!"
So on Barliss' next turn, Shenaleure walks to him, and like the smart creature it is, lowers and offers itself up as a mount to Barliss, who proclaims as he hops into the saddle, "Good girl, I knew you'd come to your sens-"
POOF
In the Undiomede House. Party has just dealt with Albor Voltiaro, in all of his various forms, and decide to move on to the library they'd seen from below earlier. They step in the room, open to the elements, and see a couple of incorporeal figures.
Knowledge check reveals the Spectres in all their glory. I'm reading through the headings. Get to "Powerless in sunlight".
All pause. Players: "Aren't we here during the day?"
Well, that was an easy bit of experience. Only because it was late did I give it to them, but still. Putting creatures powerless in sunlight in a room open to the elements? Made us all laugh.
My PCs include a paladin/cleric of Sarenrae and a dhampir sorcerer (as well as a NPC changeling witch). I had to share this moment as it was too funny.
The PCs were asked to check out the church of Gozreh in Illmarsh, and so the sorcerer went invisible while the witch and paladin went in to talk with the priests and be a general distraction. They came across four priests praying at the statue inside but were met before they got too close by one of the priests. He told them that they needed to leave, and the paladin said that he thought this was a public church. The man told him it was for townsfolks and they needed to come back later.
Not wishing to cause a scene, the witch and paladin went back out to the front to wait until the sorcerer was done. Afterwards they exchanged notes and discovered the dark truth of the church - that its not really to Gozreh.
We learned quickly that the paladin got grumpy about such things when we returned that night to the temple and greeted the same priests. They asked what they were doing there and the paladin replied with: "We're here for the Dagon services since we weren't allowed to the Gozreh service."