| darwinn69 |
So I've been running the Rise of the Runelords campaign for about a year now using D&D 4E rules. Scott at http://rustydragon.blogspot.com/ has been amazing at converting the adventure path and I've been using a lot of his work to help in converting the encounters. I've made several changes during the course of our adventure, so I figured I would let people know the changes I've made so far. We are currently just started the Hook Mountan Massacare.
Unfortunatnly it looks like Scotts project kind of dropped off and their are very few conversion notes past the Fortress of the Stone Giants, and even that one doesn't seem to be fully fleshed out. So when our group gets to that point I'll have to do a lot of the grunt work myself.
I figured I would update this thread as I went along to let other potental DM's know what our experiences were in converting the adventure and some of the pitfalls of 4e that we've ran into.
| darwinn69 |
Character Creation and players guide:
For character creation I let them use any array out of the book or online with one sitpulation, they can't place an 18 in any stat (meaning no level 1 stat should be a 20). The reason I did this was because I wanted to balance out the characters so that no one is so specalized that they are completely useless in other skills. I dislike level 1 rangers starting out with 22 Dex and doing nothing but DPS, while they provide very little beneift to the party outside of combat. It's also my way of toning down my group, of the 5-6 people I have in the party they all tend to be power gamers. If I let them build anything they want I'd get some crazy builds that could break the system.
I distributed the players guide from Paizo to the party to let them read all the basics. I personally didn't bother with the players guide conversions for the new religous feats, nor are we really playing with the different Gods. Other than a couple of chapters in the very begining the Rise of the Runelords doesn't have much interaction with religion. So for ease of character builder and not confusing the players I opted to pretty much replace the Pathfinder gods with the DnD gods. I haven't found it to be an issue yet.
| darwinn69 |
Burnt Offerings:
The festival went pretty much as expected. It is a great way to get adventures together for the first time since everyone pretty much has their own background and history. Since the 'party' wasn't officially formed yet the wizard decided to run away with the rest of the crowd since he wasn't sure anyone would be able to protect him while he casted his spells. A bit of a lol moment, but as expected the party was able to handle this series of encounters pretty easily. I was hoping for a bit more of a challenge in the third fight, but they didn't even break a sweat. Not exactly bad, but I did take note.
After the initial assault and their introduction to Aldern the party had the run of the city. This was where the best part of the conversion so far came in....the Rumors. The party loved being able to make streetwise checks (DC 16) and getting a rumor that they overheard. I created a deck of rumors and randomly shuffled them out to the party. The party got really excited about getting new rumors and quickly decided that the Sandpoint Devel must die. It took quite a bit of convincing from the sherrif that it was a fools errand so they didn't run out and get in way over their heads right from the start.
This brought us to our first skill challenge the shopkeepers daughter. As always, PC's can be pretty inventive and although the skill challenge proceeded I had to do a lot of quick thinking on my feet and coming up with things as we go along. This one was a little clunkly because it was the groups first skill challenge and I personally learned a lot from running one of these. Don't get wraped up in the DC checks needed to pass, think of it more of a RP puzzle for them to solve and let them approach it any way they want. If it sounds reasonable come up with a skill check and let them roll. I also tried not to get too wraped up in how many successes/failures they had but instead keep the narrative moving forward.
Next up was the Boar Hunt. The true purpose of this part of the adventure was to introduce Aldern to the party as someone they know, but is a little off. Scott had it listed as another skill challenge, but honistly I didn't like that idea since we just did a skill challenge. Instead I took the oppertunity to make a side dungon that they would get suck in for the night, using A Dark and Stormy Night as a template (It's a free Wizards download for a quick adventure). It would have given the PC's more interaction with Aldern as he would be following them around acting generally weird but harmless like he's supposed to. The idea was that this would also give them an introduction to Thelosian ruins and since the tome is of interest to Bogart introduce him as an 'expert'the PC's would want to talk to on a semi-regular basis when they want the history of the area. Unfortunatly the PC's missed the boat...the ranger decided that hunting boars for sport was wrong and decided to veto the trip. The rest of the party went along and they missed out....damn PC's!
| darwinn69 |
Next up came the Monster in the Closet. The idea was supposed to make the goblins an actual evil race that the PC's actually dislike and want to kill. I don't feel like it quite had the emotional impact on the party like I was hoping. The encounter itself went pretty much as planned, a couple of goblins didn't stand much chance when everyone already had all their dailys up. Combat wise this was again no challenge. Which is one of the reasons I don't think it quite had the impact on the players like I wanted. It's hard to hate something thats such a push over. If I had to do it again I would probably up the level some more...keeping the enemy small but making them harder to kill.
Next up came the glassworks. This is supposed to be the first real 'dungon crawl' of the adventure and the first real test of their abilities. After the pushover that the first series of encounters were I was looking forward to this to really put some stress on the party so they can start realy feeling heroic. I ran the encounter pretty much exactly as Scott did and watched as the party breezed through the encounter. I should note at this point that my group tends to be a bit more power gamers...but it was a bit excessive, the entire glassworks wasn't even close to a challenge. I understand it's just supposed to be an introduction to get them to go down to the Catacombs of Wrath...but still I wanted to make the entire party spend more than 2 healing surges.
| darwinn69 |
Now the Catacombs of Wrath. I decided to keep to Scotts script even though the party hasn't had a real challenge yet and is starting to get cocky. The Guard Cave, Prision and Washing Pool went prety much as expected...the party didn't break a sweat. Then they decided to do something really stupid...they split up. The tank and healer went north and ran into Koruvus while all the DPS went south and ran into Erylium. Now you would expect that splitting the party and each half fighting a boss that both groups would wipe in no time. Instead they put up one hell of a fight...and both group almost won. I say almost because I did kill the entire party, but it was pretty close. This is when I started really woundering about the conversion. If half the party can take on a boss and still almost win, they realy arn't getting the challenge they they need. I don't want to wipe the party...but I do want to stress them so they are just barely pulling out victories from bosses. This is where I started trying to figure out where I wanted to change the conversion and start making it harder for the group.
Anyways, not to be daunted by a party wipe the group rerolled characters and went back at it. I came up with a scnerio where Amiko contacted her former friends in the pathfinder guild and asked for some help since she sent some folks down into the cave and they never came back. Of course the pathfinders wouldn't send any real members for such a small task, but her friend did point the new party of adventurers her way because they might be able to help. So back into the dungon and this time the party stuck together and managed to kill the two bosses without much difficulty. I made Erylium a bit harder...she spawned 2 rippers per summoning and the rippers hit a little harder (+2 damage). That seemed to have the desired effect and the party actually felt like they accomplished something when they killed her.
| darwinn69 |
So continuing to use Scotts conversion http://rustydragon.blogspot.com it was time for the party to head to thisletop. Scott uses a skill challenge to navigate the nettlewook. I didn't use that, and instead took the experience that from that, along with the experience they didn't get with the board hunt and started pumping up the monsters and encounters they would actually face in Thisletop. It was time to really put some stress on the party and make them fear for their lives and realize adventuring is hard (insert evil GM laugh here).
Once again though the PC's supprised the hell out of me. After wading through 15 goblin henchmen and a couple of beefier dudes in the refugee nest they came upon the massive hole in the ground. They went down, fought off a couple of alligators and did one of the crazyiest things I've ever saw done with a Tensers Floating Disk. They summoned the disk, swam out into the ocean, tied everyone to the disk with some very fancy rope work...and then floated in the water and used the disk to pull them up to the side of the rock where they could climb up the back of Thisletop. I made them take a perception check, and of course the ranger rolls a 20 on his check and they discover the underwater tunnel leading to the Treasure room. I also used Kruthik for this conversion and laid out the room a bit differnt so their is much more water. Half the party had to fight treading water while the crabs were able to swim around at will. This created the most challenging fights so far, not because the mobs were difficult (even though they were because at this point they were fighting a level 4 hard encounter) but because the environment was screwing with them. This immedeatly gave me ideas on how I wanted to run a lot of other encounters later in the adventure...make things hard by making things happen to them, not necessarly by making the mobs tougher or throwing more stuff at them.
Anyways they managed to kill the crabs but as you can expect, this completely changes everything in Thisletop with the party coming in the back door. So major change time. First off they still had to kill the wraiths to get to the centeral part of the lower dungon. That is where they encounterd all of Nialu's minions trying to figure out the coin door. My plan was at this point was to have the distrubance cause Nialu to notice something was up and send wave after wave of goblins downstairs to that the party has to fight though before finally encountering Nialu in the throne room. The Tentamorts turn into two Grells that the goblins keep as pets and herd after them.
The adventures did some fast talking and managed to sow some distrust amongst the minions and got Lyrie to turn on her friends. It made the fight a lot easier and they quickly betrayed Lyrie to get information. Since they did some creative thinking to make the enounter easier I gave them some time before Nialu notices something is up and they opened the door and headed in the direction of Malfeshnekor. Now this is where I started getting worried for them. By everything I read a party of level 2's should not be able to deal with this guy...and in fact the party could very easily wipe here again. However, I didn't want to cheapen the encounter and make him a pushover so I still used http://rustydragon.blogspot.com/2008_11_01_archive.html as the monster. Well it turns out my fears were unfounded....somehow my group still managed to not only beat the guy but did it so easily that they didn't even realize it was supposed to be a dangerous fight.
As much as I love Scotts conversion this is where I started to get realy worried that the conversion just isn't providing the level of difficulty that the party needs to make things a real challenge. It was time for me to really make some major changes to keep things intersting for the party so they actually have a challenge.
| darwinn69 |
Unfortunatly at this point due to situations ouside the game the game group broke up. It took a couple of months but I managed to reform a game group and since 3 of the 5 new players were from the previous group we decided to continue the adventure. However, in the couple of months break this gave me some time to realy think about the conversion and how D&D 4e works.
I like the system in general as far as the way it runs characters and monsters, it's not a complicated as 3.5/Pathfinder stuff, but still lets you be flexable enough that you can throw some intersting stuff in once in a while. What I don't like is the way D&D builds encounters. The basic method is figuring out an experience level for an encounter then buying monsters/traps to spend your experience on. That system works 'ok' in a dungon crawl scenerio, but it doesn't translate well to the pathfinder method. A lot of the things they are doing is not dungon crawl, but tend to be set piece encounters that take the party to intresting places. To make things work that means the encounters need to be pumped up significantly and will often involve multiple waves. You need to be able to catch the adventures with healing surges gone, dailies blown, or not giving them back their encounters before the next mob shows up in order to really provide them with a challenge that the encounters deserve.
In addition, a lot of the solos that you find don't really seem to hold the challenge that a party needs. Malfeshnekor did a lot of single point damage, but couldn't really spread the love around enough to threaten everyone. I ran in to the same problem with the Skinsaw Man ( discussed later) where he felt a little anti-climatic after some of the other changes I did to the adventure.
One thing of note on the adventure path. The DM gets lots of information about history, background, motives and why things are happening when they do. The PC's don't, and their seems to be precious few oppertunities where they can get a glimpse behind the scenes on whats going on. I've heard them say a couple of times that they feel a little lost and don't know whats going on in the big picture, and while thats intentional at this point of the adventure it can be a little frustrating. I have to remind them every once in a while that they are just at the tip of the iceburg and all will eventually become clear. Of course that won't really happen until the end of the hook mountain massacare which seems a little long to string them along. Unfortunatly I don't really see a good oppertunity to give them more information before then without rewriting a lot of the storyline, so we'll just stick with what the adventure path provides.
With these things in mind I wanted to do something different with the new group. One of the biggest things is they no longer track experience. Since they don't go off the rails of the adventure that much I have set places where I want them to level. That also means I am much more flexable in designing the encounters to be real challenges without having to worry about experience totals and making sure that everything adds up and the pace of the encounters stay the same. I also started removing a lot of the 'extra' encounters and instead started building fewer encounters that were harder and centered on set pieces and ineresting environments. This has been overwelming positive with my group and it's something I plan on keeping up.
| darwinn69 |
So with these things in mind it was time to continue the adventure with my new group. I started everyone off at level 4 and briefed the new players at what happened so far. I pulled a page from the role playing video games and started them off fighting a boss....Nialu. I still used Scotts conversion of Nialu http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_57MmzM9rqx0/SchWdZEDHuI/AAAAAAAAA3Q/Q9JMKwHlLqE/s 1600-h/Nualia+Stat+Block.PNG along with a pair of shadow hounds as pets. The one change is when she first uses her shared nightmare everyone sees a vision of Nialu's life, history, and motivations. I borrowed heavily from another conversion which I can't seem to find right now. Despite being evil it suddenly make her a symphothetic character, and although they defeated her because she was evil it painted everything that she's done in a different light. The encounter itself wasn't too dificult considering they were level 4 and had all their abilities and healing surges...but at this point it wasn't supposed to be a real challenge so much as an introduction.
This got us started with the Skinsaw Murders. Scott introduces it as a skill challenge, which in this case I didn't feel was approprate. I dislike keeping track of successes and failures and feel like in situations like this it's a little too ridgid of a structure to deal with a role playing environment. Since I'm telling my group when to level I'm not required to give them experience for completing a challenge, and theirfor I let the investigation proceed much more organically according to the story.
Once they figured out the Misgivings and my chosen PC had enough things missing farmer Grump showed up to send them after the horde. This was my first chance to really pump up the challenge level. Instead of Wights as Scott suggested I used real Ghouls. The first encounter had 4 ghouls tied up like scarecrows and 1d4 came down a turn. In addition the corn field was pretty dense so they couldn't see the 3-4 other ghouls lurking in the fields waiting to ambush them. This ment that our party of 5 was fighting between 6-7 level 8 monsters at a time. While they still managed to kill them without too much trouble, I made them burn some encounters and even a daily along with using several healing surges...and perfectly setting them up for the next fight. Without giving them a short rest (so no encounter powers back) I immedeatly made them hear a howl as if a swarm were coming (think left for dead). A huge swarm of about 10 ghoul minions swarmed out of the barn, at AC 24 the minions were actually a threat that the party had to address and couldn't just lolzy AOE and kill them all. Just as they were starting to position themselves to deal with the swarm a greater ghoul smashed down the door of the farmhouse and came after them. So now not only did the party have to deal with a swarm of hard to hit minions, they now had to deal with a level 10 brute of a mob who could put out quite a bit of hurt on the party.
Things got a little messy, a couple of guys had to make some death saving throws...but ultimatly they came out the winners and felt that they really accomplished something. Overall that was probably the most successful encounters we had up to this point. Now they were ready to head out to the Misgivings. In keeping with their leveling schedule I went ahead and made them level 5 at this point.
| darwinn69 |
I should note that in farm stead, and in the misgivings when I say that the party fights ghouls that can be pretty much any level 7 or 8 ghoul monster. Just pull up the monster manual online and look for ghouls that look fun to play.
On to the Misgivings. I was actually worried about this one. Scott did a lot of working converting the haunts into traps: http://rustydragon.blogspot.com/2009_01_01_archive.html. The point was that by the time they finish exploring the house and make it to the basement they shouldn't be fresh but harrassed and harried a little bit from the traps so the few encounters that are down their can actually strain them. I was worried that the traps wouldn't exactly play out as expected as they could be skipped over or not do much at all. However, Scott hit the nail right on the head with his conversion. Instead of dealing damage all the traps removes healing surges, and some of them just instantly make your HP 0...and it worked perfectly. The party got legimitaly afraid of the house...instantly throwing every musical instrument out the window, breaking every statue and destoying everything they came accross. Their was still enough varity that by the time they made it to the basement they were far from fresh and in fact were quite haggard.
In the kitchen I left the rat swarms the same as Scotts conversion, and while it was a simple encounter it was an important transiton point to the next series of encounters. Once they got into the catacombs below they were assaulted by another 4 ghoul guard. Again, not a difficult encounter, but important to transiton them to fighting ghouls again, and making them use another couple of healing surges. At this point the party should be about halfway through their healing surges.
The party skiped over the Feeding cave, but even if they would have went down their I would have keep it the same as Scotts conversion: http://rustydragon.blogspot.com/2009/01/b32-feeding-cave.html. It would not have been a dificult encounter and I didn't really want them to worry about it that much...I had plans.
Instead the party chose the right path and went straight for Aldrens lair. However, this is where I changed the map and encounter significantly. The party had to traverse a narrow ledge two or three squares at it's widest and 10 or so squares long. To their left was solid rock, but to the right the ground sloped away very steeply down to a pool of water, mud and filth at the bottom. On the ledge with them was a greater ghoul along with two ghoul somethings (pick a level 8 ghoul that has a bit of HP). At the bottom of the ledge were another 10 ghoul minions that had to climb their way up to get to the party, which would take them about 2-3 turns. From their previous experience the party knew that they couldn't burn down the greater ghoul in time before they get overun by minions, but they also knew that because the minions were hard to hit they couldn't just kill them outright before the greater ghoul and his buddies did a lot of damage. It made for one of the more interesting tactical fights that they have had so far as they had to figure out how to slow down the minion hord while trying to deal with the big guys in front.
If you add up the experience for that fight you'll find out that they were fighting an encounter way way higher than they should be for a bunch of level 5's. However, because the mobs came at them staggard it was just enough to make sure they didn't get completely overwelmed but still had a realy tough fight on their hands. It got a little messy at on point but overall they came through the fight without anyone dieing. I also made them hit level 6 at this point.
As intended that did put them in a weakened state for when they encountered the skinsaw man. I left him the same as Scotts conversion: http://rustydragon.blogspot.com/2009/01/vorels-laboratory.html. I knew that they would be weakend from their previous encounters but since they just hit level 6 they shouldn't have too much of a problem with him. It turns out they didn't, and although he put up a fight they beat him down without too much trouble.
Looking back on the Misgivings I like how it turned out for the most part. The hauts were great as traps that take healing surges. After the massive fight outside Aldrens door, Aldren himself was a bit anti-climatic. If I had to do it again I would probably mix up the encounters a bit to make Aldren the real challenge and the ghoul swarm more of a support. One thing I did not like about the adventure path is the Misgivings has a lot of storyline behind it, in fact 3 different story lines that are all playing out including what the PC's are doing. If you read the haunts as described it makes perfect since to the DM, but I think the intricies of the plot get missed on the players. Their are a few 'her you go' moments that reveal some chunks of the plot, but it doesn't really seem to paint the entire picture. My PC's never really got the story and I never found a good way to clue them in on what they missed. I'm going to end up just telling them the whole story since it doesn't have any real bearing on the overall plot once you leave the house.
| darwinn69 |
Once in Magnamar the party went to Alderns townhouse. I left Scotts conversion alone and let them face the stalkers and assassins as is. As expected they didn't provide much of a challenge, but thats OK. Instead of just allowing them to go immedeatly take an extended rest before they continue the adventure the ledger they find says that Aldren was supposed to drop off his payment to the B7 TODAY. That was of course enough encourgament for the party to head straight to the sawmill, and forced them to start that series of encounters down a healing surge and one daily.
The sawmill itself saw some modification to make the encounters overall harder. The loading bay saw the same total XP worth of humans, but added about 5 more minions to give the impressions of a large group. Of course adding a few extra minions won't significantly alter the parties difficulty, but it did make 'seem' more difficult. For the inside of the sawmill I reduced the number of floors. The first floor contained the waterwheel and machinery traps taking up most of the available space. I kept the same number of humans but made sure that they stayed on or near the traps so the PC's had to expose themself to machinery every time they wanted to hit one of the NPC's. It had the desired effect of making the encounter interesting but not crazy hard....that would come.
The next floor contained the log splitters, 5 total spread out accross the floor. This is where I wanted the encounter to get hard. They first had to clear out the room where the log splitters are, but in 1d4+2 turns the people above here notice the comotion and rushes down the stairs to investigate. For the first room I used three thuggish cultits so I could try to push them into the log splitters along with a couple of war mages to do some ranged harassment, and the group that rushed down included the Jordaini Enforcer which can really shove PC's along with two more thugs. Because the log splitters were so brutal the entire encounter turned into a huge shoving match as people were trying to push each other into the pits. This turned out to be pretty hard and by the time the party was done they have faced effectivly 5 encounters worth of mobs and still had another floor to go.
The top floor contained the rest of the cult, a combination of thugs and war mages. Iornbriar comes out of his office on the second turn and the fight gets interesting. In their weakend state this fight proved to be difficult enough to give them a challenge and feel like a climax, but not overly hard that they were barely scraping through. Given that it seems what pathfinder wants at this point we got the desired effect. They got their loots, and hit level 7 at this point.
| darwinn69 |
Time for the party to find the clocktower. Unfortunatly they wasted one of the birds sending a message that the cult needs help hoping to lure what ever was controling the cult out to the sawmill. Xanesha could care less about the cult and insteads reinforces her position. So it was up to the PC's to find her.
This is one of the points where I found skill challenges to be approprate. If you think of them as a list of skill check DC's and not so much things that PC's have to accomplish it works out pretty well. With one bird down they released the second bird and chased through the streets after it...the elf jumping from roof to roof. Eventually they lost sight of the first bird and was about to release their last bird when the druid realized he could speak with animals. A little corn later and the bird told them he goes to a clock, and a quick streetwise check lets the party realize what clock it's talking about. So, off to the clock tower.
For the scarecrow scott used a Bronze Warder and a couple of assassins. It worked 'ok' but I feel like the encounter should have been harder, it's a fortified lair after all and it just wasn't hard enough for the party. If I had to do it again I would have put two bronze warders in place and removed the assassins. Since the party should be fully rested at this point it would have still been a decent challenge and give the entire area a more 'guarded'.
Next comes the worst map of the entire series...the stairs. The map pathfinder provded is horrible. It just doesn't make since in a lot of places and a lot of transition elements seem to be missing. So time to hack the entire thing. Instead I drew a single 10x10 square. I then made the walls lined by a 2 square wide stairs that went around the entire thing. I marked a point on the map that indicates you transitioned from one level to the next. The entier stairs is supposed to be 4 levels, so by each model I put a tiny dice that indicated which level the mob is on, when you hit the transion point on the spiral stairs you change levels (hopefully that makes since). When the PC's get to the second level the mobs from above come rushing down. Not only did I include some stalkers and assassins like Scott suggested, but I also added some weak ranged guys that stay a level or two above the party and shoots down at them. The party was pretty cautious about not standing next to each other so in order to impress upon them how unsafe the stairs were when the mage did an AOE blast I made several sections of the stairs under the blast weaken to the point that parts fell away and it only took one person to trigger the stair trap. Once the bell came crashing down it made it really difficult for the party to continue up the stairs since an entire quarter of the stairs were missing, but they still had to contend with a bunch of guys raining down arrows on them, although not doing a lot it was enough to keep them harassed. Eventually they managed to clear the stairs and through some fancy rope work make their way accross the broken stairs, but it was a challenge.
Next came the beams (I skipped the store rooms since it didn't have anything really important in it). Having to balance their way accross beams while fighting assassins/stalkers who didn't want to come out ment the pc's had to balance accross some beams to get to them. I kept the encounter the same as Scotts, but looking back I should have changed it. At first I tried to have the assassins push people off the beams, but then quickly realized they don't have near enough strenght for a good bull rush. In addition, they don't really do anything at ranged which would have been perfect for this fight as it really forces the PC's to close the gap and having to balance accross the beams while dodging arrows. If I had to do it again instead of stalkers and assassins I would have used some human type model that wants to push people so I can try to push people off the beams (give them an acrobatics check to catch the beam so they don't just fall straight to their death), and have some ranged guys who put out some real DPS at ranged to pressure the PC's to move forward. In the end the dwarf sliped and fell 100 feet to his almost death, but then died when someone pushed a mob off right where the dwarf fell and landed on him (he wanted a new character anyways so it was semi-intentional).
Now comes the boss, Xanesha. Scott gave us a stat block, and she's a pretty good controller type mob. Unfortunatly, as a controller type she really needs some backup to keep up. To help, instead of 2 stalkers I upped it to 4 stalkers, stalkers as converted don't really seem to threaten level 7's. I also started them off invisible and hiding in the corners of her room, and they wait until the party commits to the room to show themselves and attack. After a very good fight that gave the PC's the challenge they deserve she took flight and started to retreat at her scheduled time and I was ready to wrap up the fight. Now the barbarian decided he wasn't going to let this b*tch escape so decides he's going to catch her. He takes a running leap from the top of the tower (rolled high on his athletics check so he was accurate enough to catch up to her) and grabs her and she's floating down (made a grab check with a -5 modifier). He succeeds and they both turn into a meteor and plumet to the ground (I'm pretty sure a flight spell would fail after 300lb of angry mussle gets added to her weight). Because he broke his fall with a floating half snake he only takes half damage and managed to not insta-die and has like 8 hp left, the Xanesha is almost dead at this point and the ranger decides not to be outdone and takes a flying leap off the tower so the barbarian doesn't have to deal with her alone. Good acrobatics check to break his fall and I roll poorly for falling damage and he too manages not to die and lands with enough HP left that between them and the mage shooting magic missles down from the top of a 16 story building they manage to kill her before she can really regain her bearings. Since that was pretty cool I had to give them an extra pice of loot for the awesomeness.
| darwinn69 |
After beating Xanesha the party hits level 8, and the adventure continues.
Hook Mountain Massacare:
This is where we are currently in the adventure. The party wanted to take a side stop and find the Sandpoint Devil. I let them camp out at farmer Grumps place because he seems to be loosing some livestock. The sandpoint devil shows up, and they engage. I again used Scotts conversion and it seemed to work pretty well: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_57MmzM9rqx0/SchOjzoIR2I/AAAAAAAAA1I/r6SRPyp2qHg/s 1600-h/The+Sandpoint+Devil+Stat+Block.PNG. I was a little worried because previous experience with solo mobs that concentrate on doing damage never seem to pan out like I want. This one worked because I made them take shifts to stay up through the night to watch for the devil. So when it showed up not everyone was fully awake and it took some time for them to get ready (everyone not awake rolled 1d3 and that was how many turns they skipped). As a solo monster he was strong enough to challenge the party with all their dailys up, mostly due to his fog cloud ability. For him to work correctly I think his hellfire breath should recharge on a 4+ instead of a 5+ as that seemed to be the biggest threat he had. It probably would have been a bit tougher, but the mage had an ability that ignored my resistances...damn PC's foiled me again! ;)
Next they got the call to head to Turtleback Ferry. Like Scott, I agree that random encounters are stupid when you can just come up with a predefined encounter that is much more interesting and the party would never know the difference. I didn't have enough time to prep my own encounter that week so I ran the Satyr encounter that Scott suggest. I didn't have the satyrs attack the party until their attention was fixed on the owlbears. It worked out fairly well. I forgot to use the owlbears screech ability which realy would have helped, but the owlbears do massive amounts of damange despite that and my first roll crited and insta-gibbed the ranger. I gave them a short rest and the rest of the satyrs showed up with their displacer beast in tow. The satyrs themselves were underwealming, but the displacer beast was a huge hit with the party. If I had to do it again I would lower the amount of satyrs and make the displacer beast a little bigger (I think their is a level 12 version of the beast).
And that is where we are currently. We meet about once every two weeks, so our next get together won't be until after the holidays. I'll keep updating this thread to let you guys know how our adventure is going and any more notes I have on converting the adventure. If ya'll have any questions please feel free to ask.
| darwinn69 |
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
So, instead of just listing what my party has done so far and how Scotts conversion has been working out for us it's time to get down to doing some actual conversion work. My first order of business is to work up some rumors for Turtleback Ferry since the PC's will be spending some time in the area. However, I need to make sure that the rumors I give make since with how I want to run this adventure, so I need to figure out how I want to run the Hook Mountain Massacre.
After reading through it and other peoples comments I tend to agree that Skulls crossing won't seem very connected to the main plot from the PC's prospective. Generally that's OK to have side things that are only partially connected to the main plot, but we already have Grulls farmstead which is way too cool to drop. I played with the idea of creating a counter attack like others have suggested, but that seems too divergent from the main plot considering that Ft. Rannick was only an idle diversion for Barl Breakbones who tends to prefer his minions undead anyways. So I still want to send the PC's to Skulls Crossing, but I really don't want to use the flood to do it. Instead when the PC's encounter Lucrecia she's going to make it very clear that Turtleback Ferry is doomed and that it's destruction will send hundreds of greedy souls to her master. To help forshadow how this will happen we need to include a number of rumors from the townsfolk who are worried about the rising waters in the Stovall deep, and that Skulls crossing should have opened it's spillway soon.
In addition, I want to try to skip springing the Haunted Heart on the PC's if I can. The original adventure really only intends this to be something you do if the PC's need some additional prodding to go to Hook Mountain. However, I don't want to just leave this fluff completely out, and if they desire to explore that area I'll certainly let them. So adding some rumors about the fey seems appropriate to at least give them the option.
So with that in mind, we need to come up with a number of rumors that the PC's can gather using a Streetwise (DC18) check once they get to Turtleback Ferry.
1. Their have been more spotting of friendly Fey creatures on the outskirts of the Shimmerglens.
2. The trolls living in Skulls crossing have been unusually quite.
3. Black Magga sunk another fishing boat in Stoval Deep.
4. Bran Fered spotted a drowned troll in the river.
5. Tillia Henkenson proudly says she has record attendance this semester.
6. The old mayor is worried that the rains have been unusually heavy north of Stoval Deep. The water levels are at an all time high.
7. Terek 'Earthbreaker' Charhok killed another giant.
8. You notice the Sihedron rune on the shoulder of one of the inns bartender.
9. Lady Lucrecia is generally thought to have died when paradise sank.
10. The butchers swears he saw Lady Lucrecia in the crowd that gathered when paradise burned.
11. Terek 'Earthbreaker' Charhok is said to have an excessively large manhood.
12. With all the rain Skulls Crossing would usually open one of the flood gates by now, however that hasn't seemed to have happened yet.
13. Tillia Henkenson's husband died when paradise sank. After his death she discovered that their savings have been almost completely drained.
14. One of the huge shells used as ferries sprang a leak. It can't be fixed and they aren't sure what to replace it.
15. While not hostile or unfriendly the shimerglens are generally best left alone. However, recently trappers have seen some odd changes in the outskirts of the marshes.
16. A tornado destroyed a small fishing hovel along stovall deep.
17. It was Black Magga who destroyed a fishing hovel along stovall deep
18. No one has heard from Fort Rannick in a few weeks. While the rangers tend to be reclusive they usualy come down for supplies by now.
19. If the Skulls Crossing floodgates don't open then the entire area could be in danger of flooding and Turtleback ferry would be underwater.
20. You notice the Sihedron rune on the wrist of one of the dock hands.
21. An unusal lightning storm destroyed a small fishing hovel along the stovall deep.
Shuffle them up and hand them out to every PC who makes a successful Streetwise (DC 18) check. Allow them to make a check once every 12 hours, and try to make sure they get one of the Sihedron runes within the first 5.
Obviously their is a lot more we can do with these rumors. I've always felt a little let down by Turtleback Ferry. After the wonderfully fleshed out Sandpoint where it felt like a living city, then magnamar where it was so sprawling that you could find and do pretty much anything here, Turtleback ferry seemed so blah in comparison. I want to include some more social type rumors, but I figured a lot of that will come while they are holding the fort through the winter. Eventually I'd like to have them hunt down a turtle to replace the leaky ferry, and maybe even track down a rampaging Argorth that formed after Black Maggas encounter with the PC's. With any luck their brief encounter with Black Magga will make them want to kill her and we'll have another 'sandpoint devil' that they have to come back to later.
| darwinn69 |
So with the rumors distributed and the PC's have a chance to explore Turtle Back Ferry it's time for them to move on. As any good adventurer party they took the bait and went to rescue the bear to start Grull's farm. Scott (Tales of the Rusty Dragon) did a lot of work making each Grull unique, but honestly I think that the minor variances would have been lost on the PC's overall. For most of the Grulls I took an Ogre Savage, made it an elite so it would get additional HP, and upped it's AC and Fortitude to 23. Then, for encounters where it mattered I gave some minor ability.
For the first encounter with Rukus I used my elite ogre savage and 5 attack dogs, very similar to Scotts. I didn't give Rukus any abilities since this would be their first time fighting Ogres and would give them a good introduction to the basic ogre stats. The encounter went well, they freed the bear in the middle of the fight so I gave them the cave bear sheet and let them run the encounter. When they tried to subdue Rukus I had them take a nature check (DC 20), and since they failed the Bear decided it would tear Rukus's throat out.
Next encounter was Crowfood at the Grull farm. Now Crowfood is supposed to be 8' tall, massive, guards the area and makes scarecrows/fetishes that are placed along the perimeter of the farm. I wanted to play him up as an actual 'guardian' of the farm, and bring his scarecrows into play. So I placed a number of scarecrows around the farm perimeter of the battlemap. The scarecrows have the following abilities:
-Aura 5, enemies in the aura are -2 to attack rolls
-Immune to Range and magic attacks
-Melee attacks auto hit, but must do a minimum of 20 HP of damage in a single swing to destroy it. A fetish may also be disabled using Acrane (DC 22) or Theivery (DC 26).
So they are annoying, but not exactly dangerous. However, to play up the guardian aspect of Crowfood he went through some major changes. First he became an Solo monster, and his AC was upped appropratly. In addition he gained two abilities:
-1/round, minor, Activate a fetish, The fetish performs the following attack: Close burst 5, +12 vs. Will, enemies in the burst are dazed (save ends)
-Crowfood deals an extra 2d6 damage vs. Dazed and Stunned characters. If crowfood hits a dazed character it instead becomes stunned (save ends)
Crowfood tries to keep as many of the PC's near a fetish as possible, and will always attack anyone who is dazed regardless of opportunity attacks.
Next up the PC's decided to clear out the barn first. The three Grulls who were waiting for them were simple Elite Ogre Savages. As far as encounters go, it was fairly ho-hum. This wasn't exactly supposed to be a major encounter, so I let it play out as is and the PC's killed the Ogres with little effort, just a couple healing surges spent.
After the Grulls I put a total of 5 spiders in the next room, 3 bladspiders and 2 bloodspinner spiders. My plan was to give them a challenge, not in the spiders themselves(I could tell pretty quickly that the spiders would be easy prey for the PC's, but I wanted to do interesting things with the web and have the spiders spend most of their time keeping everyone tangled in webs. It turned out to be irrelevant, the PC's used the remnants of the still and caught the room on fire. It made things a lot more interesting, the PC's had to race in, grab the prisioners, and get out while the barn burnt down around them and dealing with the spiders who are trapped inside.
Once the prisoners were free the party decided it was time to clear the house. I made Shialu and the bear stick with the prisoners to start tending to their wounds, so the party had to go to the house without them. The traps in the house were cute, but they really didn't do much to the PC's. I turned the kitchen into another trap, anyone who walks in takes an attack +15 vs fortitude, and if you fail you loose a healing surge violently throwing up.
Lucky and Maulgro were basic elite ogre savages. I gave them the ability that when the other ogre is bloodied or dies the ogre gets to shift two squares, laughs at his companions misfortune, then all abilities automatically recharge. It worked out OK, again not a difficult fight.
For Mammy I used Scotts stat block: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_57MmzM9rqx0/SdHailKi_CI/AAAAAAAAA4o/wFTCgX6fB98/s 1600-h/Mammy+Graul+Stat+Block.PNG. I turned her three boys into Zombie Hulks, mostly because I didn't want to keep up with 4 unique mobs when 3 of them probably won't live more than a couple of rounds. Zombie hulk's seemed appropriate for a large zombie creation. Mammy did her thing, and although she wasn't difficult she was an interesting fight for the party.
Next came Hucker downstairs. I once again used the elite ogre savage as my template and added 4 ravenous attack dogs (donkey rats). To show the interaction between Hucker and his pets every time one of the pets died Hucker immediately regained all recharge abilities and got +1 to hit/damage. He ended up spitting out a fair amount of damage, but the fight itself seemed rather boring and uninspired. Although it took a little grinding they did manage to drop him.
And last, but not least, Muck Grull. Ever since the start of the adventure he was one of the mobs I was most looking forward to playing. I used Scotts basic stat line for both Muck and the tangleroot crawlers: http://rustydragon.blogspot.com/2009/04/a14-a15-tendriculous-pit.html#muckg raul. I did make a couple of minor changes. The tangleroot crawlers damage was upped to 8 base, and 10 vs. combat advantage. I also turned the root move action into a free action to give him more mobility and make him a bigger PITA. It was appropriately frustrating for some of the melee types, but after a round of dailies blown that dropped him to bloodied in one round it wasn't long until they cleaned him up.
Looking back on Grulls farm it was an overall successful scene, but I think I would make some changes if I had to do it again. First off Hucker, the barn, the playpen, and to a lesser extent Rukus were all a little on the boring side. The Grulls themselves had a bunch of HP and did an appropriate amount of damage to weaken the PC's setting them up for later encounters. The problem was their was nothing else interesting going on while the PC's were fighting them, and three of those encounters really felt more like an MMO grind then an actual adventure. If I had to do it again I would probably retool all the encounters to give some sort of environmental effect, or task they have to do while fighting the Ogres to make it more interesting overall.
On the flip side, the changes I made to Crowfood worked out well, and I would recommend that to anyone who wants to run this encounter. Mammy was an interesting NPC and I would have liked to have done more with her. Muck Grull was a great final boss, although I would probably give the tangle root crawlers some better defenses and probably start him off with a couple pre-spawned.
Changes if I were to run it again
1. I would probably completely revise the Hucker encounter, and maybe even remove it. My thought would be to turn him into a solo and fill his room with traps. Then give him some abilities that can slide PC's around so they get put in areas surrounded by traps. I had thought about adding some clockwork monsters, but that seemed a little too technical for an ogre.
2. Do something different with the playpen. I would have removed the two full grown Grulls and replaced them with a dozen or so baby Grulls. Have them squabbling over human remains, and attack the PC's as soon as they enter. Make it understood that they have a hungry look to them and find some appropriate human sized NPC that could represent a half starved ogre toddler. It probably still wouldn't have been a challenging encounter, but it would have given them a unique mob to fight.
3. I would have loved to do more with Mammy. I should have turned her into a solo monster and added something to her to up her threat level to the party. Perhaps have her give birth to a littler of whelps when she's bloodied and maybe have the playpen come to her rescue once she gets engaged. I could have also started with one of her boys 'nursing' when the PC's arrive.
4. The barn seemed ho-hum, but I think it's OK as far as design goes. To make things interesting I think the still should automatically go up in flames as soon as the last Grull dies. The spiders could then be replaced with any number of vermin who just try to escape the flames and will fight any NPC who tries to get in their way. The big risk is that they won't know the black arrows are held hostage in the back, so you need to add something to make sure the PC's know they are their.
5. I should have done a lot more with the traps in the house. I used Scotts stats http://rustydragon.blogspot.com/2009/03/a1-a3-trapped-entryway.html, but they never really felt threatening enough.
| Kolokotroni |
This thread probably needs a spoiler warning, possibly to be moved to the rise of runelords section of the forums? Not sure since it certainly is a conversion, but it is more closely tied to the AP then the rpg.
| darwinn69 |
This thread probably needs a spoiler warning, possibly to be moved to the rise of runelords section of the forums? Not sure since it certainly is a conversion, but it is more closely tied to the AP then the rpg.
Ok sure. It's more about how to restructure and convert the encounters so it fits into D&D 4E than it is about the actual adventure path. But what ever makes ya'll happy. :)
Not sure about how to add a spoiler warning. I guess I just assumed that anyone who reads message boards about a specific adventure wouldn't be concerned with spoilers.