I'll just be jotting some notes here regarding some of the more interesting choices my players make through the coarse of this campaign. Feel free to comment!
First, some background on my PC's. This'll be my longest post here, the actual adventure synopsis will just be snippets that assume the reader knows how the adventure is supposed to go already.
Tank: Human Fighter - Gareth Jeggare. Born to a rich Family in Korvosa, estranged relationship with his family caused him to journey abroad. Hitched up with some mercenaries in Magnimar but felt the lifestyle unsettling to his Good nature. Settled in Sandpoint as a Blade for Hire to the Town Guard. His 19 str makes him an excellent bodyguard.
Melee DPS: Human Rogue - Haschell Drokkus. A young Varisian boy with ties to the Sczarni family. Tried to make a name for himself by murdering a traveling Wizzard by the name of Caledrel. He was bested by the Elf and taken for experimentation. He was eventually rescued but not before the arcane experiments left him with scars of the Elemental plane of Air. He will be taking levels in Sorcerer and become an arcane trickster.
Ranged DPS: Tiefling Ranger (urban archtype) - Darius Drokkus. A bounty hunter by trade, Darius was also born in Korvosa. At that time, the town still struggled against the diabloist nature of their parent nation of Cheliax. Horrified by the birth of their first half-fiend, his father abandoned him on the roadside a mile from town. He would have died from the experience were it not for a traveling Varisian Caravan who happened by. They fought off some predators who were attempting to make a meal of the child and adopted Darius as a member of their tribe. Near starvation at an early stage of life left him with a poor constitution score and compensates with a sharp wit and ranged combat. His adoptive parents settled in Sandpoint to build what would become the Sandpoint Theater. Darius became the other side of the coin that was Nualia's presence in Sandpoint.
Healer: Human Oracle of Life - Veovis Andorhal. Hails originally from Riddleport where he was trained as a Warrior, and Pirate. Taught by his father to craft weapons and armor, and to sail. When a Traveling Wizard happened onto his ship at an early age Veovis was fascinated. In exchange for hauling treasures from the sea-floor he would train the boy in the arcane arts, assuring the pirates that what Veovis learned would help all of their lives. And so it was that Veovis spent the better parts of his life mastering the arcane arts. Forgoing the standard Armored battle-mage disciplines for the simpler Still-Spell Meta magic. Eventually Veovis came to see all magic as a secret that could be unlocked, and endeavored to "break the code of divine magic" as it were. He was determined to unlock the weave of creation without the aid of the Gods and prayer. But, one god took notice. Nethys came to Veovis in a vision one night, announced that Veovis would not grasp the power he sought until he learned to respect it, stripped him of all Arcane Spellcasting ability, and cursed him as an oracle of life. Veovis would gain the ability to cast divine magic at will, but not as he imagined. Now he has the ability to heal any wound or ailment, save for his own wasting disease. A gift from Nethys that Veovis likes to refer to as a "Divine Practical Joke."
Durring the festival I had
Banny is serving as an enjoyable comic relief guy with some of his antics which should make the following adventure draw in the player more.
Pretty much the rest of this thread will be spoilers.
Gareth was the ladies man of the group but critically failed to hit on Ameiko while Shayliss was waiting to make her move, and Darius rolled a natural 18 just to attempt to show Gareth up, so Shayliss made her move on Darius instead. But, when the bodice came off he told her "I don't want any STD's" lol
When they attacked Tsuto he nearly TPK'ed them. He was only down 3 HP when the goblins died, but he had a tatctical advantage and allready personally took out the Healer and the Tank with one shot each. His third shot brought the rogue to 1 HP. So he stuck around for another turn but due to some excellent tactics they brought him down to -5 on the next turn (they dowsed the torch in the basement and used Darkness to make it completely black, and the ranger can see in the dark).
The part of note is that they made some emergency heal checks on him and tied him up so they could bring him to the guard! I didn't see that coming.
So while the party was recovering from their wounds, Tsuto escaped from prison. When they were able, they spent the rest of the session investigating how he did it (I guess the answer came too easily because they kept trying to dig up more information even though there was none) I had to drudge up some sinspawn to kill townspeople to get attention back to the tunnel that they were standing in front of when we sat down today...
i got bored of this. But some highlights are: Tiefling grappled the quaist and tried to drown her in the pool, he resisted most of the cold damage and he let go when he realized she almost instantly froze to death. She was giving them a run for their money up to that point.
The encounter with gogmurt went as planned with him surrendering everything he knew about thistletop. Then they actively checked the rope bridge and wired it up correctly before stealthing into the fort via the east tower. They decided climbing in made more sense than entering the suspiciously ajar front door. So a quick shimmy up to the top and murdered the 2 gobs up there pretty silently and they're off to coup de grace a bunch of sleeping goblins
I misread some of the DC's for sleeping creatures next to something getting stabbed :/ oh well.
It's okay ripnugget quickly made his way towards TPK. Ranger climbed up one of the pillars and hung upside down from his legs around some spikes to fire arrows down into the room. Very cool scene and gave me an excuse to have ripnugget climb up there to get 'em an not continuously deal 16 damage from spirited charge every turn. Meanwhile the rogue wastes his time baring the doors from incoming goblins even though it was just a ghost sound.
When the other goblins (the picklethieves) finanally checked in on the sounds of battle they used their best impersonation of ripnugget's voice to tell them "go away i'm banging my wives in here", and being goblins it worked.
My rogue checked EVERYTHING around the slasher chest -determined- that it was trapped somehow. But he didn't make his perception check to see the lid scythe. So here he is with a rope tied to his waist being held by the warrior around the corner, and his right hand on a blade he stabbed into the wall next to him in case the floor fell out from under him and left him in a crap filled spike pit.... and he turned the key left.
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Their incursion into level 2 ended abruptly when they landed in lap of 2 yeth hounds as their first encounter. The 3 that panicked ran all the way out to level 1 and the 1 that didn't ran anyway shutting every door behind them till they got to the courtyard. The yeth hounds wouldnt go into the daylight but everyone on lvl 2 was now on alert and before they could come up with a decent plan tsuto and lyrie had climbed on up into the guard tower overlooking the exercise yard and the rooftop of the fort respectively and began to rain down arrows and magic missiles upon them.
When they finally got down to level 2 again i had each entrance guarded by a longshank and a yethhound, the sound of the hounds bay alerting the second group as to the parties location and soon they were fighting orik bruzthamas and 2 yethhounds. Bruzthamas was last to survive and was not in melee so he fled to get backup from the goblin women.
Party is too wounded to continue much further, orik gave up (they really liked this character anyway. Had him hide behind the door on their way in and when they checked behind it and saw him he said "hi!" with a big smile and then hit them with a powerattack. party:"i like this guy") so they let him drink his potion and lyrie used her's on tsuto. If they had killed them before they got the chance they would be good to go.
The plan is to hunt bruzthamas and retreat to rest after he's dead. But the second the sun goes down a yeth hound is coming for them. I may continue harasing them through the night to prevent rest if i can make it realistic enough. Suggestions?
They're in for a really tough night - enough to use Heal checks to patch themselves up, but not much more if the yeth hound comes calling every hour or so to rattle their cages.
Have the hound hit and run - it's a cunning, deadly foe in its element of night and shadow. Play up things until they're ragged around the edges come sunrise (fatigued, not exhausted).
THEN have just enough time for them to eat breakfast before the daytimers whomp them. ^__^
That sounds like a good plan. What about Lamashtu? Now that everyone Helping Nualia is dead but a bugbear 5 goblin wives and a yeth hound, does Lamashtu give Nualia re-enforcements or say YOU GOT YOUR YETH HOUNDS DO OR DIE!
Options: Players try to rest out in the nettlewood, get harrased by a yeth hound all night.
Players realize they aren't getting anywhere and retreat to sandpoint for the night (Yethhound still hunts them it says in the MM but Say they kill it) Lamashtu sends a fiendish minitaur to back her up/use up party resources so Nualia doesn't seem like a pushover (she would be if everyone is at 100% i feel)
Players go to sandpoint to grab potions before continuing. spending 5 hours travel both ways. That would make it 9pm ish and the whole day adventuring and traveling. Maybe I give them fatiged but leave the dungeon structure alone.