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Made a booboo last night. Misread the VV random encounter chart. Came up with a Greater Cyclops.... Dunno how but I thought it said 2. Thought the 8 th level pc's couldn't handle that so I dopped in a hunting party so that the PC's goal could be to rescue them rather than stay and fighht the monsters...
The PC's didn't take that bait and went in to kill the brutes as the encounter was taking place too close to a settlement for their comfort (I didn't consider that). Was gonna have the cyclopses (is that the right pluralization?) get spooked and run off but my players were so psyched about fighting 30 foot tall giants that I thought a round or two of combat before spooking them was ok.
Lo and behold, the pc's do well. Gtanted, I helped by playing up the cyclops' stupidity... Having one run after the ride-by, evil-smiting paladin letting the others gang up on the last cyclops, keeping opponents abay with their reach rather than stepping in to cut off disengagement actions, not really weighing the pc's as more dangerous than the hapless hunters (sucked for them but less attacks sent the pc's way). With all of that (and the nuke that is a smiting, lance-wielding, charging paladin on chaotic evil bad guys), they won!
The bard was near going out, druid was at -2, sorceress was quaking in her boots when the druid went down as there was nothing between her squishy self and a charging cyclops, paladin was badly hurt... The archer ranger was the only one that hadn't taken damage. It was 2:30am when the last cyclops fell and there was a rousing cheer in 3 different cities (as two of my players join us by skype teleconference).
Then they start the conspiracy theories... The Gyronna cult has been fairly prominent in my game. They think the cult brought the giant owlbear on their capitol... Now they think the cult also lured the cyclopses. My own plot-weaving wheels got to turning based on their paranoia... I see several weeks of cultist hunting plotline ahead of us.
PC's are psyched, I am inspired, campaign is made even better... All thanks to the random encounter chart and my silly mistake while reading it.
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Made a booboo last night. Misread the VV random encounter chart. Came up with a Greater Cyclops.... Dunno how but I thought it said 2. Thought the 8 th level pc's couldn't handle that so I dopped in a hunting party so that the PC's goal could be to rescue them rather than stay and fighht the monsters...
The PC's didn't take that bait and went in to kill the brutes as the encounter was taking place too close to a settlement for their comfort (I didn't consider that). Was gonna have the cyclopses (is that the right pluralization?) get spooked and run off but my players were so psyched about fighting 30 foot tall giants that I thought a round or two of combat before spooking them was ok.
Lo and behold, the pc's do well. Gtanted, I helped by playing up the cyclops' stupidity... Having one run after the ride-by, evil-smiting paladin letting the others gang up on the last cyclops, keeping opponents abay with their reach rather than stepping in to cut off disengagement actions, not really weighing the pc's as more dangerous than the hapless hunters (sucked for them but less attacks sent the pc's way). With all of that (and the nuke that is a smiting, lance-wielding, charging paladin on chaotic evil bad guys), they won!
The bard was near going out, druid was at -2, sorceress was quaking in her boots when the druid went down as there was nothing between her squishy self and a charging cyclops, paladin was badly hurt... The archer ranger was the only one that hadn't taken damage. It was 2:30am when the last cyclops fell and there was a rousing cheer in 3 different cities (as two of my players join us by skype teleconference).
Then they start the conspiracy theories... The Gyronna cult has been fairly prominent in my game. They think the cult brought the giant owlbear on their capitol... Now they think the cult also lured the cyclopses. My own plot-weaving wheels got to turning based on their paranoia... I see several weeks of cultist hunting plotline ahead of us.
PC's are psyched, I am inspired, campaign is...
Awesome fight! Some accidents are good. :-)
I love this freakin AP! lol
Thanks for sharing!. I did something like that in the first book with wolves...oops! I really need to make sure I wear my reading glasses when I'm looking at the tables.
I was really worried about how I would handle random encounter tables because Paizo has some serious run-ins that can TPK in a heart beat. Now add my poor eyesight-at-night and I could knock out the Stolen Lands...lol!