My group is moving along slowly - the group is very RP heavy so we move pretty slowly. I'm interested in any changes, enhancements, or ideas anyone has for Feldgrau. There's been several times I've missed cool things on the forums and didn't locate them until we had passed the area.
Thanks.
You probably already heard about this one, but there is an important mistake in Vrood's stat block. He should not have the circle of death spell because Paizo forgot to include the spellcaster level reduction from his prestige class. Look at the most recent messages in the Carrion Crown Obituaries thread. Apparently, "There was a late change to the PrC after the adventure was developed, but Vrood's stat block was unfortunately not updated to reflect that. It probably doesn't hurt the adventure to lower his CL to 10 (he only loses 2 spells), or you can give him another level of necromancer, which also increases his CR by 1 (and involves greater changes to his stat block)." I'm planning on NOT giving him another level because I'm ok with not inflicting circle of death on my PCs in Feldgrau.
You probably already heard about this one . . .
Thanks. I remember reading about that but forgot. I'm not a fan of save or die spells so I'm not sure I would have cast it anyway. Still, thanks!
As written, there's no real content between the Stairs and Feldgrau itself. I think the game and setting misses a lot by not stopping by Ardis, and then going through the Furrows.
I did a short trek through Ardis (not too much plot, just sights & sounds), and then while hiking through the backcountry of Ardeal, did a brief little sidetrek loosely inspired by Feast of Ravenmoor. Once they got to the Furrows, it was basically an outdoor dungeon-crawl, focusing on haunts and the horrors of trench-warfare.
Once they got to Feldgrau itself, I found it hard to ask "where do you want to go?" without them just saying "well, the big tower, duh" and they skipped a huge chunk of the written content.
warning if the group skips much of the town, they will end up skipping the ghost that can pull memories out of people's brains. Since Vrood drinks the deathgag elixir, this can cause the plot to fall apart. Make sure you have a backup plan to feed the next bits of plot to the PCs. Putting more info into the coded journal is a fine way of doing this.
Also, unless the PCs are really emphasizing sneaking and waylaying enemies (and most groups don't), then the confrontations in Feldgrau can quickly spiral out of control with MANY MANY combatants. Think ahead as to how you'll run so many mobs at once at your game. (Because it's certainly not realistic for them to keep doing their patrols in ignorance while a fight goes off 50 ft away across the open ground.)
Be advices that u may want to keep the original stats if u play with 6 players.
Sure players may die, but they have enought $ to fix that.
I am GMing for 8 players, how should I alter the fight
8...wow....massive.
I have 6. I left the encounter as it was. 1 died...
for 8 I would put some extra skeletons or maybe the ghouls in, and a vanguard around him. Def use Circle of death and weed out the players. maybe replace some of his spells for more offensive stuff (assuming u have a vanguard that keeps the PC at bay).
I'll add my own comments in case someone else reads this.
SPOILERS!
The party ran into Delgrose whom they immediately cast detect evil on and then insta-killed. The huntsman really was in no position to offer up anything. It's pretty sad that you can just walk around detecting evil (at will, we have an inquisitor). Maybe I should have shielded his alignment... nevertheless, the entire "fool them into an ambush" requires an especially naive party.
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A few things to remember about Detect Evil:
- it has verbal and somatic components; in the PF world, it is safe to assume that all humans can "recognize spellcasting when they see it", even if they can't figure out what is being cast (that takes ranks in Spellcraft). Many social situations can explode when the other group goes "DUDE! WTF?! WHY ARE YOU CASTING A SPELL AT ME!?!", they have no idea if it's a fireball, or a dominate person, etc. It's just not socially proper to cast spells in people's faces.
- the first round merely detects "the presence of absence of evil within the area of effect (a cone)"; in places like Feldgrau, of course that's going to trigger no matter what. This round of ambiguity gives the other person time to freak out or flee (as per the above bullet). Only on the second round can you associate an aura with a location.
- if a character moves outside of the spell's effect during this round, the spell must be recast.
- there's lots of valid reasons to detect evil. Carrying an evil magic item, being under the effects of an evil curse, etc. Especially in Ustalav, where curses abound. To drive the point home: Frodo Baggins would "detect as evil" throughout all of LotR, and you definitely should not kill him on sight (though you certainly would want to ask some hard questions).
- many characters that can detect evil have Lawful alignments or other codes of conduct. Killing someone in self defense is self defense. Killing someone who is in the act of committing an evil act is defending the innocent. Killing someone "because they looked wrong" is murder, and murder is illegal. Paladins cannot kill someone "just because they ping" - they need due cause. Petty criminals detect as evil: and "execution" does not match the crime of "petty theft."
Now, if it's a crazed CG Inquisitor, yea, all bets are off.
Also have a llok at Rules of Fear. Most of Ustavlas population is some kind of evil...read up on the alignments....evil dosnt mean some one is auromaticly up to bad stuff.
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I added a Multiplying T-Rex Skeleton (from the TotB bestiary) right before Vrood. I also kept the Circle of Death spell.
They beat him down no problem anyway, with just 3 PCs and a Leadership cohort. He needs a lot more meatshields between him and the PCs if he's going to have time to get his good spells off.
With 8 players, if you don't want him to drop CoD on them, he should open with Cloudkill.
As for the rest of Feldgrau, I ran it pretty straight, but with a few more set-pieces:
There were burning skeletons systematically burning down the remaining buildings, and the PCs fought them right before they were going to go into a building with a liquid ice trap. If they'd just let the skeletons continue, they'd have caused a huge explosion as the ice reacted with their fire effect. :)
They also met Duristan, but he half-convinced them that he wasn't a werewolf. So they left him with the Prince's Wolves, and he proceeded to hulk out and slaughter them all.
Thanks, Erik. Great points.
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@Lehmo: I would beef up the skeleton archers atop the tower (maybe champions with 3 levels of FTR), and have Vrood fly out of the top mid-fight if you have a group that big. 8 characters plus Vrood and his familiar and whatever else monsters you insert becomes a very tight encounter in the interior of the tower, but flying around the tower as the archers peg the casters makes for a much less straightforward hack-em-up.
@Ullapool: The two clerics in the pack of skeletors is a joke of a fight for a party with a tank and the spell Displacement. My group Leeroy Jenkins'ed that fight and it was like 2 rounds total. Changing it to be compelling or even a challenge would be better. Also read up on the haunt rules like 5 times before they start exploring the buildings, since you're nearly 2 books past the last Haunt you faced.
Once they got to the Furrows, it was basically an outdoor dungeon-crawl, focusing on haunts and the horrors of trench-warfare.
Once they got to Feldgrau itself, I found it hard to ask "where do you want to go?" without them just saying "well, the big tower, duh" and they skipped a huge chunk of the written content.
If you make the mist very tight around the town and the mist and the trees almost impassible (eg, by putting lots of APL+5 ghosts and other nasties in them, plus strong hints that the PCs should avoid the trees), you can structure the town such that these barriers form the "walls" of the dungeon. Start them in the left of the map, and they will have to fight their way through the encounters in order to get to the tower.
I did that and it worked very well. In fact, Feldgrau was probably the highlight of the module for us.
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Main changes I'm making or have made, as my party (five PCs, 20 point buy, plus Kendra (L6 diviner) and my substantially re-written Gibbs (L6 fighter)) are in Feldgrau right now --
1) I've giving Vrood the extra level he needs to be able to cast Circle of Death. I've actually made a big deal out of Vrood killing people (including the Professor) with the spell over the course of the campaign, and the party's planning actually revolves around "how are we facing this dude and not immediately losing our people with +4 fort saves).
2) Along those lines, my party came up with a pretty convoluted scheme to recruit the Demon Wolves to use as fodder against Vrood, under the pretext of "any other day we would fight to the death, but we both hunt the same man. We don't care what you do with the heart as long as Vrood dies." And the cleric got a 30 something bluff v. Adimarus's 8 sense motive... So it's actually a thing that'll happen.
3) I've been adding apocalypse zombies with advanced template (and max HP) to the encounters, with the pre-text that when Vrood makes undead, he does an awesome job of it. The apocazombies still aren't very dangerous, but compared to the wimpy skeleton champions they're a huge pain in the ass for the party.
4) I tweaked the festrogs to be "Apocalypse Festrogs" - advanced template, max HP, plus improved grab, brain eating & plague-bearing. Every melee character is currently infected with the zombie plague at this point.
5)Vrood has an additional ally - a half-red dragon gargoyle that he rode into Schloss Caromarc. It will be buy time for Vrood to buff up, and Vrood will probably reanimate it as an apocalypse gargoyle in the middle of the fight.
Keep in mind that Feldgrau has a really, really high encounter rate - 50% chance the PCs run into something every time they go between buildings.
After the party swept into Feldgrau, cleared most of the buildings (destroying over half a dozen random encounters in the process) and left, they came back the next morning to find an assault by 3 curates, 3 cultists, 4 apocafestrogs, and 8 apocazombies already engaging the demon wolves. After a pretty serious battle,the party managed to wipe out the cult forces and convince Adimarus to work with them. So next week they're going straight through the town square and then into Vrood's tower.
Vrood's going to have the gangs of wights hanging out in the armory as reinforcements.
This should be fun, though I actually need to worry about the party's sorceress doing something like readying to fireball Vrood every time he casts a spell...
Good geeze you really like to lay it on for your players. My 5 players just hit 8th at the end of trial and I'm starting to feel the power ramp up. The torched the Aberrant Promethean within three and a half rounds without going anywhere near the bondslave thrall (and all it managed to do was almost kill the druid), so I suppose by the time they get to Feldgrau, they might be quite potent.
Still, Apocalypse monsters and max hp and brain eating. Good times!
What did you guys do for resting in the area? My party likes to pull the old sleeping in the dimensional cabin (drawing a blank on the spell now, /blush). Usually I've been not allowing them to really get a lot of rest and it's been putting a strain on the casters. In your above discussion, Zhangar, I can imagine the casters would be really drained of spells.
These are great tips! Thanks all.
My ppl sleeped in the Inn. As this is the only place neigher of the patrols come on. They defeated (bit not put to rest) the Innkeep they could sleep in pease.
As for spell casting, my campaign is running over winter and additional drain for the spellcaster for he needs to use endure elements on the groupe, as they missed the opportunity to buy WARM cloth in Leipidstadt.
In my case the party completely pulled out of Feldgrau to rest, and simply took their chance with the random encounters walking back in. They also talked the Prince's Wolves into withdrawing from Feldgrau with them, so they had additional support for defending their camp. I rolled for an Ardeal encounter and didn't get anything, so that worked out for them.
Ulla - I have a cleric, an chirurgeon alchemist, and a sorceress. They also have Kendra as their back-up wizard. As a side note, Diviner's Insight is a damn nice power to have on a supporting NPC. Anyways, I actually have to push the party pretty damn hard to put a dent in their spell casting capacity.
As a comical side effect of trying to push the party, the cleric now has 11 or so pearls of power from all of the curates the party has killed.
For the battle with Vrood: The demon wolves served the party pretty well - the sorceress hasted them, they tore apart the curates and skeleton champions at the mass grave, zipped over to the tower, tore down the front gate, and then died by Vrood's hand. Adimarus survived a bit longer than his minions, but by being the only person to actually reach Vrood initially, he soaked quite a few spells, including Cloudkill and Eyebite.
The party also got lucky in a few matters:
1) I rolled for a random encounter to add to the Vrood battle, figuring open battle at the mass grave would bring reinforcements. I rolled 100 on the chart, which meant the demon wolves - who were already working with the party. So Vrood had no reinforcements beyond Acrietta.
2) The sorceress successfully dispelled Cloudkill, Eyebite, and Fly, all back to back. Losing Eyebite and Fly hosed Vrood badly.
3) While Acrietta was a participant in the battle, the alchemist actually beat her 26 initiative and did nearly 50 damage to her with bombs while she was still flat-footed. So despite her super high AC (I'd given her advanced temple; she was over a 30 once she started moving), it only took a couple more hits to drop her. She only got a single attack before she went down.
Also, being an enemy spellcaster with an alchemist readied to bomb you when you cast is rough. Once that was finally set up, Vrood never got another spell off. Vrood's last act was to walk up to the alchemist and use Lich's Touch for about 15 damage, for spite's sake.
. . .
Once they got to Feldgrau itself, I found it hard to ask "where do you want to go?" without them just saying "well, the big tower, duh" and they skipped a huge chunk of the written content.warning if the group skips much of the town, they will end up skipping the ghost that can pull memories out of people's brains. Since Vrood drinks the deathgag elixir, this can cause the plot to fall apart. Make sure you have a backup plan to feed the next bits of plot to the PCs. Putting more info into the coded journal is a fine way of doing this.
. . .
This is precisely what my group is doing and it's really derailing this railroad. I'm interested in any ideas you guys can provide.
I tried to get them to hop between buildings to see what was inside by having patrols outside but my group decided that they needed to take out the patrols - they started following them. I put up thick fog so that they couldn't see very far ahead (50 ft) and was making them roll stealth and the other guys perception.... they managed to track a large group of the Way for a while. I made the group large trying to scare they off but they weren't, so I added 3 packs of Demon wolves that descended on the event - trying to scare them by sandwiching them.
They did what I had hoped, ducked into an alley and into a building. I thought things were good until they then went outside and waited for both sides to be weakened and then went in and mopped up the bits (sigh). Then back to tracking. They've taken to just circling the town.
I redesigned the town so that the tower was in the middle so that they wouldn't just circle around to it but they are now scared to go into the buildings because the first one had a wolf ambush and the second one had the candle haunt (two of them took almost max damage from the haunt and were REALLY hurt from it). As such, they're basically intending to skirt down the alleys between buildings to the town center (where the tower is IMC).
I had the Prince's Wolves intervene once, tell them that they could help - could tell them where the demon wolves leader was and my party was like "that's your war, we're after the Way".
I have another week to think this through now. Can I get some suggestions from my fellow DMs here about what to do?
Do I really NEED to pull them into some of those scenes? They're going to miss the butcher shop, the inn (and the inn keeper), the demon wolves ambush in the mill, adimarus, hell they're going to miss Acretia (as written).
Relocate the town such that they walk directly into a courtyard through the mists, then throw in some screams for help or a person who looks like a cultist ducking into a building. We haven't yet reached this point in my game (this Saturday will be my players first session of book 3).
I thought about this a while today and I think I'm going to make the tower be a defensible location that the Demon Wolves are throwing themselves against and dying in great numbers (of course this changes the amount of wolves in the pack, but whatever).
The PCs hopefully will realize they can't get in that way and I'll have the Prince's Wolves say that they have discovered that there is a secret entrance hidden somewhere in town that connects to the tower through an underground passageway - sort of an escape-route for the tower.
Maybe the PCs will then go stomping through the buildings looking for this entrance.
Just an idea. Thoughts?
Ulla -
1) Did the party miss Desna's vision at the Stairs of the Moon? They should realize that Vrood isn't the end by a long shot...
2) My honest answer is to just pull in everything that the party didn't neutralize into the battle with Vrood. The main tower coming under attack should be enough of a ruckus to get the attention of everything that wasn't found and put down, and so the cultists/festrogs/Acretia/Demon Wolves all show up for a piece of the action. Once the party realizes they're pulling the entire town they might decide to withdraw and rethink the approach. Or they'll decide to fight it out, at which point you'll have a dead party, a good story or both.
Vrood's notes in his tent mention sending a Dark Rider to Thrushmoor, and make it clear Vrood's taking orders from someone. If the party can decrypt the notes, they don't need the ghost's help to find out where to go next.
They also try to explore the town once they've pacified the immediate threat. I have no idea how your group flows.
So they miss stuff. Thats fine. My players went a bit in, meet the Princes Wolfes and the Inn. In the inn they just defeated haunt (but didnt put it to rest). Then they skirted around to the tower (notice that the tower is ON a hill, while the graveyard in the middle is in a Vally). They killed him of...wasnt easy. Then they now are on the way to Trushmoor. They missed the all the other stuff, including the Innkepps ability.
Anyway. Ever after defeating Vroom, they still have to deal with the skeleton Army outside and the rests of the demon wolfes...so there is a second chance to do all that.