
Lehmo |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |

So rather then running Feldgrau which seemed for my party of 8 PCs would involve the tedious searching of individual buildings of the destroyed town, I jazzed it up with running an open battle between an allied force and the whispering way. There were a number of reasons for this.
1) Broken Moon hints at the werewolf tribes being larger in the module then that of which the PCs meet
2) The module explains Vrood is in Feldgrau to raise an army to march on Gallowspire.
3) Over the course of the adventure the PCs should have made influential friends that can help with the battle (eg Vessorriana Hawkren and the ghost prisoners under her influence from Harrowstone, Alphon Cormarc and his construct amalgamations, Ravensgro citizens, Werewolves of Shudderwood from different tribes, Ascanor Lodge influential members, Silver hand - Silivio rangers from Ascanor lodge he leads to hunt werewolves - Lepidstadt university fighting fraternities, druids of the shudderwood, commoners or nobels from Lepidsadt etc)
4) Pcs are at a level were there reputation is as famous as that of the noblemen who run the different states of Ustalav
5) The furrows is a legendary old battlefield more then 20 years old. It felt natural to have alarge battle take place there once more.
6) The Pcs had essentially been chasing Vrood whom is suspected of being the cultist for Lorrimors death and the orchestrator behind the Whidpering Way cultists
7) The poem for the Carrion Crown has a passage "a hundred slain lie innocent"
8) I have slowed the module down to allow for wizards to craft items
9) None of the states claim the furrows as there own land (border disputes).
I dropped the fact the Whispering Way had a large army by Rhakis Szadro after the high throne battle. But this could be done at Ascanor Lodge in Estovions Journal, a premonition about an impending war, a harrowing by Ivanja etc
So basically the PCs had three weeks to muster up an army spearheaded by the werewolves Alternativerly you could use Yharloc (in my adventure he is the leader of the silver hand organisation that hunt down Shudderwood werewolves, Yharloc is from the rule of fear book) or Cilias Graydon if he survived, if the PCs turned the werrwolves down.
They also were required to create a basic encampment.
There are a number of ways you can run a open war scenario.
The book called "Warpath" has rules for mass combat which has been specifically designed for pathfinder.I recommend this book if you want to run a mass combat scenario.
The 3.5 book called "Heroes of battle"allows for PCs to be a special forces unit which is essentially a black ops team which takes out enemy strategic locations.
The D20 books "Fields of blood - the book of war" and "Cry Havoc" are also good sources.
The scenario I developed used the army cards of Warpath and the mass combat rules associated with them. Basically this allows one to mark off casualties, attacks, saves, initiative CMB/CMD checks for armies. Each of the PCs created there own army and recruited someone to lead it. The army was to combat the undead hordes while the PCs attacked strategic locations. It was the PCs job to throw the battle in there favour by attacking or defending strategic locations. The locations I came up with were;
1) Beacon of unrest - a device which was attracting undead to the ruins of Feldgrau, emanating a strange necrotic impulse like that of Gallowspires undead storm (See "dungeons of Golarion" pathfinder chronicles book)
2) Changing pit (from the module "Hungry are the dead" , the book also has Lucimar [a Whispering Way lich and leader of the cult - according to "Fractions of Golarion" book - that the PCs will meet later in the adventure path] history -the pit itself was the same as in Hungry are the dead, where corpses or farmers bodies were being tossed into a large pit and changed into undead by Whispering way Curates.
3) The ziggurat of control - a device allowing the whispering way cultists to control a large army of the undead. I used Drazmorg from the Hungry are the dead module, changing his usual book of "The whispers of the tyrant" to a "book of eternal necromancy" ( see http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic-items/3rd-party-magic-items/3rd-party-artifac ts/3rd-party-minor-artifacts/bastion-press/book-of-eternal-necromancy). I kept the encounter and description the same from the inner seal room from the Hungry are the dead module.
4) Undead catapaults, loaded with screaming skulls, belching skulls and flaming skulls from the Haunting of Harrowstone module. A few whispering way cultist necromancers were in charge of the catapaults. Page 47 Broken Moon
5) Rot giants as the whispering way terror units. They are from the book "Mythic menagerie - Kingdoms of the grave". Pretty much giants that can create skeletons by eating corpses and are immune to non magical missile fire.
6) Enemy Hq, Vrood in his tower. Same as in broken moon
7) The hungry fog, bestiary 3. Protected enemy flag.
8) Defend an allied unit in trouble (random encounter dependent upon how the battle plays out)
9) Stop enemy charge - nerfed grave knights, beastiary 3. Undead cavaliers left over from the Bastoi knights that died in the "War without Rivals", that created the furrows.
10) Surviving an encounter with an overwhelming enemy (3 rounds). The Furrows before the "War without Rivals" use to be called the "Dragonsvet plains", so called for a blue dragon that was killed there. I used the night dragon "Mythic menagerie - Kingdoms of the grave" the whispering way briefly animated.Due to the devestating impact the dragon was having the PCs had to rally routed units and hold out versus the dragon while units reformed themselves. The dragons breath was not used to increased the likelyhood of survival.
The PCs were awarded 25 points for each strategic location they captured/protected. With 100 points changing the battle and causing almost all the enemy units to de-animate and return to the grave.
The fun thing about changing Feldgrau was allowing the Pcs to create an encampment. Recruit an army. Deal with problems in the encampment (eg suspicious behaviour, prisoners captured, preventing a plague from spreading -ghoul fever, choosing a supreme commander for there war council, scounting the enemy using skill checks and terrain [remembering the furrows is nicknamed the man made maze], sustaining morale, making alliances, Pharasman clerics organising soldiers to fill out wills to ensure the soldiers families were looked after in the event of there death, the morbid feel of fighting a loosing battle, battle tactics/strategies for the battle, lack of food/rations due to the food tasting like decay or ash due to the proximity of the furrows and much more). Most of all it escalated the adventure, allowing the PCs to really make use of the friendships they had created.
Reading through Feldgrau it sounds fine to run. But I did not feel it really did justice to Vrood and his scheming plans. Also it was unlikely to provide a challenge to PCs either in roleplay or combat for 8 PCs, even if encounters were doubled. Feldgrau feels more like a dungeon crawl with the numerous minor encounters. But hey that was just me.
I am going to use Adimarus and the demon wolves as an encounter between Broken Moon and Wake of the watcher. Whom comes for Kavalca Sains heart after the battle.
Basically the battle ended up with the PCs destroying the beacon of unrest, the changing pit (enemy supply line), ziggurat of control (disrupt enemy communications). Now the PCs encampment is being besieged by Vrood and what is left over by his army.