So yesterday, we had our eight RotRL session. At the end of our previous one, the party had just stumbled into the throne room, where they defeated Ripnugget after a harrowing battle. The six goblins that were in the barracks joined in, but most of these fled the scene after Ripnugget was killed.
They proceeded to quickly explore the rest of the stockade, before heading down into the first floor of the dungeon using the back stairs. They ran into Lyrie and had a bit of a confused encounter where they weren't sure who she was or what she was doing here. I had them roll initiative and said that Lyrie started panicking and started casting defensive spells, and blasted the barbarian with a ray of enfeeblement when he moved up to her. They grappled, pinned and bound her, but not before she yelled for help.
This quickly drew Bruthazmus to them, who'm they also dispatched, yet not quite as quickly. Seeing as Lyrie's calls for help drew this bugbear, they surmised she was in league with the goblins, and tried to question her. Lyrie tried to convince them to let her go because she knew nothing. The PC's saw through this, at which point she pretty much spat in their faces and hollered for Orik.
The party cursed, and readied themselves. An unsuspecting Orik opened the door, and walked straight into the PC's trap. They dropped his health down enough to where he surrendered and pleaded for his life. Questioning him, they found out he was a bodyguard for hire, and he revealed that his employer Nualia would probably be somewhere in the level below. They didn't really ask about the first level that they were on, so he could give little answers.
At this point, they have bound, gagged and blindfolded both Orik and Lyrie, and are planning on making their way back to Sandpoint to rest, re-supply and turn Orik and Lyrie in to the authorities. Currently they are standing at the rope bridge, that broke when the ranger tried to escort Shadowmist across, stranding 4 players on the briarpatch end and the ranger and the horse on the other end, near the stockade.
Now, that's the situation that's unfolded last session. My question is, what would Nualia do when she finds that nearly the entire goblin population, along with Bruthazmus has been decimated and that both Orik and Nualia have gone missing?
I'm inclined to have her abandon Thistletop all together before the party gets back, but this feels a bit like cheating the party of a memorable encounter. Then again, they are choosing to take the trek back to town. They have also been extremely bad at checking for secret doors, so I think there's a good chance they won't even find the second level, let alone the secret doors leading to Malfeshnekor or the giant crab.
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Maybe they return to find her only moments away from completing a ritual releasing Malfeshnekor (At his point her chance for revenge against the marauding adventurers). More likely would be that she'd flee to Magnimar,and meet up with the Skin Saw cultists but I think the former explanation is acceptable enough if a bit cliched. More importantly it preserves the climax of the first module.
That said though, the idea that after decimating her defenders the ultimate goal of their raid might flee; is a thought that probably should have occurred to the pcs. You might want to suggest as subtly or as bluntly as you like that this might be a possibility. You could even use Orik to suggest it in character.
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Now, that's the situation that's unfolded last session. My question is, what would Nualia do when she finds that nearly the entire goblin population, along with Bruthazmus has been decimated and that both Orik and Nualia have gone missing?
Continue working her evil. Nualia really does not care about the goblins or her bodyguards. Given enough time she can replace minions in her mind. I think that your feeling is correct that it would be cheating your players out of a memorable encounter. I agree with Massive as well in that preserving the climax of chapter one is very important.
I'd also recommend replacing a bunch of the fallen goblins to harrass the party on their return. Perhaps a couple of raiding parties returned. Or, perhaps Nualia uses animate dead to create a bunch of goblin zombies. (I did both in my game.)
Try to stall your players for two-three days while they are in sandpoint/magnimar, that will give Nualia the time she needs to animate most of the dead goblins.
Zombie goblins, brilliant! Also, they didn't kill nearly all of the goblins yet.
The four goblin commandos with the dogs outside were left alone as they snuck inside while they played kilgull, there's still the goblin refugees in the briar patch, and at least four goblins escaped the stockade when Ripnugget was killed.
Now to find a way to stall them for a bit... Perhaps a sinspawn caused some havoc in Sandpoint when they were gone, seeing as they left the runewell alone.
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I don't think Nualia would leave, she's got too much left to do in Thistletop. There are other goblin tribes in the area that would love the chance to get the 'best lair' and other mercenaries are easy enough to come by.
I think this would, however, put her on alert. She would keep all three Yeth Hounds by her at all times. Tomorrow she would probably change up her spell list somewhat to deal with the events. Animate dead for the goblins is awesome and you could maybe add a little Lamashtu flavor to them when they're raised...more monstrous appearances somehow. I think she'd also go without sleep for a few nights, using Gogmurt's trick of lesser restoration to fight off the fatigue. I think she'd probably continue like this until she got some new mercenaries hired to watch her back.
I already changed Nualia to a cleric 5 / fighter 2 before the session, because I have five players and one of them is a barbarian that can pretty much cut through anything.
This means she can cast animate dead twice, which will be sufficient to raise quite a few goblins. I'm also gonna have her raise Bruthazmus and Ripnugget's riding gecko (Ripnugget himself got his head cut off, so he's out of the question).
They're gonna freak when they have the fight the bugbear again, because he mauled the (half-elf) barbarian pretty bad last time.
The players IMC did something similar - they fought the goblins outside, sneaked inside, rescuing Shalelu (that had been captured by Bruthazmus) and retreated to rest. When they returned Thistletop was on high alert - There were hidden goblin sentries who warned Ripnugget when the PCs started crossing the bridge, giving him time to prepare.
They ended up fighting Ripnugget, his mount, 3 commandos, 1 warchanter, 4 regular goblins, Orik and one yeth hound. It was a really difficult fight, but they managed to turn Orik and enlist him in defeating Nualia (they even promised him an equal share of the treasure!).
The second fight was Nualia, 2 yeth hounds and an invisible Lyrie in the temple. Also really hard but ultimately satisfying (specially when she and the party's paladin KOed one another simultaneously).
That said, I second the undead idea. Specially if your party has a cleric (he'll feel awesome burning through the weak undead with his channels). You could also determine that the extra time allowed her to finally free the barghest. The fact that both Nualia and the barghest are evil outsiders makes the yeth hounds' baying pretty scary.
Some information about the party would help us providing information - you want to have a memorable encounter, not a TPK.
My party had a paladin and a cleric (with protection from evil/magic circle) so the yeth hounds baying were a nonissue (only managed to scare the NPCs the party had recruited along the way). If you party doesn't have anything similar, it can easily mean a TPK.
Let's see, the group's got:
Half-elf Barbarian with the invulnerable rager archetype
Human Witch, hedge witch archetype
Half-elf Sorcerer, arcana school
Human Monk with the serpent style feat
Human Ranger, skirmisher archetype with a constrictor snake companion and undead as his favored enemy.
The yeth hounds could definitely pose a problem for the party. The zombies that Nualia creates will probably be little more than fodder for them. I'm not going to have her release Malfeshnekor, since that foe will be hard enough on his own, and they will probably need a rest after slashing through the zombies, the tentamort, yeth hounds and Nualia.
That said, I'm fully expecting a death on the Nualia fight (possibly to the cage trap), but we're using hero points and everyone has at least two, so they will be able to cheat death a little.
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Honestly, I feel that the encounter as stated is very very hard on N. Her stat block mentions escape attempts, but in the cramped quarters where she is located that's simply impossible.
I moved her from there to the temple. Since it has two entrances, it at least has a credible escape route (even though she didn't get to use it). Also, that meant I could use the cover of the Faiths of Corruption book as visual reference. "So you open the door and you see this" provoked some chills from the PCs, and they got to have a traditional banter with her before rolling initiative.
Your party is somewhat big, that along with zombies will make for really cramped quarters indeed. I highly recommend using the temple. Put one undead minion on the prison corridor; if she's hurt too much, she can retreat moving past its square (which the PCs can't do) and heal. The PCs will have to probably need to mow down the undead before pursuing.
Leave the undead sitting down as if watching a Sunday mass for added creepiness. When initiative is rolled she yells "Kill them all" and they rise. Seriously, saying it feels awesome.
That's excellent advice, thanks! On the one hand, the players really need to have the encounter with Nualia, to have some closure in the first chapter of the campaign. On the other hand, I really do want to try and have Nualia escape and survive to have her return in a later chapter.
The advice to move her to the temple might be something I'll have to consider. I'll do some math and stat up the entire encounter to check what CR it would be, I don't want them to face overwhelming odds.
The yeth hounds baying makes it somewhat swingy though, with three hounds that's three saves for everyone. Their will saves are respectively 0, 6, 3, 6 and 2. They still have to level, and they have two unidentified cloaks of resistance +1, so this will go up a bit. The yeth hound DC is only 12, so not that bad, but Nualia's channel energy is a DC 15 to resist, and with 3d6 damage can sting quite a bit.
Plus I gave her channel smite, combine that with divine favor, bull's strength, power attack, ferocious strike and fury of the abyss, and she's doing 1d10 +3d6 +18 damage when she hits with her bastard sword on the first six rounds, with still a +12 bonus to hit.
Man, clerics are powerhouses.
What would Nualia do? Kill something. Sacrifice something. Burn something. Assault someone to gain obedience. Brood. Plot for vengeance.
Glad I could help. Didn't come to my mind to level her up and have her raising undead goblins - that would have been really cool. Specially considering the cleric of Sarenrae with an itchy channel energy trigger.
Consider that the undead will probably not be so simple to defeat - most characters will have to waste at least one attack (or more) on them (a skeleton has 4 HP, but a zombie 12). I suggest using skeletons since your party doesn't seem big on destroyed AOE. They act quickly (high initiative), make a few attacks and get killed by attacks of opportunity. Also, 3 yeth hounds seems too much. Leave one of them as a guard in the bridge or the stairs down. The PCs fight it, learn about its powers/weaknesses, and at the first bay Nualia knows they're here and has time to prepare (casting buff spells, positioning her minions).
That said, it's my personal preference to have one big fight instead of three smaller ones. Specially if it's a dramatic moment such as this one.
I've ruled that the party can only regain spells once every 24 hours, to combat the 15-minute adventuring day syndrome.
I've ruled that the party can only regain spells once every 24 hours, to combat the 15-minute adventuring day syndrome.
IIRC, that is the RAW - fresh spell slots can only be acquired once a day.
After all, the point at low levels is not to nova all one's spells, but to budget them according to circumstances. (I think that computer games have a lot to answer for.)
This weekend my players finally had their face-off with Nualia. She raised Bruthazmus, 6 goblins and 2 goblin dogs as zombies with animate dead. As mentioned previously, I statted her up as cleric 5 fighter 2, and gave her an 18 point buy because as written she has a base strength of 12, which means she doesn't qualify for her Power Attack feat. I also gave her a potion of cat's grace, since that spell isn't on the cleric spell list. For reference, here's the stat block I used for her, all buffs included (except for her Ferocious Strike ability). Note that the animate dead spells in her statblock have already been cast to raise the zombies.
XP 2400
Female Aasimar Cleric 5 Fighter 2
CE Medium Outsider (native)
Init +1; Senses darkvision 60 ft.; Perception +6
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Defense
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AC 18, touch 11, flat-footed 17 (+7 armor, +1 Dex, +2 deflection)
hp 59 (2d10+5d8+19)
Fort +10, Ref +3, Will +8 (+1 vs. fear)
Defensive Abilities bravery +1; Resist acid 5, cold 5, electricity 5
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Offense
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Speed 20 ft.
Melee +1 Bastard sword +12 (1d10+12/19-20/x2) and
Claw +5 (1d6+7/x2)
Ranged Masterwork Composite longbow +8 (1d8+3/x3)
Special Attacks ferocious strike (+2) (6/day)
Spell-Like Abilities Daylight (1/day)
Cleric Spells Prepared (CL 5):
3rd (2/day)—rage, animate dead (2)
2nd (3/day)—bull's strength, death knell (DC 15), cure moderate wounds, shatter (DC 15)
1st (4/day)—divine favor, shield of faith, doom (DC 14), sanctuary (DC 14), obscuring mist
0 (at will)—bleed (DC 13), stabilize, detect magic, mending
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Statistics
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Str 18, Dex 12, Con 14, Int 10, Wis 16, Cha 17
Base Atk +5; CMB +11; CMD 20
Feats Channel Smite, Exotic Weapon Proficiency (Bastard sword), Lamashtu's Mark (1/day), Power Attack -2/+4, Selective Channeling, Weapon Focus (Bastard sword)
Skills Acrobatics -2 (-6 jump), Climb +1, Escape Artist -2, Fly -2, Intimidate +10, Knowledge (planes) +6, Knowledge (religion) +7, Linguistics +4, Perception +6, Ride -2, Spellcraft +6, Stealth -2, Swim +1
Languages Celestial, Common, Goblin
SQ aura, cleric channel negative energy 3d6 (6/day) (dc 15), domains (ferocity, demon [evil]), fury of the abyss (+2) (6/day), spontaneous casting
Combat Gear Potion of Cat's Grace; Other Gear +1 Breastplate, +1 Bastard sword, Arrows (20), Masterwork Composite longbow (Str +2), Sihedron medallion, Gold holy symbol (Lamashtu), 7 PP, 5 GP
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Special Abilities
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Aura (Ex) The Cleric has an aura corresponding to his deity's alignment.
Bravery +1 (Ex) +1 to Will save vs. Fear
Channel Smite Channel energy can be delivered through a Smite attack.
Cleric Channel Negative Energy 3d6 (6/day) (DC 15) (Su) Positive energy heals the living and harms the undead; negative has the reverse effect.
Cleric Domain (Ferocity) Associated Domain: Strength
Damage Resistance, Acid (5) You have the specified Damage Resistance against Acid attacks.
Damage Resistance, Cold (5) You have the specified Damage Resistance against Cold attacks.
Damage Resistance, Electricity (5) You have the specified Damage Resistance against Electricity attacks.
Darkvision (60 feet) You can see in the dark (black and white vision only).
Demon Associated Domain: Evil
Ferocious Strike (+2) (6/day) (Su) +2 damage for an attack.
Fury of the Abyss (+2) (6/day) (Su) For 1 rd -2 AC and gain bonus to melee att/dam/CMB
Lamashtu's Mark (1/day) 1/day: inflict 1d4 CHA penalty on an opponent you strike.
Power Attack -2/+4 You can subtract from your attack roll to add to your damage.
Selective Channeling Exclude targets from the area of your Channel Energy.
Spontaneous Casting The Cleric can convert stored spells into Cure or Inflict spells.
I broke up her minions somewhat, and first had the party run into a yeth hound, two zombie goblins and zombie Bruthazmus. The party barbarian and Orik (who'm the party had brought along after some deliberation) failed their will saves, and fled back upstairs. They encountered the two zombified goblin dogs in front of the cathedral doors, and cut them down in a single round before they had a chance to act.
The party then explored the living quarters, and proceeded to enter the cathedral through the side door from the prison, which is when the mayhem began. I used Rune's suggestions, and had Nualia holed up in here, along with her two remaining yeth hounds and the last four zombie goblins. The barbarian once again failed his will save against the hounds, along with Orik, and the player threw his d20 across the room, naturally frustrated. They were both panicked and fleeing for 4 rounds. The second yeth hound only succeeded in scaring off the ranger's snake companion, since two of the players elected to burn a hero point to reroll their save.
A very hard battle followed, as the party ran into the bottleneck of the door and tiny corridor, with the yeth hounds and the goblins streaming out. Nualia had plenty of time to cast her buffing spells for the first five rounds, and threw in a negative energy channel at one point.
The monk was in a lot of trouble, dropping in and out of unconsciousness as the party was doing their very best to keep her alive. I warned them that the yeth hounds would go for a coup de grace kill if they got the chance, but with some well spent hero points and spells from the sorcerer and witch, they managed to keep the monk alive, who used stunning fist on one hound, and stunned and blinded the other hound with a spell. I was rolling extremely well, as the hounds barely missed and was usually rolling fives and sixes on the damage rolls. I even got in a high damage crit after rolling 20's twice on both the hit and the confirmation roll.
After four rounds, Orik and the party barb were back in the action, Orik went on to assist the party with the yeth hounds and the last remaining goblin, while the barbarian charged Nualia on his own—which turned out to not be the smartest idea. Orik rushed in to lend some aid, but Nualia pretty much cleaved our barbarian in half with two full-round attacks in two rounds. Nualia unleashed everything she had on him, with her bastard sword, claw attack, Power Attack, Channel Smite, Ferocious Strike and Fury of the Abyss. The barbarian with his bad will save and mediocre AC went unconscious after three attacks, upon which Nualia used her claw attack to tear out his throat. -18 hp, and we have our first casualty of the campaign.
Nualia took her last action with 17 hit points, not enough for her to start fleeing according to her tactics. The combat ended when the party took her down to -2 hit points in the proceeding round with some well-placed arrows and spells, and when the witch went to check if Nualia was still alive, I gave her a knowledge: the planes check to realize she was actually an aasimar. The LG witch and LN monk then insisted that they tie her up and take her back to Sandpoint, along with their fallen companion.
It was an epic fight, and I was worried that it was too hard, but the party thoroughly enjoyed the challenge. The barbarian player has already been busy statting up a magus for his next character.