I have a great group that is far beyond the "you see something and..." "we kill it! yeah!" way of thinking. They try to talk people down instead of just trying to kill everything, and often find creative ways to defuse encounters.
So today we ran the soulbound guardian encounter. The girl appearing part really got their attention and they felt like it was building up to something really cool. Then they find the doll, and are very reluctant to attack it. They try to talk to it. I have it using prestidigitation, light and mage hand to try to freak people out, and having it speak when no one is looking at it.
The players keep trying to find a way to activate it without attacking it, and finally pick it up and start carrying it around outside. I decided that it wouldn't aggro unless they tried to take it out of the clearing entirely. One of the characters finally made a comment about trying to take the gems out and then I had the doll activate.
Charm Person x 3 and 3 passed will saves later (even the barbarian, lucky bastards), they are still trying to talk to it. Eventually it becomes clear that they should just kill it so they do.
They felt a little cheated, though. It feels like there should have been an alternate way of dealing with the doll besides just killing it. Or at least some way for them to get more information out of it. Now that the session is over, I feel like I should have had the doll say something to the effect of, "I don't want to kill you, but I have to... She's making me..." or something to give more creepy info or something. The underlying story is very compelling but I'm not sure how to give more of it to the players yet.
Oddly enough one of my players was convinced the doll was the key to the portal to Irrisen itself, and was trying to find a way to activate a portal with it...
I'm running this adventure again with a different group later and I think I might want handle this encounter differently with this experience in mind. Any suggestions?
Excuse me while I suffer envy. I love your group. =^-^=
Did they destroy the gem, by the way? It still has the girl's soul in it... which might be interesting to manifest as a spirit of some sort when they encounter her mother... if only to say goodbye.
As the GM, you should always adapt any adventure to your group. If they are fascinated with a specific aspect of the setting or adventure or NPCs, play it up. Make the doll the key to the portal, make it something else special... The text on the page is there as a jumpstarter to give you fodder for fun adventures, you get exactly jack crap for sticking to it word for word.
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As the GM, you should always adapt any adventure to your group. If they are fascinated with a specific aspect of the setting or adventure or NPCs, play it up. Make the doll the key to the portal, make it something else special... The text on the page is there as a jumpstarter to give you fodder for fun adventures, you get exactly jack crap for sticking to it word for word.
This is wisdom and truth. Great advice.
As I entered this thread, I was silently hoping that the original post would consist entirely of the words: "Let them."
I have precisely one group that's really good about roleplaying in a wide variety of situations. Most of the others fall back on a stab/slash/crush strategy. I rather enjoy the roleplay-inclined group, while the primarily-violent ones start to get tedious at higher levels.
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Certainly most situations could be defused by the right strategy of talking, however... some situations, like facing that poor doll, are just a lost cause, and when something is a lost cause you should discourage your players from trying it. In the situation you described you should have made it a lot clearer a lot sooner that it would be impossible to make the doll friendly, and have it attack them sooner.
In most situations though, your party's attitude is great! cherish it! probably a once in a lifetime GM experience.
They didn't destroy the gem, or the mirror. The players recognize that the mirror is probably a scrying device but their characters wouldn't know that so they are taking it with them anyway.
I've tried to adapt the adventure to fit their taste of talking their way through trouble. Here is one example:
The party convinced Ten-Penny to turn on Rokhar. She assisted them in that battle, and now they left Rokhar as a prisoner at the lodge. They've convinced Ten-Penny to turn Rokhar over to the town authorities of Heldren as a way of ingratiating herself to them, and the party wants to put in a good word to try to get her established as the leader of a rebuilt Sentinels group to keep the forest safe since she helped them put Rokhar down. While Ten-Penny isn't much on the law, I figured she wouldn't mind a promotion and get to rule the lodge. It was a great session all around.
@Tangent- I think I will have the girl's spirit manifest to the mother when they meet her. It would be rather fitting.
My old group was like this if it wasn't openly hostile and unrelenting it was beat out a plan time. My favorite moment had them dealing with a group of centaur bandits who had caused such an issue to trade the area around them no longer even had patrols. The party managed to convince them that they stood to make better profits by shipping the goods themselves than to let trade completely die out in the area.
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My players are also quite thoughtful in their run so far...
Following notes carry through the first chapter
One of my players PC is an Inspector Detective (Bard). He sees everything and can diplo just about anything with a brain. Fighting the Arctic Tatyzlwyrm he ended up fascinating it, and they tried to leave it alive in their departure. Well being that it chased them down, they ended up killing it but it wasn't for lack of trying.
Then they get to High Sentinel Lodge and just astounded me. They tripped the trap outside, not by not seeing it, but a bad disable device roll by the our filcher. So Rohkar's Raiders come running outside to attack. They lay them down fairly easily and then they burn the bodies. Now I know none of them have read the AP (they are all quite experienced players) but the PC's discussed and decided they should burn them. So they enter, meanwhile Rohkar has done his battle prep upstairs. They find Ten Pence Pacy in the kitchen clinging to a rafter and diplo her down and coax some info out of her. She asks to leave after telling them she thinks they are keeping the councilwoman in the house somewhere. After seeing the woman clinging to the ceiling, our Winter Witch freaks out. (The player knows all the history of the Jadwiga and uses it well in her character) She finds a large bag of flour in the kitchen and starts throwing it everywhere looking for invisible people... quite a hilarious sight to be honest. Ends up powdering the whole main floor and she is still powdering up the stairs when they enter Rohkars study. While the druid and bard are dealing with the frost skeletons upstairs the witch and inquisitor see footprints coming down the stairs and the witches familiar (Ermine) latches to Rohkar and grapples around his neck while the witch throws flour on him. So now there is a lightly powdered invisible guy with a "mink" wrapped around his neck, cornered trying to come down the stairs. He tries to jump over the railing halfway up to make a run for it, but misses his acrobatics check and falls flat faced right in front of the filcher and the inquisitor. They smack him up a bit and then tie him up. They interrogate him, get the councilwoman out and headed back to town, and then, even knowing his deity (detective saw his unholy symbol when he was tied up) dump him in the cellar with 1 HP and lock it up.
I was floored. The whole encounter was so off from what I was expecting it was amazing. This is a great group to run with though they are definitely going to keep me on my toes through this AP.
As for them trying to Diplo the raiders that came running out, wasn't going to happen. They were more scared of Rokhar then they were of the PC's but my bard had a hard time swallowing that pill. But oh well. We do what we can to keep things moving without railroading them.
My players will be running the Soul Bound Guardian section tomorrow night so I will let you know how they handled it. I have a feeling it will be similar though the Witch will likely freak out when she sees the doll. (Her backstory is she is a WWitch from Irrisen who came to Absalom looking for information as Baba Yaga didn't return when she was supposed to. She didn't dare look for info in Irrisen as she is terrified of Elvanna. We are running this for PFS so I added a whole PFS mission tie in during our prequel that brought the PCs together for this.)
I have a great group that is far beyond the "you see something and..." "we kill it! yeah!" way of thinking. They try to talk people down instead of just trying to kill everything, and often find creative ways to defuse encounters.
** spoiler omitted **
I'm running this adventure again with a different group later and I think I might want handle this encounter differently with this experience in...
Perhaps the Black Rider mantle can disrupt the compulsion? It may be a construct, but there's a soul there as well, and no one knows witchcraft like Baba Yaga. Maybe she helps her envoy out a bit, eh?
I understand your situation. Talking/RP heavy groups are fun, but a lot of work. Ran Burnt Offerings from RotRL and the cleric, with party enthusiastically in tow, wanted to talk to everyone in Sandpoint, everyone! The maid who answered the Scarnetti's door needed a name, description, motivation, 'What do my sense motive and diplomacy checks get me?', etc. The maid I tell you!
Perhaps the girl can talk to the PCs, now that she's no longer bound in the doll. i.e. the compulsions may be gone, and she's just trapped now.
To explain why she didn't immediately speak to them after the doll was destroyed, maybe she can only do so in dreams, or maybe she chooses to use (creepy) dreams in order to avoid being spied on via the mirror as she tells her story?
Actually, no. The details on the doll state if the gem is placed into another doll, it'll animate the doll as another guardian with all the memories of the previous doll(s). Thus if you gave it a new body? It is a neutral evil doll out to kill you all once more.
Thus the gem itself is enchanted and the spirit within is likely geased. My suggestion of letting her soul say goodbye to her mother is just for dramatic tension, really.
Though this IS your game of course so if you want the compulsion broken, feel free too. :)
I'm going to have to plan what the girls ghost says in the haunted maze bit very carefully. Players should be able to pick up some of the back story in that exchange, and the fact the doll looks like an old crone version of her.
You lucky S.O.B. The best I get from my players is that if they feel it is no direct threat they don't hunt it down and kill it. Ten-Penny looked at what they did and ran, they watched her go.
One of my players took the suggestion of the need of fire damage to heart, specialized in it to an extreme degree. He blasted the doll with an area effect spell... repeatedly....