Getting Started

[flamethrower49]

My Reign of Winter campaign will be starting in a few weeks, and I'm very excited for it. My PCs look like they are as follows:

An Ulfen Fighter (Viking)
A LE Chelaxian Monk (Zen Archer)
A Half-Elf Cleric of Nethys
A human sorcerer (unknown nationality)
And another character, race/class unknown.

Now, I've been a DM before, but I've never brought a disparate group of first-level adventurers with vastly different backgrounds together. How have other people been accomplishing this for this campaign? I've looked at some of the PBFs here for some ideas, but I'm just looking for some general advice. I'm not particularly averse to them just meeting in a tavern, but I want to hear what else has worked for people.

Character-specific, potential spoiler information:

The Viking has been sent to Heldren to meet and be added to Lady Argentea's escort as a mercenary. Of course, they never showed up. He'll have to go retrieve her. Simple enough.

The cleric, I imagine, has been studying under the elder in Heldren as a part of his nomadic, troublemaking wanderings. The elder suggests he go on this adventure, in part to satisfy his wanderlust, and in part to get him out of his temple.

I don't have anything to work with for the sorcerer yet, but the monk's association is proving tricky. So, the character is lawful evil, which I don't have a problem with. She was raised as an assassin of the empire, and has presumably been sent to Taldor on assignment. The easy assignment would be to assassinate Lady Argentea, but I don't want to cause inter-party conflict at 1st level by prompting her to kill the first quest objective. Any thoughts?

[Tangent101]

Here's a warning. Adhere to the recommended tactics for foes, especially for Rokhar. Otherwise Rokhar will wipe the ground with them. (Alternatively, rework Rokhar so he drops a level of cleric and adds a level of rogue.) (You might also consider extra side-encounters leading up to the Lodge so they're 2nd level when they reach it.) Also, Hero Points would likely be extremely useful... and consider allowing them to only spend 1 Hero Point to keep from dying.

[zimmerwald1915]

flamethrower49 wrote:

** spoiler omitted **

The Monk:

Perhaps the monk was sent to Taldor to assassinate the leader of the High Sentinels. True the Sentinels are a shadow of what they used to be, but perhaps that's the point. Perhaps Cheliax is afraid that, say, a vigorous new leader could revitalize the organization and further secure Taldor's border with Qadira, allowing Taldor's central government to devote more resources to the shadow war in Absalom, expanding its fleet, or some other pursuit which impacts Chelaxian interests. Also, the monk's first level. Of course he's going to be sent to assassinate someone small-time.

Once the party reaches the High Sentinel Lodge or perhaps even before, they'll discover that the Sentinels have been slaughtered to a man...including the monk's target. At that point, being lawful evil, he has all the reason in the world to turn his attention toward the man who prevented from fulfilling his assignment, Rohkar, and his allies: the cold fey and White Witches of Irrisen.

[flamethrower49]

Yeah, I've been reading these forums for a while. Your campaign has provided a lot of inspiration, Tangent. I'm going to be much harder on my PCs than you have been, but I'll see what I can do to not have Rokhar completely murder them.

Thank you, Zimmerwald! That's exactly the kind of tip I'm looking for.

[Necrovox]

Yeah. Rohkar almost killed two of my parties. My gamers love me for my RP opportunities, but loathe combat because so far someone has almost died every. single. fight.
Now, the sorcerer could be checking out the unusual weather, as rumors have surely spread far and wide. That was the back story for both my Wizard and my Sorcerer/Ranger.

EDIT: Rohkar succeeded at killing one party and had knocked a few down round two.

[Icefalcon]

I just ran part one this weekend. My players had a hard time with Rohkar but they survived the encounter fine.

[flamethrower49]

Rohkar fight:

So, the heroes stormed the lodge, and had very few issues with the first floor. After a bit of recon from the zen archer (Emma), they launched a (surprisingly) surprise attack, having bypassed the tripline and successfully evaded the notice of the bandit on watch. Then the fighter (Valgard) waded in, basically immune to their attacks due to his high AC, and power-attacked his way through them with ranged support from Emma. The last one surrendered, and fled at the prompting of the cleric (Jamion), as the sorcerer (Jexx) and Emma would have killed him. They disarmed Ten-Penny Tacey, but let her live as she didn't take part in the battle. Emma killed the rest of the bandits. (Session ended here, and the party leveled up to level 2.)

They walked upstairs and breezed through the skeletons, and took the cage with Vrixx, but found no boss, as they expected. Moments later, they heard a scream for help. Ten-Penny was caught on top of the table, surrounded by five zombies! As Jamion and Valgard arrived on the scene, Rohkar appeared and held Ten-Penny. Valgard killed a zombie, but the rest of them overwhelmed Jamion and Valgard and swarmed into the next room. They took down Jexx, and Emma opened the back door and fled. Rokhar was taking his time, showboating, healing the zombies, and executing the still-held form of Ten-Penny. Bergdis, the heretofore unmentioned bard with a zombie all up in her face, opened the cage that held Vrixx and appealed to him for help.

Here, the game went wonky as I tried to work out what A, Vrixx would do, and B, it would take to let my party live through this. As Bergdis held off a zombie on her own, retreating up the steps, Vrixx flitted into the next room and somehow stunned Rohkar for five rounds with Color Spray. He then kept the (uncontrolled) zombies away from the rest of the party with dancing lights before fleeing for good through the broken window.

Bergdis finished off her zombie and ran to administer to Jamion, who channeled positive energy to get everybody back on their feet, as Emma watched through the window. Just in time, too, as Rohkar snapped out of his stupor and commanded his 3 distracted zombies to get back to business. Valgard and Jamion valiantly held their own for a bit at the two chokepoints around the fireplace, but fell once again. Bergdis finally landed a Sleep spell on Rohkar just before the last zombie overwhelmed her. Emma re-entered and coup de graced Rohkar, while Jexx critted the last zombie with a Disrupt Undead spell for maximum damage. (The cheers were deafening.) Jexx also managed to get Emma to stop shooting Rohkar's corpse long enough for her to give him her healing potion so that he could stop the cleric from bleeding out, finally taking everybody out of danger.

It was a hell of a rough fight, and I definitely took some liberties, but I think everything was in keeping with everybody's character.

[Stone Dog]

This thread is really useful to me. I start RoW on Saturday. My group is as follows,

Human Cleric (Evangelist) Sarenrae
Half-Orc Ranger
Human Fighter (Viking)
Vanara Monk (Zen Archer)
Elf Wizard

There will be a Bard (Archaeologist) joining them in Whitethrone.

[Slamy Mcbiteo]

Actually I thought the Rhokar fight was tough we had more trouble with some of the early fights and the environment

The Artic Tatzlwrm:

The Tatzlwrm with burrow and pounce, snuck up and basically took out the monk. With the weather and the slowed movement I could have easily dragged him away for lunch.

Winter Touched Sprites:

With the Sprites...all I have to say is three color sprays on party of level ones is not good.

Environment:

Making fort saves every hour slowed us way down, the low levels were fatigue and hurt. Plus with the limited visibility (-4 perception and -4 ranged) it made going tough. Also the limited movement hampered the party a lot tactically. since most the enemies were not hampered...

The Rhokar fight:

This fight was tough but the zombies are hampered by the fact they have to move into the room and then are staggered. My party took them quickly, one hit so Rhokar could not heal. He did start channeling to hurt I dropped the witch but the monk made short work of him. But I did bump them to level 2 right before the house otherwise they would have died horribly I think.

Leveling:

I also plan to level them to 3 right before the Portal fight I think but I will see. Level two seemed to make a pretty big. difference

Intro Story:

As for story on why they are they are all there, the characters each came up with the own. The monk is on a vision quest for enlightenment traveling the world, the witch and ranger are running from there past and the halfling gunslinger and cleric are in town trying to sell the locals snake oil during the local festival. I pulled them all together using Ionnia, the threat of the crazy winter weather and the rescue of the the noble lady. It went well, they got to explore the Heldren a little (otherwise they will not make the connection to Waldsby). One thing I did is I sent them to find the High Sentinels to alert them of the Noble's capture, so they were on a simple mission to start with...once they realized the High Sentinels were dead they quickly moved into a more lead role. It seemed to work well and made more sense to me

[flamethrower49]

Oh, man.

The Ice Elementals:

These guys owned Jamion and Valgard, especially after they got stunned by the snowman. Only the timely intervention of the up-to-that-moment absent Jexx saved their lives. Bergdis and Emma could hardly do anything to the things. After that, they had to rig up a sled to pull the downed cleric back to town so he could recover.

The Tatzlwyrm:

It downed Jexx in one hit and climbed a tree to try to escape. Emma got so frustrated at the snow this first session that I kinda curtailed it for the remainder of part one. They bagged it only after Valgard climbed up after it.

Jamion has gone down in almost every fight, partially due to bad luck, but partially due to 9 Constitution.

[Stone Dog]

I printed out the paper minis for Snows of Summer last night and I think that they will be a big help. They look great! I'm just sad that there doesn't seem to be a Black Rider.

All of your advice is really helping me get prepped for this. I appreciate you all sharing your experience.

[Imattackingthedarkness]

My party just played this last weekend.

They enlisted the help of Ten Penny, who drank her potion of invisibility and then one shot crit-killed Rohkar. Very anti-climactic. But, seeing as they were at level 1, wounded, had hypothermia and were out of daily spells/healing this may have been a blessing.

[Stone Dog]

I'm off for my first session. Wish me luck!

[Stone Dog]

That went very well!

Massacre Site:

Fortunately the half-orc ranger chose to take Keen Scent as his first feat, so when they came across the uncontrolled zombies in the carriage he was able to immediately determine that whatever was in there, wasn't living. A rather efficient zombie ambush ensued.
However, itching for adventure the Ulfen viking ran up the Snowy Trail ahead of everybody and got tagged with the log trap. The cleric delayed healing him for a while as that was just stupid.

Heavy Snowdrift:

The elf wizard was the one who took a Tatzelwyrm to the face and like somebody else in this thread, I chose for it to drag the elf into the deepest parts of the snow. Frustration abounded as snow is SO very hard to rescue somebody in, but a sudden Burning Hands made everything much easier and the wyrm was a brief, but freaky encounter.

Decorated Trees:

The Ulfen had decided that crows were some sort of totem animal and took great offense to their desecration, more so than human corpses. This did not endear him to the sprites at all.
Most of the party fell to the color sprays, but out of nowhere the ranger actually snatched one out of the air and held it hostage! Vosi might have gotten more information out of them than they did from it, but they will keep their word. They won't see those particular three sprites again.

At this point only the Cleric was feeling anything from Hypothermia.
"Does my cold resistance from Northern Ancestry do anything?"
"This is a case of 'the slow knife penetrates the shield."
"Oh... damn. Grandfather talked about it being cold, but not like this!"
They made a short camp with a stealth fire and healed up the cleric a bit before...

The Talking Stag:

They fell for this one, hook, line and sinker. At first they were going to kill the stag for food, but once it started "talking" they just had a nice conversation on its terms. It then wished them well and bounded away.

Icy Crossing:

This was pretty straight forward. Inch across the ice and lay some beat down on some ice elementals that couldn't roll above a 6 to save their lives. Coming across Old Man Dansby made the Ulfen who had been staying with him in exchange for chores pretty mad.

Bandits on the Trail:

God what a slaughter. The ranger sneaked around the arguing bandits, got within spear range and killed one of them in the surprise round outright. After another round of fighting our zen-archer slew the other two with a flurry of bow.

We won't meet again till mid October, but then they will take on the Lodge being freshly 2nd Level.

People like it, though and they are very curious as to what is going on. One of them guessed that the White Witches Yuln talked about are making a push South. He gets extra XP.

[Tangent101]

Coolness! No pun intended. ^^;;