Ron Lundeen Contributor |
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The Cult of the Moon Sisters scenario is intended for characters who have completed Perils of the Lost Coast, and perhaps even Burnt Offerings. The presence of two villains—each of whom becomes very powerful when the moon is right—makes this scenario challenging. It only requires cards from Sets B and C (but it doesn’t matter if Set 1 cards are already included, too).
Two powerful werewolves—twin sisters steeped in astronomical lore—have arrived in the Sandpoint region in advance of certain eldritch cosmological conjunctions. These two demagogues are attended by a coterie of cultists and monsters, whose powers fluctuate as the moon waxes and wanes. These two sisters and their vile cult must be stopped!
Setup: Remove the two Werewolf cards and all the Cultist cards from the monsters and set them aside; the two Werewolves are the villains of this scenario and the Cultists are the henchmen (and can be used to close locations, just like any henchmen). If you need more henchmen than this, use any card you can remember is intended to represent a Cultist (like unused Loot cards).
Players: Location
1: Town Square
1: Warrens
1: Woods
2: Wooden Bridge
3: Treacherous Cave
4: Garrison
5: Farmhouse
6: Shrine to Lamashtu
Villain: Werewolves (2)
Henchmen: Cultists
During This Scenario:You must defeat both villains to defeat this scenario. When you corner and defeat the first werewolf, set it aside. You win when you corner and defeat the second werewolf.
If the top card of the Blessings discard pile is a Blessing of the Gods, the difficulty to defeat any bane is increased by 2.
Reward: Each character chooses a random blessing from the box.
Comments?
TClifford |
Nice scenario. I like where you thought outside the box some by changing up the villains and henchmen. I think the the Blessing mechanic could be better handled by just upping the required rolls for the Werewolf and Cultists. I think that makes defeating some of the other Banes a little too much.
Ron Lundeen Contributor |
Are you planning to do a full adventure?
That's not a bad idea, but it's a lot of work to get each scenario working well independently as well as together in a cohesive way. I'll probably first see whether I can get a few independent scenarios together that work well, and see about tying them together.
Ron Lundeen Contributor |
Nice scenario. I like where you thought outside the box some by changing up the villains and henchmen. I think the the Blessing mechanic could be better handled by just upping the required rolls for the Werewolf and Cultists. I think that makes defeating some of the other Banes a little too much.
In one of the tests we did, it was +1 to banes across the board (including werewolves and cultists), and it still came out a bit on the easy side. We're still playing with the +2 across the board. I'd actually prefer something like +1 to all banes, but +2 to cultists, and using the "built-in" +3 to werewolves, but I'm concerned with it being too wordy.
Right now, my biggest concern is that you'd *better* fight a werewolf when there isn't a BotG up, because their Combat check jumps from 13 to 18, which seems pretty high for a low-level scenario and can wipe your whole hand if you aren't ready--but perhaps, from a design perspective, that's not bad.
Anyway, I wanted to get this out there for comment while we're still testing.
Ron Lundeen Contributor |
Thazar |
EDIT - Note to self... read the post fully and maybe it answers your question already. LOL
First off it looks great.
That being said... are there enough Werewolves and cultists for a full 8 location? Also what happens if you randomly get MORE cultists or werewolves as some of your random monsters? (I did not do a monster count of the box... just curious.)
I use card sleeves so I can add a little slip of paper into the sleeve to note cards that are villains or henchman. I could even just set aside a werewolf and cultist and then use other henchman and villains as a proxy inside the sleeves and pull the real card out when needed for dice rolls and what not.
But really nice idea and build. I will give it a try with our group!
cartmanbeck RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16 |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Here's one I came up with:
The Devil Hunt
The Devil Hunt scenario is intended for characters who have finished the first chapter of the Rise of the Runelords campaign, Burnt Offerings. The Sandpoint Devil is an extremely difficult villain to defeat, but the players will get the chance to reduce his power if they hunt down the henchmen in the other locations first.
The citizens of Sandpoint have been disappearing at an alarming rate, and the mayor thinks that the Sandpoint Devil is behind the disappearances. She has asked you to hunt down the devil and destroy it if at all possible. Several townsfolk have offered to help, and some of them even have valuable clues as to the best places to ambush the devil. Take out the Sandpoint Devil before it kills again!
Setup: Remove Ilosari Gandethus from the Allies deck. If that card is in one of the players’ decks, simply ignore the sentence about rolling to randomly summon the Sandpoint Devil.
Players Location
1 Junk Beach
1 Wooden Bridge
1 Glassworks
2 Waterfront
3 Goblin Fortress
4 The Old Light
5 Warrens
6 Town Square
Villain: The Sandpoint Devil
Henchmen: Ancient Skeletons
During the Scenario:
When any player defeats one of the Henchmen, place that Ancient Skeleton card in a pile next to the scenario card. For each card in this pile, the difficulty of checks to defeat the Sandpoint Devil is reduced by 1.
When you encounter an Ally card, instead of attempting to acquire it, you may attempt a Charisma/Diplomacy 8 check. If you succeed, place that Ally card in the pile of Henchmen next to the scenario card, and add a random blessing from the box to the top of the Blessings deck.
When you encounter the Sandpoint Devil, if either of your combat checks to defeat it do not have the Magic trait, the Sandpoint Devil is undefeated.
Ignore the first power listed on the Sandpoint Devil card (instead treat it as any other villain).
Award: Each character chooses a type of boon. That character gains one random card of that type from the box. In addition, each character may choose to banish any one card from their deck when rebuilding it at the end of this scenario.
Ron Lundeen Contributor |
First off it looks great.
Thanks!
That being said... are there enough Werewolves and cultists for a full 8 location? Also what happens if you randomly get MORE cultists or werewolves as some of your random monsters? (I did not do a monster count of the box... just curious.)
I believe there are two Werewolves (both of which you'd pull out for this scenario) and either three or four Cultists; that's why you'd have to proxy the others. Alternatively, you could just assume that the werewolf twins have some hired muscle, and use Bandit henchmen fill out any remaining henchmen you need.
Ron Lundeen Contributor |
Ron Lundeen Contributor |
GFWD |
I just soloed this with Lem (Lem has completed Perils as you suggested)
It was a lot of fun and the blessing mechanic you put in created a lot of tactical decisions. I ended up using Lem's Sanctuary spell multiple times to avoid the werewolves until I had a better blessing combo so they were easier to beat.
I also had an augury spell I pulled from a location deck that helped me move through the locations and avoid some of the bad guys.
I ended up winning with about 1/3 of the blessing deck left. I was able to cycle my cure spell a couple of times so I was never in danger of dying.
Thanks for the great scenario!
Sir Barnick |
Just a suggestion, for the reward, a blessing is pretty useless for ezren ! So changing or giving a choice for the reward would be better imo.
Well, many rewards are useless for some characters and great for others. There are a couple of scenarios that reward a weapon or armor, but Seoni and Ezren don't care about those. A Sajan loves blessings but he really gets no love at all in the first to adventures.
I think we just have to understand that not every one gets what they want every time. While the loot for this scenario might not be great for your current character it might be the best ever for your next character.
Thazar |
We gave this one a try over the weekend. It was fun but we actually failed to defeat it in two plays both times due to the blessings deck running out. Below are the high points from the game.
1 - We played with Merisiel, Ezren, Kyra, and Seelah. Each character had played the Lost Coast only and had not run Burnt Offerings yet.
2 - The second play we suffered from some bad luck on the hands. Ezren did not get anything that let him get extra explores from his power and Merisiel had a poor drawing of his hand. This player did not like to discard during a reset so he ended up going once per turn for the first six turns without finding a monster so his hand stayed full. These two issues caused a major problem in staying ahead of the blessings deck.
3 - The variable rules for the moon made the first session VERY tough as both times we came up on the main villain the Blessing of the Gods was up... so that made the werewolf an 18 to defeat. The first time Seelah had no weapons out and had to ditch her armor to avoid discarding the entire hand. The second time Kyra had to play a Sanctuary to avoid taking a beating as no one had a blessing up to help with the attack.
4 - By having two villains you encounter them much more frequently early in the game as your odds are double. This happened in both sessions so it made the blessings deck even tougher to stay in front of.
Overall it was very fun and everyone liked it. We are going to try again the next time we get together.
Ron Lundeen Contributor |
Ron Lundeen Contributor |
1970Zombie |
Tried The Cult of the Moon Sisters solo with Valeros. I beat it handily. Part of it may have been luck of the draw. I encountered the first Werewolf on turn one and defeated it. I then encountered it again on turn 3 and defeated it again. The cultist came up shortly after that and I defeated that as well and meet the closing condition. This allowed me to reduce that deck down to only the villain.
I then went to work on the last full deck. I managed to encounter and defeat a werewolf again which allowed me to close the 2nd location and force the werewolf to join the other at the remaining location.
As I had turns to burn, I waited to get a blessing other than Blessing of the Gods before encountering each werewolf. I beat the scenario in 21 turns. I believe that 8 turns were used to reset my hand and/or wait for a more favorable blessing.
It was fun. I will try it again with my wife. That will use Valeros and Seoni.
One note: if you have the Character Add-on deck you will have a total of 2 werewolves and 4 cultists available. Otherwise you will only have 1 werewolf and 2 cultists to work with.
Ron Lundeen Contributor |
Fromper |
Fromper wrote:I'll probably try Cult of the Moon Sisters soon, but I've got one question. That +2 to all bane difficulties when Blessing of the Gods is on top: Does that stack with the normal Werewolf power boost?Yes, it does--be careful fighting werewolves when the moon is full!
Now that we finished with Black Fang and have our first skill feat, we'll give this a try, before mixing in the Burnt Offerings cards. This could be tough for a party of 3 without a healer!
Fromper |
Ron Lundeen wrote:Now that we finished with Black Fang and have our first skill feat, we'll give this a try, before mixing in the Burnt Offerings cards. This could be tough for a party of 3 without a healer!Fromper wrote:I'll probably try Cult of the Moon Sisters soon, but I've got one question. That +2 to all bane difficulties when Blessing of the Gods is on top: Does that stack with the normal Werewolf power boost?Yes, it does--be careful fighting werewolves when the moon is full!
Gave it a try, and barely finished it. This one is tough. The toughest part is obviously the 18 DC werewolves when the moon is full, but the +2 on other banes hurt, too. Certain barriers are weak enough that it wasn't a big deal, but on the tougher barriers, this can be dangerous.
In the end, Seelah's life literally depended on Merisiel's ability to make a wisdom check to close a location, so the villain couldn't escape. There was no doubt that Seelah was rolling enough dice to beat the villain, but she didn't have enough cards left to recharge if the game didn't end instantly once she won the fight. Luckily, one blessing on Merisiel's wisdom check was enough, and she made the roll, Seelah slayed the werewolf, and victory was ours!
Akasma |
We played this scenario in my three player campaign group and we really enjoyed it. Every time a BotG was flipped up on the blessing deck we all cringed! lol we did beat it, I play Kyra, We also have Lem and Sajan so we have some hard hitters and help each other a lot. Thank you so much! I liked this idea a lot.