The Harrowing: assorted observations and questions (some spoilers)

[Tinalles]

1) One of my players is a 10th level cleric. This weekend, he turned to me and said "... so, can I just use Plane Shift to ditch this weird place and get back to the real world? Because I'm pretty sure my character would realize he could do that."

I hoisted him on his own backstory -- the PC had spent ages tracking down the All-Seeing Hojeck (sp?) in order to try and rescue one of her previous victims. So his character would likely stay put till that's resolved. But it was a very good question, and I couldn't find it addressed in the adventure as written. I'm glad I didn't have to wave my hands and shout "The power of Plot compels you!"

2) I note that two of the melee oriented bad guys, namely

Spoiler:

The Barrow King and the Paladin

... lack any ranged option besides 1 or 2 masterwork throwing axes, and they're both wandering around wide-open areas with little or no cover. The flying archer in our party essentially soloed both of them. A flying anything could have soloed them. I plan to go through and check the remainder of the antagonists to see that they've at least got a bow or crossbow or cover or SOMETHING so they don't just stand there and get turned into pincushions.

3) The problems with the flying archer soloing everything in an open area led me to adjust the the encounter they had over the weekend, namely:

Spoiler:

The Mute Hag in the Prophet's Garden. I took away "Control Weather" and gave her "Control Wind" instead. Hurricane force winds make flying inadvisable and archery flat-out impossible.

On the whole, it made for a very satisfying encounter all around. The archer was forced to try something besides "I stand there and full attack". He was looking up rules for class abilities he'd never had to use before, and apparently enjoying it. The flying casters had their work cut out for them between the environmental conditions and some silenced areas. A very tough fight, but everyone seemed interested and engaged. There were 2 deaths out of 6 party members, which leads to:

4) Diamond dust. The party now stands in need of a significant amount of diamond dust in order to raise their two dead pary members and deal with the accompanying negative levels. I'm open to suggestions on how to integrate that with the world -- I was thinking there might be some at the Smith's Caldera.

5) Loot. I've been having the gear for storykin melt into wax along with them. Was that supposed to be lootable? If so, I've been shortchanging my players, and should make up for it with a nice haul soon.

We've been enjoying this one a LOT. I told the story of the Rabbit Prince that Crystal posted elsewhere in the forums, and it went over great. I'm impressed with the intricacy and inventiveness of the module. Nicely done.

[Raisse]

1. Check the beginning section (like page 4 maybe?). I believe it's a DC30 Caster level check to cast extradimensional travel spells like Plane Shift in the Harrowed Realm, so your cleric would need to roll a 20.

2. I'm sorry your party has decided to murderize everything. The barrow king is understandable, but the paladin could attempt to speak with the party and deceive them. I feel that much of the fun of this module is the fact that so many of the encounters are very RP friendly and it makes for great stories. In my game, the paladin was convinced to follow them (for now, shhhhh), which is excellent, because now they can see his paladin powers be lost in the final encounter. When I played it, the paladin tried to make a deal with my imp companion to kill the entire party and loot the tokens from our very dead (and in my case, very damned) corpses. Not wanting to be trapped in the Harrowed Realm forever, the imp decided to wait it out and see if the Paladin was strong enough to take care of business, so the imp went strangely missing during the next encounter.

4. They can purchase Diamond Dust (or even scrolls of Raise Dead) from the Centaur in the desert, assuming they've saved him. They don't get the discount (that's only for the items listed), but his bag of holding has pretty much anything they could want. If they didn't save him, they could make friends with the Denizen of Leng in the desert. As a trader, he likely carries various magical supplies. Just a bit more evil...

5. Yes, I don't recall exactly where, but it specifies that the loot of the creatures is real, and therefore lootable. If the real gear is ever removed from the Harrowed Realm, when the storykin reform in the waxworks, they reform with wax replicas of their equipment. The equipment acts as real, but if the storykin is slain again, the replicas melt with them.

And I'll just end by saying that this one is pretty much my favorite module ever. We got to "grizzly bears on unicycles" and I knew I was sold.

[Tinalles]

Oo, I forgot the Centaur in the desert. That's an excellent suggestion.

They may have been a little over-hasty with the Paladin and the Barrow King, but for the most part they've been willing to talk with people. They talked with the Rabbit Prince, who is following them even now. They tried a rather inventive ploy to get Embor-Comes-by-Night to hang out with Mourning Choir and provide her company, which might well have worked if they hadn't royally flubbed the Diplomacy check. They struck a deal with the Tick-Tock man to go get grubs, but insisted on adding a clause to the agreement to the effect that "other acceptably competent workers may be exchanged on a 1-for-1 basis." Even Bernaditi survived, and got to do his "catch me in a lie" routine. Though they did kind of burn down the circus tent, mostly as the side-effect of an ill-considered Fireball spell.

I'll have to go back and tot up the value of the loot I've melted, and arrange a suitable payday to compensate.