Hey all, so I've been running RotRL for a few mates, it's been going good. They got to Thistletop a couple sessions ago, got through everyone on the ground floor (although Ripnugget put up a hell of a fight), went straight down the northmost stairs into Lyrie, who they chased downstairs and killed, immediately walked into the trap (although reflex saved), and instead of being like "Huh, there's a trap, let's be cautious" immediately went and opened the door to Nualia's room.
At this point, faced with a big scary lady with a monster hand and a huge sword, the cowardly Sorcerer fled, the rest of the party (including Shalelu) following. They get back to camp fine.
During the night they're attacked by a few straggler goblins who they missed at Thistletop and, once they've healed up as best as possible (with the Paladin and Sorcerer still being on <1/2 HP) they go back inside. I reason that Nualia, aware that there's a team of adventurers about, would station Bruthazmus and Orik at the bottom of the two sets of stairs to watch out, and I pulled one of the Yeth hounds back downstairs to guard their master.
So the party head down the same stairs, straight into Orik, who calls for Bruthazmus. Orik cuts through the fighter handily with the help of the remaining Yeth (whose scary baying howl managed to fail on everyone except the Sorcerer), Bruthazmus turns up and Shalelu goes blind with rage at the sight of her arch-enemy, and the two go at it. Eventually Bruthazmus and Orik are brought down to low HP, Orik surrendering and Bruthazmus running downstairs to be with Nualia - Shalelu follows, managing to kill Bruthazmus just inside the doors to the room where Nualia, now alerted, is waiting with the two remaining yeth hounds. The party book it out of there, barricading the doors with desks and tables and the like, and decide to go back to Sandpoint to heal up properly and hand Orik over to the authorities.
So, at this point, what does Nualia do? I kind of think that, left on her own with her yeths in Thistletop, she'd want to get out of there before the party presumably comes back - but how desperate is she to get to Malfeshnekor? Any advice? I'm still pretty new to GMing so I'm not great at changing the AP on the fly.
Do you think that Nualia thinks she can fond Malfesknor in a day which is what she has before the pc's come back? If so she stays on the other hand she has failed for several days already.
Next based on what Bruthazmus knows about the pc's does she think she can with her available resources kill all of them?
If she thinks she can kill them all she stays, if she thinks she cannot win and has not got time to find Mal she leaves. She knows the players won't be able to stay around forever and she can come back when they have left with some more goblins or other reinforcements preferably including a competent rogue and wizard. After all is she cannot find Mal after all that time the players are not going to (ok they will but she does not know they are more competent than her)
If she does leave she can be met in Magnimar trying to get reinforcements or she can come back to Sandpoint later when the pc's are there with a few extra levels to get her revenge or she can just vanish depending on what you think will work best with your group.
For my group she escaped and came back several times as a recurring foe
Seems like you're doing fine - you've adjusted tactics in response to pc actions. In a way, changing "strategy" isn't much different.
There isn't any one, right answer. Wickedly, the answer is "it depends." I'll throw some questions for you to consider.
Yes, a sane person would leave in the situation you describe. But Nualia is hardly a sane person. Sane people don't worship Lamashtu, maim themselves, seek to become a fiend or desire to burn their hometown to the ground.
Does she have any other potential allies? Are all the other occupants of Thistletop gone? How long are the pc's going to be healing? She could possibly draw in additional goblin reinforcements from Mosswood. In the errata thread, it's noted she does not qualify for Power Attack. You could replace it with Command Undead and bring the shadows from E6 out to serve her. She could finally free Malfeshnekor and he could join her and the Yeth Hounds in an attack on Sandpoint (at night of course.) This last is a particularly dark line to pursue - the barghest is dramatically more effective outside the confines of his prison and the yeth hound howl (with it's huge range) would be devastating to the people of Sandpoint. (Arguably, Nualia, her mercenaries, her yeth hounds and the goblins of Thistletop would have been able to destroy Sandpoint without Malfeshnekor.)
My view is that Nualia has been quested by her Goddess to free Malfeshnekor and she won't abandon that goal until either it's impossible (Mal is dead or otherwise freed) or she is dead. Now she might leave Thistletop to get more allies but she'll be back. Maybe she goes to Mosswood, returns with a horde of goblins while the pc's are inside looking for her. Now, the pc's are defending the fort against external assault.
If she were to flee, you need to answer a couple questions - are you awarding them xp for her and the yeth hounds? Are you using the milestone advancement method - it which case, cleaning out Thistletop can be the milestone. Is your group likely to focus on her fate? Will they want to track her down? Be annoyed she escaped? She's an interesting red herring for the beginning of the next chapter if she's unaccounted for but she can also be a major distraction if the group assumes everything is about her and insists on searching for her rather than following the actual threads of the AP.
If you want to keep it simple and hew to the bounds of the AP as written, I'd add some additional Thistletop goblins - a patrol returned aft the pc's left and have her fight to the death to defend the Temple and lower levels. If you want to experiment with different plot lines that seem more interesting to you or your group, then go for it. It might seem a bit intimidating but it's part of the fun of being GM.
Thanks for the advice guys, I've got some planning to do I think :P
My party had a pretty similar sequence of events. The details were different, but they now have Lyrie, Orik, and Nualia captured (all the others were slain). Lyrie and Orik have been imprisoned at Sandpoint and they're about to take Nualia back there.
I'm trying to figure out if I should gloss over the trial and have some kind of pre-determined outcome; possibly including an escape by one or all of the aforementioned NPCs. The party failed to kill Erylium, so she might be able to pull something like that off. If they do escape, what do I do with them next?
Obviously, the simple, easy answer is to have the people of Sandpoint give them all the Death penalty, but I think that's too simple, too easy, and possibly not in character with the town.
Maybe the judge will send them to Magnimar, where Ironbriar might pull some strings to get them back in his employ?
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That's pretty close to what I did with Lyrie in my game, caps. The townsfolk might take pity on Nualia, though - she was one of them, after all, and after her journal becomes public, she might garner sympathy. Someone there might argue for rehabilitation, especially since Habe's Sanatorium is just outside of town. It would be for the best.
As for Lyrie and Orik, they could definitely be shipped off to Magnimar for trial before Justice Ironbriar. You'd have to decide how interested Xanesha is in both of them to arrange for their release. I feel like she'd be more interested in Lyrie, but maybe she could arrange for Orik to be her bodyguard. That would be up to you to decide how much you'd like these two to be recurring antagonists, or if you think the party would prefer to see justice done to these two.
I admit for having a soft spot for Lyrie and the great fun I had with my version of "The Lyrie Scenario". My PCs dragged their feet and wandered around long enough for me to decide that Naulia had done her business.
I do think its important to portray the good guy NPCs as at least competent. Having escape attempts (especially successful ones) undermines the NPCs value to the characters (and players).
If anything, Lyrie being back in Magnimar and under Ironbriar's thumb is a death scentance she probably knows too much to be let live free.
For Maddy - Naulia should probably bail and hope Mal either remains hidden or can handle the situation and come back when things cool off.
For caps, one way to get buy in from the players is to have NPCs approach the PCs and talk to them about events, question them about what they saw and how the NPCs reacted - there is justification for lots of courses of action.
Orik likely surrendered and will tell a tale of a mercenary contract gone bad, being in over his head with no good way out. Its a pretty sympathetic story.
Lyrie can legitimately tell a story of an archaeological mission gone arwry, and knows enough Pathfinder Society information and the process of trying to join to call into question her involvement in sending goblins at the town - she could easily throw Naulia under the bus to save herself.
Naulia, as Misroi points out, she could easily be though of at first to be fellow citizen of Sandpoint, but her journal is pretty damning (I made a pretty nice handout of it for my players with lots of entries with snapshots over the years based on one I found somewhere). If her journal is in play, she's responsible for more than just the goblins, but also the Sandpoint Fire. It's possible that someone would try to stand up for her as being possessed/insane/under a curse/something else and try to convince people to give Naulia another chance, but think she's kinda doomed. Elyrium IS just crazy enough to attempt a rescue attempt - a bunch of sinspawn running around directed by Ely could be a fun interlude here - how that all plays out is up to you, but your players could also surprise you with what THEY want.
The first time I ran Runelords (back in 2010), I retooled Nualia as a multiclassed fighter 1/cleric 5. (I'm planning to retool her as a 7th-level warpriest in my current campaign.) Either way, this gives her access to 3rd-level spells... including animate dead. (I also made Lyrie a 5th-level necromancer and gave her lesser animate dead).
In both cases, after the PCs initial assault on Thistletop and their subsequent retreat, Nualia and Lyrie use animate dead and the Control Undead feat to make a whole bunch of goblin zombies under their control to thwart the return of the PCs.
I ran Nualia as bat$#!t-crazy, consumed with vengeance, and convinced that her ongoing demonic apotheosis means that Lamashtu has also granted her invincibility. So, no, she isn't leaving Thistletop without first freeing Malfeshnakor!
When the group I was running for kept running back to town to heal up between trips to Thistletop, I just reasoned that this gave Nualia time to progress her transformation. I threw the half-fiend template on her, and had her send Bruthazmas and Orik into town with a gang of goblins to raid it again.
My party had a pretty similar sequence of events. The details were different, but they now have Lyrie, Orik, and Nualia captured (all the others were slain). Lyrie and Orik have been imprisoned at Sandpoint and they're about to take Nualia back there.
I'm trying to figure out if I should gloss over the trial and have some kind of pre-determined outcome; possibly including an escape by one or all of the aforementioned NPCs. The party failed to kill Erylium, so she might be able to pull something like that off. If they do escape, what do I do with them next?
Obviously, the simple, easy answer is to have the people of Sandpoint give them all the Death penalty, but I think that's too simple, too easy, and possibly not in character with the town.
Maybe the judge will send them to Magnimar, where Ironbriar might pull some strings to get them back in his employ?
"Not in character with the town"? Hmmm. Let's review some facts: Nualia is a cleric of Lamashtu, a demon goddess of perversion and destruction. She's on the path (with clear visible evidence) of transforming into a demon. A trip to Habe's isn't going to solve that. Nualia and her crew are directly responsible for two assaults on Sandpoint - the AP does not emphasize it but it seems reasonable to assume there were deaths associated with the attack on the festival (not to mention the "Closet" follow-on event). They're also the closest thing the town will have to culpable parties for the atrocities Tsuto and the goblins perpetrated at the Glassworks. Lonjitsu may have been unpopular but those craftsmen were friends and family of many in town. Oh and she started the fire that burned the church to the ground, killing her adopted father. My view: the pc's are going to have to fight off a lynch mob just to get these scumbags into custody. It's all well and good to be sympathetic to someone who was bullied but that sympathy goes away when the bullied kills dozens of people, seeks to release a long bound evil and burn her hometown in a mass sacrifice to empower her transformation into a demon.
'Captured prisoner escapes' is a tired trope (my view.) If you do go that way, keep in mind how your players are likely to respond. Equivalent: you could just say directly "Please don't ever take another prisoner. Ever again. Because it will come back to haunt you - I guarantee it. And yes, please assume every authority figure is either an incompetent boob or utterly corrupt."
Small nit: Nualia and her misfits were never in Ironbriar's employ. Xanesha aided Nualia because she's chaotic evil and watching a cleric of Lamashtu run amok in Sandpoint makes for good theater in her eyes. If anything, Xanesha (and therefore by extension, Ironbriar) is going to want these losers silenced as quick as possible. Last thing Xanesha wants is Nualia's story to be told. "Yea, there was this powerful woman in Magnimar. She gave me this amulet and told me about this quasit..."
Regarding the "captured prisoner escapes" trope: I would only do it if it makes sense. For example ...
If X's plans in Magnimar are de-railed by the PCs and she is forced to flee, then she might stop off on her way out of town/the region to pick up Nualia from a jail (easy to do with her abilities). X needs to flee, but is nursing a grudge against the PCs. She knows that Nualia is also nursing a grudge, so she arranges for Nualia to be released and accompany her further down the AP's plot, to be trained up as a suitable foe for the PCs at a (much) later point. This version of the trope is one which I would find acceptable.
However, I don't see X as being interested in anyone else from the Thistletop gang or helping them to escape jail.
X would most likely leave Lyrie in jail. If Lyrie escaped the PCs, then she'll get as far away as possible. (One possibility is that Lyrie goes to Riddleport and tries to join the Cyphermages.) No trope there.
If Orik escaped, then he'll just look for a new contract in Magnimar. If he was captured, he might be sent up to Fort Rannick, either before Book 3 or in the company of the PCs at the start of Book 3. No trope there.
If Tsuto was captured, he'll probably face direct execution for Lonjiku's grisly murder (plus that of the Glassworks' staff). If he escaped by the end of Book 1, then he might try to spring Nualia out of jail, fail and be caught doing so, and end up executed anyway. If he had escaped and Nualia is dead, then he most likely will try to get far away from Varisia. No trope there.
Everyone/-thing else at Thistletop are considered monsters and therefore to be killed ... errr, except for Shadowmist and maybe the druid's animal companion. :)
In my game, I made X. (And the B7) more involved in Nualia's plan. The gold to bribe the goblins came from X. My story is s bit different as I use elements from shstteted star, but an easy motivation could be to clean up sand point to study the catacombs, or freeing M. to bind him or to get some info from Thassilonian era, or maybe as plan to siphon the energy from the Wrath runewell, or related to Foxglove Manor, etc
I think the lamashtu side of the story needs to be linked to the main plot somehow. Personally don't like how thevwhole burnt offering thing happen to be an accident. Also, by intriducing the B7 earlier (and thus X. and K.), you get more cohesion and the party gets a feeling of that's going on, instead of just tumbling over Runelord themed things. YMMV, however