I've been thinking about Fortress of the Stone Giants and that perhaps I need to do something to add a few new creature types to the mix. I am posting my ideas and fishing for ideas others might have.
I have two reasons for this.
#1 - Repetition. The Hook Mountain Massacre was basically a string of encounters which were almost all giants. There were a few exceptions, such as Xanesha, Lamatar, and the Hags, but almost all the encounters were fights with ogres or their kin.
Looking through the Fortress of the Stone Giants module, I see more Giants, Giants, and Giants. Not until the party actually penetrates the catacombs under Jorgenfist do we get any real variety.
#2. - Tactics. The party I have is likely able to walk over a lot of the encounters. In particular, there is one Strix character and an air sorcerer who flies a lot. Even with stone throwing the giants will have a hard time dealing with the party, and they have gotten very good at dealing with big slow creatures. So I want to mix it up.
So far here is what I am thinking:
A: Harpies. A Bog-standard harpy is a little too easy for my guys but with a sprinkling of class levels and good numbers this will give my aerial characters something to think about.
B: Ghosts. A group of Thassilonian nobles pledged themselves forever loyal to Karzoug. These nobles found themselves abandoned by the Runelord when Earthfall happened. They desire revenge, but are bound by Karzoug and cannot defy him. However, they are useless as souls for the Sihedron Ritual because they are already dead. Karzoug has given control over some of them to Mokmurian.
C: Weird Giants. I figure we ought to have a variety of giant types represented and I was thinking of making things interesting. I don't like the proliferation of "terrain based" giant types, but a few other giant types might be in order, such as:
* Ettins. Possibly with levels that take advantage of their two-weapon ability.
* Variant Ogres from the Monster Codex: Shaggras and Pickins.
* Fiendish Ogres. A tribe dedicated to Lamashtu has been using a Demon Mother's mask to give them Fiendish offspring.
* Werewolf Ogres. Why not? Give the party some work to do about needing silver weapons.
Anyone have any other suggestions?
Well part of this AP is mostly giants and wizards.
But as you will see in my notes im trying to add a few different things to the giants.
|
Let's see... from memory this is what you have ahead of you:
1. Sandpoint: Giants, pet bears and a dragon. Yes it's a lot of giants, but the frantic pace of the encounters and trying to defend the town makes it really exciting.
2. Outside Jorgenfist. As written, tons of giants in several different major camps. It's not a cohesive army (yet), but more a gathering of tribes. This actually lends itself well to the party trying to sneak in, rather than fight their way through a few hundred giants.
3. Getting into the fortress itself, there's a few different ways in. From the top, you have a group of harpy monks, which is pretty great when they start hitting with Stunning Fists and they evade fireballs. Just inside you have the black monk, who has supernatural flight and a number of nasty nasty tricks. If they opt for the other way in, they find everyone's favorite kobold barbarian.
4. Once they're finally inside, there's a few encounters with stone giants, some trolls and some dragons. Due to the floor set up, it's really easy to chain every encounter together at once, but make sure you keep track of the time it actually takes the enemies to reach the party. It usually results in a staggered arrival of a cluster of enemies each round. There's also some potential for friendly interaction with the giants if the party is so inclined.
5. Down below you have cool constructs, and hit and run tactics from a wall phasing ball of slag. When I ran it, the slag guy would wait until the party was engaged with another enemy, then pop out, attack once, then flee. By the time they finally managed to pin the creature down, they were incredibly angry with it.
So... in my experience, while yes, there are numerous giants, the encounters that you're likely to actually have tend to be pretty varied and it doesn't feel like a slog through a literal army of giants. If your party goes that route, they're probably pretty likely to die, because 300 rock throws a round (after the giants actually finally mobilize) will yield a considerable number of natural 20s.
If you'd really like to spice up the giant encounters, try making them memorable.
Orcs. Have a few dozen bands of orc cannon-fodder cluttering the place up, most of whom have the usual 6 hp and corresponding life expectancy, plus a few leaders and casters. They obviously won't present much of a direct threat, but can play havoc with infiltration plans and go where larger creatures can't. Which is easier to handle at 12th level: 2 hill giants or 20 orcs? Naturally they have some wargs and the odd winter wolf too.
You can add the orcs (or goblins) to Sandpoint as advance scouts and interference, though it might be a real headache to run a huge mob like that.
Now the orc gangs probably hate each other and fear the giants, so clever PCs might be able to turn one band against another, or disguise the party as orcs, or whatever. There's not much RP left in RotRL once you get to Jorgenfist (Conna aside) so you might as well milk it.
@ Mudfoot:
I was a player in a 3.5 game once where we infiltrated a Giant city (I think the adventure was from a Dungeon magazine). They had Bugbear slaves as cannon fodder. Similar to your orc idea, but with a few more HP.
As it is an Orc Warrior 1 will probably be unable to hit any of my players except on a natural 20. So I might beef them up a little - maybe Barbarian levels. It's a good idea.
@ Raisse:
Yeah, once the party is in the tunnels under Jorgenfist things will get more interesting. But the overland encounters are basically Ogres, Hill Giants, patrolling Stone Giants, etc. with a few animals thrown in.
I expect the party will figure out a way to sneak past the giants in the camps rather than just smash through them. Though if they mounted a guerilla campaign against them I could see them actually winning if they were smart. As I mentioned, they have developed very effective tactics for dealing with giants.
One of the things the giants did in the 3.5 adventure was in addition to throwing rocks they also threw pickled carrion crawler heads, which would hit as splash weapons and paralyze people.
The variant Ogre thing I already mentioned... werewolf ogres would have DR silver and fiendish ogres would have SR and stuff. Any particular other templates you think I should try?
@ Joey Virtue:
I take it you mean from THIS THREAD? I looked over it and for the most part you are just increasing the numbers of enemies in existing encounters.
I am interested though: What is a War Troll? Is that a template for trolls?
War Troll was a 3.5 Monster I cant remember the book but it was Bad a$$
As things are starting to go im slowly trying to add different giants.
I think a pack of giant lycanthropes would be a lot of fun and really cool
I think a pack of giant lycanthropes would be a lot of fun and really cool
Yeah and at the same time, once you have one lycanthrope it would be pretty easy to have a bunch. I imagine an Ogre tribe that worshiped Lamashtu would be down with deliberately infecting themselves with lycanthropy.