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I'm returning to pathfinder after over a year of running other stuff (5e D&D, Dark Heresy, some Shadowrun). I've decided to convert the 3e Eberron Adventure, Eyes of the Lich Queen to Pathfinder and give it a go.
I have five players for this campaign and I'm running it pretty much entirely on roll20. We're gaming weekly on Tuesday evenings from about 8-10:30, so sessions are fairly short.
The starting characters are:
Gale Miller (slyph, fighter 4- dex based fighter with a high Int to give her a fair amount of skills, so that she somewhat doubles as a scout/tomb raider)
Bakji (samsaran, occulist 4, scholarly type obsessed with acquiring lost lore)
Jeysus Chryst (aasimar, cleric 4, believes he is the son of a god he calls "The One" and he is attempting establish his own religion. He of course is the prophet of said religion)
Gundar Judsen (human, fighter 4, big, heavily armored fighter with a great sword who kills things, and isn't great at much else)
We played our first session last night. Journal to follow soon.
???? (not sure yet what the final addition to the party will be, as my fifth player is on vacation.
I started them off with this quest intro:
Several weeks ago, you garnered a contract with a man named Sur’Kil through the Clifftop Adventurers Guild (of which you are a member).
Sur’Kil billed himself as an “independent researcher,” and he was looking for adventurers to investigate a site he had learned of that dated back to the “Age of Demons,” (long, long ago). He said that any loot you found at the site would be yours to claim with the exception of relics from that time that he seeks. He wasn’t particularly clear about the exact nature of the relics, but he assured you that he would compensate you fairly for any you find.
You vaguely recall his words from your meeting,
“The location you will be surveying is in the jungles of the Q’barran peninsula, to the south of the great volcano of Haka’torvhak. From Adderport, you will have a week long trek inland to the site of the Temple of Kha’shazul. This temple is your destination and the site of the relics you seek.
The temple is now used by a tribe of lizard folk worshipers of some half-fiend dragon god. From what I understand, they demand tribute from other lizard folk tribes in the region, so I would expect them to be armed and capable. However, the temple and its inhabitants are merely an obstacle.”
I believe that the Temple of Kha’shazul hides a deeper secret, one unknown even to the current inhabitants. My research indicates the temple occupies a place where an ancient demon was cast down. Such places were guarded, in legend, by half-dragon beasts. Somewhere beneath that temple, I believe that the crypt of one such ancient creature lies, along with relics of that time.
In addition to the promise of reward for relics that might be of interest to your patron, you and your companions have each been offered 100 gp per week for your services.
The journey from Sharn to Adderport took 1 month on a house Lyrandar Elemental Galleon (The Swiftwind), and thus far the expedition has taken over 6 weeks. You have already been paid 600 gp each for services rendered (part of your starting wealth). Sur’Kil travelled with you from Sharn to Adderport, and he is currently waiting in Adderport for you to return from the jungle.
You have now been trekking through the jungle for several days. You are being aided by a lizard folk guide named Kobbu. He was hired in Adderport, and Sur’Kil had a number of divinations cast upon him to ensure that he had no plans to betray the party or otherwise lead you astray. Hopefully those divinations prove accurate.
Sur’Kil has provided the party with two sending stones, a regional map and five vials of antitoxin. The map hasn’t proved overly useful, and you are currently relying much more on your guide to navigate you to the temple.
Eyes of the Lich Queen
Session #1 (Temple of Kha’Shazul)
PCs
Bakji (Samsaran, Occultist 4)
Jesys Chryst (Aasimmar, Cleric 4)
Gale (Slyph, Fighter 4)
Gundar (Human, Fighter 4)
The adventure begins with the heroes hiking through the steaming jungles of Q’barra. They have been trekking for nearly a week, having left the town of Adderport at the behest of their patron Sur’Kil in search of a lost temple that is rumoured to contain relics that date back to the Age of Demons. Their hired guide for the expedition is a lizard man named Kobbu. Thus far the journey has already taken more than the estimated time that Sur Kil had anticipated, which is hardly a surprise given the difficulty of hacking through the jungle. Kobbu has seemingly been an effective guide, and they have avoided many of the jungle’s dangers. He assures the adventurers that they have nearly reached their destination.
It is mid afternoon, and they are a few hours into their march since taking a lengthy rest to cool down. Bakji and Jesys are again starting to feel the affects of the heat, but Gundar and Gale seem to be doing fairly well, despite the fact that Gundar is attempting the trek in a suite of full plate armour (good Fort saves Gundar)! As they round a bend in the trail, they see a band of lizard folk up ahead. There are about a half dozen of them, and they appear to be warriors; some show signs of recent injury. The lizard men seem surprised to see a band of soft skins so deep in the jungle; they raise their spears, but they don’t attack. Jesys decides to approach them along with their guide Kobbu. He attempts a parlay and introduces himself as the prophet of the One true god. He doesn’t speak draconic, but he has Kobbu to translate, and the leader of the lizarmen band speaks some common. In order to prove the power of his god, he channels his holy energy and heals the wounded lizard men. This makes them far more receptive to his parlay, and he learns that they were coming from the temple, which is just a “short walk” up the trail. They had just delivered a tribute to the Black Scales that control the ruin. It seems the Black Scales felt the need to remind the lizard men who is in charge, and it was these nasty brute that cause their injuries. Jesys also learns that a pair of young black dragons dwell in the ruin, and that the lizard men were forced to give their tribe’s sacred spear as an offering to the evil reptiles. The heroes have heard of Blackscale lizard folk. They are said to be the size of ogres and are particularly aggressive and fearsome. The lizard men soon depart to return to their village, but they suggest that their chief would be most pleased if the heroes dealt with the dragons and the black scales. He would be even more pleased if they returned their sacred spear. The lizard men tell the heroes that they will return to the temple in a couple of days to see if the adventurers have survived.
They continue on their way, but they have not gone far when suddenly arrows start whizzing out of the undergrowth from both sides of the trail. They find themselves ambushed by a band of poison dusk lizard men. These vile creatures are a common danger to the region. Like the black scales they have a reputation for being evil. Unlike the black scales, they are only 3-4’ tall, and they have scales that blend in with surrounding jungle. Most of the arrows miss their marks, or bounce off the adventurers’ armour. However, one of the arrows finds its way through a gap in Gundar’s plate mail. The arrow is poisoned, and the big fighter soon begins to feel the effects of the toxin (bad roll on a Fort save). The little lizard men aren’t far from the trail, and it isn’t difficult for the heroes to draw their weapons and engage the bastards in melee. Gale and Gundar wade into the underbrush to start cutting them down. The pair have quite opposite fighting styles. Gundar lacks any subtlety. He grits his teeth ignoring the poison and chops down on one with his great sword, nearly splitting it in half. Gale demonstrates, agility and grace. She draws a scimitar and deftly slashes one across the chest. At the same time, Jesys stands in the middle of the trail and lets loose a wave of searing holy light that burns his enemies with radiant fire. Bakji, who is loaded down with gear and not able to move too quick, also stays on the trail. He uses a special glove that acts as a focus for his arcane power, and he blasts one of the lizard men in the face with a bolt of frost (first critical hit!!) that instantly kills the creature. The skirmish is over fairly quickly, with the heroes handily defeating the poison dusk lizard men. However Gundar succumbs to another poisoned arrow (another crit, and failed fort save) near the end of the fight, leaving him quite wounded (3 Strength and 6 Con damage- Ouch!). Only one of the little fiends escapes. The rest are slaughtered before they have a chance to retreat.
Kobbu suggests that it is likely that the lizard men were a patrol from the temple in the service of the Blackscales, and that the temple is close. Gale convinces him to do some scouting with her, while the rest of the band hides and rests. Kobbu proves correct, and soon he and Gale come to the edge of a clearing. Near the far end of the clearing is the crumbling, vine choked temple. It isn’t particularly big for a temple, but it also isn’t tiny. It features a portico supported by stone columns that highlight the entry. A pair of blackscale lizard men stand guard in the shade of the portico along with another reptilian creature- a dracotaur. The remainder of the clearing (between the heroes and the temple) is dominated by two sets of huts. One is a group of big, circular thatched huts that is clearly the camp of the Blackscales. The other cluster are smaller huts that belong to poison dusk lizard men. A few of each type of lizard men can be seen near the huts. Gale is concerned. The temple is clearly occupied and well defended. Getting into it won’t be easy. She does notice that there are several window openings about 15-20’ up the temple wall. She considers that there may be similar windows around the back of the structure, so she and Kobbu detour around behind the ruin. There doesn’t appear to be any guards on this side, so she creeps up to the wall, and with the aid of some vines she scales the wall and peers in the middle most window. She sees only a long columned hall that leads to the front entrance. She tries one of the other windows, and in this one she looks into a large room with a 10’ diameter well in the middle. It also features some big empty metal cages and a velociraptor chained to the wall beneath the window. She considers checking the final window on the back of the temple, but she hears chanting and smells incense, which is enough to deter her. Thus, she quits whiles she’s ahead and returns to her companions with Kobbu to report her findings.
They decide to camp for the night before raiding the temple so that Jesys can memorize lesser restoration spells to help heal Gundar from the poison damage. Kobbu aids them in finding a good campsite where they can easily rest and hide from any patrols. This allows them a night of undisturbed sleep. The next day Jesys helps Gundar get sorted out, and they make a plan. The plan is simple (and possibly not very good). Come in from the back, climb up to a window and drop into the temple. Gale is the most stealthy, so she goes first. She decides they should go for the window that overlooks the room holding the raptor. She again climbs into the window opening. She is very quiet and the raptor doesn’t notice her. She sets up a rope for her companions, and she drops down into the chamber, landing beside the dinosaur. She attacks the raptor, slashing a good gash in its flank. It strikes back, biting at her. She dodges out of the way of its bite, but it then rakes her with its claws. Gundar is close behind, and he jumps down to finish the thing off with his sword. His magical catstep boots allow him to land on his feet, despite him not being very graceful. Next Jesys scales the rope, while Bakji waits outside for his turn to climb up.
Gundar and Gale make their way towards the front of the room where an opening to their left leads to a hall. Gale hears heavy footsteps approaching. She gets up against the wall and readies herself to attack whatever enters the room. Jesys jumps down into the room, and Bakji starts climbing the rope. A hulking black scale lizard man steps into the room. He looks around, having heard the sounds of the dying velociraptor. Gale is ready, and she slashes him across the leg with her scimitar. He bellows in pain and retaliates, smashing her with his massive, stone headed club. She avoids the worst of it, but still takes a painful injury. Gundar is at her side in an instant, and he cleaves the brute across the chest with his great sword. It falls dead to the warm stone floor. More of the black scales are approaching from the hall with the dracotaur leading the way. Fortunately, the hall is only wide enough for one of them to come at a time. The two fighters take position in the door way to hold the choke point. Jesys stays behind them; his morning star burns with holy fire from a recently cast spell. He wards Gundar with a protection from evil spell and prepares to heal Gale’s wounds.
Meanwhile, Bakji attempts to climb the wall. His climbing skills have much to be desired, and even with the aid of the rope he can’t seem to get himself up the wall. He falls and lands on his back on the soft ground just as a few arrows fly out of the jungle and impact the wall where he had just been climbing. The Samarsan curses. He can hear his friends fighting in the temple, and he’s still stuck outside with a bunch of snipers in the jungle trying to pick him off.
Back inside, Gale and Gundar do a good job of holding the chokepoint. Jesys provides some needed healing and channels radiant energy to wound their enemies from a distance. The dracotaur manages to stab Gundar with its spear, but they soon cut it down. Gundar presses forward into the hall to meet his foes, and he steps up to face another black scale. Jesys heals some of Gale’s injuries, but he suddenly has his own problems to deal with when he hears a grating sound coming from down in the well that sits in the middle of the room. He rushes to the well to investigate. Suddenly a small black dragon bursts out, and sprays him with acid. Luckily his celestial heritage gives him some resistance to acid, and he isn’t as badly hurt as he might have been.. Gundar and Gale aren’t in much position to help him, as they have their hands full dealing with a line of black scales trying to get to them. One of which proves to be a spell caster that attempts to magically compel them to throw their weapons aways (a couple of command spells). Neither of the fighters see the tactical advantage of being weaponless, so they choose to ignore his commands (Will saves made!). Instead they use their blades to cut down another black scale. There are still plenty more, and the next one hammers Gale on the shoulder, shattering her collar bone. She’s badly wounded, and forced to fall back to drink a potent healing potion, which mends the broken bone. Gundar keeps hewing with his sword. His blade is soon covered with blood, and several black scale corpses are now clogging up the hall. The floor grows slick with their blood. Bakji continues his attempts to climb the wall without success, and more arrows skip off the stone near him. Jesys finds himself in a vicious melee with the dragon, and its claws rip into him as he smashes it with his flaming morning star.
Finally Bakji makes it up the wall. He climbs into the window and readies to jump down. Then, after numerous misses, an arrow drives into his back. He feels poison seeping in, but he manages to resist the worst of its effects. He jumps down into the room and falls on the ground. Ahead of him, he sees Jesys fighting for his life against the little dragon. Bakji again channels arcane power through his glove and blasts the dragon with a ray of cold. It is now quite wounded, but it keeps tearing at Jesys, who continues to try to smash its skull with his blazing morning star and sear it with channeled radiant power. The dragon shifts in front of him and unleashes another blast of acid. He dodges to the side, and only takes minor damage. Bakji is hit more directly, but he deflects the damage with his magic. The pair then retaliate and finish it off as it attempts to retreat back down the well. In the hallway, Gundar and Gale continue to face off agains the big black scales. They are holding their own, but the battle is far from won. There ares still plenty more enemies, and the heroes have all sustained injuries and have no easy means of escape.
The session ends here, in the midst of a nasty combat.
Session #1 GM commentary:
So I think this session ended up being a good, exciting intro the campaign. The characters got right into it, and it ended in a very tense situation.
I'm a little concerned about a possible TPK next session. Climbing directly into the temple was a bad move IMO. The blackscale priests that inhabit the temple aren't so likely to run out to help the guards outside, but if they are attacked directly then the guards outside do come to help them, which is what has happened. As a result the PCs have pretty much initiated a single big battle with all the creatures in the area. Tactically they have the advantage of a hallway that is too narrow for the blackscales to come at them more than one at a time, but I'm not sure if that will save them, as there are still several ready to die for their priests.
However, next week our fifth player should be back, so I'll pull a little reality hiccup and drop his character into the room ready to go, which might keep them alive.
I've got a couple other surprises and ideas in mind as well...
At any rate, it should be a tense session.
It was interesting going back to Pathfinder after playing 5e for the past year. When I proposed the campaign I gave the players the option of playing it in 5e or Pathfinder. There was a little more of an interest from them in Pathfinder, which I think was because of all the extra character options Pathfinder has. Personally, I like both systems (heck I like 4e as well), but I probably prefer 5e a little more because of its relative simplicity compared to Pathfinder. But 5e D&D lacks certain gritty mechanics that I also enjoy as DM (like all that ability damage from poison). I look forward to running the rest of this adventure/campaign (assuming the campaign doesn't end next session with a TPK). I expect it to take the characters up to level 11ish, so it will definitely be shorter than a full Pathfinder AP, but that was one of reasons I wanted to run it.
I'm not sure if I'd call it brave... I think that part way through the fight they realized that they might have gotten in a little over their heads.
So...
The second session was two hours of brutal combat, of which recounting a play by play of would be rather difficult, and probably not very interesting to read. However, the heroes continued to hack their way through the lizardfolk. The blackscales were the biggest threat (standing 9' tall and as strong as ogres). Gundar kept trying to gain ground in the hallway hoping that he could fight his way to the exit of the temple and give the party a possible getaway. Unfortunately, there were too many of them, and as he and Gale got closer to the temple's main exit they found themselves in a wider hall where multiple blackscales could attack them at once. Meanwhile another black and a few poison dusk lizardmen had used a secret door to move in on the back ranks of the party from behind. Suddenly they found themselves fighting on two fronts. They all sustained serious injuries. Jesys did his best to keep healing them, but they had to fall back into one of the temple's rooms. Here Gale and Gundar held the entrance, while Jesys used the last of his healing magic, but this wouldn't be enough to save them.
Gundar took a poisoned arrow that he failed several saves against (by the end strength was reduced to 10 and his Con 8, which is rough on a fighter). Everything really started to go to s&%& when Jesys came up to try to help the fighters in melee, but was dropped by a black scale's great club. None of the other heroes had any healing they could give him, and Jesys died. Gundar decided to go down in a blaze of glory, and he kept on fighting, but soon he was brought down by a blackscale. Bakji died soon after. While this had been going on, Gale had managed to fight her way through the lizardmen that had come up on the party from the rear. She then used the secret passage they had used to sneak up on the high priest and land crit on him with her scimitar. Then he turned on her and his loyal adept came to his aid. The two of them laid into her, inflicting terrible injuries (she was dropped to 3 hp). She soon realized that she was the only surviving party member. She knew she didn't stand a chance, so she retreated (her mobility feat allowed to avoid being clubbed to death as she ran). She almost escaped. She managed to climb up to the window ledge and was about to jump down and make a break for it when she was shot by a poisoned arrow (natural 20, but not a crit) that finished her off.
In the end, it was a TPK, but all in all, the heroes put up a great fight and took down a ton of enemies. Unfortunately, our fifth player wasn't able to make the session, and two blackscale priests kept the few surviving lizardfolk from routing, which was enough to win the battle for the lizardfolk.
The players took this defeat well. They decided to they wanted to give the adventure another go, so they are going to make a new party.
Session #2 GMs Notes:
So a TPK in the second session isn't the ideal way to kick off a new campaign. However, in some ways it's not the worst time for a TPK, as the players are not yet that invested in the story or their characters.
I have mixed feelings on TPKs. Too many will definitely anger players, especially if they feel the encounter was really unfair to them. However, I tend to let the chips fall where they may, especially on roll20 where my dice rolls are all posted in the chat log. I think every now and then some character death is a good wake up call for players and keeps them from growing too complacent. In my opinion the game loses a lot of its excitement as a player if there isn't a real possibility of failure. Of course, failure doesn't have to mean character death, but in a game like D&D, which tends to be pretty combat heavy, it often does.
I think this is the third or fourth TPK in my 20+ year GMing history. I had one in a 3.5 campaign I ran a long time ago, and my 4e homebrew campaign ended with a TPK against a dracolich at around 16th level. I also had a semi TPK a while back in a shadowrun game I had been running off and on. In that case two out of the three characters present died, but the survivor decided that he was retiring afterwards, so that ended the campaign. Then there was last night's TPK.
The players took it quite well, so it's nice to have a good group of guys to game with who don't get all bent out of shape when things don't go their way. I don't see it that often, but every now and then you run into a player that just can't handle having their character die. I don't really get that mentality- I mean it's not that hard to create a new character. For me, as a player, when one of my characters dies I try to look at it as a fun opportunity to try something new.
Anyhow, I'm a little up in the air if I want to go right back into this campaign. I'm tempted to take the opportunity to look at some other adventures and see if there's something else that jumps out that I might try instead. I'm considering the Chimes at Midnight Eberron trilogy.
I ended up deciding to not take another stab at this adventure. I've decided we are going to give Reign of Winter a go instead.
There's been another change of plans. After looking through Reign of Winter in more detail I decided that I wasn't up for running another AP just yet. It seemed like too much of a commitment to run right now. I contributed to the new Conan rpg kickstarter, and I'd like to start a conan campaign this summer, so I decided that I didn't want to be trapped in middle of an Adventure Path. I also realized that I just wasn't ready to have the path all laid out for me.
Anyhow, I decided instead to reboot with a new Pathfinder homebrew campaign that starts at level one, and is set back in Greyhawk. I've run my players through the entirety of Savage Tide and Age of Worms APs, so this campaign will be set ten years after the end of our Age of Worms campaign.
It is going to take place in Saltmarsh, and will be inspired by the Saltmarsh trilogy of adventures. I'll be doing some adapting of those adventures, as well as a bunch of homebrew stuff. I'm not sure how far I'll take this one. We'll see how it goes.
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I dropped this into my Way of the Wicked campaign, with 8th level evil characters and minimal upgrades. (Let them feel tough for a bit before the more difficult/ level appropriate stuff kicks in again).
They breezed through the Temple with some damage, had a bit of a hard time with two very young Orichalcum dragons, and then traipsed down to the altar. I replaced the Canoloths with Mezzoloths and that was quite a tough fight, as the spells were almost gone by this stage. For the final encounter I added a few shadows doing Charisma damage. A succesful hit led to apathy, and the desire to stay here forever as a guard.
Imagine my surprise when they were channelled into submission and commanded to attack the mummy! Imagine my consternation when I realized that undead were immune to physical ability damage. Cue very happy players - as they were not looking forward to that fight while running on empty!
Long story short - everybody very happy, and the characters have aberrant dragonmarks instead of the usual pile of gold :-)