| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I'm just about halfway through book 2, and my players have surprised me a number of times with things, so I wanted to share their actions and how I changed things based upon them.
The party decided to enter the Glassworks via the delivey door mentioned in the note. This lead to them discovering the stairs down and rescuing Ameiko before anything else. I had to tell them directly not to enter the catacombs yet. 'you feel like this area is different from the rest of the structure, older, more dangerous, and probably not part of the kidnapping'.
One character has gotten into the habit of using Bullrush at opportune moments in order to quickly eliminate enemies. At the Glassworks, he was able to push two different goblins into the furnace. Later, at Thistletop, they party had cleared the stockade, but needed to rest. They were aware of the stairs leading down, so they hid the signs of fighting and secured themselves in Ripnugget's room to overnight. I decided it would be amusing to have Bruthazmus come up to... water the bunyip from the cliffside near the bridge, and it so happened the this character was the one on watch at the time. He followed Bruthazmus, saw the brute standing at cliff's edge, and successfully bullrushed the bugbear right off the cliff. I did have the player make a WIS check, to point out that if anyone below was expecting the bugbear to return, an alarm may be raised when he didn't arrive. The character awoke the rest of the party to inform them, and they decided offense was called for. Even though it was ostensibly the middle of the night, I decided that the only one who would actually be in bed was Orik. Lyrie and Nualia both struck me as the types to burn a bit of the midnight oil to feed their interests.
The party has also shown quite a penchant for capturing enemies alive. Tsuto, Lyrie, Erin, and Caizarlu were all apprehended and turned over to the Sandpoint guard. Tsuto and Lyrie were transported to Magnimar to be tried (because of strong feelings involving the goblin raid they could not be fairly tried in Sandpoint). Ironbriar will accquit both of them on technicalities (PCs not being present to testify even though nobody notified them), and they will join him in the battle where the PCs confront him later. Caizarlu was also transferred to Magnimar, due to being wanted in connection with Sczarni activites. Erin isn't guilty of much other than extremely poor judgement, as far as I can tell. The unsavoury nature of his deal will assure his sanitorium never has another client.
Speaking of the Sanitorium, upon first seeing Grayst, and making the Heal check well enough to recognize his exact condition, the party druid immediately declared she would cast Remove Disease on him. The level check succeeded, and Grayst was left mad, but no longer in danger of undeath. Grayst still lunged at the obsession character, but without the benefit of undead strength he was too weak to escape his restraints. (The party subdued him, which alerted Caizarlu and spooked Erin.)
During Walking Scarecrows, the party proritized getting the two still living humans (upon discovery) to safety such that the party split, the fastest members taking the pair back to Sandpoint while the rest picked off ghoul scarecrows from a safe distance. I had used a suggestion I read here to have the survivor who came to town be a child, in this case a frightened little girl, and decided that the two still living ones were her parents (the characters didn't learn that until later), making the party's extreme effort to save them quite touching. I'm still trying to think of a suitable reward or outcome for the party from this.
What little ways or big ways have your players deviated from expectation?
Funny, the cleric in my group's party did the exact same thing to Grayst. The pc's took Grayst back to town where he could slowly recover from ability damage. Since he was not going to turn into a ghoul, the necromancer had no reason to risk his neck in a confrontation and remained hidden until the pc's left. The group was very suspicious of Habe and his sanitorium but after they returned to town, events in the farms, etc. would carry them to Misgivings and beyond. The sanitorium's occupants survived - among the very few NPC's who have.
I don't know if the other sanitorium residents will survive in mine. The party arranged to meet Grayst peaceably, and Erin fled towards the reception area. The party successfully Intimidated the orderlies when the fight broke out. Thus the orderlies were left in charge when the party took Erin and the Necromancer. I assume they'll wait a day or so, then break open Erin's coffer for the gold and take off. It may be some time before anyone checks on them.
Hi. I've been DM'ing for decades, but I'm new to Pathfinder. I'm running RotR and we just had our first kickoff game last Saturday. They got to the end of the raid on the festival, but had to stop where they saved the nobleman and he was offering them dinner if they stop by the Rusty Dragon.
I'll keep checking this thread to see what your players do; the Bull Rush idea is interesting. I'll report here if my players do anything wacky or out of order, so to speak. :)
|
I have also had unexpected player choices regarding the sanitorium.
The way I ran it, after Grayst was killed, Dr. Caizarlu ran upstairs, four zombies in two, shouting, "What happened? I brought the - uh-oh...
"Wh-how dare you, drawing weapons in a place of healing!? And you killed such a delicate patient!? Get out of here!"
This put them on the defensive, and they ended up making Diplomacy to explain themselves and talk him down. He actually invited them into his basement, shoved the zombies back in his zombie closet, and gave them some more information. He even swapped a spell with our wizard, and gave them a bar of soul soap when they returned from the farmstead (after telling some traumatized farmers about the place; they even told a Pharasmin inquisitor, "Nope! No ghouls in there!" and made Bluff successfully).
So nobody cared about the zombies, the whole situation was resolved peacefully, and Dr. Caizarlu will continue right on treating people dealing with insanity as "Interesting Test Subjects". They even gave all the farmers' money directly to the farmers' children, so he might start planning ways to extort it out of them. I dunno if I should send the PCs back there, though.
My players also had an interesting time in the sanatorium. They intimidated the orderlies early, and didn't pick up on Habe being anything other than creepy. So when things went down with Grayst, Habe was a non-combatant and ran in terror from the fight. No-one in the party thought to go with him, so no-one knew that Habe was the reason Caizarlu and his zombies were on the staircase. And whe nthe party reached the main floor again, there was only Habe and the cowed orderlies who had hurriedly practiced their story.
Habe declared that Caizarlu was both the funder of the sanatorium and their pseudo-captor, and the orderlies nodded dumbly. The party took him at his word, probably because the closest the party had to a face was the evil character, and he had ideas for the sanatorium. He decided he would fill the vacuum left by the dead Caizarlu, and informed he was their new benefactor, and then privately intimidated all three again by promising them that if they ran away he'd track them down. It worked well enough, though Habe was bitter (as per the rules for intimidation) over the arrangement. Habe thought about torching the place and running, but when it became obvious that the player was investing obscene amounts of money into the place, he changed his tune (the player took particular exception to the fact that there was no proper kitchen, and brought people in to build one).
So they party not only had property in Sandpoint to protect when the time came, but they also had a remote building they cared about. Funniest of all, is that beyond 'owning' this establishment, the player's plans for it weren't fully formed and wouldn't happen until much higher level... so it ended being a better version of itself in the long run because the player never really did more than send money there.
An update: In the Skinsaw murders chapter, my players again exercised their penchant for capture. They took the Faceless Stalkers in the Townhouse alive then one of the party members "extracted" quite alot of information. The party found out about the lair at the clock tower at the same time they learned about the sawmill, and they nearly went to the clock tower first. Luckily, they decided to meet with officials to explain why there were now two creature corpses in a ransacked townhouse belonging to a recently deceased minor noble. They met with the head of the investigation into the murders, Justice Ironbriar. Ironbriar counseled them to check the mill first, now knowing to prepare for their arrival. Of course, my one player did take the opportunity to Bullrush a cultist into the sawmill machinery during the infiltration. I mentioned before that the party had captured Tsuto and Lyrie alive. Ironbriar had seen them both acquitted, and recruited them into the Seven. At the top of the mill, the party faced Ironbriar, Tsuto, Lyrie, and two cultists, with Tsuto and Lyrie both bumped to lv6, and equipped at a PC wealth level. It's the longest fight the party has had, particularly because knowing the party was coming meant all the pre-buffing was in place. (Also, I rebuilt Tsuto as an Unchained Monk/Rogue, and with 3 in each he took Ninja Trick: Vanish to utilize with the Monk Ki pool.) Amusingly, it made the sawmill the more difficult battle compared to the clock tower. The party was so riled up by the battle that they decided to ignite the sawmill itself as they left. (Fortunately Ironbriar had his own reasons not to mention to anyone that the party was going there, so there's no reason for them to be connected to the fire).
After facing Xanesha, and the Lord Mayor's Banquet, they headed to Turtleback Ferry. I've planned encounters with both an escaped Caizarlu, and a now wretched Erin Habe, both as callbacks and as opportunities for sin or virtue. I've designed some content to make the sin tracking relevant in the rest of the AP, not just in Runeforge, so I like to give the party chances to indulge or refrain. One character is already heavily sinful in Greed, and might give Karzy a run for his money (pun intended) when it comes time.
If anyone is curious about the content I mentioned.
Anyway, the weapons have a passive buff (+ to a save, initiative, or something similar) that is tied to the current rating the character has in the associated sin. Also each offers a minor bonus when used in combat in accordance with the sin. For instance, Ambition (keyed to Pride) grants a bonus when attacking creatures larger than the wielder. When more than one is being used in combat, each gains a little power, from enhancement boosts, to crit range going up by one, all the way to a die type boost.
My players pulled off a huge surprise: they saved Sandpoint from the giant raid.
Not by beating back the giants when they attacked. No, they learned of the upcoming raid, flew back to Sandpoint, and instead of using the day before the raid to prepare the town, they scouted the location of the giants' camp and planned an ambush attack for that night.
With a combination of stealth/surprise, attacking in different directions, the dire bears being penned for the night, and effective use of AoE spells, the party eliminated the giant raiding party.
I'm also really seeing the action economy differential in effect that dooms single enemy boss encounters vs a full party. The party was also able to defeat Black Magga, despite the CR disparity. They got initiative, and are a very damage focused group. The only single encounter battles that last beyond a round or two are ones with magical gimmicks such as Mirror Image combined with Stoneskin.
I've had a few fun and interesting encounters with my players too.
Interrogations after the Raid:
My players decided to go to the barracks, and convinced Hemlock to let them interrogate one of the goblins. The arcanist used illusions to make an image of one of the goblins they killed try to talk info out of one of the captive. Rolling crits on bluff, they squeezed out info by tricking the goblin into believing that he was telling a friend.
Thistletop:
With the use of Charm person/monster, Illusions, Ghost sounds, really high bluff rolls, and really low goblin sense motive rolls, they managed to convince the goblins that one of them is a goblin fire god. They convinced just about every single goblin other than 2, that they have come to help them. They even convinced them that invaders from earlier that took out gogmurt (because they raised the alarm) were killed by them.
The two goblins I spoke of that didn't believe were killed by the "fire god" with a kinetic fire blast with the gunslinger hidden behind them, shooting his gun at the same time criting them for 4x damage... Because of the loud gunshot and that the gunslinger was out of sight, all the goblins saw was the fire deity smite the unbeliever with fire and a loud bang of noise. They did this twice in two different rooms, one of which being in front of the Warchief.
Book 2 they didn't do anything majorly out of the ordinary.
Turtleback Ferry
After discovering the rune on people, the local arcanist made a couple wands of erase, and spread word about discreet tattoo removal. He spent a couple of days just going through the town, spreading rumors quickly and investigating people, removing half the town's tattoos well before the flood.
Down Comes the Rain: Black Magga
The party arcanist cast slowing and rooting spells constantly on the magga, causing it to be unable to move at all (any and all attempts were met with really low rolls). The Magga was able to kill the Magus, but the party was able to kill the Black Magga, which is a major feat as I over doubled it's health.
They are currently about to explore the Hook Mountain Clanhold. I can update on any future ventures later :)
Wow, the party's dice must have been truly blessed that day!
The SR alone gave my two groups problems, not to mention her good saves, immunities, resistances, two-level energy-draining bite, and Breath of Madness. Luckily her "combat timer" in the Morale section allowed her only about four rounds of combat before she retreated, or both parties would have been toast.