After my tabletop group decided the Playtest wasn't for them, we crafted characters for the Reign of Winter campaign. I'd previously run it for another group, but due to scheduling conflicts that group died (seriously, going over half a year between games is not a good thing - to the point that the two players who had that scheduling conflict are not being invited into my new group). The group is almost entirely local with one player over Skype and based in Florida.
I am using some Pathfinder Unchained rules for the game. This includes the following:
Unchained Classes (for the Barbarian, Rogue, Monk, and Summoner)
Background Skills (two bonus skill points for specific skills)
Automatic Bonus Progression - this is a biggie seeing that the group will frequently be away from larger communities. By cutting the amount of vendor trash the group gets but letting the party have bonuses for "traditional" core magic items, this allows more versatility for the treasure.
Two of my players so fell in love with ABP when they saw the rules that they both said they plan on using it for their own campaigns in the future.
The group used a 20-point build. They had average starting gold rather than rolling randomly for gold.
Also, I start everyone at double starting hit points for 1st level as I find 1st level characters a tad too squishy.
The group consists of the following:
Alak: A variant Aasimar Witch (with bonuses to Intelligence and Charisma) with the Elemental Patron. He has silver-white hair and yellow slitted eyes, and very pale skin. Yeah, I know what he looks like but players will do what they want. ;) He's got a Fox familiar. His Trait is Warded against Witchery as does his sister.
Ciri: Alak's somewhat naive adoptive sister, a Varisian Bard (with the Versatile Human upgrade and boosts to Charisma and Dexterity) - she's the GMPC but built in a Support role and will mostly not do much in combat. (I just liked the name. Otherwise she's black-haired and her own person.) Her Trait is Warded Against Witchery and both she and Alak had an encounter with the White Witches as children.
Thelin: A Stonesinger variant Dwarven Druid who took the Earth Domain rather than an animal companion. He left his clan as he preferred living outdoors instead of in the mountain, and met up with the oracle Freya and the barbarian Araval while on the road before they headed to Heldren. His Campaign Trait is Restless Wayfarer.
Freya: A Kitsune Oracle of the Stone Mystery and who is Haunted. She was raised in Tien but after touching an enchanted bauble was teleported into Northern Taldor where she met up with Araval and then Thelin. She continued traveling with them while learning more of this new region. She also has the Restless Wayfarer campaign trait.
Araval: A half-orc Barbarian from an orcish settlement in the River Kingdoms (I figure the region is unsettled enough that an orcish hold could exist there without being mentioned in the books). He possesses the Northern Ancestry Campaign Trait and started traveling south while seeking people to wrestle and learn from - part of the reason he went to Heldren is he heard the smith was a good wrestler and wanted to try his luck (he lost).
While Alak and Ciri were traveling separate from Freya, Thelin, and Araval, they met up during Heldren's midsummer's festivities. I had a half dozen games the players could partake of including an archery stand, a three-card monte stand, and a pie eating stand. Araval also sought out the smith and learned that years of experience and working the forge meant more than being a barbarian when it comes to wrestling (Araval held his own at first but then lost). But he also was given tips on how to wrestle as the smith is a good winner. ;)
At midnight, the Winter Portal opened in the Border Wood. Thelin noticed a thunderstorm starting to form over the Border Wood but didn't realize anything else about it (though given it was nighttime, that's not surprising).
That night while the five new friends slept on the tavern floor, the oracle had an odd dream...
Storm Warnings: home-brewed encounter to start Reign of Winter
Seeing I had the group start out in Heldren (partly to give them a taste of the town and reason for wanting to help out), I needed to find a way to get them out of town for a couple of days. While I had considered having the group go to Zimar with a caravan (probably to get the Smith some supplies), I decided to give Freya's player something to help her shine for a session. And it works also as it is a far... spookier and more ominous start than just going to Zimar and dealing with bandits.
It started with Freya having a dream:
Your eyes open as a chill permeates into your bones. You sit up from the hearth, noticing that while light emanates from the hearth, the flames do not move and you feel no warmth from the fire. Silence reigns but for the crackle of ice forming on the bowl of water by your side. Then you hear a low creak. You turn, seeing all around you are people from Heldren reaching out and conversing, but stopped mid-motion, time having ceased.
You hear the creak again and again, and turn trying to place it. In a shadowy corner you sense motion, a back-and-forth motion of a rocking chair, a wizened form seated on it. You approach the old crone rocking in the chair. She glances up at you, her eyes burning, her voice rasps out "Find me!" And then you wake.
When she woke, Araval and Ciri both noticed Freya was acting a tad odd, but she actually brought up the dream without any prodding from her companions. (Perception check to notice something was off.)
Freya then rolled a natural 20 to know who to talk to about a local oracle who dealt in dreams and knew that the barkeep, Kale Garimos, was a bit overworked and underappreciated due to the festival. Being polite and respectful meant she could easily ask questions without having to bribe her. With some roleplay she learned of Old Nana, who lived in the middle of the Briarwood (a little to the north) and approximate directions to find Old Nana.
Unfortunately they were only approximate directions as Alak promptly butted into the conversation as he was fascinated by oracles and dreams and all that rather than waiting for the conversation to end. Yeah, Kale isn't too thrilled with Alak who is a less-than-polite (if otherwise charismatic) chap at times.
The group all chose to travel with Freya and headed into the Briarwood. Partway into the day, Thelin failed to see signs of boars living in the area and a mother-and-child pair of boars surprised the group. Only Ciri and Thelin made their saves, and Ciri promptly started up a Bardic Song while Thelin used Entangle to ensnare the boars.
Highlights include a spell fizzle from the Witch casting Burning Hands defensively and a Paizo Critical Hit Card having a boar gore not only the Druid for 10 hit points (I rolled snake-eyes for damage) but also the Bard next to him for 10 hit points (as the boar THEN rolled well). The younger Boar suffered a Critical Failure and suffered Exhaustion which was a good thing because Ferocity means Boars effectively have an extra 17 hit points.
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The group reached Old Nana (a half-elven Oracle who isn't actually all that old but has been in the region for over 20 years so folk "assume" she is old) who listened to the dream. She decided that Freya needed to go on a Vision Quest and told the group they'd need several ingredients - mugwort, roots from a flowering plant that has eight thin white petals, and mushrooms that have orange-red caps that are dotted white and pure white bases. She then brewed a chunky tea that those going on the Vision Quest would go on.
Naturally, Destiny chose otherwise. The Barbarian chose to watch over his four companions but he failed a Will save and was dragged into the Vision Quest as well.
The Dream World was in shades of grey, primarily black-and-white. A white frost was slowly creeping up on them and crows cawed angrily from the trees. After initially going in the wrong direction with the crows getting angrier and angrier while the frost grew closer, Alak realized there was a trail and urged the group to go on it.
While on the trail the crows pursued them. Further, ahead of them they found a stool, on which was perched a strange doll with a sapphire-blue eye and a hole for her other eye. The doll urged them to turn back and that their Doom awaited ahead. It also said they could not pass.
So Freya promptly picked up the struggling doll and carried it in front of her. The doll got rather sullen about that because they had not passed the doll. (I would have allowed fire to burn the doll as well, but I was most amused by their decision to carry the doll in front of them.)
They finally reached a hut with tiny thick glass windows. The group didn't notice that each side was in fact the back of the house - it "turned" away from them for each side, even when one person stayed behind. Alak tried climbing the roof to look down the chimney but he fell off (my group tends to be clumsy - seriously, both the Witch and the Druid have a 10 Dexterity, while the Oracle has the highest armor class at 17). Freya also fell off the roof (having swaddled the doll so it was on her chest and still "in front of" her).
Finally the group listened to Araval who has suggested at the very start to leave someone at each side when exploring the hut, and thus at the fourth side Freya found the door leading in. However, inside was a foyer with three doors that didn't open until everyone entered the hut and closed the main door leading out.
With the doors to the right and left they saw small rooms with small windows that the crows attacked from outside, trying to get in. They chose not to fight crows and fled back to the foyer... and went into the central room.
The door out vanished, leaving them in a room with a fireplace and a fire burning (no real mantleplace), and a table in the center of the room with a snowglobe on it. In the snowglobe they saw a glowing orb inside, with snow blowing out from within and large icicles pointing away from it (in short they saw something they'll see once they reach the center of the winter weather in the Border Wood).
The snowglobe was flawless in make, appearing priceless, but no one was stupid enough to touch it. So the doll struggled loose and grabbed the globe, causing it to start to break. Araval grabbed the doll and threw it in the fireplace where it promptly vanished.
Frost was forming on the ceiling as winter escaped the breaking snowglobe, and was slowly climbing down the walls toward them. Each party member, one-by-one, touched the fire and escaped the Vision, with the NPC Bard being the last to flee.
The last thing they heard was "Return to Heldren." That's where the session ended.
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One thing I like about crafting this adventure was I was able to create some foreshadowing. The group is warned of the winter weather (and will hear more about it when they return to Heldren in two more days). They also saw a few things that will cause them pause when they run across them in the future...
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One other thing I should mention is that the group consists of two veteran players (though they primarily played D&D 3.5) and two newer players. I've been asked not to fudge rolls though with the first fight with the boar I chose to be lenient and warned them that this would not last once they are past 1st level. Part of my early fudging of a couple rolls was because people missed by one or the like.
That said, I'm also using Hero Points. I pointed out the Hero Points after the combat had ended and will write myself a note to remind them of Hero Points. I will also be using Hero Points to award intelligent and insightful play. This will likely replace fudging rolls as it will be up to the players more.
One thing that will earn players Hero Points is keeping a journal and-or notes. I plan on posting Player Journals to this log.
Roadside Massacre: Or hey, Zombies are rather dangerous!
Today was a shorter game than expected due to some real-life constraints - one of which being one of my players not being able to play until midnight, and our not actually starting until close to seven. So you know, a four-hour session instead of the nearly-six that we'd been doing. Fortunately, this also taught me an object lesson for what the group will be facing.
A goodly portion of the game involved roleplaying, along with one of my players fading fast as he'd not gotten any sleep. I'd been curious as to why he'd avoided the RP-related situations but fortunately one nap (right when fighting was starting) only kept him out of the fight for a couple of rounds. Unfortunately having me run characters as NPCs means they are... less effective as a result.
Though that's getting ahead of myself. Anyway, the group returned to Heldren and started learning about the winter weather and related incidents while they'd been traipsing off in the Briarwood while learning about dreams. My decision to limit the GMPC Bard to less-commonly-known Knowledge skills (or to put it in Ciri's words, "I'm a bard, not the town gossip!") left it for Freya to learn about incidents of winter weather - in fact, when asked what she'd found out Ciri brightly said "It's snowing in the Border Woods! Snow! In the middle of summer!" (Yeah, a modified 6 doesn't teach you a lot now, does it? ^^)
This also led to some fun roleplay. You see, I'm playing Ciri to be a somewhat-oblivious singer and dancer with no ranks in Sense Motive and the tendency to blithely trust people, while her Witch brother is the more cynical and protective of the two (which may be an interesting subversion seeing he's Aasimar and she's Varisian). No doubt the group will learn to quickly tell Ciri to shut up before she tells enemies all of their secrets but we'll see. It'll be fun in the meanwhile.
After learning about Yuln, the group went to the town hall in the morn (though Araval and Alak chose to go speak to the town smith rather than follow through with the town council - leaving the Oracle, Druid and Ciri to speak to councilwoman Teppen and Yuln. Rather than just wait for the party to ask the right questions, I did volunteer some information as a natural part of Yuln's conversations and the group basically learned everything from him except how to fight the Winter Fey. So, you know, no cold-iron blade or stocking up on alchemical fire for the group. ;)
There was initial talk by Thelin to set up camp just outside of the winter weather until he realized the group was going to reach the massacre site close to noontime. So after buying winter gear (with Freya buying a set for Thelin (who'd bought drinks for everyone the night before), and my running Alak and having him buy his sister some winter weather gear as well seeing she doesn't understand the concept of saving up for a rainy day (I'd already chatted with the player about it previously and he'd said it was something he'd do so no problems there) the group headed off to save Lady Argentea.
At the site of the massacre, the group soon realized there was something in the intact carriage and rather than just blithely pop it open, the barbarian gathered the others and encircled the carriage. A call into the carriage got no response so they were fairly certain it wasn't necessarily good - but it could be wounded people so....
This is where I, as the GM, learned an important lesson. Zombies are nasty. Seriously, they're not the pushovers that goblins or skeletons are... and my decision to add a third zombie was not a smart one. Especially as Ciri is a support unit. If she's getting into the fight, things are going bad.
I'm not sure how things would have gone if Alak's player had been with us at this juncture. He's got a tactically sound mind after all and can plan things out. Instead, the Druid popped the spear from the door and the group not only realized within seconds that these guards were not among the living... but that zombies can be nasty if you don't have a Cleric to spam Channel Positive Energy.
This is also where I started using rules for difficult terrain. I'm not quite sure if corpses actually count as difficult terrain or not, but I figure the crossbar for the wagon would, meaning that Freya's decision to put Sun Metal on one of the players' weapons was limited to the dwarf. And he isn't a front-line unit having both a Strength and Dexterity of 10.
The resulting fight took four rounds, two draws of the Critical Fumble deck (and my ignoring a couple OTHER natural 1s), including Araval using a Hero Point to set up a truly devastating strike to take down one of the zombies... only to roll a 1. And then when I said I didn't see the roll? The Dice Gods said "oh, really? Here, let's show it to you again!" I feel kind of bad for suggesting using the Hero Point in fact. They might be better suited for after-roll use to boost those strikes that almost do their duty.
That said, we had three Hero Points used. One, by Freya, was used to boost the Barbarian's first attack which to me was actually a rather heroic use of a hero point and I quite enjoyed it. I mean, you had a cooperative use of a Hero Point to enhance someone else's ability to fight and not only did Araval hit, he only hit because of that Hero Point. (The other two uses of Hero Points didn't pan out, sadly, with a +8 to the roll not being enough to save for bad die rolls.)
I also talked Freya out of using a Hero Point to attack a zombie with her club seeing it didn't matter if she hit, but how much damage she did. Lo, her second club attack DID hit anyway but didn't do enough damage to penetrate the zombie's damage reduction. (Hey, I'm a kinder, gentler GM. Also they'd not given me journals so no temporary Hero Points were given out.)
My decision to give everyone double-starting hit points also proved to be a wise one as Araval took 24 hit points damage (even with 2 of those soaked by the temporary Rage HPs from the Uncanny Barbarian Rage). Other players would have been at only 1-2 hit points without doubling the hit points so even if the group is less-than-effective in a fight, they can survive thanks to that boost in hit points.
After witnessing a truly devastating club attack against a Zombie do a mere 2 hit points damage, I even allowed the NPC Bard to do a Knowledge: Religion check to warn people to use slashing attacks. This would have been a good thing except half of the group lacks basic slashing weapons - amusingly enough, outside of the Barbarian, it was the Witch and Bard who had slashing weapons. Neither of them actually did any damage with those weapons. (The Oracle did strike for a goodly amount of damage with Cure Light Wounds against a zombie but to be honest it was a less-than-effective use of the spell.)
After the fight was through, the group thoroughly looted the area (using a torch to melt the breastplate and masterwork sword free which were given to the Barbarian player), Alak's player (back from his nap to help near the end of the fight) proved trustworthy and let the group know about the jewelry he found, and the group, without any healing resources left at all, were left looking at the trail that Lady Argentea's kidnappers took.
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Lessons learned: Ciri is not the group's +1. I built her to be a Support Character. As such she actually isn't contributing to combat in a significant manner and I should not (for now) increase the number of combatants to deal with her. The fight would have been over a round round earlier if I'd kept it down to two zombies.
As such, upcoming encounters will be limited to what the book recommends for a 4-person group. And given that the group is already bloodied... I can't see them lasting more than two encounters in before either retreating to Heldren or camping for the night. If foes prove to be too weak, I can boost hit points for the monsters. Action Economy isn't going to matter if Ciri's action economy is purely spent on helping the others.
Oh, and in the Accidentally Amusing Ineptitude of the day, we have Alak rolling a natural 1 to fight a Zombie, pulling a card from his deck of critical fumbles, and it coming up "damage armor." Alak is a Witch. So somehow he managed to cut his clothes open while trying to fight a zombie while Ciri rolled her eyes at how inept her brother is in a fight. (She's one to speak.)
Looking at things to come, it will be interesting to see if Alak's player starts using his Hexes to greater effect. Spells are well and nice and all, but he has the potential of doing more to help the group than Ciri, seeing he can keep using Misfortune on enemies (assuming they fail a Will save) and occasionally Fortune on his allies when push comes to shove (he took Extra Hex at 1st level). He'd probably have been better off with Evil Eye rather than Misfortune, to be honest, and I'll likely suggest he take that at 2nd level instead of Cauldron like he currently intends on.
Next game will be in two weeks.
And we're off! Real-life constraints once more shortened the game from the expected six hours to a little over four - it seems two of my players have been slacking off on sleep (though one of them did manage to get a nap in before the game at least). That said, a four-hour session can still be quite full of fun and get a bit done, and this one was fortunately a constructive game.
I'd also instituted a new rule: Fudging is being replaced by the players each getting one temporary Hero Point for each game session. This allows players to reroll natural 1s or otherwise deal with issues where they might want to fudge the rolls. And for the most part it worked, though I did fudge one other roll at one point due to bad die rolls and not wanting to have any of the characters die just quite yet.
Note: Given what I know of snowfall and how easy it is for even a clear path to get snowed in rather quickly, I decided that the region is currently suffering from Light Snow. This results in a -2 Perception and a -2 to-hit for ranged attacks. It would also allow for the trail to remain for a good day or more even with a light wind - but seeing the trail is in a wooded area, it is sheltered somewhat which lessens how easily the trail will get snowed in.
We'd left off with the group having used up just about every spell they had (outside of Cantrips and the Druid's Entangle spell). That said, I failed to keep track of hit points, so while I knew one player was off by probably six or more hit points... so I just handwaved it and had them all fully-healed. Seeing I have Hero Labs working for the new PC, I can now properly track hit points electronically so this won't be a problem in the future.
They promptly changed into the Winter Weather Clothes they had acquired in town. For the first session, I chose not to have the group roll for Fortitude checks - for one thing, two of the characters actually have Cold Resistance (5 for the Witch and 2 for the Barbarian) and they did dress warmly. That said, it will have been several hours with several periods of strenuous combat by the time the next game starts up, so Fortitude checks will start up, probably not on an hourly basis but probably every four hours or so.
The first encounter was with the trap laid by the bandits. I was curious how this was going to play out, seeing there wasn't a rogue in the party... but it was a moot point when Alak rolled a Natural 20 for his Perception check. The trap was spotted and the group moved around it.
I will admit after looking at the write-up on the trap, it was perhaps a bit vague. How did the trap work? Was it a trip-line or did they hook something up to the chest? After a little bit of thought I decided a trip-line was a more likely scenario. The group skipped past the rope and looked in the chest to find the Bandits had left nothing behind but the chest.
I'll let them know eventually that they missed out on that equipment. Part of me is tempted to have the bandits wearing that gear but... I suppose padded armor is actually warmer than leather or a chain shirt.
The trap itself doesn't make much sense. Why spend 30 or so minutes setting up that trap? Given the cold weather, wouldn't the bandits just want to get in out of the cold? So why not just drag the gear back? I suppose the bandits could have prepared this ahead of time, back when the weather was warmer, but I don't know.[/i]
One Temporary Hero Point was spent, however, when Freya chose to look around the chest and the trap and rolled a natural 1 for Perception. I had her roll a Reflex save to try and avoid falling on the rope and trigger the trap, and she spent the Hero Point to either boost or reroll the failed Reflex.
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The next combat was in fact the most deadly. Amusingly enough, it also started out... less successful than it should have, as I had the Tatzlwrym attack early - I guess it was just hungry and it was attacking from Surprise, so it didn't get a full Charge, just a single Move Action.
The Tatzlwyrm was rewritten to have the ability to ignore snow as difficult terrain, but lost its poison breath. This was both fortunate and unfortunate for the group seeing it was quite mobile... but at least it didn't poison the Witch.
Seeing Alak (our unarmored Witch) was in the back of the group, our scaly white critter bound past the entire group, reaching the Oracle at the end of its Surprise round. During the first round of combat, the Tatzlwyrm was clubbed by the Oracle, and the Barbarian missed with his Lucern Hammer (showing that Reach Weapons can be quite handy in a snow-covered battlefield).
The Wyrm on its turn went bouncing along and savaged the Witch with a bite. Fortunately for Alak, the Wyrm had to maneuver around people and thus wasn't Charging or Pouncing. He still got bit quite hard and promptly grappled. The Wyrm was then smacked by the GMPC Bard for a whopping 1 hit point of damage! (Ah, Strength penalties!)
Then Alak promptly rolled a natural 20 for Escape Artist and wiggled free at which point he ran away. The Wyrm had already used its Attack of Opportunity so its prey escaped bloodied but otherwise intact. The Oracle managed to hit it again which distracted it from its prey while Thelin used his Entangle to Summon Nature's Ally (a Dire Rat) and the Wyrm proved surprisingly inept against armored foes. Once Araval got in range with his Lucern Hammer, it fell fairly quickly.
Lesson learned: printing out nice maps (and loading them on Roll20 for my online player) may allow for a nicer feel for the game, but the smaller battlefield does constrain things. I'm thinking of getting a mini-projector and using Roll20 for both online and projected tabletop maps. That way the battlefield can be larger. That said, the printed maps do work as a "fog of war" effect as one of my players pointed out.
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The third encounter for the night was a less-hectic fight but a rather interesting one, with the players running across three of the Winter Fey (Sprites). Sadly, I didn't play this quite as well as I could have. For one thing, having an 8-by-10 inch map meant that even with difficult terrain everywhere, the group could quickly close on the Sprites. Also, I kind of had the Sprites acting more cocky and trying to hide promptly after each arrow-strike... and the die rolls didn't favor that.
The Sprites soon realized they were going to have to hide more, but by that time the group had closed with them. They tried... but the one attempt to Color Spray the group failed (as the two players made their saves).
Amusingly enough, the cover the Sprites had proved more effective with a critical hit turning into an outright miss (which frankly miffed the barbarian player). He did learn once again that the Lucern hammer is very effective as when he DID connect, the fey fell quickly.
The end result was one Sprite almost smooshed by hammer (the Druid then stabilizing it with the group planning on questioning it when it regains consciousness - though seeing it's at -8 hit points that's going to take burning at least one CLW spell), one Sprite brought to 0 hit points and then pounced by the Witch's fox familiar (and the player being a tad irked that I had the fox coup-de-grace the Sprite but in my eyes, it's an intelligent animal whose minion was being hurt by these things. And it was hungry and it's cold out so time for noms).
We ended there for the night.
Note: doubling hit points for 1st level definitely has proven to be a lifesaver. In other games I just started the group at 2nd level, but there's something to be said about the ineptness of 1st level.
Seeing I actually started the group with a mini adventure prior to the actual module, I plan on having them level up just before the Encounter X:
I had the players level up their characters at the end of the game just in case they DO manage to reach the end of Chapter 1 in the next game. Personally? I doubt they'll get quite that far. There's three more encounters for the next game prior to Encounter X, and if we end up with another four-hour session... it's likely they'll finish just prior to the big encounter. But you never know, and this way the group can just immediately continue in the game instead of pausing to level up.
Next game will likely be on December 23rd. Two of the players (Alak and Thelin) will join in remotely.