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...
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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... including a certain creepy doll and the Winter Portal
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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, should they have them printed out for me.
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.
[Editorial note: Of course that depends on me remembering to play her as naive. I think part of it is that she likes teasing her brother so when he is being naive, she gets quiet and watchful. Or maybe I just forgot occasionally.)
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 added 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.
Winter Weather Sucks to Fight In!
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 house 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.
They didn't think of digging under the chest or of moving it. I find this quite amusing seeing one of the veteran players was bragging about how they were able to see through many traps because of their old GM who pulled all sorts of evil crap on them... but never bothered to look under 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.
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: the hunting lodge where a certain priest-pretending-to-be-a-necromancer is lurking
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.
Hero Points Spent: 0
Fudge Points Spent: 1? (It's been a while so I only remember Freya using her temporary point to reroll a failed Reflex save so she didn't trigger the trap.)
Editorial Note: Due to RL and holidays being a bear, the game was delayed to January 7th.
Witches are Squishy: Or why keeping spellcasters in the back doesn't always work against intelligent foes...
Sunday's game had me trying something new with the group, as I hooked up a 36-inch television to a spare laptop, had one of my players create a Roll20 account, and put the map and miniatures on the screen rather than printing out maps. This allowed me to use larger maps, and also gave the players more table space, seeing they didn't have to worry about knocking miniatures over or the like.
This also allowed me to use Dynamic Lighting on Roll20. While Dynamic Lighting primarily is meant for use indoors, I came up with a rather interesting idea: using dynamic lighting circles around tree trunks. This blocked off bits of each player's line-of-sight and created a far more interesting and dynamic playing field.
The players loved it. Not being able to see the entire map made things far more interesting and added to the suspense of the game. While it is a bit more work for me, it's not much more than editing maps to fit on printer paper, and as it draws the players in, that's a big success in my eyes.
Also, the use of Temporary Hero Points in lieu of fudging rolls continued. I think three Temporary Hero Points and one regular Hero Point were spent in-game, one to undo a Natural 1, one to help another character, and for other purposes that escape my mind at the moment.
Alak: Level 2 Aasimar Witch
Ciri: Level 2 Varisian Bard (NPC)
Thelin: Level 2 Dwarvish Mountain Druid
Freya: Level 2 Kitsune Oracle of Stone
Aravel: Level 2 Half-Orc Barbarian
I leveled up the group slightly earlier than planned (I was going to do so right before the Lodge) as I wasn't sure how far we'd be getting and didn't want to have to level stuff up in the middle of the game. That said, we didn't get as far as I expected to, but we got some fun roleplaying in so there's no loss there. We ran nearly six hours.
The game started off right after their capturing an unconscious Sprite and the group starting to debate just what to do with her. The general consensus was to interrogate her but seeing she was at -8 hit points, that wasn't going to happen anytime soon without healing magic. Even so, they were quite paranoid about the evil faeries, though initially Alak was pontificating about how the group may have intruded on the faeries' territory and that the dead ravens might have been a "warning" totem put in place. One Knowledge: Nature roll later from the Druid and they soon realized this was not a totem for trespassing but just evil faeries being little shits.
With that the group started forward once more. And after an hour or so of travel, with it getting later in the day (it was after 4 p.m. in game-time, and with the constant snowfall it was getting darker even with it still being afternoon). The group came across a group of tracks and started to talk about stuff they'd heard back in Helgren about a White Elk...
That's when I pulled an Elk icon out of the GM layer of Roll20 and slowly started sneaking it toward the group while they were busy talking. Finally one player noticed right when I was done with my fun and asked them to roll a Perception check to notice that huge White Elk just 20 feet away. Hey, it's snowing and they were talking so... ;)
Several years back, I ran RoW for another group (part tabletop and part via Roll20 and Skype). When they came across the Elk, they just blithely gave all their secrets to it and even hushed the GMPC who was wide-eyed and shocked at how trusting they were. Later on one of my players tried to defend his actions with "well we had the whole Chronicles of Narnia feel going on and so we trusted it!" It always amused me how trusting they were and I was looking forward to seeing how two veteran players who loved to talk about their paranoia and having had an Evil GM before would act.
They trusted it. They just started talking outright and had no problems whatsoever. Now, I didn't ask for a Sense Motive check - in my eyes, if you say "roll Sense Motive" then all at once the players will be on their guard. Instead, I waited to see who would act suspicious... and it was Freya who spoke up when asked "what can you do that would let you rescue this person?" (with Fawfein being quite careful to avoid slipping up verbally (at first)) speaking up and saying "we don't know what we're doing!" and basically warning the group with winks and acting blithely that they were being too trusting.
Sadly I didn't think to have Ciri continue to be blithely ignorant and blabber on but she was keeping quiet and watching her brother be the naive and friendly one. Seriously, given how much he grouses and warns her to keep quiet, it's quite the novelty to see the shoe on the other foot and it had nothing to do with the fact I forgot all about roleplaying Ciri while desperately roleplaying a Fae trying to be sneaky and avoid saying something that the "Elk" wouldn't know.
Eventually Fawfein slipped up and mentioned "bandits" and I knew the jig was up. So did he. But he had a surprise in order - one of the Sprites who had fought them previously had escaped and fled to him. They launched a Surprise Attack and started attacking the group.
It didn't go so well for the Fae. I mean, the Elk just couldn't hit the broadside of a barn... and admittedly I did have the Elk attack an armored person (the Druid) but that's because the squishies were in the back of the party and on the other side of them. There'd have been no way to reach them. And while the Sprite did hit Alak for another 4-5 hit points of damage, the Oracle used a new 1st level spell (having leveled up and suddenly having it available) to heal him of the damage taken and a little of what he'd taken before.
That said, Fawfein did successfully hit the Barbarian's Greataxe (after Aravel hit the Elk for 9 hit points and nearly killed it) and shrink it down to pencil-size. Aravel laughed and said he'd make it into a keychain and then pulled out the Mastercraft longsword he'd looted and then proceeded to finish off the Elk.
Meanwhile, Alak (who was being a pincushion for Vosi the Sprite) told his sister to pull out their prisoner and kill it if the Fae didn't back off. The Sprite, knowing that the others had taken a prisoner, had worked out a plan to recover her and moved her attack on Ciri... who then chose NOT to kill the prisoner (even as Alak had a Descend Into Darkness moment and demanded she do so) and fired off a Crossbow bolt while shouting "Skeet!" at the Sprite. She missed by 1.
And then the Gods reached out and at the last second the Bolt adjusted its course. It was some stray gust of wind or an act of Desna... but that bolt proceeded to cut through the Sprite and skewer it. (Freya's player spent her Temporary Hero Point to give Ciri a +2 to her roll, allowing her to hit.)
Fawfein fell soon after. Alak's player soon learned (when I suggested he look at the rules for Evil Eye) that he could not only hex someone to lessen their chance to hit, but for other purposes as well... making the small Fae easier to hit instead. Fawfein's attempts to cast Reduce Person on the Barbarian failed, and his kill-all-Dikinis view on life once his pet Elk had a leg chopped off was not conducive for a long life.
After taking an hour to dress, skin, and debone the Elk (and Freya insisting that she get to wear its head pelt fur as a hoodie (sort of like those wolf-skin cloaks I guess?)), they chose to make camp what with the dying light. That's when Alak and Thelin got into a disagreement on what type of camp. Alak wanted a cold camp. No fire, just huddle under blankets to be safe. Thelin insisted on a fire in order to cook the meat and the group remained on the path as doing a fire in the middle of trees isn't exactly a smart idea especially as the trees are covered with snow and they might not remember high school literature with those survival stories about the traveler whose fire got smothered by falling snow from a branch but I sure do and Ciri's not a complete idiot. Only a partial one.
That said, even with the fire, Freya got chilled at night and woke with hypothermia and having taken 1 temporary hit point damage.
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The next fight was rather... interesting. You see, having had the paranoia bug bite, the group was a bit itchy and nervous. It didn't help that the players were talking and kept seeing 1d100 rolls show up on the screen and when they ask I just smiled and said "nope, it's nothing, don't worry." Seeing none of the rolls were 25 or lower, no random encounters disturbed their sleep (though I did forget to ask about watches - at least this time, though seeing they did discuss watches in the first game and one player keeps meticulous notes (including die-rolls) I know they would have watches set up.
That said, no one thought to cast healing spells. Alak was below half. Even with leveling up (and maxing out on hit points), he was not in good shape. This almost cost him dearly. It will be interesting to see what the group does as a result in the future.
Anyway, I custom-built a map for this rather than using the one in the PDF of the AP, seeing they failed to make it so you could hide the weak points in the ice. I actually had fun building the map and with the Dynamic Lighting, they had no idea there was a frozen stream ahead (as the path curved right after the snowman). Their comments and dialogue during that part helped show that taking time with the dynamic lighting with trees and such was a good idea. Having a large screen for people to see the map brought things to life.
Anyway, the Snowman was a no-go. Seriously. The moment they saw it, they immediately knew something was up. And seeing that the AP fails to explain what's detected through Detect Magic... or how the Sound Burst was put into the Snowman (I decided it was a Glyph of Warding as the effect sounded very much like that for the triggering) I allowed the Druid to detect the magic and then the Bard to diagnose the magic in it (Abjuration and Illusion). There were some fun "I disbelieve" bits tossed in there and Freya managed a Natural 1 to disbelieve so I told her that the snowman vanished from her sight (it was snowing, it was 50 feet away, and she focused so much she got fuzzy-eyed) along with using Mage Hand to reposition the carrot from its face to... elsewhere (I'd say "boys!" but Freya participated in the antics so...) and finally the group chose to go through the woods, remaining at least 30 feet away from the snowman.
That's when they came across the frozen stream. I decided to have the Elementals detect the group and plan an ambush but the group decided to be cautious and gave the Barbarian a rope and told him to cross and tie it to a tree. He started to cross, made a good Perception check, and he and the Ice Elementals acted in the Surprise Round, with the first Elemental missing horribly, Aravel moving onto dry (well, not-ice) land, and the second Elemental following him.
Thelin decided to use Produce Flame and threw it at the Elemental going after Araval but... well, he rolled poorly, even with a ranged touch attack. Alak then moved up and tried out his newly memorized Burning Hands spell only to learn it's not really that good. That said, he did manage to roll 4 damage which after two successful saving throws turned into 3 damage against both Elementals. And thus the Squishy Caster drew Aggro. And one of the Elementals closed and while it missed the first time, critted the second time and reduced Alak to 2 hit points.
Given that snow-covered trees count as Very Difficult Terrain (meaning it's a 20-foot move to enter a square), it was quite difficult for any of the three people with healing magic to reach him. Fortunately Thelin did manage to reach him for an initial healing (forgoing another Produce Flame attack) and Alak Withdrew from combat and finally got close enough to Freya to get healed yet again.
Thelin managed to hit a second time at which point a veteran player of D&D 3.5 learned that Pathfinder Rules are in fact different. There was a spirited discussion that ended with me pulling out the spell and showing that it lost a minute of duration for each attack, not just each ranged attack.
Long story short, the Ice Elementals were shattered into crushed ice, the group found the dead farmer and after a short discussion chose to return his money to his family (while keeping his gear), and continued on to continue with their efforts to rescue the Lady Argentea.
Everyone in the group at this point is wounded, but no one has taken over 5 hit points damage so it's likely they'll ignore healing for the time being.
Hero Points Spent: 1 (to reroll an attack roll, which resulted in the Barbarian critting the last Ice Elemental and killing it)
Fudge Points Spent: 3 (one to negate a Critical Failure, one to boost Ciri's attack roll so she succeeded in hitting, and I don't remember the details on the third.)
The game ended there. Next game is currently up on the air due to scheduling constraints. I might reschedule my Skype-based Hell's Rebels game and if I do so, then I'll have the next RoW game in two weeks. Otherwise it'll be sometime in the next month.
Winter Gaming and Winter Games, What Joy!
I ended up rescheduling the Hell's Rebels game. Seeing the best time for the RoW game is every other week, I'm going to do my best to keep to that schedule. I just have to keep that in mind when planning my other campaign... but no biggie. (Also, one of my players for the HR campaign couldn't play yesterday so it all worked out.)
The game started a little later than anticipated. Part of this was due to the ice storm that hit my area. While I tried to convince two of my players to just game remotely, they didn't think their computers were up to the task so... they ended up coming down. We also wrapped up earlier than normal which basically reduced the game to roleplay, distractions, and one encounter.
Part of the game also included some minor adjustments to the characters. Once the two newer players realized about the Trait Drawbacks (and allowing an added Trait in return) due in part to some roleplaying that was underway, we paused while they added new Traits and Drawbacks.
Araval ended up with the Pride drawback (if someone challenges, threatens, or accuses him he'll take a -2 penalty on Diplomacy Checks and Sense motive checks until an apology happens) and the Reactionary Trait (for +2 to Initiative, bringing his initiative up to +3), while Freya took Hedonistic (needing treasure or entertainment else she ends up fatigued for four hours) and took Highlander (hills or mountains) for a bonus to Stealth and having it as a Class skill (meaning she'll have a +3 to Stealth once she's no longer fatigued). I suspect this will be incorporated into their roleplaying styles and will remind them about this. I am also making sure to fully use the other players' Drawbacks and already started with the GMPC, Ciri.
You see, Ciri has the Family Ties Drawback. When Alak told Ciri to kill a captured Winter Sprite, she refused. But she feels absolutely horrible about it. (Her adoptive brother is true Neutral while she's Chaotic Neutral with Good tendencies.) So she's now suffering a -2 to all Wisdom- and Charisma-based ability checks and skill checks until she either murders the sprite or succeeds at a DC 20 Will Save (allowed once a day).
Alak tried telling Ciri he didn't mean it, but Ciri didn't buy his story. So she's got this doubt just gnawing at her. Eventually she'll overcome it. But in the meantime, Alak is realizing he has to be careful about what he tells Ciri to do as she might very well refuse and then let it tear her apart afterward. It will be most amusing to watch. (Alak has the Attached drawback with Ciri as the object of his attachment which will affect Will saves and save vs. Fear.)
After the roleplay, the group continued on for over half an hour in the snow until they came across "fresh tracks." Now given it was snowing much of the previous day, I got to witness first-hand how "light snow" will erase tracks. So... given the timeline for the attack on Lady Argentea's wagons and the like, I honestly don't think that the trail could be considered "fresh" - nor can I see much of the trail having survived at all. Fortunately, there is the bandit map showing where the Winter Portal is located so... hopefully that should fit the bill.
But I handwaved it as the group left out there was a rotating crew. While they'd been out there for several hours, I did give them a small campfire in a pit they'd dug in the snow and huddled around. Ciri was sent out 20 feet ahead of the group to act as a scout seeing she can remain silent, and while I got into a bit of an argument with the group seeing someone rolled really poorly for Stealth... well, the distance to the campfire combined with the snowfall meant the bandits actually remained unobservant until the group was almost on top of them.
The fight... well, it was interesting. One bandit managed to hit the Barbarian for three points of damage, but once Alak used his Pyrotechnics racial ability (for being a Peri-kin Aasimar) on their campfire, all three bandits were blinded along with Freya. (We also had a bit of a discussion on being precise with language. Alak's player said "I whisper to the others" during combat. He then tried to explain it as "a hushed voice" rather than a whisper, so I reduced the difficulty to hearing it by 5... which still meant that only the Druid heard what was said and had a bonus to their Will save.
(As an aside I do find it amusing that the player who urged me not to fudge rolls and allow things to stand is also a huge one to argue my rulings. I guess die rolls are allowed to stand but GM calls, not so much. But hey, I'm a stubborn old girl so I don't let him just get away with stuff.)
The three bandits tried to escape after that but... it's not easy when you're blinded. One managed to run right to the beaten-down path in the snow and stumbled in it and fell. Another ran right through the fire but managed to avoid falling in. The third ran straight but was the first to fall with a crossbow bolt in the chest. Firewalker went and had a throwing hatchet smack him in the head and reduce him to -1 hit points (I figure the haft struck him in the head) and the guy who got to the trail... well, his vision cleared in time to see the half-orc barbarian ten feet away with a Lucerne Hammer ready and when he tried to get up to attack, was hit hard enough to bring him from unhurt to all-but-dead in one blow.
The group saved the least-hurt of the crew, tied him to a tree (facing said tree), and interrogated him while telling him if his story didn't match up with his buddy's, he'd die. One Bluff check from the Bard begging her dear brother to let her chop off several fingers (that left the group itself believing her) and an Intimidate check from Araval left the bandit stumbling over his words trying to tell them everything. They know there's nine bandits left, they know about Two-Penny, and about the bandits' Necromancer Leader, Rokhar.
Ciri let them know that she wasn't going to let them murder a helpless prisoner and the group chose to return to deal with him later after they rescue Lady Argentea. So they started off. Two hours later, they came within sight of the High Sentinel Lodge and started planning their attack.
Side note: I did take time to modify this. When you look at the map provided for the encounter, there isn't any way for the group to see the bridge or the stable. So I left all that out. They heard the water rushing over small waterfalls and could catch a glimpse of the ravine, but that's all. Otherwise, the Lodge itself blocked a lot of the view which led the group to decide to send a scout.
Alak sent his fox familiar to go around and count doors. They could see the main doors and even that the footprints don't lead to the doors (one really good Perception check). Telling Fawkes to look for doors like that, he went forth and came back half an hour later letting them know there were four double doors. That two of the doors are found on the stable is not yet known. (The fox has a 6 intelligence. I figure that's similar to a young child who might make a similar mistake.)
They did count plumes of smoke as well and decided there were two chimneys. The plan is for Ciri to go, use twine to tie the doors together, and then climb the lodge and toss wet blankets over the chimneys to smoke the bandits out. It's a good plan. It's a complicated plan however and they are relying on the GMPC (and I am ceding control of Ciri to Alak's player up until things go FUBAR as they inevitably will) to do things, seeing she is the quiet one of the group.
Of course you never know. They might pull it off.
Next game will be in two weeks. I honestly suspect the assault on the bandits will take all-game. I also have planned a little incursion from the Winter Fey upon Heldren that the group will run into when returning Lady Argentea to safety, and will likely result in the deaths of most of Heldren's militia (I'll run the combat for several rounds and then have the group arrive in the middle of things), but personally I suspect the Lodge will take most of the next game.
The Best Laid Plans...
Pregame notes: Seeing that I had the group level up previously (due to the pregame adventure they were on), I decided to upgrade the bandits. So they were given a 15-point build - not an optimized build, mind you, but it did boost their Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution so that they had a bonus hit point and an extra +1 to hit and damage. Rokhar didn't get any boosts however. In addition, I felt the sick bandits should still get to use bucklers seeing it takes maybe a round to put it on.
Seeing that Ciri isn't a complete idiot (even if she is the GMPC), I decided to let the group debate more about what they were going to do (and even had Ciri point out she wasn't very good at climbing) for their battle plan. Ciri offered to burn the bandits out (having the one flash of alchemist fire that the group had) while they also discussed surrounding the Lodge (all five of them) and the like.
Finally they came up with a slightly less crazy idea. After grousing that they didn't completely strip the corpses of two of the bandits they previously encountered, I told the players what spell resources they still had. It wasn't a lot (seeing they're only 2nd level) but it did include the spell-like abilities of the Kitsune Oracle who'd taken the Extra Tail Feat. Freya revealed to the group she was able to cast the spell Disguise Self and offered to go as one of the bandits.
One unmodified roll of 19 for a Disguise Check later, and Freya looked very much like one of the male bandits they had fought. Several Buff spells were cast (Feather Step for Alak and Araval, Guidance and Message on Freya) and Freya was sent off. She then went running to the Lodge to warn them of Taldor soldiers led by a huge Orc who murdered her two companions... and promptly took a crossbow bolt to the chest when she triggered the trap in front of the Lodge.
Yeah, I might have forgotten to mention the trap when the captive bandit was being interrogated.
Freya continued to stagger up to the Lodge while the group tried to sneak after her, hoping she'd distract the guards. But the guards quickly caught sight of the half-orc Barbarian. Next round the Dwarf Druid faceplanted in the snow with a natural 1 for a Stealth check. Things were not going well initially for the group. Inside, the guards immediately warned the others, one bandit went to wake her sick brethren and another warned Rokhar of the incoming Taldor Patrol (or so they thought it was).
Things did run into several rules hiccups as Alak's player felt Disguise Self should work on voices as well. I used the Rules Forum to dissuade his view and insisted Freya roll a Bluff check against the other bandits... and she rolled easily enough to fake them out. Seriously, 10 minutes arguing about rules and it was a moot point. I wonder how long it'll take for Alak's player to learn I'm not going to back down and know the rules fairly well... ah well. No big loss.
The bandits laughed at Freya's warning about the horrible orcish guard and lined up by the stable while the four sick bandits created a second line by the porch and readied bows. Ciri started up a Bardic Song affecting herself, Alak, Thelin, and Araval (Freya was too far away to benefit) and Araval then moved up and fired an arrow into the first bandit, leaving him with just one hit point left. Rokhar remained in the upstairs room and started preparing for a fight while keeping an eye on his bandits from the upstairs window.
Our half-orcish thief meanwhile watched for a couple rounds and then quietly snuck around to the back of the lodge, broke into her room, and proceeded to start and loot her room of her belongings. No one detected her.
The return fire of the bandits was completely ineffectual. One arrow bounced off the Taldor breastplate that Araval was wearing while none of the other rolls even beat a 10. This is with me using the light snow rules (-2 to hit) rather than the snowstorm rules seeing I figure it's not snowing quite that until you get closer to the Winter Portal.
Araval then chose to charge with the masterwork longsword the group looted from the dead captain while the rest of the group started to get closer, and he even chose to Rage for what might be his first time in the game. Between his strength, raging, the sword being Mastercrafted, Power Attack, and Ciri's bardic song, Araval had a +8 to hit and a +8 to damage. The only way he could miss is by rolling a 5 or under, and one hit would take a fully-healthy bandit to negative hit points. Needless to say, he became a lawnmower and the bandits were grass.
As Araval was mowing down healthy bandits, Alak got in position and hit the sick bandits with his last non-cantrip spell: Sleep. I will admit I was surprised he went after the less-healthy Bandits, but with their extra penalties, three of them passed out. This did serve to remove the bandits for two rounds as the remaining bandit woke one of his companions for his round and then next round the two of them woke their last two companions. By that time it was too late. Araval reached the sick bandits and started slaughtering them as well. One bandit lost his resolve and fled while his three companions all died.
Thelin finally managed to reach the fight (kind of) and threw one of his three Magic Stones. Sadly, a combination of snow and the bandit being sixty feet away (and Thelin not even having a simple sling for ranged combat) meant that he missed horribly. He rolled poorly enough that even if he'd used a hero point before the attack roll, he STILL wound have missed. Maybe this will encourage him to purchase a sling next time the group is in town.
During this time, Freya went into the Lodge and looked around. She quickly found the trap door and then looked in some other rooms to make sure no other bandits were there. She also succeeded in both a Perception Check and a Spellcraft check to realize someone was casting an Invisibility spell. Seeing she was alone but hurting, she took time to cast Cure Light Wounds, negating both her damage from the crossbow and also the temporary damage from the hypothermia she was suffering from (five minutes in front of the fire and the last effects of hypothermia will wear off, I think).
She finally went into the cellar where Lady Argentea fell hook, line, and sinker in believing this was a bandit who was just trying to use her as a hostage and that Taldorian soldiers were about ready to spring her. She eventually realized that this was *wink wink, nudge nudge* a "bandit" but soon lost respect when she realized no one had done anything about the Necromancer still in the Lodge.
When the primary fight ended, Alak entered into the main lodge, looked down, asked if Argentea was there and at that point Lady Argentea Malassene informed them of her full name and don't they forget it! (She's had it rough and I figured this would be a triggering point. Not to mention the group hasn't dealt with Rokhar yet....)
Ciri, Alak, and Freya are in the Lodge. Thelin is still outdoors while Araval is lurking at the front door in case anyone tries to go in or out (seeing there is one bandit and the half-orc who didn't join the combat still unaccounted for, along with the rumored necromancer).
At that point one of my players had to get going to bring his girlfriend home and then head to work as despite it being his week off he got scheduled because of some idiot football game so we stopped for the night.
End tally: Araval killed seven bandits outright and took down one other with an assist from Ciri (and with Alak Sleeping a bunch of them). They've not yet encountered Rokhar, who is fully prepared for them, invisible, and waiting up above so he can sneak out when everyone is indoors and likely facing his Skeleton minions. Whether or not he succeeds at drawing everyone into the lodge in time to take advantage of the dying outside remains to be seen.
If I remember, only one Temporary Hero Point was spent this time around, and no permanent Hero Points. To be honest, the dice were kind of hot for my players and not so hot for the bandits
Next game will be in two weeks.
Given the town includes a level 4 Warrior/level 4 Expert, a level 6 Cleric, a level 5 Adept, a level 3 Alchemist, and several others, once half of the enemy has been wiped out I'll pause that fight and let the PCs show up at that point. They will likely be out of spells, but I honestly doubt Rokhar will do that much damage to them (though I may be wrong). But this will also create a sense of greater urgency for the group, knowing this is just the start of something far nastier.
Invisible foes are the worse foes...
Tonight's game was brought to you by the makers of inertia! Inertia, where a game that's at rest tends to remain at rest... and this game was at rest. That's not to say things weren't getting done, it's just things were going too slowly. And I must admit part of the problem was with me.
The game started up right where we'd ended previously. Two people were outdoors, and everyone else had headed inside. Realizing they didn't know where the Necromancer was, Araval decided (after letting his Rage lapse, he has 2 rounds remaining) to start coup de gracing bandits so they couldn't be raised by the Necromancer - as in you do so much damage to a body that a necromancer can't create effective undead out of them.
Now, I'd not actually been tracking how many hit points various bandits were taking after they were knocked below 0 hit points, but when the barbarian does 20 points of damage with a coup de grace, it's a fair bet that a body has been basically turned into something that would fold over on itself if zombified, and would have shattered bones if turned into a skeleton. At least, that makes sense to me even if there's no official rule on it. And Thelin decided to join in and use his Earthbreaker to do the same... and despite not having any strength bonus at all, it seems Earthbreakers are devastating weapons for coup de gracing a foe.
Freya shouted up to Alak that she heard the Necromancer casting an Invisibility spell. So he chose to move over and look in a couple of rooms... and promptly found Ten Penny looting her room of belongings. To be honest? I'd forgotten to load Ten Penny into the initiative so she had basically been in that room for three rounds at this point.
Seeing her, he promptly cast Daze on it and with Ten Penny being incoherent, Ciri promptly rushed into the room and tossed Ten Penny onto the bed while starting Bard Song for one round (I made a mistake and forgot it is a standard action for Bard Song to start up, but no biggie). This was unfortunately a problem because it effectively split the party. That said, it did lure both Araval and Thelin into the Lodge and away from the dead bodies. Only two bandits were mutilated beyond use.
This whole time, Rokhar was waiting in his room for someone to wander upstairs and unleash his skeletons. He actually had a very effective plan. He opened a window opposite the door (and where all the bodies were) hoping that if anyone opened the door, they'd find the open window and expect him to have fled out that way. Sadly... with the clock ticking he decided to instead unleash his minions and opened the door himself (at which point the only real damage was inflicted on the group).
The Frost Skeletons went downstairs and promptly hurt both Thelin and Freya with their Cold Aura. Sadly, they could not actually attack as their foes were just out of range so they did a full move action to reach their foes. In response, Araval (despite being Fatigued from his broken Rage) used his Lucern Hammer and at range crushed the skeleton that was threatening Freya. Yes, one of the two characters with cold resistance remained out of range of the Skeleton's Cold Aura.
Freya then took a five-foot step and used her club against Thelin while taking additional damage by entering a second Frost Skeleton's Cold Aura. As she was still suffering some effects of hypothermia, she had a strength penalty... which was negated by the Bard Song. This is why I don't consider it that big a problem... if I'd just said "being in a warm environment after having healed your temporary damage ends the hypothermia" then she'd be fine - from a technical point of view, the moment she was indoors and cast a healing spell, the hypothermia should have ended. I just chose to rule she needed to specifically go in front of the fire and warm up properly first. Her blow did just enough damage to bring the Skeleton to 0 hit points and thus destroyed it.
Thelin, grumbling that once more he didn't get to fight anything, went upstairs and reached the doorway. Rokhar had not yet been able to act - he opened the door and unleashed his Skeletons. Fortunately he was invisible and thus would not be observed unless he rolled, oh, say a 1 for his Stealth roll.
Naturally Rokhar rolled a 1. Just as I ruled Thelin fell in the snow, so too I ruled that Rokhar tripped over a chair, causing it to move and warn Thelin about the invisible spellcaster. He called out a warning about this. Meanwhile, Ten Penny was finally able to act and fled - and both Ciri and Alak both failed an Attack of Opportunity to grapple her. Ciri felt the Invisible Spellcaster was the bigger threat and ran up the stairs, while Alak jumped out the window to go after Ten Penny.
The rest of the group ran up the stairs but were unable to find Rokhar, who was hanging out the window by his invisible fingers. Finally Thelin entered the room and chose to cast Entangle out of the window in case Rokhar was there. Come Rokhar's turn, he dropped to the ground and promptly failed his saving throw and was Entangled.
This is where things bogged down. For several hours the group tried to find Rokhar in the upstairs room. Freya found the evil trapped faerie and started up a conversation, Ciri (who was being run by Alak's player seeing I didn't want to do her actions when I knew what was going on) threw a blanket over the cage and encouraged Freya to continue searching for Rokhar, Thelin ran downstairs to look and see if Rokhar was trying to escape past the barred doors... and Alak burned a Temporary Hero Point to recast the Sleep Spell and knock out Ten Penny. His Daze failed to hit the remaining bandit who'd been running away, and finally he chose to tie up Ten Penny while ignoring the invisible Necromancer until a few hints got him moving to the front of the Lodge.
Between the snow and the Entangle, Rokhar was limited to five feet of movement a turn. So it took something like five rounds for him to get to the end of the Entangle. During this time, the folk upstairs searched for an invisible foe that was not in the room (using sprayed water from a waterskin to try and reveal him, and walking around waving hands). And I saw that this was going to end with a pointless fight. The group was not badly hurt, they would face zombies that were harder to kill, and this would be the next game at that as we were running near the end of the session. So I paused things and I told them "Think like a Necromancer. What is he going to do?"
After thinking "run away" as it was obvious they would in that situation, Alak's player started suggesting "run away, wait for us to leave, then return for those bodies out... front... he's going for the bodies!" Freya's player then burned a Temporary Hero Point for a bit of Inspiration from the GM and I gave her some - I suggested she move her character to be in the middle of a C of corpses (of bandits who tried flanking Araval and failed miserably) so that if Rokhar tried to turn them into Zombies... she would get an Attack of Opportunity.
With that, I had Rokhar offer to parlay. This was not an actual surrender. Instead, this was a negotiation between equals. Rokhar kept his equipment and offered to tell what he knew, and I started the bit with him blaming Teb Knotten and crew for what they did. He admitted to being a bandit but he started working with the Ice Fae in order to keep his men alive. And they fought because they thought it was the Taldor authorities rather than someone reasonable who would talk to them.
The group even agreed to let him bring his former comrades back to a state of "usefulness" as zombies - it seems that when four of the five characters are Neutral-aligned (the Druid is NG, everyone else is Neutral or Chaotic Neutral) they don't see a problem with using dead corpses. In fact, the group made several comments that were... not the actions of good people. Seriously. And they seem to not think that Rokhar is likely to backstab them.
They're also planning on trying to recruit Ten Penny. I think she'll be the one to try and convince them that Rokhar can't be trusted.
So. For actually starting to think and realize what Rokhar was going to do (in going for the corpses and bring them back to fight the group), I awarded Alak a permanent Hero Point.
Alak and Freya both used Temporary Hero Points, Alak to recast Sleep while Freya used hers for Inspiration from the GM... and in doing so helped me find a non-combative method of ending the session. And let's be honest... roleplaying is a good thing, and we were able to end the game on a positive note.
Next game will be in two weeks.
Preparatory notes for the next game:
I've been creating maps on Roll20 for the next game, leading up to the end of Part 2 of Book 1, the Winter Portal. One of the fortunate things on having waited before running this game is that Roll20 has a lot of content now for this, and while the best of this content costs money, I was able to get four purchases that for under $25 in all will provide most of the content I need to custom-build encounter maps and enhance existing maps.
I went with Vile Tiles: Winter Mapper 1 and Winter Pine Mapper as this provides both the snow-covered pine trees and the deciduous trees that had not yet lost their leaves. The region of Taldor where the Winter Portal opens is fairly warm, and most of the trees in that part of the game shouldn't be pines. Unfortunately, a lot of the trees drawn are more suggestions of trees. I'm strongly tempted to replace them on the main maps with content from Vile Tiles.
Two added packs I purchased included MEGA MAPS Winter Snow and Village Builder V - Winter Town. The former has several premade maps that are fairly good and can be further added-to (I used one for the probable ambush site, assuming the group doesn't just push for the Winter Portal in one go after escorting Lady Argentea back to Heldren.) The latter I'll be using to build Waldsby, seeing there are a couple of encounters that take place outside of town, and there's a couple other winter communities in the second Book.
One other aspect of prepping the maps ahead of time on Roll20 is I can use the dynamic lighting with the trees to block line of sight. This has drawn in the players as their view of the map on the television is limited to their characters.
This is the evil adventuring group, isn't it?
A couple of decades ago when I was running AD&D (and then 3rd Ed. DND) campaigns. I tossed Alignment out the window for the most part. To me, an arbitrary alignment limits roleplay. Interestingly enough, my old group rarely did anything that could be considered "evil" per say - perhaps because while I didn't use alignments I did believe in consequences... to the point that if you did something stupid or illegal, unless you were really good at planning it out, you suffered for your actions.
My current campaign has one good-aligned character, two True Neutrals, and two Chaotic Neutrals (admittedly with one being the GMPC). So when you have an "evil necromancer" willing to ally with the party, even with a noblewoman listening on in some horror about this scum of the earth going to raise the dead as zombies... well, things get interesting. And you get some fun chances for roleplay that did once more leave the group not advancing the main plot, but still having a lot of fun. (And isn't that the point of the game?)
That included a long discussion on the ethics of animating the dead with Alak's sister making a Knowledge Religion check concerning how Animating Dead may actually be spiritually harmful to the person being animated, and Alak just arguing from a "it makes sense" perspective. I swear, Alak's player could easily play evil and when I eventually put his group through Hell's Vengeance he'll probably have a grand old time. And hey. Baba Yaga's more interested in her own self than in the "nobility" of "heroes" so she and the boy should get alone swimmingly. ;)
Anyway, the group started out continuing from where we'd left last time. Rokhar told a tale of woe in which he admitted to being a bandit but he only worked with the evil faeries because he didn't have a choice in the matter. Well, outside of choosing death, that is. Still, he told the adventurers what they needed to know: there is a Winter "Portal" of some sort, evil ice faeries are coming out of it and preparing for something, and it's not looking good. He also negotiates with the group to join them - whether or not he remains true to this bargain remains to be seen.
After learning what they could from Rokhar, they sent Freya to talk to Ten-Penny. While Freya initially rolled a Natural 1 for her Sense Motive check, burning her Game Session Hero Point allowed her to reroll at which point Freya rolled... a natural 20. The thing is, Ten-Penny wasn't going to lie but hey, smoothing over a few facts does count as deception so after calling her on it a couple times, Ten Penny fessed up and Freya found out Penny was running from the law, didn't participate in raids with Rokhar's Raiders, and didn't have any real desire to join in the attack on the Winter Portal. She did offer to walk back to Heldren with the others to escort Lady Argentea home safely because of safety in numbers, and the group then spent the rest of the day and night in the Lodge.
Well, that's after they sent Thelin and Aravel out to recover the captured bandit an hour away. Fortunately he had survived and while he was renamed as "Joe" by Aravel (who has basically told "Joe" that he's now Aravel's servant) and basically intimidated "Joe" into following meekly to the lodge.
Seeing no one tried to cross the bridge, Izoze remained quietly on her tree branch observing. Come morning, the group saddled the three horses and allowed Rokhar to animate his dead bandit buddies before heading off toward Heldren.
While I've not been using much in the way of random encounters, I did map out an actual encounter with the group coming across signs of a Yeti - as in I designed a map, had ominous footprints cross it, and allowed the group to interact with the prints. While no one actually realized what it was (Yeti prints that were half an hour old), Thelin rolled a Natural 1 and was sure these were dragon footprints. Alak realized it was for some large-sized bipedal creature and the group rushed through there, grateful they'd not been on the path half an hour earlier.
Several hours later (zombies are slower than even dwarves, seeing they only get one move action a round, but fortunately only a little slower) the group came across the trapped chest that they previously walked over. One intelligence roll later had Alak warning Rokhar about the trap and keeping the zombie that was leading the group from from triggering the trap. Rokhar then learned the group didn't loot that stuff so he went and tried to disarm the trap.
He failed. Coin might have metaphorically exchanged hands afterward as Rokhar got hit because he had to pretend to be a Necromancer and while the Log Trap rolled a 12 to hit... Rokhar's AC was only 11. Fortunately he only took 5 hit points of damage. He was going to have the zombies all carry the loot until Alak pointed out the chest could carry most of it, at which point Rokhar loaded up the chest and had the zombies carry his loot. Needless to say, Lady Argentea was NOT at all happy.
Well, up until Freya handed the Lady her case of jewelry which had been recovered from the ambush site. Upon reaching Heldren (the zombies being left behind in the woods), Lady Argentea talked to the mayor and drew upon some credit to pay the group 500 gold for rescuing her.
The group did some basic shopping at that point with Aravel purchasing a Masterwork Backpack and a quick-load light wooden shield, while Freya purchased a Masterwork Backpack of her own, and Thelin selling off most of the elk meat they'd harvested from the "talking" White Elk. Aravel then went on to try and buy something for fatigue (seeing he didn't like the fatigue after Raging) but wasn't able to find anything specific outside of some coffee.
It was at this point we wrapped up.
One (temporary) Hero Point was spent by Freya to reroll a Sense Motive check. Freya also earned a permanent Hero Point for her actions in the game.
Next game will be in two weeks, on March 17th.
Real Life constraints (family obligations) and the fact it was Saint Patrick's Day left me with one player. Many Athenians and Spartans were slain instead of ice fae and their allies. A black short-haired teenage kitty may have been played with as well.
Next game will likely be in two weeks on March 31st.
Roleplaying instead of Rollplaying...
The game got a little bit of a late start today, partly due to my decision to start the game with pizza (and the pizza place screwing up my order by giving one of my pizzas to another customer but hey, I got a free pizza out of the deal) and the remote player getting home around 6:30 for game. But it wasn't a huge deal and the game started up a little before seven.
We'd last been located at Heldren, and one of my players was really intent on getting more roleplaying going. He even offered to RP as a couple of the town merchants but seeing I kind of let people buy stuff the previous game, that fell through. Instead, we started off with the group talking about what they were going to be facing and learning more about each other.
Aravel's player gave a long story about looking for the murderer of his Orcish father and while that didn't match what we'd initially agreed upon, I just shut my mouth and let him talk. Aravel's player has put a bit of thought into this and definitely gets an extra permanent Hero Point for his inventive and fascinating backstory. While some of the things he did might seem beyond that of a level 1 Barbarian, I very much like the effort he put into this and am thinking of letting him able to take the Champion Story Feat. I mean, that level of hard work should be rewarded. :)
Thelin's player didn't go on at length but talked about how few Dwarven druids existed and how he felt out of place among his people but still was accepted by them. He didn't share anymore as it was private to him, but we'll get more out of him over time. ;)
Freya's player was a little vague about what she does as an Oracle. She did admit about being from another land and being transported to another land when she touched a trapped magic item and then meeting up with Aravel and then Thelin.
Alak's player said he didn't know much about his birth. He revealed he has yellow eyes and white hair, and gave a bare-bones description of what he could do as a Witch (Fortune, Misfortune, and Evil Eye), and how he was rescued along with Ciri and adopted by his family.
From there the topic of Rokhar came up and whether he could be trusted or not. Alak continued to argue about the merits of Animate Dead while Ciri argued against it and despite Ciri out-arguing him (opposed Knowledge: Religion checks), he then Bluffed against her not-great Sense Motive ability and convinced her that he'd won the argument. She kind of rolled a natural 1 in Sense Motive. She totally bought his argument while the others were not paying attention and he got away with it. Poor Ciri. ;)
They also discussed about grilling the "poor" winter sprite they'd captured way back on January 7th. The problem is that there was nothing they could learn from her. I didn't want to deal with this. So finally I decided to be evil... and chose to allow one of the White Witches to realize the fae Vrixx and Pym had been captured and used the sliver of ice in their hearts to just kill them rather than risk magic being used on them.
Freya was allowed a Perception check to notice the death but failed. She then burned her Temporary Hero Point and... once more failed. But eventually the group realized that Pym had died, having bled from all orifices, and Rokhar returned half an hour later to reveal Vrixx had died mysteriously. This led them to debate over what could have caused the death of these fey, but the group finally went to sleep.
While she slept, Freya had a dream (which was inspired by one of the other people in the forums having the Black Rider having fought his way through people protecting the Winter Portal on the other side).
Snow whips across your eyes, driven by the wind, and you struggle for a moment as it threatens to push you into the deep snow surrounding you. Your nose and ears ache in the cold and at first you mistake the sound of hooves for the pounding of your heart. The wind subsides for a brief moment and you see a shadowy figure on a black steed racing across a snowy plain.
The howls of wolves fill the air and you realize they are hunting. The sound of horses fills the air and more riders emerge, clad in blues and silvers, following the black-clad rider. One rider, a woman with straw-coloured hair, shouts out arcane words and a blade of blue ice streaks out toward the shadowy rider, only to shimmer and vanish moments before striking him. He turns, his blade slashing, and three of his pursuers fall to the ground, bleeding, while immense silver-furred wolves leap toward him, one biting him soundly in the arm while a second inhales and then exhales a cone of frost that sheathes the dark rider with a rime of frost which cracks as he moves and strikes down the giant wolf worrying his arm.
He casually strikes down the second beast and starts toward the yellow-haired woman, who desperately shrieks out more arcane words. Another shard of ice streaks out toward the black-clad rider and this time pierces him, leaving him staggered. She closes, mouthing more magic, when he tosses his blade directly at her... only for the wind to pick up and blind you to the fight below.
You wake up chilled, and find a dusting of snow is covering your blankets despite being in the tavern where you and your companions sleep.
The group actually had posted watches, and Thelin noticed the snow on Freya (despite the fact they'd slept indoors and before a banked hearth). After waking the others, Freya explained what she'd seen (summing things up rather than reading the text of the dream outright, and it was nice of her to roleplay that out) and the group pondered who the Black Rider was and those who opposed him. That said, they knew that some of those who fought the Black Rider were Winter Wolves so... it will be interesting to see how that works out.
The group then moved to the Lodge and tried to make their way across the bridge by sending a zombie with a rope tied around its waist. Yeah, not a good idea. It fell, but they reeled it back in and Alak then sent his fox across with the rope. Ciri followed, tied the rope securely, and the group made their way across with the rope's assistance and finally got the zombies across.
Seeing the group was now deeper in the winter weather, I am using the full snowfall rules for perception and ranged attack penalties.
Not even 15 minutes later they came across fresh tracks. Alak hid in the bushes while the group asked Rokhar to send a zombie out ahead and while the text of the encounter reads that the skeletons attack the living... I decided to have the five Frost Skeletons (increased by two as the group included Rokhar and six zombies) attack the lead Zombie.
Aravel noticed that the skeletons hurt the zombie without even attacking (frost aura) and moved up to prepare an attack while getting his Lucern Hammer ready.
Ciri did one round of Bardic Song. Lingering Performance would let that song last for an added two rounds.
Alak chose to hold his action until a Skeleton moved into range of his Hexes, having Misfortune on hand.
Freya moved behind Aravel and cast Sun Metal onto Aravel's Lucern Hammer.
The rest of the zombies moved up to engage the skeletons - or they WOULD have if they'd not been slow. It's kind of funny. Skeletons and zombies are perfect for killing each other. But zombies are just slower all around even if they're damage sponges.
Finally, Thelin moved up to next to another zombie in a double-move so he could start using spells.
Meanwhile the skeletons moved up. None of them were able to actually attack the first Zombie, but they did do a bit of damage with their Aura of cold. Next round, a combination of the frost aura and a Critical Hit by one of the skeletons destroyed the zombie used to draw out the skeletons. Three more skeletons moved forward using a double-move and toward the second-closest zombie and poor Thelin who'd moved NEXT to the zombie instead of behind it. Not that it would have helped, I still would have gotten a skeleton on him. That said, the skeletons' aura did hurt Thelin for 4 hit points in all.
So yeah. Misfortune kind of didn't do much this time around. Seeing it was close to midnight, I paused the combat with Aravel's actions coming next.
The next game will be on April 14th. To be honest, I don't expect the pace of the game to pick up too much - I spent a bit of time creating a specific map for the Slain Hunter, and given Rokhar will likely want to animate poor Kepp to replace his losses (I fully expect him to lose at least half of his zombies against the skeletons) we'll likely see a bit of an argument on if he can do that or not. I also created a map with the bear traps, just to be fun. But I am hoping the group reaches the Soulbound Guardian as I plan on having fun with a creepy doll that was hinted at waaaay back in the second game....
Slowly whittling down the zombie horde...
Events conspired to delay the start of the game, with half the group off visiting family and not getting here until two hours after the game was set to start, and my flatmate suffering from a nasty toothache that left him in bed because being in pain is not conducive of roleplaying. Fortunately, we did manage to start and still got in over three hours of gaming. Further, we were more productive than I anticipated.
We started out with the continuing Zombies vs. Ice Skeleton fight. As I'd mentioend previously, I increased the number of skeletons to five to compensate for Rokhar and his six zombies. This was partly a cunning plan of mine to eliminate as many zombies as possible, seeing that skeletons are fantastic at zombie-control (and zombies are great at killing skeletons), and partly because of the larger party size.
Aravel started the fight and was inspired by Gorum in his attack (burning his Temporary Hero Point for a reroll so he'd hit his foe), with his blow smashing a Skeleton to splinters. In return, a blast of cold radiated from the skeleton, damaging the zombie next to it. Araval, having used a Lucern Hammer, was out-of-range of the cold blast and took no damage (which is perhaps ironic seeing he actually has cold resistance of 2 for a trait bonus).
Next, one of the remaining skeletons (that had helped kill the zombie scout) moved up to take the place of the destroyed skeleton, and then it was time for the zombie that had become the front line. The collective cold aura damage from three skeletons was enough to kill the zombie and it broke apart in the cold. Thelin fortunately was only in range of two of the skeletons, and took only four damage initially. Rather than retreat and risk weaker members of the party from facing the skeletons, he grabbed his Earthbreaker and struck... and was inspired by nature itself or somesuch as his player burned his temporary Hero Point to reroll a miss and also smashed a skeleton to shards. He took another four points of damage as a result of the cold aura damage.
Rokhar, seeing his zombies were at risk of being all destroyed, used Sleigh of Hand to bring out his unholy symbol and Channeled Negative Energy to heal his undead minions. No one noticed the unholy symbol's use and views of him as a necromancer (who apparently had some spell to buff the undead and used a short sword) continued without question. He healed one wounded Zombie of six damage. It didn't last as one of the skeletons finally got to do a full attack and hit once for six damage.
Avarel went next and used Power Attack in his attack against a skeleton (he honestly didn't need to but... Barbarians) and brought the skeleton to -11 hit points in one blow. The resulting blast of cold destroyed the zombie that had just been hurt and Rokhar continued to curse his vile luck. A zombie tried to attack a skeleton after that but proved ineffectual. Thelin went next, continuing his melee rampage against the undead, and took a total of five damage between the cold aura and the explosion of cold resulting from his striking down yet another skeleton.
In the end, the fight was finished with all the skeletons destroyed, three zombies destroyed, Thelin hurt (and then healed somewhat by Freya), Alchemist Fire was used to kill one skeleton (by Freya), and no loot found.
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The group moved on and after nearly two hours of trudging through the snow they came across a ridge. Before they could investigate they heard a scream and then realized there were wolves guarding a freshly-slain deer. Thelin managed to calm down the wolves (which were one step from Hostile) and encouraged the party to remain away from the wolves. They didn't mind because they'd seen a blood trail further up, and what looked like a partly-buried corpse... and came across the mauled corpse of Dryden Kepp. Aravel was able to identify the tracks as that of a weasel of unusual size, and Thelin found the hunter's backpack and read through the journal... at which point the party learned about the strange hut and creepy doll.
Let me tell you, they've not forgotten. They started talking about what they wanted to do to that doll, despite the fact that the doll they came across was in a vision quest. (I have to wonder if they'll still hate dolls and destroy them at every chance they get years from now when they get into Book 6....) They traveled for another half an hour and came across an odd section of the ridge where the snow was pulled away and something had been digging. Sadly, no one was able to beat the Stealth roll of the Frost Firs, and they went first.
To compensate for the zombies and extra member of the cast, I increased the number of Frost Firs by one and maxed out their hit points. This proved wise as it actually made the fight more interesting. Two non-temporary Hero Points were burned (by Thelin and by Aravel) to reroll Natural 1s. Alak continued to (through my running the character seeing his player wasn't available) use Hexes to put Misfortune on various foes (and then Evil Eye on one Frost Fir only to learn they are immune to mind-affecting effects - while I knew this, I figured Alak might not so it made sense), and another Skeleton bit the dust.
The group moved on from there and after quarter an hour found themselves descending into a valley. Bloodied pawprints warned them of something afoot, and the group soon found a triggered bear trap. I had Thelin roll a Wisdom check which he blew through easily (modified 19 for the roll) and he remembered the journal which mentioned several bear traps. He grabbed a length of branch and used it to find the remaining traps, and Alak successfully disarmed them while Ciri watched on intently, as she is finally starting to learn the tricks of the trade her adoptive parents had tried to teach her and had successfully taught her adopted brother Alak. After half an hour the group came across a field of ice boulders and glimpsed an odd-looking hut built on top of tree trunks... and that's where I ended it for the night.
The next game will take place in two weeks.
Once More Unto the Missing Player!
The game was delayed to Thursday as initially one player wasn't sure he could make it and the couple who come to my home to play were going to a family event. Game of Thrones prevented the remote player from joining in, so Thelin the Druid was played as mostly an NPC (with some input from Alak's player as he's best friends with Thelin's player). The gift of alcohol earned two players an additional Temporary Hero Point (thus they started out with 2 temporary Hero Points each).
The game started off with the Creepy Doll - er, I mean the Strange Hut. No one made their Perception check to notice the Irriseni Mirror Scrying spell - Radosek Pavril gets a good look at the six people traveling toward the Winter Portal. The group moved up with the zombies taking point, and soon came across a shivering girl among the ice boulders who said "I'm Sorry! Don't hurt me! I never meant to call you names!". They were immediately suspicious. Freya made her Diplomacy check however and asked "What are you doing here?" Thora responded with "I have to watch the path." She moved away.
They decided not to pursue and instead headed toward the northerly part of the clearing. I had Haunt-Thora appear again and a second successful Diplomacy Check had this exchange: "Please don't keep me here. It's so cold. I miss my mother." "What's your name?" "Thora. Thora Petska." She moved toward the south again and the group didn't follow.
Guardian Thora cast Ventriloquism to try and get them to leave, but Alak had a Detect Magic up and realized an illusion had been cast and succeeded in a Spellcraft roll to determine what spell was used. Thora also tried twice to cast Charm Person - once on Freya and once on Avarel. Both made their saves. Alak detected one of the Charm attempts.
They had Rokhar send one Zombie up the hill to wait at the base of the hut and then went along the north of the hill to climb the hill the other way and all met at the hut. Freya insisted on going into the hut because of her dream (from the second session of the game). Alak followed and she kept trying to get Thora to talk. Alak "joked" about wanting to dig the gem out of the doll's eye socket but Freya refused to let him (and Thora remained silent).
Freya actually realized the doll was Thora (or was tied to the doll somehow), but Alak was of the opinion that Thora was casting through the doll. They chose to carry the doll with them as they continue along the path.
Leading the group is one zombie and Avarel. They see the message in the snow but don't think of checking for traps (and honestly couldn't have stopped it anyway). Aravel makes his Reflex Save and only takes 8 damage, but one more Zombie bites the big one... just one left!
After traveling for another half hour or so, the group realize it's getting late and see an area that seems like a clearing. They send the zombie in first and it triggers aggro on a Giant White Weasel... yes, that Great White Wha-- Weasel! It fails to hit in the surprise round, but in the first round it hits twice, once a crit, and the final zombie ends up a pile of parts and Rokhar is left cursing once more.
Ciri starts up a round of Bardic Song (with her feat that lets it linger for two rounds), and Rokhar casts Magic Weapon on Aravel's hammer (seeing everyone had been talking about camping for the night he figured now was the best time to cast it as he could memorize it again in the morning). Then Aravel moves up and attacks it for close to half of its hit points with his Lucern Hammer.
Alak's attempt to Misfortune it failed (he has bad luck with that Hex, amusingly enough!) while Thelin used his Acid Dart ability on the weasel and Freya used a Magic Stone spell on the beast but missed. Ciri then cast Freedom of Action on Aravel as I was thinking tactically for Ciri and the snow prevents five-foot steps. It was a moot point though. The weasel attempted to move up to attack Aravel (having only a five-foot reach) and provoked an Attack of Opportunity. Aravel left the beast with a crushed side and a decision to skin the beast so to vindicate Dryden Kepp's name.
The group dragged the weasel off a little ways and set up camp in the clearing where the weasel had been resting. They skinned the beast and there was comments on having some of its meat so they probably had fresh weasel for dinner which probably tasted rather unpleasant but hey, who can tell what half-orcs and crew like for meals.
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This actually set up the perfect opportunity for the Ambush. Originally I'd planned on having two Air Elementals attack with Izoze. But the elimination of all the zombies and the inclusion of Thora had me rethink things and it was probably for the best that I went with the original encounter as things were somewhat tough even with some lucky rolls. That said, I maxed out Squald's hit points and boosted Thora's by 8 (and gave her a level of Sorcerer).
The group blindfolded Thora just in case she was being used as a scrying tool (there was some talk about shoving her into a sack but Freya was insisting on being polite to the doll). Well, they didn't say "scrying" but they thought the "shivering girl" (the haunt) was looking through the doll's eyes so close enough.
Freya was on watch, which means Aravel was out of his armor. She failed to beat a 21 for her Perception check, which allowed Izoze and Squald to get quite close to the group. The fight started with Squald descending as a whirlwind to destroy the group's campfire while Izoze puked ice all over the camp, getting everyone but Alak and Thelin. Alak's player tried to claim his fox was on watch as well so I let him weasel(!) out a Perception check for the fox, but it failed to roll above an 18. Seeing I'd rolled twice on Roll20 and the results were there to see, he didn't have any reason to further contest the ambush. Well, for the moment. Thora drew her weapon and prepared to attack.
First round, Freya started. She immediately transformed into her full Kitsune form and used her Dancing Lights ability to ring the campsite with four floating torches, illuminating the area. Squald flew off, smacking Alak (who protested being targeted until I explained his foes had previously identified each member of the group and knew he was a caster). Seeing the most heavily-armored player was wearing Studded Leather and she was right next to that character, Izoze chose to claw Freya, hitting once. Thelin made a Wisdom check and realized that this foxgirl wearing Freya's clothes was Freya (and said as such) and then chose to sacrifice Entangle and cast Summon Nature's Ally.
This is where things got dicey. Alak's player chose to cast Sleep and I grinned as Thora promptly shanked him. He was upset that he didn't notice the doll was next to him (I pointed out that Freya wouldn't have been holding the doll throughout the night and we also had a discussion about the Haunted curse of the Oracle where if you carefully put something down it doesn't scamper off, otherwise Haunted Oracles would basically be naked as they could never claim their clothes, eat food, or the like) and that with the camp being disrupted by a whirlwind they wouldn't notice.
He insisted on a Perception check so I said "heck with it, go for it." I had Thora (with her Stealth of 15) take 10 for being quietly near Alak (who had talked about pulling her eye out) and he failed his Perception check and accepted his fate... of taking 1 point of damage and thanks to being Aasimar taking NO cold damage at all. He then made his Concentration check to avoid spell disruption and cast Sleep on Izoze... who failed her save and fell to the ground in a deep slumber.
Aravel Raged and used his longsword against Thora but learned she was somehow resistant to the attack. He still hurt her, just not as much as he could have. Thora's action came up and she went after Alak again with her blade... and did one temporary point of damage. Once more, Aasimar cold resistance proved the bane of the Guardian doll. Ciri started up Bardic Song (despite being right next to Thora) and Rokhar, noticing a sleeping Izoze, got up, pulled out his short sword, and moved up to Izoze in preparation to do a coup de grace.
The second round started with Freya burning a Permanent Hero Point (having used up her Temporary hero points earlier as her brand new dice? Kept rolling 1s - I mean I saw that die roll a 1 five times out of a half dozen rolls) while she cast Mighty Pebble and threw it at Thora. Despite throwing into combat (and in a snow storm), between the Bardic song, the Hero Point's +8, and the spell's bonus, she easily hit Thora and her enchanted pebble did full damage against Thora.
Squald did a second fly-by attack, going after Thelin this time. Fortunately a natural 20 was rolled for a Concentration check and a Fire Beetle was summoned to go after the Elemental... and promptly missed. Thelin's Acid Dart spell likewise missed. Alak's player got into a disagreement with me over my refusal to have given Thelin a Temporary Hero Point... I pointed out that Thelin's player wasn't here so he didn't get the Temporary Point. Aravel's player agreed it was only fair so Alak's player let it drop.
Alak put Fortune on Aravel's player (though looking back, technically I don't think he should have been able to do so, I think he did so earlier in the day - it is sort of a moot point though) and shouted to Aravel to coup de grace the mephit. Aravel grabbed his Lucern Hammer and did just that, dragging Izoze to -9 hit points from full. A nature 16 was not enough of a save to prevent death. Seeing it was a coup de grace, I don't think her regeneration would help in this case. Even if it did? It would be five rounds for her to wake up so it's a moot point.
Thora took the attack on Izoze poorly and went after Aravel. She did one point of damage. Her cold damage failed to penetrate his Northern Ancestry cold resistance. Thora is having a very bad day it seems. Ciri chose to hold her action with her crossbow while waiting for the air elemental to return - when she gets the chance she'll snipe it as it heads in for another attack. Finally, Rokhar (having lost his chance to murder someone) tried casting Hold Person on Thora. She made her save.
Seeing it was 1 a.m. at that point on a weekday, the game is paused and will resume a week from Sunday.
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Hero Points spent: Freya spent both Temporary Hero Points for rerolls of Natural 1s. Her new dice hate her. I think they're poorly balanced or something. She also spent a Permanent Hero Point bringing her down to 2 - seeing she'll be leveling up next game, that will max her out again and not be a problem. I don't recall but I think Aravel also spent one Temporary Hero Point but I don't recall for what. Seeing Thelin's player wasn't on, he didn't get a Temporary Hero Point and thus didn't spend it on a reroll despite grousing of Alak's player.
Looking back, there were a few things I did wrong. First, I should have had everyone roll a Perception check to wake up. I figured having the entire camp hit by a whirlwind would wake everyone up anyway. Second, I should have had Thora Levitate out of combat and start using spells. The attack against Aravel though was in character as she is "human" and honestly, a little girl. She got angry. Having two Elementals might have worked better but the group is facing a CR 6 encounter between the boosted Thora, Izoze, and Squald. The group's effective party level is 3 thanks to Rokhar and Ciri but it'll still be a tough fight.
The next game will most likely see the group facing Teb and crew at the Portal. Originally I was going to have them all at level 3 for facing Teb, but given how the group is doing, I may keep them at level 2. They did avoid the encounter with the Haunt after all... and are 370 XP away from leveling up once they finish the Ambush. However, seeing I'm using the Incremental Advancement rules, they will have a bonus to their BAB (except for Alak), hit points, and saving throws so they won't be THAT poorly off.
Given Freya's interactions with Thora and her trying to befriend the doll... I am seriously thinking of giving Thora a "dramatic death" once they "kill" the Guardian Doll. In fact, it might be interesting (seeing Freya has the Haunted Oracle Curse) to have Thora continue to haunt Freya once the group hopefully releases her soul from the gem (and I will have her mention she is trapped in the gem).
So. I've been thinking... and going to post this under a Spoiler tag in the off chance my players go on here. I can trust them to be mature and not peek. Unlike a certain nameless player in my old Runelords Skype group... ;)
After a bit of thought, I've decided to play the encounter at the Portal and its defenders as-written. In many ways, the Winter Portal is a military encampment (even if guarded by fae and a troll). There are no humans currently from Irrisen on this side of the Portal. Rokhar's Raiders are not allowed near the Portal. Thus any humans approaching the Portal are to be treated as enemies and attacked on sight. And seeing this "military" isn't bound by laws preventing the accidental deaths of civilians, they don't need to "hold their fire" to ensure hostile intent. Any humans or human-like beings on this side of the Portal are the Enemy and are to be killed.
While everything guarding the Portal is Chaotic Evil, they are following dictates of a more powerful and threatening "overlord" and thus are not likely to just wander off or lessen their guard - and in fact, two of the defenders (the Sprites) are in fact "slacking off" in one of the shelters, though there is a logical reason for them to do so if they are the "night watch."
Teb is watching over the Portal pretending to be a tree. His main concern is the Portal and making sure that anyone going through is allowed... and he's slacked off in allowing a giant mantis to stagger through it within the past day. (I so could see him chatting away with Radosek as the bloody thing lands behind him, quirks its head, and heads through the portal... with Radosek going "did something just go through the portal...?" and Teb turning and going "I don't see anything.") He's probably snoozing and has half an eye open but doesn't care one way or the other about the Winter. He's got a job, he's being paid for that job, and if he pisses off his bosses enough he's dead so that's reason enough to do it (not to mention the fact a 9 intelligence isn't dumb while a 12 Wisdom gives him enough "inner smarts" to avoid pissing off the White Witches).
Hommelstaub on the other hand has brains and wisdom... and a purpose. He wants to coat the world with ice. This Portal is furthering everything he desires. He is going to be watching intently and ensuring nothing that could stop his desires gets to the Portal. And seeing that in Pathfinder the fey need to eat and sleep, come nightfall he's going to rely on the two Sprites currently in one of the igloos for a "night watch" rather than just hope the cold and dark keeps adventurers at bay.
There is one other factor at play here. It has been stated that Radosek can communicate through Teb's mirror (I'm actually going to add a Magic Mirror embedded into the wall of the Pale Tower that acts like a crystal ball with telepathy that can only be used with the Irriseni Mirror Sight spell to explain how Radosek is able to "talk" to Teb and to Nazhena Vasilliovna, seeing nothing in the spell description suggests it has that capability). It has been stated in-game that Radosek was looking through Thora's mirror-eye when the PCs first arrive in the valley and find Thora's hut. Thus there is an in-game reason not only for Radosek to know about the PCs ahead of time but to also warn Teb of incoming adventurers.
The ambush on the PCs' campsite? It was because of Radosek warning Teb. When Izoze fails to return Teb knows that the group of adventurers will likely be heading to the Portal and is on alert. Hommelstaub will know that Rokhar is still with the PCs, and that the PCs consist of three humans (aasimar and disguised kitsune being indistinguishable from humans), a half-orc, and a dwarf. The moment Hommelstaub sees this group? He will throw a Thunderstone at the group and warn the encampment that PCs are incoming.
The only way around that would be stealth - if the PCs managed to sneak up on Hommelstaub and surprise them. My group? Is not likely to try that route. And while I could set up an ambush or the like, keeping the encounter as-written makes the most sense.
Also, seeing as one of my tabletop players has to work Sunday the game will be delayed, possibly to Thursday the 16th.
Plans for the Thursday game fell through as one player has to work. Seeing that the next game likely will have campaign-vital information and roleplaying (and the player in question just revealed to the group during this current fight she's a kitsune and we definitely need to RP that part of the game out), the next game will be a week from Sunday (after Game of Thrones is safely done with and I don't have to worry about players deciding to skip game to watch the show).
Fortunately, my Roll20-based Hell's Rebels game is this Sunday so I won't suffer GMing withdrawals. ;)
One Step Forward, Two Steps Back...
It's amazing how dangerous a foe can be when you start running them effectively. Case in point: in my previous game session, the Guardian Doll Thora Petska was... fairly ineffectual. Her attacks did minimal damage, she went after foes with Cold Resistance, and she was more of a nuisance than anything else. This time around she used her magical abilities effectively and did the most damage to the group of any foe... and not only brought the main group down to nearly single-digit hit points but also brought Rokhar to negative hit points. In fact, if not for a lucky Constitution check he would have died.
Of course, the other reason why things turned dire for the party is I maxed out the hit points of the Air Elemental and gave Thora a level of Sorcerer and extra hit points to boot. If they had normal hit points the fight would have ended at least one round earlier, if not more.
The game started out with Freya choosing to attack Thora with her club. Sadly, Thora has damage resistance and the blow bounced off... well, it bounced off one round later when I realized she had damage resistance! I also forgot she has include Magic Resistance so given how the dice were rolling... she probably would have lasted a couple more rounds. Seriously, of all the foes she was facing, one (Araval) would be able to hit her regularly and effectively ignore her DR, and that would only be if he was attacking her with a melee weapon. Unfortunately for him, Thora was in his square. He was using a Lucern Hammer and couldn't attack her.
Meanwhile, Squald (the small Air Elemental) chose to try and save Izoze, not realizing she was dead. He turned into a Whirlwind and while he couldn't attack anyone in that form, he could create an area of dust you couldn't see through... and he hoped Izoze would be able to escape. Unfortunately, the previous round Izoze was coup de graced and was dead. (Fast Healing ends when the target dies.) Squald then got pounded on by several people, including Rokhar (who actually did damage for once in his life), especially after Alak put an Evil Eye on the elemental to reduce its armor class. Thora used the cover to escape into the trees and did her first Stealth Check, rolling a modified 17. Seriously, that "girl" can't hide worth a damn.
The next round Freya chose to cast Magic Stone with her final level 1 spell and targeted Thora (who she successfully detected) while Ciri went with resuming her Bardic Song as the Lingering Performance was wearing off. Squald chose to resume his fly-by attacks, this time hitting Rokhar. Alak and Thelin chose to hold their actions with Thelin doing 3 damage, while he waiting for the Elemental (and also directing his Summoned Fire Beetle to charge Squald, hitting it for 3 hit points) while Alak was going for either the Elemental or Thora. Araval also detected Thora and fired an arrow at her but it was... not that effective. Thora then rolled a Natural 1 for a Stealth Check while Levitating into the tree above her, and Alak was alerted to her presence, hitting her with a crossbow bolt. Rokhar used his Invisibility spell and moved closer to the old campfire hoping to be avoided by foes.
Next round, Freya missed with her Magic Stone against Thora and Ciri fired her crossbow at Thora. Alak used an Evil Eye hex on Thora to make her easier to hit, and Squald focused its attack on the Fire Beetle. This is when Thora used her Frost Fall spell. Everyone took 8 damage (except for Araval who had 2 points cold resistance and Alak with his 5 points cold resistance). This knocked Rokhar to 2 hit points. No one rolled Spellcraft to identify the spell and thus no one moved away from its source. Thus when the next round came about, another 3 hit points of damage were inflicted and Rokhar fell unconscious. Fortunately for him (but not me) he immediately made a Constitution check and stabilized.
Over the next couple of rounds the group wiped out the Elemental and finally used Alchemist Fire on Thora. I actually had a roleplaying moment with Thora apologizing to Freya about attacking her and how she was forced to do so. When Freya asked where her body was, Thora explained she was dead. This doll was her body. She begged Freya to break the gemstone eye (and Freya guessed on her own the mirror eye was used for scrying and broke that as well). Thora also asked if Freya could tell her mom she loved her and that she lived in Waldsby. She then died and Freya broke her gemstone eye, freeing Thora's soul.
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There was a bit of roleplaying at this point as the group learned Freya was a Kitsune (well, they learned at the start of the combat but now got to talk about it) and decided it didn't matter. She was still Freya. So Freya's secret is out of the bag and she is remaining in her furry form for now as it's a little bit warmer.
The group had a spirited discussion afterward about Rokhar. Half of the group wanted to just kill him. Ciri (the GMPC) was fully part of this "kill Rokhar" sentiment as Ciri dislikes necromancy something fierce, while Thelin, a Druid, felt necromancy was unnatural. Freya could go either way, while Alak was all "we need to keep him alive so he can bring us close to the Winter Portal with the passwords he knows and the like!" (Alak doesn't realize that Rokhar was a "contractor" at best who never approached the Winter Portal and just knows approximately where it is located.) It was Avaral who gave the most impassioned argument stating that Rokhar had done nothing against them since they've been allied and thus they should not kill an ally. Ciri's next argument was "loot him as payment" and both she and Thelin stated outright they would not provide healing for Rokhar. Freya said she couldn't provide healing (as she's out of spells) and thus left it ambiguous.
Alak was uninterested in looting an ally until Ciri pointed out he might have a healing potion on him at which point Alak started examining Rokhar's gear. He didn't bother identifying Rokhar's cloak, but figured out he had Unholy Water (for Infernal Healing though the group doesn't know that) and three oils of Magic Weapon. As he didn't have Read Magic he didn't bother with the scrolls.
The group then debated what to do next. Ciri suggested going back to the Lodge and Araval and Freya agreed. Alak wanted to create a cold dark camp a mile away from where they'd been ambushed until I pointed out hypothermia was a likely result. Alak talked the others into setting up a campsite anyway and the group hid their trail while going deeper into the woods to rest. Seeing they had gotten two hours of sleep before the initial ambush, they chose to set two watches. One would be Araval, and the second would be Fawkes, Alak's familiar.
That's when I rolled for random encounters. Four hours in and just as Araval was nearing the end of his watch his perception check noticed three beings moving quietly through the snow. (I forgot about snow and perception checks, but I also wasn't using the penalties for snow for ranged attacks during the ambush so I figure a lull in the snowfall happened while the Winter Portal pushes out more cold air - all of the moisture has been squeezed out of the air around them while the snow starts to fall on Heldren itself. Not that they know this.) He immediately thought "Goblins!" and woke Thelin but didn't bother with anyone else in the group.
Seriously. Goblins are approaching and you don't wake the group.
He had this crazy idea of trying to intimidate the goblins. Fortunately when the goblins came across the camp, Alak woke up. He grabbed the musket he'd looted from the lodge (he is choosing to do a secondary class of Gunslinger using the Pathfinder: Unchained Secondary Class rules) and moved a little further away and fired a shot into the first Goblin that appeared. (Honestly, I should have forced him to load the gun itself first but it was late and I wasn't thinking all the way through.) The retort woke Freya but Ciri slept through it by rolling a Natural 1.
Freya (who was still fuzzy) bit the goblin (using a Hero Point for a reroll) in the leg while Alak considered using his sling. At that point as it was late I told Alak's player to read the Hero Point rules. He stated he knew the rules, but wanted to use them only in emergencies. When I pointed out there were three Goblins around his character's sister, any of which could coup de grace her, he finally chose to burn his temporary Hero Point and re-cast the Sleep spell. Four goblins were caught in it while the Goblin Warchanter fled the battlefield.
The group proceeded to interrogate the goblins, pretending to prepare to cook them while killing and gutting one goblin who gave an answer that was inappropriate to scare the others into listening... maybe it was an evil act but their previous actions have not been that cruel so it won't adversely impact them (excepting for the Druid who is going to have some nightmares about this I think). They learned that goblins hate each other and when told if their answer wouldn't align with that of their other cohort that that cohort would die, they started telling wild stories and getting each other killed off. It was the Commando who basically told them about being chased off from an area by scaring ice critters.
With that I ended the game. The Goblin encounter was enough to level everyone up to 3rd level. Ciri leveled up in Bard and chose the Secondary Class of Rogue (and thus didn't get a Feat this level) while Alak leveled up in Witch and chose the Secondary Class of Gunslinger. Araval leveled up in Barbarian (and took the Cleave Feat), Thelin went with Druid (and the Spell Focus (Conjuration) Feat), and Freya took a third level of Oracle (and the Acid Touch Revelation and the Extra Tail feat making her a three-tailed Kitsune).
The next game will be in two weeks.
Given my use of premonitions and dreams in Reign of Winter, one of my players suggested that every time Freya levels up and/or gets a new Revelation, she should get a new Dream. I rather like the idea as I can hint at things to come. In addition, I can slowly build toward some odd twists I'm including in the game.
One such twist is the fact that Alak is Nazhena's half-brother. Alak's player has been trying to get me to incorporate that he's an "Irrisen prince" for a bit and personally I don't like that idea. But for Alak to be a great-great grandchild of Elvanna? That works for me. While he might not like it, another thing I'm going to include is the fact his mother intended on sacrificing him and Ciri (Alak's adoptive sister) to become more powerful. All Alak ever was is a means of increasing her own power - his Aasimar blood having plenty of potential and a threat as the "divine" nature of his heritage could lead him into rebellion against the "way of things" in Irrisin.
Nazhena doesn't agree with this. Part of the reason she insisted on having Radosek as her apprentice was she barely remembered the pale toddler that was in the Pale Tower before she was sent to Elvanna's Court. Part of the reason she rose up against her mother was when she learned not only her mother's plans to sacrifice her baby brother, but that Varisians managed to steal him away and disrupt that ceremony. Nazhena doesn't know yet what she wants to do with Alak - further her mother's rituals to use Alak's life essence to increase her own power, or have Alak rule at her left hand even as Radosek is at her right. Events in the Pale Tower will, of course, decide which path she chooses.
The dream itself hints at things. Thora ends up being a good vessel by which to impart the dream to Freya, and is actually the first almost uplifting premonitory dreams that Freya has had (in that Freya doesn't end up covered with snow and feeling like something bad is happening). It may also be that Freya won't share this with the others. Given that I don't actually name the "brother" there is a hint of ambiguity here. For all she knows, this may be about Araval or even Thelin. But there's enough that she probably will realize the truth.
The wind intensifies and snow is crusting on your fur as you struggle to head toward shelter. You can smell smoke in the wind and the glimmer of light coming through windows guides you, while behind you the chill intensifies. Each step becomes heavier than the last, snow weighing you down, threatening to bury you. It is starting to feel warm... it would be so easy to just lie down. Just for a little while.
"Don't quit now"
You're startled by the whisper, your ears perking up and flicking snow off of them. The lodge is only a little bit ahead. Finally you're on the porch and you struggle with the door, pulling it open, and step through. The doors struggle, not wanting to shut, wanting to allow the cold and wind into the lodge to smother the fire and kill the warmth, but you finally pull them shut and then turn.
The warmth is painful at first and you shiver as cold rivulets of water start to run through your fur and drip from you. It takes a moment for your eyes to adjust but you see a small form by the fire. She tosses a log into the hearth, her blonde hair tinted red in the firelight.
"Freya! I'm glad you could reach me!" the girl says. You recognize the voice... it's Thora. Only instead of a doll, you see a young girl. She looks the same as the strange apparition you saw by the strange hut where you first found the Thora-doll. You feel a sense of unease for a moment remembering that hut. It is not a good place. It should have been burned. You shake your head and smile back at the girl.
"We don't have much time. But I had to warn you. You must protect the brother. They will try to turn him, to take him from you. He will be tempted as he's always wanted to know who his family truly is, but you and your companions are his family now. Let him know that. He can be full of himself and believe his views are the only valid ones, but his pride may be his downfall lest he be careful. "
The wind rattles the windows and sparks blow out of the fireplace as the wind tries to descend the chimney. Thora steps back, waving her hand as she coughs. "They will use him and discard him when he's served their purpose. But if you follow the path, if you free the Queen of Witches, he'll find his true destiny."
With that you wake, feeling warm and content for the first time in days.
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As a brief aside, back when I was first running RoW for my old group, I saw a Kickstarter for an interesting Norse-themed adventure called "Wrath of the Jotunn" for five to six adventurers of levels 9 to 15. After glancing through this... well, I'm more than halfway tempted to have another stop for Baba Yaga's Tardis - er, I mean Dancing Hut - and then increase the difficulty of encounters for foes in the fifth and sixth books to compensate.
I'm not quite sure how to incorporate the adventure into things... perhaps Baba Yaga was helped by the Demigoddess that plays a part in WotJ and promised she'd manipulate some foolish heroes to help out, or maybe the Demigoddess is a black sheep daughter of Baba Yaga who was more decently-minded and thus dismissed as a failure by Baba Yaga. I'm not quite sure.
There's also plans on how to explain more of Elvanna's plot as I mentioned in a posting on Elvanna's motivations in the RoW forum. That'll involve modifying the stand-alone module "The Witchwar Legacy" to act as the ending of the campaign... assuming I don't go the Mythic Route and start building an after-the-end campaign with ending Irrisin's Eternal Winter. But we'll have to wait and see on that.
Snow slows a lot of things... including combats
Alak: Level 3 Aasimar Witch (Secondary Class Gunslinger)
Ciri: Level 3 Varisian Bard (Secondary Class Rogue) (GMPC)
Thelin: Level 3 Dwarvish Mountain Druid
Freya: Level 3 Kitsune Oracle of Stone
Aravel: Level 3 Half-Orc Barbarian
The game started a little bit late today unfortunately as everyone thought the game was next week even though last week I'd reminded them when the game was going to be. I suspect this is partly due to my e-mailing character sheet PDFs to everyone without reminding them about the game. Fortunately, everyone was able to make it, along with a potential new player from my other game (who listened in and "played" Alak's familiar).
We started off with the continued debate over staying out in the wilds or returning to the Lodge for the night. Fortunately after initially stating he wanted to stay out, Alak changed his mind and everyone headed back to the Lodge. That's when I saw my opportunity and struck.
While crossing the icy bridge, I had Alak make a Reflex Save. He failed and dropped Rokhar. I had him do a second check at which point he rolled a Natural 20, so I had him successfully catch the unconscious priest rather than have him fall into the stream below. Thelin helped pull him up, but unbeknownst to almost everyone, Rokhar's wounds reopened when he was dropped and caught. Thelin made his Perception check and chose not to speak up about the bleeding as while Thelin may be good-aligned, it is anathema to create the Undead according to his religious beliefs. (The player has stated outright his Druid finds necromancy abhorrent. While the Green Faith doesn't state outright it is anti-undead, it makes sense to me.)
Alak carried him into the Lodge and put Rokhar to bed where he noticed Rokhar was bleeding out. He'd already been wrestling with his conscience about Rokhar, especially given how much his sister was speaking about letting Rokhar die or abandoning him. This provided the group with a means of eliminating Rokhar without breaking their direct promise to him as allies of convenience. He felt guilt over letting Rokhar die and it bothered him, but after going through Rokhar's belongings, found the Unholy Symbol to Norborger and chose not to save Rokhar because of Rokhar's allegiances. Upon revealing this to the group, everyone agreed they would leave Rokhar in the Lodge to recover or die in his sleep.
The group slept uneventfully with Fawkes keeping an eye on things for the night. When they woke they realized they had learned new things (with both Alak and Thelin learning 2nd level spells). They also identified all of Rokhar's gear. Freya gained the Cloak of the Yeti while the scrolls of Magic Weapon were given to Freya and Thelin, and the oils of Magic Weapon given to the non-casters. The group then started forth and headed toward where the map Ciri had taken from the Lodge previously and Rokhar himself had said was where the Winter Portal was located.
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The trip from the Lodge to the Winter Portal was uneventful. During the night, the Winter Fey chased off various goblins and other monsters that lived in the area, even as the weather cooled further. Finally, when starting to approach where the Portal was located, Thelin cast Resist Cold on himself while Ciri put Feather Step on Araval and Alak cast Mage Armor on himself.
Seeing I'm using Roll20, I chose to modify the map as it was... rather short otherwise. Given Hommelstaub's Perception and placement, it makes sense for the pathway leading to the Portal to be longer and I extended it by around 20 by 30 feet (and added trees to create a "path' for the group to see).
The group actually decided to be stealthy. Unfortunately, stealthy ran into the fact most of the group has penalties to Stealth and Hommelstaub has a significant bonus to Perception. The only two that Hommelstaub didn't notice was Fawkes and Ciri. This is where I chose to deviate from the written combat plan, because Hommelstaub noticed one of the intruders was a... "person of interest" that needs to be taken alive.
The group continued being stealthy until Araval scored quite nicely for Perception and overheard voices from Hommelstaub and Teb about the intruders. He gestured to the others and they started to cast buffs or add Magic Weapon Oil to their weapons. Likewise, Teb drank his potion and started toward the intruders while Hommelstaub cast the first of his buffs... and Araval once more rolled quite well with Perception and then a Spellcraft/Knowledge Arcana check to notice the casting sounded... similar to that he'd heard from Freya. (This wasn't to determine what spell was cast, but rather the type of casting. It makes sense that Oracles would cast spells similar to other Oracles and it wouldn't sound similar to what Witches cast like or how Wizards cast spells. Or at least it makes sense to me.
Five rounds have passed since the group entered into the Winter Portal, with Magic Weapon being cast/applied in the last two rounds.
My friend who listened in for the game (and watched through the eyes of Fawkes) seems interested in the group. We'll talk over the next two weeks and craft a character for her... and she may very well join in during the next game. :)
The next game is planned for in two weeks.
Stop children, what's that sound? Everyone look what's going 'round...
Pregame note: Using the Blizzard rules in the Wilderness rules, visibility increased to 20 feet. However, ranged attacks suffered a -8 to hit due to wind and snow. Also, I increased Hommelstaub's level by one but to be honest it was a moot point. Also, Teb was provided with one level of Unchained Barbarian and the Feat Dodge so that his armor class wouldn't be badly hurt by Raging. A third Sprite was also added to the group, which had grown to include a sixth member:
Zvezda: 3rd level Catfolk Monk
As I mentioned, in my previous game I had a player from my Discord game join in to watch and run Fawkes. She enjoyed the camaraderie and ended up joining us, and went with a Catfolk Monk for her character. However, she chose to go with a most interesting background. Zvezda was a magical experiment. A high-level Winter Witch tortured and broke her before using her to be her Familiar. She did this to further empower her magic but before she was finished, Queen Elvanna required her to go after the Black Rider.
She failed to kill Black Midnight, who in turn killed her and her minions but chose to free the chained catfolk whose life essence was used to empower the ice spike that had broken through Black Midnight's magic resistance and essentially had killed him. He gave her the name "Zvezda" (Star in Russian) and after giving her a strange crystal tiara that had been on the Witch (along with some other belongings) continued toward the south and the Winter Portal he sensed there.
As he approached the Portal, an ambush was sprung. Several Winter Wolves and a couple patrols of guards from the Pale Tower attacked. He told Zvezda to go through the Portal and secure it as she would only be underfoot in Irrisen and risk his life further. She plunged through the Portal, not knowing that a fight was already underway on the other side.
Meanwhile, on the Taldor side of the Portal, the group soon came upon the guardians of the Portal. Aravel made first contact, moving up far enough to see Teb and then calling back to the others. Between Araval's warning and Teb speaking, the Winter Fae sleeping in the igloo soon realized that there were enemies and woke to prepare for battle.
Teb actually offered to negotiate initially. He praised the adventurers on coming this far and offered to let them live if they left... and he would even pay them a reward should they but hand over the "white-haired witch and the Sacrifice he travels with." (The group misunderstood at first and thought I'd said "small sacrifice" - Alak's fox. No, they were referring to Ciri.) Alak joked about if he'd get the reward if he turned himself in but the group basically didn't even think things over. (Alak also put Fortune on Araval while Ciri started up a Bardic Song.)
Just as the fight was preparing to start up, on the other side of the battlefield Zvezda emerged from the Portal. Hommelstaub had just flown off to join with Teb so Zvezda was able to hide and then start sneaking up following the footprints Teb left behind.
Round 6, the fight started up. Araval started out by Raging and using Power Attack. He hit for maximum damage - however, Teb had also started Raging and his Temporary Hit Points soaked most of the damage. In fact, once he started regenerating, it essentially negated the entire damage taken in the first round (though temporary hit points don't regenerate). As Araval was using his longsword and shield, Teb got an Attack of Opportunity and promptly rolled a 1. Fortunately, he failed to "confirm" the critical failure so I didn't need to draw from the Critical Failure deck.
Freya used her entire move to get alongside Araval (and avoided an AoO as Teb had already used his against Araval).
Alak buffed Thelin with a Fortune spell. Unfortunately, while Thelin managed to his with an Acid Dart spell, Teb managed the one successful Concealment spell for the game and avoided taking damage.
Hommelstaub then used a Thunderstone against Thelin. However, everyone in range of the blast made their Fortitude saves. Finally Teb returned the favor of Araval's blow and easily did as much damage in return.
And things basically repeated themselves next round. Araval hit the troll (and remembered he had Rage Sprites, but they missed), Freya used Touch of Acid on it only to learn this type of troll still regenerates when exposed to acid, and the Troll did maximum damage in returning a blow on Araval, and Hommelstaub started a summoning for a fiendish Eagle. Finally, not wanting to miss because of concealment again, Thelin cast Faerie Fire on Teb... and was struck by the arrow of a Sprite who held its action for spellcasting. Fortunately, Concentration Checks were made and the spell went off.
Fortunately, things got mixed up with the next round.
First, Araval nearly missed. In fact, he did miss but his player burned his Temporary Hero Point and successfully struck Teb for max damage. Freya though decided to go and do something... interesting and proceeded to Intimidate Teb, rolling a modified 29 to Intimidate. This proved handy as the penalty to saving throws came in before Alak (who had finally gotten close enough to see Teb) cast a most nasty Witch spell: Boneshaker. The spell inflicted 4d6 damage on Teb (thank you Horror Adventures) and brought Teb to 6 hit points.
That's when Ciri burned a Permanent Hero Point and threw a vial of Alchemist's Fire to impact on the troll. It did exactly 6 hit points of damage and set the troll ablaze. Zvezda launched a sneak-attack on Hommelstaub and used her Temporary Hero Point to successfully hit the Atomie Oracle and afterward cursed herself for forgetting to use Stunning Fist. And Teb stopped, dropped, and rolled, putting himself out.
After that Thelin used his last spell (Soften Earth & Mud) to trap Teb in a quagmire, Araval smacked him down into negative hit points, and finally Freya lit him up again to end Teb's life.
As it was 10:20 at that point and I knew that Hommelstaub was going to be a huge nuisance nickel-and-diming the players to death, I Deus Ex Machina'd an ending - in fact it was the same basic ending of my first run of RoW. Black Midnight charged through the Winter Portal, he chucked his spear at Hommelstaub, hit, and one-shotted him. (To be honest, Hommelstaub probably would have survived but it was dramatic and drove home the power of the Black Rider.
Zvezda joined him as he got off his horse (which evaporated) and confronted the group. And while I answered a couple questions, I also had him state outright other things and insist that the players were the ones who could save Baba Yaga and thus save their world. When asked how he could trust them, he told them outright about the Geas and the blessing of Baba Yaga. The group had full disclosure of what was going to happen - and seeing that the Riders Three are in fact Lawful Neutral, it makes sense for him to tell them.
Eventually the group chose to work with him. Finally he extended the offer to Zvezda (who had basically "adopted" Black Midnight as her new lord after he'd slew her cruel mistress) and as one last request had her pull the ice spike from his chest. His life's blood poured forth and empowered the two Keys for the Dancing Hut.
We also had roleplay as the group "met" Zvezda officially (and started debating burning Zvezda's stuffed bunny which she has the Attached Drawback for, seeing that they just saw "creepy doll" - I swear, they will freak whenever a doll appears in the game in the future! Heh...) and the game ended with the group having looted Teb and the cave, and approached the Portal to see what awaits them on the other side.
Next game in two weeks.
GM Thoughts on Hommelstaub
Played effectively, Hommelstaub would be impossible for a party to fight - at least under normal circumstances. If he were used for the Ambush against the party the night before, then there is a significant balancing of the scales (as Hommelstaub may be able to see through snow but it being night does cause him the same problems many PCs would have (he has low-light vision and it's overcast at night).
Given the fact "heavy snow" is falling (I went with blizzard to reduce the visibility of the group and create a more claustrophobic feel to the fight - and having Teb looming out of the 20-foot range of sight for the group did ramp up tension for the players), it actually makes sense to have reduced daytime visibility for Hommelstaub (and for that matter the adventurers). Then again, if they'd chosen to attack at night, it would have allowed for a stealthier approach to the Portal.
Still, I have no regrets having Hommelstaub slain by the Black Rider. My depiction of him is of a strong powerful warrior who continues to move by force of will (and Baba Yaga's favor). Part of me is actually tempted to give the group a touch of Mythic - have them only die when they reach double their Constitution bonus, and automatically stabilize.
The amusing thing is, if this had been a level 2 group and I'd not modified Teb to have a level of Unchained Barbarian, then he honestly would have fallen probably after two rounds of combat. My players had some really lucky damage rolls. I'd have been left with the same problem with Hommelstaub however - a sniper who can attack from beyond the visual range of the players. And once the players got within melee range, his ability to go invisible and flee just made him into a true aggravation. Given the hour we were at and the fact I honestly didn't want to delay yet again having the Black Rider appear... using him to end the fight was for the best.
Besides. The game is about having fun. Of the six members of the group, only the Barbarian was at half hit points. Everyone else was within four hit points of being full up. All Hommelstaub would have been was that annoying final foe that is sniping you from a hidden location that you find in the occasional video game. It's better to just cut-and-run in those cases.
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I was wondering why I dreamed of giant insects last night...
Last night's game ended up (once again) with less progress than I'd anticipated. That said, there was a bit of roleplay involved and everyone enjoyed themselves so that's what's important. This isn't to say there weren't areas where I couldn't have improved things but... while some folk may speed-run through Adventure Paths, it's kind of refreshing to have people who will take time and just have fun. And hey, at the rate they're going, we'll be all old and gray before we run out of 1st Edition Pathfinder material to play. ;)
We last ended just outside the Winter Portal. Rather than go through, the group decided the most important thing was to return to Heldren and report what they'd learned to the town leaders, while also selling off loot and consolidating coinage to platinum (seeing that the second-highest strength in the group was a 13 and coinage weighs a lot). Before that, they made sure to provide a proper funeral (cremation by bonfire) of the Black Rider and for honoring him in such a fashion I've given them a second boon: they now are as hard to kill as a Mythic character (ie, die at negative double their Constitution value, and auto-stabilize when at negative hit points).
(To be honest, part of me is tempted to make them Mythic. I enjoy the Mythic rules. But this group is... quite intelligent in many ways, and if they had control over what Mythic path they took, then they'd be breaking the game far worse than what happened in my old RotRL campaign. Of course I could always select Mythic aspects for them without telling them and have these abilities appear slowly over time while increasing the level of all of their foes to compensate. I'll have to think on that.)
For Zvezda, it was a fascinating experience. Due to her Story Feat Forgotten Past, she doesn't remember a time before Irrisen. So seeing green growing things outside, smelling loam and earth, and the like... it was a truly new experience. And she embraced the new experience... and in doing so perhaps even gaining a reason to try and restore Baba Yaga, rather than just because the Black Rider saved her and needed her to do so. (Freya resumed her human form, so no one in Heldren knows she is a Kitsune. Alak was curious if Zvezda could do similar, but it seems the Catfolk didn't know any magic.)
The group also brought all of the supplies that had been looted by Teb and crew back to town and gave it to the town. The town will need to salt the meat and such to prevent spoilage, but in the eyes of the party, it was going to be needed more by the townsfolk. Perhaps in thanks, they were each provided with five days of trail rations. It might not be gifting the group with magic items or the like, but I figured it was a good gesture. And with the town council warned (and plans to alert the Taldor military of the Irriseni plans), loot sold, and the like the group headed back and at nightfall went through the Portal.
It was two hours earlier (at least) due to the time difference (Golarion not being a flat planet ^^). Ciri actually managed a Nat. 20 for Geography and told them exactly where they were (the Hoarwood Forest in Irrisen) - though it helped that they knew the Winter Portal led to Irrisen (and that Ciri had been there in the past with Alak, even though Alak didn't remember). Alak popped back through the Portal to make sure it didn't just send people to random locations (he appeared back in Taldor where they'd just left from) and then was scolded by the others because if he'd been right then he'd have been separated from the others. (I also think part of it was verifying his sister's knowledge, especially as he's used to being the smarter of the two (her Int. is 14 while his was 18 prior to the Boon).
Thelin realized the dark clouds meant there was a storm incoming (even if it wasn't currently snowing, a welcome change from the other side of the Portal) and they looked around for the battle that Zvezda had told them about - while it had been over two days, no one had found the bodies of the guards or the Winter Wolves that had tried to stop the Black Rider. There was nothing salvageable among the remains as the fey magicks the Black Rider used froze men and their equipment solid, while the Winter Wolves had been hacked to pieces. They soon heard sounds of a conflict nearby and investigating they came across a band of people trying to save another man from the clutches of a giant green preying mantis.
As a side GM note? Sometimes the larger maps that Roll20 allows for can... cause problems with encounters. I had the group in the upper left part of the map... and they were 100 feet away from the conflict with snowy (difficult) terrain between them and the conflict below. If they'd only been 50 feet away then things may have turned out a bit differently but... yeah.
The Mantis won initiative. With his first attack he dropped his victim down to -6 hit points. Thelin's player looked over all his spells and realized that the one spell he had that would be of use would be Summon Nature's Ally and he started casting it, while Araval and Zvezda took advantage of their natural speediness (Barbarian and Monk bonuses to movement speed) to trudge through snow and nearly halve the distance between them. Ciri started up a Bardic Song (which left out Araval and Zvezda as they had outdistanced the bard) and essentially the first round was spent doing nothing to distract a hungry Mantis.
Second round, the poor chap who was the Mantis' preferred meal had another chunk ripped out of him. Cue Wilhelm scream as he was brought to -12 and was likely negative his Constitution (though I never did bother crafting the generic warriors, I figure their Con would be at a max a 12). Once again the round was spent closing with the Mantis, except for Ciri whose crossbow bolt failed to penetrate its armor, the three Stirges that Thelin summoned but whose effect wouldn't be felt until the end of the round... and for Nadya who actually managed to roll a modified 19 with her handaxe and struck the insect for 6 damage... and drew aggro.
This is where I nearly lost Nadya.
It hit twice, grappled, and bit her. Nadya went from 27 hit points to 2. (Note to self - if my sixth player does end up joining us (this last time RL concerns prevented her from reprising her role of Nadya who she played in my previous RoW campaign) be sure to give Nadya the "no squishy" extra hit point bonus the others have gotten.)
This is also where I had a little discussion with Araval's player who seems loathed to use his Rage ability. (I half think he'd have been better off playing a straight Fighter.) His reasoning? "It's not big enough [to waste my Rage on]." I scoffed at that as did a couple other players and I pointed out it was a giant Mantis, was size Large, and was easily bigger than everyone on the battlefield. So he decided to go full hilt, Raged, used Power Attack, and nearly maxed his damage, bringing the bug down to single-digit hit points. At the end of the round, the three Stirges caused another 3 points of Constitution Damage and the Mantis collapsed (with Nadya essentially seeing this half-orc warrior bash it with a Lucern hammer and it taking a second before it staggered and died).
Freya rushed up to Nadya and healed her for 8 hit points. And a grateful Nadya Petska introduced herself to the group... who immediately started eyeing each other and remembering the name "Petska" which they'd learned from a certain creepy doll. And after dancing around the topic for a minute they finally admitted to Nadya that they had run across her daughter whose soul had been trapped in a doll and forced to attack them.
Needless to say... Nadya was incensed. She swore at length. She'd gone and basically bankrupted herself getting supplies for Nazhena only for the White Witch to murder Nadya's daughter without ever intending on upholding her part of the deal. The group did mention the Winter Portal and how she could get sanctuary on the other side - and it will be interesting to see if the group suggests this again when Nadya is less incensed or possibly to others in Waldsby.
Proving that you can have a 16 Charisma and yet be... less than considerate and polite, Alak tried interrogating Nadya, accusing her of having "her people" invading Taldor and being less-than-sympathetic seeing that doll-Thora had stabbed him in the side and foot several times. Nadya had some choice words for him as well but chose to cut them short as the storm was getting closer and she wanted to set up a camp away from the carcass of the mantis.
And that's where we ended for the night.
If my friend is able to reprise her role of Nadya, it will be interesting to see where she takes this. She actually wants to learn some phrases in Russian (curses rather than swears - "I'll feed you your liver" and the like rather than curse-words) that she can utter during the game, especially when she eventually gets revenge against Nazhena. It will also be interesting to see how she works with Nadya's... annoyance with Alak, though Alak's player explained to me that he thought that Nadya and crew were agents of the White Witches - I'd not bothered with attack rolls for anyone but Nadya against the Mantis, so to him everyone else was just standing around watching. That one's on me, but it does provide for roleplaying opportunities.
After all, Alak (in-character) did learn a couple days earlier that the White Witches had plans for him, and called either his sister or familiar a "sacrifice" (and he's fairly certain it was his sister the troll spoke of). Everyone was quite willing to just blindly trust Nadya. So he was being more... cautious and less boorish. Or at the very least he was being protective of his sister.
The next game will be in two weeks.
Ravens! It had to be ravens!
Sadly, my friend was not able to reprise running Nadya. She's realized her schedule is a tad too busy and she didn't want to keep bowing out of games. I understand even if I wish she'd been able to join us. Alas, we won't have a Russian-swearing Nadya, even if it would have been fun. :/
Once more we didn't get quite as far along as I'd hoped, but we still got a bit done - in fact, the game managed to go through two encounters (at times we seem to get stuck with a single encounter per game, though those are often the nastier encounters). It helps that one was primarily a roleplaying encounter, so there was less time spent trying to determine what the players could do, and more time just roleplaying.
We started soon after where we'd let off. Nadya led the group away from the battle site with the Mantis. Zvezda was the one character with the highest Ride skill, so the catfolk was quite happy to be mushing sled dogs, her tail thwapping Alak who was riding behind her. And after five minutes of travel, Nadya found a site that she felt would be suitable for camping and set up two fires - one for her and the adventurers, and one for the remaining three caravanners and the sled dogs.
The group did not tell Nadya about the Black Rider, or their quest to free Baba Yaga. They did talk about closing the Winter Portals but that was basically it. Nadya promised to help the group (seeing that she would be getting vengeance against Nazhena for the death of Thora), but outside of that... she doesn't have the sense of awe toward the group that was hinted at for those who for some reason would blab everything. Of course, given the adventurers saved her life from the Mantis... well, she's already fairly impressed by them.
Alak took time to be more... sympathetic toward Nadya and she accepted his apology (or at the very least to view it as sort of an apology). The boy can be charming when he chooses to be (the benefits of a 16 Charisma).
After eating rations, the encounter with the forlarren Mierul started up. The group immediately were on their guard (excepting for the naive waif Zvezda who immediately greeted her and introduced her to her stuffed bunny doll Fritzwick "and my friends" - and miracle of miracles, Ciri rolled a Natural 18 for a Wisdom check to determine that maybe, just maybe caution was called for. She showed up at Zvezda's side and politely suggested silence (I don't recall the exact phrasing but Zvezda caught the cue and then upon realizing this was one of those fae that her Mistress would talk to, quietly warned Ciri.
Mierul offered entertainment and the like and then asked where the others had come from. Sadly, despite a modified 20 for a Bluff check (thanks to two Assist Others), Mierul managed a modified 25 for Sense Motive and realized that Nadya was lying. Of course, claiming these were relatives given you had a Half-Orc, a Dwarf, a Tian, a Varisian, a Catfolk, and a cloaked figure... yeah. Even with Ciri mentioning the village they were from (using her nat. 20 on Knowledge: Geography from the previous game), Mierul saw through the group. But she didn't act as if she disbelieved them and no one thought to Sense Motive.
That said, they all assumed that Mierul saw through Nadya's bluff despite my keeping the roll a secret. While they didn't attack her (and I'm not sure why they chose not to, outside of the fact they're not murder-hobos), they set watches through the night and fully felt that Mierul had scouted them out.
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The next day the snow had passed and they started traveling again. Sadly, they were spied by a raven swarm and despite everyone burning their Temporary Hero Points to gain an added +8 to their rolls (thus having a +13 to their roll all-together before their regular roll modifiers), both Thelin and Araval flubbed their rolls. In fact, my players joked that Thelin had his bottom hanging out from the tarp. (And afterward when they heard about needing a modified 20 to make their rolls, stated that they'd need to be a party of Rogues to make that check. That said, Araval has a penalty to Stealth while Thelin is effectively without bonuses or penalties.
The raven swarm descended upon Thelin's tarp and tore it apart in one round. Next round, Zvezda jumped out of hiding and approached the swarm, Araval reached Freya and asked her to make his axe burn, Thelin failed in his attempt to cast Acid Dart on the ravens (not realizing it was a Swarm and thus immune), Nadya threw alchemist's fire on the raven swarm, Ciri started up a bardic song, and Alak attempted to use Sleep on the Raven Swarm.
Sadly, Sleep failed. It was a fantastic idea and in theory SHOULD have worked... but a Raven Swarm is 5d8 hit dice. I had some ravens falling asleep and landing in the snow for a thematic aspect but as there were a thousand ravens attacking... yeah. And finally the Ravens retaliated by swarming Thelin, Ciri, and Nadya - Ciri and Nadya getting attacks of opportunity and both hitting before everyone took 1 hit point damage. Thelin was blinded but then the forces of the Green Pact helped him move his arm up just in the blink of time and he managed to deflect those beaks before they could catch his eyes (the player burned a Permanent Hero Point to reroll his saving throw).
The second round, Zvezda's player burned a Permanent Hero Point to move, and then did a full-round attack and burned a point of Ki to launch three attacks on the Ravens. Two missed, but one was a natural 20 which confirmed and did a bit of damage (seeing fists are blunt objects). We joked it was akin to One Punch Man hitting the ravens.
Thelin did a Full Withdrawal from the raven swarm while Nadya did a five-foot step (being able to do so in snow because of her snowshoes). And as Freya was using her club on the ravens, Zvezda's character noticed something and questioned about needing to do a withdrawal move to escape a Swarm, seeing they have no Reach. After some research I realized she was right... so I allowed Thelin's player to do JUST a move action and then cast Bull Strength on himself, while Ciri escaped the Swarm and also hit it with the masterwork short sword she looted from Rokhar. Finally it was Alak's turn... and he fired off the second shot he had of five for the Musket he'd found.
Amusingly enough that was just enough to bring the Swarm to 0 hit points. The Swarm dispersed and Nadya insisted that they needed to reach Waldsby and get into hiding before the ravens reported the adventurers to the Pale Tower.
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The entry into Waldsby went pretty much according to the write-up. Various townsfolk dragged their kids into their houses, others questioned the group thinking them merchants, and upon reaching the chapel, Nadya insisted on pausing so she could give her dead caravanner over to Rolf, the priest of Pharasma. The group oddly were quite... willing to just trust Rolf and tried questioning him on things even as he warned them to keep things to themselves.
I mean, it wasn't "tell the priest about the Black Rider" level of failed operational security but they were basically trusting this man wouldn't turn them into the authorities while he was out-and-out telling them "I can't side with you if the guards come. My flock is more important." They were also curious how his predecessor died (I just had him die a year before he came to town with Pharasma telling him in a vision that he was needed there).
Amusingly, Thelin rolled a natural 20 for his Perception Check upon leaving the Chapel and noticed the Shorn Beard barbershop. He was horrified at the affront (and we joked that Irrisin keeps dwarves like sheep, shearing their beards and weaving them into warm but itchy clothes) but didn't approach the barber and thus has no clue it's a lady dwarf in charge of the shop.
We paused here for the night.
Everyone burned Temporary Hero Points to try and make Stealth Rolls vs. the Ravens. Thelin used a permanent Hero Point to avoid being blinded by Ravens, while Zvezda used a permanent Hero Point for moving so she could get a full attack against the Ravens and use Flurry of Blows.
Next game will be in two weeks.
The calm before the storm?
Tonight's game had a late start, as two players had a last-minute emergency happen which delayed their arrival by an hour, and a third player was busy having fun in the Florida sun (by which I mean turning into a boiled lobster). Heck, even I ran a little late as I had been doing yard work and figured my players would appreciate me not being all hot and sweaty. ^^;;
We started close to 1.5 hours after we're supposed to, and after a couple false starts I finally got the group moving. They finished up with the priest with him going outdoors and loudly thanking them for the herbs they brought him and that he was always looking for more medicinal herbs - basically, the priest was covering his ass to pretend to have bought stuff from them and that would even explain why they were in the priest's chapel for a little bit - negotiations. And it would have worked too if the group wasn't nosy and... well, themselves. ;)
Nadya soon got the group to head to her house (somehow herding Zvezda along even as she tried introducing herself to everyone around, and I seriously love this character to pieces) and soon told her children about what happened to their big sister. After some tears and the like, Nadya left to buy the group clothes to fit in more, and they made supper and entertained Orm and Mjoli.
They also went out and explored the town a little bit. Araval went looking for a helmet and ordered one to be made for him (despite the fact helmets aren't really that much a part of Pathfinder itself), Zvezda tried to say hi to everyone, bought her first item ever! (crossbow bolts), Thelin bought feathers to tease the catfolk monk, Alak had bullets made for his musket (though he still only has three shots of gunpowder left and no idea where to get more), and Freya chatted with the dwarven barber and had her hair pampered. Finally everyone headed back to Nadya's for the night.
The next morning, Nadya realized the dishes hadn't been washed. She quietly started talking to Hatch in the other room and both Freya and Alak both rolled natural 20s to overhear what was said. Alak went utterly paranoid, sure they were about to be attacked by the White Witch's forces, but when Nadya came out from the sleeping chamber she explained about Hatch being a domovoi that she'd rescued from Nazhena, and Thelin chose to leave a gift of alcohol for him. Okay, several gifts of alcohol, hidden where the kids couldn't get at it.
The group also admitted to Nadya about their full mission - that they were there to help free Baba Yaga from Elvanna's clutches, had talked to the Black Rider, and having keys to the Dancing Hut. If anything, this strengthened Nadya's resolve. She wanted revenge already against Nazhena. But this? This would allow her to get revenge against ALL of the White Witches. Not that she said this or anything but it's on her mind.
The group headed out again and soon ran into Emil who told them to come in for some tea. They went in and Zvezda again went around everywhere talking to people and even tried to go behind the bar and stoked the fire (and was chased off by Katrina, hiding behind Ciri who said she'd not let the mean woman bite her). Freya was the only one to order tea and porridge but when the GM couldn't keep a straight face she chose not to sip the tea.
She also made a Sense Motive check on the bartender who failed his Bluff check, and finally pretended to sip the tea. He gave her her command to leave Irrisin, realized he'd been duped, and pulled out his crossbow while Araval started to swear he was going to chop the guy's head off. And that's where we left for the night.
So... it was more a quieter RP-related game tonight and the group appreciated not having nonstop combat. In fact, I'm thinking of tossing something together for a roleplaying session in the next game before we have things start to head south.
Interestingly enough, the group came up with a logical way to get into the Pale Tower. Nadya is expected to bring supplies to the Pale Tower. Well, the PCs could be her caravan guards helping bring the supplies to the tower, where Nadya is (kind of) expected. It's a rather intelligent way by which the group could get into the Pale Tower, and it'll be interesting to see which method the PCs ultimately choose.
One Temporary Hero Point was spent by Freya for inspiration from the GM on what she could talk to the barber about.
Next game is in two weeks.
Can't We All Just Be Friends?
We last had the group at the bar with the barkeep aiming a crossbow at them. However, it had been a while since I last indulged in Freya's Haunted ability so I asked her what she was going to do with the hot tea she was still holding. When she put it down I was going to have it splash up in his face as Haunted kicked in.
Instead, she threw the tea in the barkeep's face. Good kitsune! ^^
The group then started initiative, with Araval Intimidating the barkeep, Alak playing Good Cop and going with a Diplomacy Check (as combat had not "started" I allowed it) and rolled quite poorly. He burned his Temporary Hero Point and rerolled... a modified 24. Sadly, he needed a 25 in order to modify the barkeep's opinion, and my hinting (but not stating) that folk could burn a Hero Point to assist other didn't pan out.
Emil went next and pulled the trigger, firing a 46-gold Human Bane crossbow bolt worth more than his entire profits for several months, and did 20 points of damage to the half-orc. A 3rd level Barbarian who had rolled really well for hit points, and with the No Squishy bonus HPs I granted him at 1st level... well, it dropped him by one third of his hit points. (Even if he'd not had the No Squishy bonus, he'd been at half his hit points.) It was painful, but Emil is literally a one-shot wonder with that heavy crossbow.
Freya went next and being a three-tailed Kitsune? She used her Spell-Like Charm Person ability and Emil failed his save. All at once he was aghast at having tried to roofie his best friend. Given the half-orc was looking annoyed at being shot but not murderous, he started calming down. Katrina got pissed, ran up to him, started shaking him saying "you've been bewitched, that b*#*% did something to you!" (she didn't see the spell effect but she DID see her husband's personality switch suddenly), pulled out a scroll, and just before she could cast Alak's player burned a Permanent Hero Point to act out of turn (doing his next round's action early). He cast Sleep on her, which was quite amusing because the scroll Katrina was pulling out? Sleep.
Meanwhile on the other side of the bar, five rowdy patrons were having a grand old time. Ciri and Zvezda were there chatting when Ciri saw things going down. She rushed over toward her brother when one of the rowdies went "oi, where are you off to in such a rush, sweet cheeks?" and pulled Ciri onto his lap. Or... he tried to. She rolled to hit with her knee on his crotch and he was in a WORLD of hurt.
The first two rowdies were watching the bar and seeing that fight fizzle they chose to not start anything. The patron closest to Ciri and the kneed patrol had a 33% chance to want to start trouble... and I rolled a 4 on 1d6. He laughed at his buddy, said "you deserved that!" and the sheepish kneed patron admitted as such and they laughed it all off. The Great Bar Brawl ended with a good laugh, Katrina asleep (and Emil carried her home to sleep it off), and then folks chatted and RPed.
Freya tried to find out why Emil roofied her and he admitted his wife talked him into it because strangers are bad and they were scared of what the White Witches might do. He also admitted that the White Witches watch them through the mirrors and that is why he has a huge mirror in the tavern - to prove to the Witches that he and his wife have nothing to hide. Otherwise he was... kind of useless. He didn't know anything of importance and I RPed him much as he looks - an idiot and fool who knows nothing.
One thing of note is Freya told him they were leaving tomorrow so he had nothing to worry about. While the Charm Person likely had worn off by the time the Pale Tower Guards arrived, he DID have something of note to tell the guards concerning the group - and if the guards didn't have orders already about the PCs, it might have worked.
Meanwhile, Thelin started chatting with a gnome who had caught his attention - Arbagazor Frimbocket, a local carpenter. I had Thelin roll a Wisdom check (and he easily made it with a modified 19) to catch he somehow knew this guy... because he'd met Frimbocket's brother in Heldren. Who was a carpenter. He also realized that there was a dwarven barber/dentist/doctor in both towns, they both had near-identical statues, sawmills, temples, and on down the line.
(On an amused note, the group has a theory that they either went into an alternative dimension or through a "looking glass" when they went to Irrisen seeing how Waldsby is a twisted reflection of Heldren. I've smiled and nodded at their ideas and neither confirm or deny them.)
The group then looked at the Statue of the Cold Lady which Zvezda promptly tried to climb. And failed. Twice. Finally on her third try she succeeded, but while she was trying, Frimbocket came out and chatted more and the group admitted they had seen someone's work much like his... and learned about his brother. They told him they'd seen him in Taldor some time ago (keeping the Portal secret for now).
They returned (through a circuitous route) to Nadya's and after a meal they were relaxing... when a pounding on the door was heard. Now, I honestly cannot see why ANY building in Irrisen would have windows. This is a place where a warm day is in the mid 20s with the Fahrenheit scale. But I could see slots to pull open and look out a door. She looked out, whispered to the group to hide, and they did so. Even the half-orc.
I gave anyone who hid upstairs a +5 to their roll. Zvezda and Ciri naturally chose to stay downstairs and both rolled REALLY well for their stealth (it helps that Ciri is effectively the group thief at this point though until Zvezda showed up she was easily the stealthiest in the group, outside of Alak's familiar). However, the Barbarian rolled a modified 5. After I pointed out he could burn his Temporary Hero Point he groused, finally chose to, and rolled a natural 20. We joked he pulled a tea cloth over his face to hide.
And then they just sat there while Nadya agreed to go with the guards. They were going to do nothing. However, there WERE two people downstairs. And Alak sent Fawkes downstairs where she scouted things out and let Alak know "many!" for who were down there (I figure empathy could allow "alarm" reactions to be felt, and something like "many" is also viable to communicate). Zvezda though saw six guards. And she was looking nice and eager at Ciri who grinned and started chanting "Let the Bodies Hit the Floor!"
Everyone was buffed and the catgirl and Varisian Bard saved the day for dear Nadya. Sadly, Stunning Fist didn't stun the guard but everyone managed to go downstairs easily enough and get caught in the bottleneck known as the front door. Thelin squeezed in next to Zvezda but Araval was left out of range of everyone and without a way to reach his foes. So he yelled at them and succeeded in Intimidation.
The poor guard at the door ended up punched, Intimidated, and then Dazed by Alak. It wasn't his day! And NONE of the other guards managed to hit. (To be honest, I'm thinking the guards might pull back and away from the door so the PCs will be forced to move out of the house and away from cover.)
The game ended there as it was approaching midnight.
Temporary Hero Points were used by Freya (to reroll a Sense Motive check on Frimbocket as she didn't believe his story - she found that she STILL believed him even with a higher roll), Alak to reroll Diplomacy, and Araval to reroll a Stealth check, while Alak also burned a Permanent Hero Point to act out of his turn and cast Sleep on Katrina.
Next game will be in two weeks. :)
Cold Reception
Apologies for the length of time between the updates. I've been procrastinating, sorry to say. Though before I get into the campaign report, I've got a GM note for people planning on running the game in the future. I probably should add these in the future, similar to what NobodysHome does in his Strange Aeons game, as having notes to work from can help improve future games.
For instance, let's take Nadya's home. When you look at the map, the house is a 20 by 20 building with a shed added to the side. My initial thought on this was that the side room was a bed chamber, but when reading about Nadya's home I found out that was where she keeps her dogs for the dog sleds, and probably a dog sled as well.
It didn't dawn on me until the day of the game that Nadya's home is a two-story home and that the family would sleep upstairs... and that realization came only when I looked at the picture of Heldren and Waldsby which showed most of the buildings had multiple floors. How much of that was artistic license and how much was planned remains to be seen... though I do have to say that there are remarkably few people living in a place with multi-story buildings - I mean, the picture of Waldsby shows two buildings with three stories each and an addict, and other places with two stories an addicts... but there's on average five people for each house. And that's assuming that no one was living in the story above their stores or shops.
Unfortunately, the lack of maps for the Silver Stoat or Nadya's home means we're left guessing at what is going on there, and that's a decided shame especially as both locations had multiple encounters taking place in them. I very much doubt anyone from Paizo bothers to read these campaign journals but if they do? Please, either add in extra details about these locales so the GM can better flesh it out in their own maps, or add some maps for areas like this in future APs. At the very least I can warn other GMs who plan on running Reign of Winter what to do with their own planned maps for the region.
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We left off with the group encountering guards. Unfortunately I didn't think things through properly and had the guards at the door rather than having barged into Nadya's house. If I'd done the latter then it probably would have been bloodier... for the bad guys. Instead we had choke points and the like which slowed the fight a little. Previously one of the guards had been stunned with a Daze spell, and Zvezda leaped over him from the doorway to hit another guard with Stunning Fist, and actually succeeded in invoking Tweety birds. Meanwhile, Ciri proved that she would always buff the wrong player when she added Feather Step to the barbarian who took his sweet time going outdoors where it actually would benefit.
Thelin burned his Temporary Hero Point to reroll a missed hit and successfully hurt the guard (though by adding a second level of Warrior to each NPC, it improved their survivability at least marginally). Freya then added Sun Metal to Araval's Greataxe Kindness and he rolled the first of several critical hits and chopped the Dazed guard's arm clear off (between the crit and fire damage doing 70 points of damage... and he's 3rd level). Alak, striving not to be outdone, used Boneshaker on the guard Zvezda had stunned and walked him back five feet where he proceeded to bleed from all of his orifices and drop dead. (Nasty spell, Boneshaker. I'm surprised it wasn't given an Evil descriptor. Or a higher level. Then again, it's useless against foes without an internal skeleton....)
This isn't to say the guards didn't actually get any hits in. They did. And when they did hit, they often dealt minimum damage. One nearly critted but failed to confirm. And outside of Araval being a critting machine (rolling three natural 20s in one combat), the notable elements were Zvezda ending up prone in the snow, Freya hitting one guard with Charm Person, and one guard at 0 hit points surrendering when the one guard whose dice were hot ended up being immobilized by Soften Earth and Stone and then cut in twain by a raging half-orc Barbarian.
The group then chose to interrogate the two guards. Alak, Ciri, and Araval took the wounded guard upstairs while Freya, Thelin, and Zvezda remained downstairs to interrogate the charmed guard. And I had the wounded guard tell everything he knew. He knew his life was on the line. He had no doubts that this group would kill him if he was caught in a lie. For his trouble in giving up the passwords and approach signals for the Pale Tower? Alak cut his throat. Araval didn't even blink.
Do note this. This... oddness is going to become a real head-scratcher later on. Admittedly, Alak is true Neutral. He found out that the White Witches are personally interested in him and in capturing him and his adoptive sister. He still murdered an unarmed helpless prisoner. And while Araval might be Chaotic Neutral... he just made a quip about it and didn't care. It was Ciri (also Chaotic Neutral) who chided her brother for his actions. Oh, and Hatch, the domovoi, yelled at Alak for getting blood everywhere. Seriously, people sleep up here. Blood stains are near impossible to get out. Alak did apologize to the fae at least.
Downstairs, the Charmed Guard resisted giving too much information. His best friend is Freya. All she has to do is go with him to his sergeant and everything would be explained. He noticed that his comrade didn't come back down and that the healing failed, and that gave him some pause but his sergeant would take care of everything... so he brought everyone to the Silver Stoat to talk to his sergeant.
The sergeant immediately saw through things, realized his man had been subverted, and ordered his men to kill the strangers. Katrina (the wife of man who runs the Silver Stoat) then started helping the guards by casting Bless on them, Scare on Araval (who had to burn a Permanent Hero Point to reroll his save) and then being targeted by others. Alak did manage to hit two guards with Sleep (again, upping them to 2nd level Warriors helped improve their survivability just a tad).
The end result was the death of every single guard except for the Charmed Guard (who spent half the fight trying to tell people to stop fighting and then fled because he realized just because Freya was his best friend didn't mean the others were... he'd betrayed his commanding officer and comrades-in-arms, and there was no stopping this) and Katrina (who fortunately was only brought to below half hit points but hid behind her husband who had been taken prisoner by the guards due to he being Charmed by the PCs). While the sergeant did activate his Mirror, the PCs closed it and put it in a bag with metal so it would make noises. Seeing the description of the spell Irrisini MIrror Sight has it looking through the mirror, all he knows is that the mirror was activated but is closed.
Hero Point Usage: Temporary Hero Points were spent by Thelin to reroll a missed attack roll, Araval to ensure he hit a guard with one of his non-natural 20s, Alak to reroll an Intimidation check.
Permanent Hero Points were spent by Araval to reroll a natural 1 that became a natural 20 and a second Permanent Hero Point to reroll a Will Save
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One problem with running games with both online and tabletop people is that the online people can... end up drowned out by the tabletop group. Both Zvezda and Thelin's players were grousing about that, so I instituted a change, adding in Roll20 a "Feat" and a "Skill" to alert people that they have something to say. (I also then instituted this into my entirely remote game seeing that online people can and often to drown each other out.)
That's actually something I should also comment on for the map itself. The description of the Pale Tower is that there are no trees for miles around it. This is a defensive position, the trees have been cut down so that an invading army can easily be seen. Yet the Paizo mapmakers went and added trees right around the Pale Tower. That... doesn't make sense. I ended up editing out all the trees so it would make more sense and fit what the description states is the case.
Another thing that doesn't make sense is the setup of the second floor dining room. Why is there one table? Further, the table is designed to make it nearly impossible to reach the Teleporters to the first floor. Yes, I know space is at a premium, but given the Pale Tower is designed to have 35 guards and support staff (and Nazhena and Radosek of course), but sitting 17 people for a meal at one time at one table.. while making it so the people on the ends have to get up whenever someone needs to walk past... it's a poor design. There should have been several smaller round tables.
Also, how do the side icicle-rooms work? There was a lost opportunity here. We should have had an outside view of the Pale Tower. It could even have been a depiction of the Tower as seen by the Iconic PCs... but having a picture to help build this view would have helped... and was actually done with the clock tower in the second book of Rise of the Runelords.
I probably should have used graphics editing tools and edited out the table and added my own. It's something to consider for the future. Still, Paizo's mapmakers should consider sometimes how to more effectively utilize space for oddly-shaped maps.
The game itself started with the group talking to Hatch about the Pale Tower and convincing him to help out. He told them what he could but was petrified of Nazhena and Radosek. They failed to get him to be Helpful and thus he only told him about passwords and the like and not certain other details I won't go into at this time.
It was during this time that Zvezda learned of Alak murdering the guard upstairs. She went outside all sad, and Ciri joined her to talk, both conversing about what the group had done, the killing of the guards, and Ciri admitted concern about her brother Alak. (This conversation was carried on privately via Roll20 even as the group itself talked.)
This is also when the group insisted on going to the town meeting where the town discussed whether to flee through the "Spring Gate" and go to Heldren or stay in Waldsby and hope for the best. Finally when I admitted to the group that I had nothing planned, they let it slide. However, I did spring another thing on them, with Verana Stolya asking if the group had seen her daughter Milivsa and her concerns her daughter might have been kidnapped as her shop had been ransacked.
Remember that Charmed guard? A tidbit in the Waldsby Gazetteer is that Milivsa was involved with a guard at the Pale Tower and passed along rumors in town to her lover to impress him. The charmed guard was that lover. He fled during the fight (and Verana was one of the people brought in for questioning as the strangers had gone to her shop among others), reached her, they robbed Milivsa's mother blind and took most of her stuff. They left some of the bulkier items but stole a magic belt with Ant Haul on it (as I'm using the Automatic Bonus Progression rules, the Belt of Mightly Constitution needed replacing), but did leave the Shadow Wooden Armor I put in there in lieu of +2 studded leather.
Seeing she was now without money, Verana was having a fire sale. She offered the PCs the wooden armor and Zvezda and Ciri were quite generous, donating everything but one copper each of loot acquired from their adventures. The OTHERS however... were more stingy. Alak offered to write a note to Lady Argentea to get everyone fleeing from Waldsby settled in Heldren and a letter of credit for Verana... which was worth the paper it was written on. Sure, she might give a small stipend, but his claim that a thousand gold is easily enough to buy a new shop ignores the fact she still needs to get new goods for that shop and the like. In all, the PCs bought the armor for 2,570 gold, while it was worth just shy of 4,000 gold. Seriously not regretting not having Hatch do a full disclosure....
When they reached the Pale Tower, disguised as Tower Guard (wearing the uniforms of the men they had slain), they found ran across the ice troll inside who immediately took interest in their dogs. Freya talked her out of eating the dogs in the end by bribing her with seven days of rations and the group went indoors without having fought anything and hoping their dogs would remain safe (and most of them probably will survive... most of them).
The group went indoors and immediately decided to just go to the second floor. Ciri pointed out the barracks and they considered jamming the doors shut but decided in the end just to go up. Yes, you heard me right. The same group that murderhoboed their way with captured prisoners decided to go the minimal-bloodshed route and rather than kill armed guards who are a viable threat, snuck in. Even when they had the threat of the guards pointed out, they decided to go with stealth rather than killing their foes.
And thus they headed to the northmost Teleporter. Araval went first and as he stepped out Mierul Ardelain and three atomies were there. She immediately rolled a 25 on Perception, realized who they were, and she told the Atomies to attack.
At that point, as I reached Araval on initiative and was asking him what he wanted to do, Alak's player opened his mouth and said "get off the teleporter" as Alak was initially talking about just doing an Intimidation check while on the teleporter which no one else can use while he's on it. After I had words with Alak's player about that even as Araval's player insisted "of course I was getting off the teleporter, that only makes sense!" I realized I'd NOT asked the group what order they were going to enter the Teleporter in. So I went via initiative.
Still, as a GM's note? Future GMs should always get a teleportation order ahead of time so this sort of thing doesn't happen in the future. For that matter, I probably should have dragged Araval's player to one side so no one would have been able to do spoilers. I'll try to remember to do that with the next game as the Teleporters are STILL going to be important.
Araval then moved onto the table (which I ruled was difficult terrain) and hit the fae bard for 19 damage while using the masterwork cold iron longsword he looted from the sergeant back in Waldsby and his Rage Sprite. The three atomies all went Invisible, and on the next round Zvezda emerged from the Teleporter, noticed Araval on a table being backstabbed by an atomie, and moved up to attack the blighter. Mierul stepped back five feet and hit him with Chord of Shards... and Zvezda used her Cat's Luck before rolling a natural 20 on her save and Araval burned a Temporary Hero Point to make his save against the spell.
The fight didn't last long enough for everyone to emerge with the atomie all being killed and Mierul surrendering upon being brought to 0 hit points. That said, the fight was not overheard by anyone who would bother to investigate. The game ended there with everyone having gotten to the second floor.
Temporary Hero Points were burned by Araval to make a saving throw and Zvezda to hit Mierul with a Stunning Fist (to which Mierul made her saving throw). Zvezda's player also gave me a short story with back story for Zvezda and for doing so was awarded a Permanent Hero Point.
The next game will be this upcoming Sunday.
I'm double-posting this as I'm using elements of this for my game and also because folk might miss it on the Campaign Journal write-up, or just over at the RoW forum, but not on both. ^^
As I start to prepare for tonight's game I've come to the realization that the Pale Tower itself is poorly designed, in a fashion similar to how early dungeons failed to account for how various things stayed alive in there, or for that matter why they were there. In the case of the Pale Tower and Radosek? It's a fairly indefensible position, all things considered.
First, let's look at the exterior. You have three guards on the walls. If the PCs launched a frontal assault, they defend to the death... despite the presence of another ten soldiers inside the Tower. There is no way to effectively raise an alert other than for the guards to send one of their number running back to the barracks (which is not in the NPC write-up). Why don't they have one of those enchanted mirrors on their end? It could even be something built into the walls of the Pale Tower itself so the PCs can't loot it.
Second, the troll inside doesn't make that much sense. The players are expected to bluff their way inside at which point there's a troll and they're going to fight or bluff the troll? Why did the guards on the walls just sit by and let the troll eat all the other dogs there? How are new patrols expected to leave seeing this glutton devoured all the dogs here? What do the wall guard do when the people they let in turn around and start fighting the troll - do they attack their "fellow guards" or just sit back and eat popcorn or what?
I understand the ice troll was brought in for extra muscle, but having the troll having eaten all the sled dogs and probably be looking at the dogs the PCs arrive with as dessert... well, it essentially is saying "hey PCs, why not get in a big meaningless fight to eat your resources?" (My current group paid off the troll with a week's worth of rations. I'm still tempted at having the troll eat one or two of their dogs as well, though to be honest after eating all the other dogs here prior to the PCs arriving, the rations might actually fill the troll's belly.)
Third, the presence of the keys also doesn't make much sense. Honestly, you have Sergeants who get a key to automatically go through the teleporter without saying a simple phrase? It's not THAT much work. Similarly, you have the Captain of the guard... with the key to the Priestess's teleporter. Why?
Fourth, we already had the Captain with a nice backstory and the end of her write-up is "she's not wise enough to surrender so she fights to the death." Add in the key and you're left with HUGE questions and no valid answers. Seriously, why include this backstory when she's just fodder for the blades of the PCs? And why does the Captain of the Guard not have a method by which she can contact her boss, Radosek? Seriously.
This is where this part of the AP starts to fall apart. There are, however, ways of fixing it. And first, let's look at those keys.
The purpose of a key is to unlock a door. So... if the place is put on high alert, all of the Teleporters should be put on lockdown. Thus you can give passcodes all you want but you're stuck on your floor and can't get in or out. HOWEVER, someone with a key would be able to unlock a teleporter and thus get to another region.
Now the keys serve a real purpose. They unlock the doors so the PCs can get through. And if you want, they could even have a second function: for the next 30 seconds, they allow other people to quickly travel through the teleporter without the passcode.
This would mean the PCs can get Hestrig's key to Jairess's Aerie and so long as they all go one right after the next, not need to know a passcode. And likewise when they get the key to Radosek's chambers they could unlock it and quickly reach Radosek's chamber to fight him as a group. It only makes sense.
Now, let's look at Hestrig. First, give her a means of communicating with Radosek - be it a Message spell or another of those hand mirrors. If she has to talk to him and there's no way to reach his chamber... what is he going to do, go to Jairess and snag her key? That's a waste of her time and resources. Further, she has reason to be questioning her loyalty to the White Witches - or at least to Nazhena and Nazhena's mother (who Nazhena iced a while ago). Thus LET HER SURRENDER. It makes sense.
Finally, let's create an actual love triangle here. Hestrig has Jairess's key because she is having a quiet affair with Jairess. This may even be part of why she's questioning herself now. She finds Jairess to be exotic and delightful, she mentions how she was trying to find information on the dragon whose blood flows through her veins, Jairess has been encouraging her (and fully understands what it means to have the desire to fly in the blood)... and she finds out about the dragon's death.
Meanwhile, she knows Radosek is trying to worm his way into Jairess's bed. Maybe he spied on Jairess and Hestrig being together through the Irriseni Mirror Sight spell. Or maybe he heard scuttlebutt or the like... but he wants some. And while Jairess has said "no" Hestrig is still getting jealous. So while she fights the PCs... give her the chance to surrender. She insists that she talk to Jairess and Jairess may even agree but also insist she has to fight initially to show her "loyalty" to the White Witches so she fights non-lethally against one of the PCs and if the PC wins, she gives them the key. If she loses she gives it to Hestrig (who then gives it to the PCs).
Finally, we have Radosek. One of the comments about him is that he frequently spies on people with the Irriseni Mirror Sight spell. But he only has it memorized once. If he was using it to communicate with Teb back at the Winter Portal and to spy through Thora's mirror eye then... how was he doing all that?
The answer is simple: put a Magic Mirror in the work room where the PCs fight Radosek. It is linked to any mirror in the Tower, and thus at any time Radosek or Nazhena could peer through the mirror and see what is going on. Further, with a casting of Irriseni Mirror Sight on it, it allows two-way communication (which is lacking with the spell itself) and thus lets Radosek talk to (and get reports from) those on the other side of the mirror.
A wily GM could even have used this to have Radosek taunt the PCs (in a fashion similar to what another witch whose name starts with "R" later in the AP does with a different spell) at various times, be it through the mirror at the White Weasel tavern, or through the mirror they found on the guard sergeant, or even through Thora's mirror eye if they kept that one.
These are the elements I'll be using with the rest of my run through The Snows of Summer:
First, I like the idea of the Hestrig-Jairess-Radosek "love triangle" and that's going to remain part of this. Thus if the PCs don't just kill Hestrig outright, they will learn about Jainess and have a chance to get her key to reach Radosek. Part of Hestrig's decision to surrender WILL be keeping Jairess alive. As an added benefit, this will also show the PCs that the enemy are not faceless ciphers but are living, breathing people... and that evil people are capable of love (seeing Hestrig's evil-aligned).
Second, I'm definitely using the Keys as I wrote above. It makes sense and helps the game become less frustrating. Having the group rush through the Teleporters also will make things more interesting and fun, especially by limiting what each PC sees by taking each tabletop player aside as they go through.
Third, the Magic Mirror that's built into the side of the Pale Tower in the work room is too intelligent a concept not to use and I'd planned on his having this for some time. Radosek may very well end up learning about the PCs and thus be casting preparatory spells... or even alerting the guards down below (as the PCs left them alive for the time being) so the PCs have to fight their way through guards they'd bypassed (or abandoning Hestrig and Jairess to die as traitors as they go after Radosek himself).
Well, that went fast...
As I'd previously written yesterday, I made a couple of changes to Reign of Winter's Pale Tower. First, the existing Key system didn't work very well. It risked having the group killed off piecemeal, especially if the players failed to get intelligence sources worked out ahead of time. In fact, the entire Teleporter system was less-than-enjoyable for the group, especially given that I had a group of five players, and each new turn took progressively longer. It was an interesting concept... but in practice it didn't work so well.
That said, the changes I implemented turned the game from a series of fights to some interesting roleplaying, background reveals, and crafting a more interesting and involved session for nearly everyone in my group (with the exception being the barbarian player who is a newer player and hasn't yet thought out how to embrace roleplaying as a means of continuing the plot instead of crushing things with his axe or sword.
One other aside is that when you implement new rules, be sure the players fully understand those new rules. One example is with Automatic Bonus Progression from Pathfinder Unchained. I had one player misunderstand the system, feeling it meant magic weapons and items no longer existed, when instead it allows for more special items to appear in the game. These arguments can get rather spirited, and in this case was resolved when I called the entire group together and those fears were expressed more coherently and then laid to rest.
Anyway, on to the game.
We'd last left off with Mierul having surrendered to the group (much to Alak's dismay - the surrender happened before he came through the teleporter so he didn't have much to say about things. That said, after Mierul waffled a few times she came clear about being Queen Elvanna's agent, at which point the group one-upped her and outright admitted they were Baba Yaga's agents.
Fortunately, Mierul was able to bluff successfully and hide the fact she knew what the Queen had been doing and instead was an innocent ice fae just doing her duty and unable to betray Elvanna because of the ice shard in her heart. She also let drop a few tidbits to prove she would not be a threat to the PCs (even offering her Ice floe elixir) including the fact Radosek was trying to get in the priestess's pants which was pissing off the Captain of the Guard whom Mierul was fairly certain was sleeping with her. (Note, she didn't mention Hestrig's name or that she is a woman. Amusingly, the group didn't react when that bit was revealed when they found her.)
After tying up Mierul and tucking her in at her bed (while back in the dining room Thelin amused himself by stripping the atomies and posing them on the dinner plates as appetizers) (jokes were also bandied about on Zvezda having a fairy wing hanging from her mouth, seeing she's catfolk), taking Mierul's Ice floe elixir and fiddle (as bardic instruments are dangerous!), the group readied themselves to enter through the back door into the library. While Hestrig had failed every single one of her Perception checks to hear the fight, I didn't actually bother with a surprise round (which to be honest I probably should have). Instead, Nadya entered the room, readied her bow at Hestrig, and demanded she surrender.
Hestrig promptly cast Shield. Nadya's readied action... rolled a Natural 1. A confirmed critical failure resulted in something that made no sense, so I went with a different result and got her taking a full action to make a single attack for three rounds. Basically her bow string went along her clothed arm and that sort of thing hurts (it's why you wear bracers). Fortunately for the group, Freya went next and she promptly hit Hestrig with a Charm Person... and Hestrig (who I'd rewritten as a level 5 Eldritch Scion Magus) promptly failed her Will save. She DID however see the Spell Effect that Freya isn't able to conceal (not having the right Feats to hide that) and was able to figure out she'd been enchanted. I mean, she's not stupid. Hell, being the Captain of the Guard would suggest that even with a 10 Intelligence that she's good at her job... and part of that would be knowing these intruders don't want to kill her (yet).
Also, she kind of hates Radosek. The man is hitting on her girlfriend, after all, and is in good enough with Nazhena that if Hestrig tried complaining to Nazhena (who she now has a reason to distrust, having learned that Nazhena's mother had slain Auburphex, whose blood courses through her veins). She even admitted as such (her "best friend" was asking her questions after all, and Freya's Charisma is 20 so that also helped), and even how it was normally impossible to reach Radosek... but that her girlfriend had a key... and how the keys work (with me having altered them so they keep the Teleporter live for 30 seconds - enough to allow six people to pass through).
She brought the group to Jairess (with her Shield spell still up and functioning, and quite prepared for a fight in case the PCs tried to betray them) and together she and the group explained what was up. Jairess was already upset because Radosek had ordered her to send her ravens out to attack "dissidents" - originally she'd thought that meant the PCs, but obviously they were already here so she had no idea who the birds were attacking. Hestrig urged Jairess to give up the key and then they'd pack their stuff and flee Irrisen.
Jairess refused. She said she was loyal to Nazhena. As such, she could not give up the key without a fight... and then turned to the group and offered a duel. Unarmed combat, until one person gives up or was knocked out. And while Araval was chomping at the bit to punch out some blue-skinned priestess girl, the group decided that Zvezda was the better choice here.
The fight was decidedly one-sided. It lasted three rounds. Zvezda actually landed a critical hit in her second round of combat while using Flurry of Blows, and at the end of three rounds Jairess admitted defeat, having not laid a single finger on the agile catfolk. She surrendered the key to the group and they promptly didn't slaughter the two women, allowing them to pack up their belongings and flee the Pale Tower.
We then spent the next hour leveling up characters, as the AP recommends the group be level 4 before fighting Radosek. While the group didn't encounter quite a few things that were meant to help give the PCs enough XPs to level up, they DID effectively bypass encounters and work their way to facing down Radosek.
Alak: Level 4 Aasimar Witch
Ciri: Level 3 Bard, Level 1 Unchained Rogue
Thelin: Level 4 Dwarvish Mountain Druid
Freya: Level 4 Kitsune Oracle of Stone
Aravael: Level 4 Half-Orc Barbarian
Zvezda: Level 4 Catfolk Unchained Monk
As a side note, I've decided to drop the Secondary Class rules. Multiclassing should work just fine and taking one level of a class really gives far greater benefit than the Secondary Class rules did over time. Alak plans at a later time to possibly take a level of Gunslinger.
The group planned out their line of attack. They'd start with Araval, followed by Zvezda, then Ciri (who buffed the group initially with Bardic Song so her Lingering Performance would help Araval while upstairs), then Alak, then Freya, and finally Thelin. (I forgot that Nadya was with the group at that point but the way I was working the keys, she'd not have been able to join the fight. The group likely returned and collected her after the fight was over.)
Radosek knew they were coming. I'd implemented the changes mentioned in the post above this one, and he'd come across signs that the group had invaded the Tower. He was spying on the group through the mirrors and when he'd seen they had the Key, he knew the jig was up. He promptly cast his two defensive spells and was busy casting Summon Monster III when Araval went through. The first round of combat saw five Small Ice Elementals appear between the two of them and while Araval's player initially contemplated just waiting for the others, he finally chose to close and attack one of the Elementals. And he promptly shattered it, seeing he was under Lingering Performance, Bull Strength, Rage, Sun Metal, and Power Attacking with his Greataxe.
Zvezda came through on the second round and actually managed to connect with Radosek with a Stunning Fist... which he promptly saved against. He fled, using a Withdraw motion while using his Flight Hex to Levitate 30 feet straight up, and for the rest of the fight remained out of reach of the group while they used ranged weapons against him.
In the end he was Webbed, hit by various rocks, crossbow bolts, had his goat knocked unconscious by Zvezda (as BOTH he AND Alak begged the monk not to kill the goat... and Thelin urged them to do so as it had been a while since he had last eaten goat), brought Alak down to single digit hit points with a couple Ice Spears from his wand, and was generally a nuisance to most of the group. If he'd failed his Fortitude Save, the fight would have been decidedly shorter.
One thing I did do differently was pull Araval's player into the other room (and get their marching order prior to starting the event) so that there was no outside interferance. That said, I have started using the Jukebox feature on Roll20, and I uploaded the Wilhelm Scream onto the Jukebox. I use that every time the PCs kill someone, and it was hilarious hearing from the other room people snarking about how Araval wouldn't leave anything alive for them. Especially amusing was the double-Wilhelm-Scream when Araval Cleaved two (burning his Temporary Hero Point to ensure one of the attacks hit) and when the group saw an "angry goat" attacking.
The fight ended up lasting past midnight. I feel rather bad about that as one of my players usually gets off to bed by 11. I'll have to apologize to her again later... but the Pale Tower is nearly complete. Well, except for looting the treasury, shutting down the Winter Portal, and probably fighting their way out of the Pale Tower.
So. If I were to do things differently, what would I do? Well, I might be tempted to have tossed a tier of Mythic onto Radosek. It would have improved his survivability a tad, given him more diversity to his spells, and helped compensate for the fact there were two more bodies fighting him. But to be honest... Ciri never hit him (and was primarily a support character), Thelin's involvement was minimal, and there was no way Radosek could have prevailed against Araval, especially once he'd fired off his Blindness/Deafness spell to no effect. I might also have tossed another level onto him, let him memorize Summon Monster III a second time, and given him another Hex. And he was STILL a tough fight. But the real problem was that he was alone (even with his Summons).
Once Book 1 is finished, I'm going to be taking a break. Alak's player has been wanting to GM again, and I gave him Book 2 to go through. It will be interesting being a just a player again (running Ciri) for the first time in a couple decades. I'll still put up campaign journals, written from Ciri's point of view. And then I'll probably take the reins again for Book 3, and maybe switch off again for Book 4. We'll have to see.
That said, before I sign off, I'll make sure to craft maps and maybe Roll20 NPC sheets for Book 2 for Alak's player, just to make things a tad easier. I find having everything available at the click of a button makes things easier... though he is an old-style GM and may very well want to do the NPCs and enemies using non-virtual dice. As I said above, we'll have to see. But it should be an interesting experience.
Second time's the charm?
Sorry for the delay in getting this last campaign journal out. I made the mistake of initially writing it directly to the system and then somehow got a Page-Back which erased everything. And I was pretty much at the conclusion of the update as these things inevitably happen at that point.
This last game was mostly roleplay, as the group had taken out Radosek by this point. Everyone gathered in the ritual chamber and looked around, with Ciri taking the forefront to look for traps (of which she found many! None of which existed but she kept rolling 1s for Perception checks and was sure there were magical traps involved!) while Alak studied the map of Golarion.
After a spirited discussion and some three-sided coin flips (some players rolled 1d3 for their decision), the group decided to go through the odd door out and found Nazhena's bedroom. After failing Perception checks (rolling a 1), Ciri was absolutely sure there was multiple traps in the room... while she failed to try to detect the actual trap (the Statue trap)... but fortunately managed to make her saving throw to avoid Nazhena's Curse.
The group decided to divvy up the loot by dumping the scrolls on Alak (at Ciri's suggestion, and yes, I had an ulterior motive as the GM behind this) while also giving Alak the wand that Radosek had been using, while Ciri claimed the Robe of Useful Items, Araval was given the Ring of Regeneration, Thelin claimed the Cauldron of Overwhelming Allies, and the remaining treasure was divided up among the party as a whole. The group also talked about creating a Party Share where a significant amount of coinage would go and party members could use for spells of Raise Dead, needed magic items, or the like. The group managed average rolls to identify the items, with no result being over 10 of what was needed to learn the item's properties.
While she didn't follow through with the urge, Zvezda did sense an odd impulse from her Tiara to place it on the Trade Silver - one of the few items she started off with is a Scaling Magic Item, the Crystal Tiara. While Zvezda is unaware of the background of the item, I plan on having this be one of a half dozen items out there that were crafted by Baba Yaga herself. They require a sacrifice of gold, silver, and other valuables in order to unlock their true power. As such, its 5th level abilities will be unlocked in another level, and after Zvezda provides 900 gold worth of silver and other valuables. (My plans are for the other party members to gradually acquire additional Scaling Items.)
After a bit of work, Alak was able to decipher the Ritual Chamber, determine that the large globe was a depiction of Golarion, and even figure out where the Winter Portal in Taldor was located... and how it was connected to the Portal a few miles away from the Pale Tower. Sadly, there was no way to connect to the other Portals and shut down Elvanna's efforts to expand Irrisen's Winter across Golarion... but they could hopefully save one small part of Golarion for the time being. Lacking a memorized Conjuration spell, Alak made use of a Scroll of Mage Armor that was suddenly part of the group of scrolls Alak had been given (I wanted to get the plot moving), and he enacted the ritual to unravel the arcane ties between Irrisen and Taldor... and vanished in a flash of light even as the Portal itself vanished from the map!
This is when I ran into a small... hiccup. You see, plans were for Alak's player to take over duties as the GM for Book 2 (at least). Alak's player didn't want to run a GMPC, so we came up with a plot to remove Alak from the game for a period of time... but we didn't realize the group might think Alak was elsewhere in the Pale Tower itself! Fortunately, I'm agile enough in my thinking (even if not as good as when I was in my 20s and 30s in rolling with my players' punches) that I decided to have one of the Irriseni Mirror Sight scrolls remain behind. I had Ciri grab the scroll and rolled Use Magic Device for her... and rolled a modified 10. I snarled, burned one of her Hero Points (used primarily for if she were to die) and... rolled a Natural 1.
At that point I enacted an GM Override, said "screw the dice," and had Ciri possessed by the spirit of the Black Rider just long enough to cast the scroll. The group then saw the following scene:
The mirror fogs for a moment and then shows a scene. You see a clearing in the middle of a wooded area. There is a hut with chicken legs in sight, the chicken legs have manacles and a chain leading to a thick stake in the ground. Alak is in sight being held by a huge creature of crystal or ice, and a pale-haired woman who looks very much like the statues you've seen on this floor is forcing a ring on his finger. She turns toward you and snarls, and then waves her hand. The mirror darkens and then only reflects Ciri and the rest of you.
Yes. Alak was the prisoner of Nazhena, the White Witch who taught Radosek, murdered Thora, and had caused so much pain and suffering. Worse, she was aware of the group now, having seen their scrying (and Ciri), and she also had the Dancing Hut. Needless to say, Ciri started to freak out and was insisting they needed to reach Whitethrone as soon as possible.
Rather than clear out the rest of the Pale Tower, the group quietly gathered all the treasure they'd found and then headed back out of the Pale Tower. They took their dog sleds out (noticing that one of their dogs was missing even as Bordegga the Ice Troll hid in her shack as she'd devoured all of the food Freya had given her and then still took one of their dogs to sate her appetite for hot bloody flesh) and passed by a large patrol of around 12 guards who were returning to the Pale Tower from the direction of Waldsby.
When they reached Waldsby, the sun growing low in the sky as evening approached, they were met by a gory sight. Stake after stake lined the northern approach. Each one held the head of one of the townsfolk who had tried to flee to Taldor. A patrol had apparently caught up with the dozens of refugees. Many of them had scratches around the face and eyes, having apparently been attacked by ravens even as they fled the guard. How many people escaped harm was not known.
And that's where I left things, setting down my metaphorical GM's gavel, and ended the Snows of Summer, first book of the Reign of Winter. I will still be posting GM commentary for my friend's run, seeing I'm acting as a secondary GM providing technical support (creating maps and populating Roll20 for ease of gaming). But I also will be posting a player journal from the eyes of Ciri, starting way back at the start of the game and going through my friend's run of the game.
On a side note, if the group had escorted the people of Waldsby to the Winter Portal, they would have been able to save them. That they didn't shows there are consequences for their actions. Further, by not having killed the other guards in the Pale Tower, they now have an enemy fortress that will be behind them and likely sending out patrols. While (due to Captain Hestrig Orlov and Jairess having quietly fled the Tower) they lack the means of communicating with the ravens in the aerie (with the only fae remaining in the tower being the spriggan cook), Nazhena still can communicate with the Pale Tower Guard using the Irriseni Mirror Sight spell.
That said, Nazhena is in a bit of a bind. First, she has to deal with Alak. Even with the magical binding she placed on him, she can't just leave him alone. Second, her attempts to be returned to the Pale Tower are going to be refused as the Iron Guard are stubbornly refusing to remain stamped out and Queen Elvanna has insisted Nazhena keep the Dancing Hut safe. She can't tell anyone what has happened as that would be perceived as weakness and could cost Nazhena her life. So she is going to be forced to try and stop the group using the guards she brought with her to Whitethrone and the guards remaining in the Pale Tower.
It will be fun taking up the reins of being a player instead of a GM. It's been over a decade since I've last been on the other side of the GM's screen. While I've had bad GMs in the past (one reason why I'm so reluctant to be a player), I trust my friend and very much doubt this is going to be a bad experience. And I plan on learning on how to be a better GM by observing him run the game even as I play Ciri.
Ciri will also be undergoing some changes. I deliberately crafted her to be the group's +1. She (much like Essanne in my Rise of the Runelords campaign) was meant to fill a hole in the group's lineup. She will still be doing this... but I can dedicate myself to roleplaying just her now. And I can indulge in my more tactical mindset and let Ciri be true to herself - a charismatic and intelligent young woman who wants more than anything else to keep her brother safe and will burn Whitethrone and all of Irrisen to the ground if needed to do so.