|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
:( *offers hugs*
If I were to run it I'd have all the non-kobold workers moved up top as hostages as well instead of being murdered and have (I forgot her name) being legitimately angry rather than "kill all hoomans on sight!".
A tense negotiation would have made for an awesome scene. Instead we got murder psychotic protestors cause they're murdering everyone dungeon slog.
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010 Top 8
|
| 7 people marked this as a favorite. |
I played up the schism between Rekarek and Skerix.
Skerix wanted to seize the pagoda and let the workers go, Rekarek thought a ‘show of strength” was required. When Rekarek started killing people, Skerix took the rest hostage, both to keep the watch from retaliating before she could negotiate, and to keep the surviving workers safe from Rekarek.
I let some of this slip through Doopa, at the front gate.
They ended up fighting their way into the pagoda, and then negotiating with Skerix to release the hostages, letting about half the Stonescales go (they only arrested the ones who actually attacked them, along with the two leaders). They also chewed out Ama for causing the situation.
I’m going to give them the opportunity to testify at the kobold’s trial at some point (probably during downtime between book 1 & 2), and I suspect that at least a few with speak in Skerix’s favor. They seemed to like her.
|
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
Yeah, I think Skerix is portrayed in the text as a reasonable person with legitimate grievances, while Rekarek is portrayed as an a%!&~*! capitalizing on the legitimate grievances of others to satisfy their own ambitions.
I think a GM focusing on those two facts can make that section work out fine, though it is a bit dependent on how much the PCs care about who is in the right.
|
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010 Top 8
|
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
One of the things I’ve been planning/doing to maintain that day-to-day cop feel is running “Fair Patrol” segments whenever the players have downtime, or between chapters.
I split the group up into teams of 2, and have them patrol different parts of the fair, where I run short, non-combat, roleplay-focused encounters.
For example, one group got caught up in an Irriseni noble’s attempt to ditch her guards and explore the fair incognito. The players decided to cover for her, and gave her some advice on good/safe places to check out in the fair.
Another group ran into a leshy street preacher who was raving about the coming end times (a reference to the age of ashes campaign some of my players were in recently—two people were playing leshies, and both took the prophetic dreams background, so the GM decided all leshies were experiencing disturbing dreams of fire).
|
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010 Top 8
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Hmm. That's a good question. I didn't catch that.
I have noticed complex traps list a Stealth modifier (for initiative) and a DC (to spot it before hand). My guess is that since the rune doesn't list the latter, the intent is that it can't usually be spotted before it goes off.
How I think I'm going to run it is, the PCs need some way to see invisible things to spot the trap before triggering it. If they've got see invisibility up, I'll use the Summoning Rune's Stealth DC (10 + listed modifier).
If they don't have see invisibility or some other way to spot invisible traps, they won't get a chance to spot it.
If they trigger it, I'll have the trap roll initiative, using its Stealth modifier. I'll compare the traps Stealth roll against each PCs Perception DC--if it fails to beat a PC, that player will see the monsters get summoned. Since the monsters appear on the rune, that tells them where the rune is, and they can try to disable it instead of fighting the cinder rats (for flavor reasons, I'll also probably have the rune briefly become visible as it summons the monsters).
Initiative will proceed as normal from there.
Edit: I don't know if that's how its supposed to work, but that seems like a fair approach to me.
So starting the game Friday pretty excited for it sure got everything lined up expect one thing I want to add in is games if the players want to explore the festival.
I can't seem to find it but wasn't there a spreadsheet filled with games and rules posted before, I know it's a bit vague but if someone has a link to it or even a thread with a bunch of games in that would be amazing.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
One of the things I’ve been planning/doing to maintain that day-to-day cop feel is running “Fair Patrol” segments whenever the players have downtime, or between chapters.
I split the group up into teams of 2, and have them patrol different parts of the fair, where I run short, non-combat, roleplay-focused encounters.
For example, one group got caught up in an Irriseni noble’s attempt to ditch her guards and explore the fair incognito. The players decided to cover for her, and gave her some advice on good/safe places to check out in the fair.
Another group ran into a leshy street preacher who was raving about the coming end times (a reference to the age of ashes campaign some of my players were in recently—two people were playing leshies, and both took the prophetic dreams background, so the GM decided all leshies were experiencing disturbing dreams of fire).
I really like it, my group finished the first chapter the last week, ithink that i will make this so they explore the fair a little. (And see the dragonfly pagoda before the chapter 2)
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
(And a whole other argument of Making the Kobolds protesting being underpaid unreasonable and extremely homicidal at the flip of a switch is a perverse mockery, especially given what’s going on now in real life.)
Absolutely agree. It's horrid.
I haven't gotten to this part as a GM yet, but I am planning on completely subverting this. Players will find out that it was the employer that, trying to crush the strike, hired goons that murdered some of the workers, pinkerton-style. Meanwhile, the kobolds and their "kidnapped victims" are actually working together and the whole case is a ruse to have either the employer surrender to their terms, or have the guard intervene and find out the truth.
|
Re: the kobold situation
Would it make sense for the workers held hostage/killed be 'scabs' and that the current situation was an escalation from protest by Rekarek? That might put Skerix in a more understandable position of being caught between a rock and a hard place, needing to balance rekarek's temper against the scabs and wanting to continue her peaceful protest. She might need to hold hostages as a way to get Rekarek from just outright killing them.
Hi,
Just curious, how do DMs handle leveling in the middle of a dungeon? My PCs are about to enter the Dreaming Palace, and I'm not sure how to handle the level up. Do you refresh all thier daily abilities or just give them the new ones?
Most new abilities/feats go into effect right away. Spontaneous casters get their new spells right away, but prepared casters will need to spend time to prepare their new spells (study their spellbook, pray to their god, etc.)
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
My modification to the whole kobold thing:
- Im gonna have a leshy in the Tipsy Tengu chatting it up with the party about poor wages. He will describe how they get pay deductions for materials used in labor and how at the end they may only end up with a pittance for a week of work. He won't work at the Pagoda but will say that cheap non-human labor is a widespread thing in Absalom. This guy won't be a kobold, so it won't telegraph it too much.
- None of the kobolds outright killed any other workers. Instead, Rekarek rigged some of building to collapse. It was supposed to happen once the non-kobold workers in the area were off shift (and the area was clear) but the manager forced them to work overtime. Now Rek's desperate and, fearing being brought up on murder charges, she's threatening to bring the whole place down unless she's given a pardon (partial bluff, she can only take down some of the construction).
- Rek will let the party pass uninjured if they agree to see her and her compatriots safely out of the city unharmed with enough money to sail to another port of call. The manager will agree to pay for this if the party keeps it all hush-hush. This will come back to bite them later when the Ollo hears of it and they end up getting a lower stipend (or maybe lose some of their discount at the quartermaster). He cannot fire them since he has no hard evidence but he puts the party on notice. The choice won't be murder the kobolds or no. It will be follow the law and bring in this person whose recklessness led to death of coworkers or free this person who was mistreated by their employers and acted out of desperation.
- Rek will be initially hostile as she is scared. Her and her people will fight but can be reasoned with. However, odds are these kobolds will fall if the party does not approach with stealth and do things like listen to kobold conversations, try to knock out/question guards, etc.
- Rek may agree to be taken in but only if those kobolds she has enlisted in her cause go free. Taking this middle way does not come with any blow back and gains the party some kobold contacts. However, it may comprimise their ideals if they are hardcore pro-law.
- Skerix cautioned Rekarek against sabotage. The humans "held" there are sympathetic to the kobold cause but Rek won't let them leave (leverage she can't let go of). So Skerix took them in. Skerix is more than willing to talk. However, she too is scared of the police and will fight back if attacked. In essence, Skerix has broken no laws and is much the same situation as the humans with her.
- The manager doesn't reveal the poor pay or overwork. She just states that these kobolds killed some non-kobold workers and destroyed a part of the pagoda. She paints them a ravenous and she laments hiring them.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
My group didn't kill any Kobolds or arrest any of them, except Rakerak .
They actually were sympathetic and negotiated issues between Ama and Skerix.
I'm glad everyone else is handling this encounter well :)
Anyone have any tips for running the House of Planes? I made dossiers for the missing persons and the party isn't even aware that Henry is the culprit. :)
Yeah, playing up the angle in the book saying that Rakerak was responsible for the people killed in the uprising and having her be on a twisted sort of power trip seems like the right call.
My party tried negotiating with her at the front gate and noticed that she wasn't interested in anything resembling a peaceful resolution. After beating a hasty retreat, the party returned and snuck past her encounter and found the hostages with Skerix. They ended up with the peaceful resolution for the hostages and their captors, only arresting Rakerak after learning that she was seemingly single-handedly responsible for the deaths which aligned with what they experienced at the gate.
After that was about 95% of the way to a TPK with the cube, relying on a final hit from the last character conscious. Engulf feels pretty dang strong after having run a few creatures with it at various levels.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
So, I am currently planning on running the AP by just directly giving the players money as a sporadic stipend (as they get time to check in, they will get enough money to raise them to their wealth by level).
However, I want them to have access to some of the unique items in the AP, so just making everything gold seems like a loss. Someone upthread mentioned having a blacksmith type character to do it, and I thought that was pretty cool, but I wanted to take it my own direction. That's when I noticed the mimic! Apparently for years I've been thinking of mimics as near mindless beasts, but they actually have average mental stats.
What I'm thinking is, I'll rework the mimic's back story so that his crimes really only call for something light, like community service. As part of serving that out, he will reveal to the agents that he has a very peculiar ability. He can not only mimic items, be he is particularly good at creating exact copies! He just needs a bit of gold (half the item's cost) to seed the process. The main wrinkle is that he tends to get bored, so he's only willing to create one copy of an item.
I've run into a bit of a stumbling block though. Does anyone have any ideas on how I should change his story (literally eating people) to better fit the adventure, and make long term community service a viable punishment?
|
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010 Top 8
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
So, I am currently planning on running the AP by just directly giving the players money as a sporadic stipend (as they get time to check in, they will get enough money to raise them to their wealth by level).
However, I want them to have access to some of the unique items in the AP, so just making everything gold seems like a loss. Someone upthread mentioned having a blacksmith type character to do it, and I thought that was pretty cool, but I wanted to take it my own direction. That's when I noticed the mimic! Apparently for years I've been thinking of mimics as near mindless beasts, but they actually have average mental stats.
What I'm thinking is, I'll rework the mimic's back story so that his crimes really only call for something light, like community service. As part of serving that out, he will reveal to the agents that he has a very peculiar ability. He can not only mimic items, be he is particularly good at creating exact copies! He just needs a bit of gold (half the item's cost) to seed the process. The main wrinkle is that he tends to get bored, so he's only willing to create one copy of an item.
I've run into a bit of a stumbling block though. Does anyone have any ideas on how I should change his story (literally eating people) to better fit the adventure, and make long term community service a viable punishment?
That's such a fun idea!
Maybe Hendrid used the mimic for corpse disposal instead of outright murder?
Or the mimic could be a victim--maybe Hendrid kept it captive to exploit its duplication powers, or harvest its adhesive slime.
You could even add a trap to one of the rooms using the adhesive slime somehow, like a man-sized glue trap or something.
That's such a fun idea!
Maybe Hendrid used the mimic for corpse disposal instead of outright murder?
Or the mimic could be a victim--maybe Hendrid kept it captive to exploit its duplication powers, or harvest its adhesive slime.
You could even add a trap to one of the rooms using the adhesive slime somehow, like a man-sized glue trap or something.
Oh! I really like the corpse disposal idea! I was already thinking a bit about the mimic being the source of some of his traps, but I had almost forgotten about the glue. I'm sure there will be somewhere perfect to put something like that. Thanks! I think between the corpse disposal and (unwilling) aiding with the traps, there should be plenty to justify some community service instead. It's not every campaign you get to redeem a mimic, so I think my players will love it.
My party hit the House of the Planes...
Id love to hear more how others have handled it for ideas.
Also, curious about how folks have handled XP?
Based on guidance my party is running low. They didn't investigate all the Pagoda... but some of it is talking through a bit more encounters than the adventure planned.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Has anyone had issues with their players immediately suspecting the big bad when he talks to them? I know some people speculated that would happen earlier in the thread, but I figure by now some people have actually run the adventure, and have actual experience.
Has anyone had issues with their players immediately suspecting the big bad when he talks to them? I know some people speculated that would happen earlier in the thread, but I figure by now some people have actually run the adventure, and have actual experience.
I'd wager that's a downside of playing a more "investigative-heavy" AP, assuming you told your players that. Means they're immediately on the lookout for villains, and anyone who's watched a procedural detective show knows Rule 1 is introduce the bad guy as early and innocuously as possible!
My advice would be to actively throw them off his scent. If they investigate them, intercept their progress before they make it to his murder house. Maybe find a way to show him as a small-time thief or something, so that they think that's the extent of his villainy? Possibly paint him as a victim of a haunting or something? Anything to convince them they've checked the box on Why He's There.
Advice for DMs. I highly recommend you let the players rest a day before running the zoo rather than sending them after walking the beat. Maybe your party won't use up many resources walking the beat, but if they do they will be lacking resources in a very tough fight at the Menagerie for 1st level characters. Boosting them to 2nd level prior to the zoo and Pagoda area should make the encounters more entertaining with less of a razor thin margin for error or bad rolls creating a TPK.
The above advice should improve the play experience of the 1st module in the Edgewatch series.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
My modification to the whole kobold thing:
- Im gonna have a leshy in the Tipsy Tengu chatting it up with the party about poor wages. He will describe how they get pay deductions for materials used in labor and how at the end they may only end up with a pittance for a week of work. He won't work at the Pagoda but will say that cheap non-human labor is a widespread thing in Absalom. This guy won't be a kobold, so it won't telegraph it too much.
- None of the kobolds outright killed any other workers. Instead, Rekarek rigged some of building to collapse. It was supposed to happen once the non-kobold workers in the area were off shift (and the area was clear) but the manager forced them to work overtime. Now Rek's desperate and, fearing being brought up on murder charges, she's threatening to bring the whole place down unless she's given a pardon (partial bluff, she can only take down some of the construction).
- Rek will let the party pass uninjured if they agree to see her and her compatriots safely out of the city unharmed with enough money to sail to another port of call. The manager will agree to pay for this if the party keeps it all hush-hush. This will come back to bite them later when the Ollo hears of it and they end up getting a lower stipend (or maybe lose some of their discount at the quartermaster). He cannot fire them since he has no hard evidence but he puts the party on notice. The choice won't be murder the kobolds or no. It will be follow the law and bring in this person whose recklessness led to death of coworkers or free this person who was mistreated by their employers and acted out of desperation.
- Rek will be initially hostile as she is scared. Her and her people will fight but can be reasoned with. However, odds are these kobolds will fall if the party does not approach with stealth and do things like listen to kobold conversations, try to knock out/question guards, etc.
- Rek may agree to be taken in but only if those kobolds she has enlisted in her cause go free. Taking this middle way does not come with any blow back and gains the party some kobold contacts. However, it may comprimise their ideals if they are hardcore pro-law.
- Skerix cautioned Rekarek against sabotage. The humans "held" there are sympathetic to the kobold cause but Rek won't let them leave (leverage she can't let go of). So Skerix took them in. Skerix is more than willing to talk. However, she too is scared of the police and will fight back if attacked. In essence, Skerix has broken no laws and is much the same situation as the humans with her.
- The manager doesn't reveal the poor pay or overwork. She just states that these kobolds killed some non-kobold workers and destroyed a part of the pagoda. She paints them a ravenous and she laments hiring them.
I applied a similar method (not playing Rekarek as a maniacal, power-hungry battle-leader, but as someone who was trying to play tough and fly by the seat of her pants after her protest bombing ended up killing four of her human colleagues and impressing her fellow kobolds), and wanted to relate my group's experience with it so that may help any GM who hasn't gotten to this part yet.
I roleplayed the NPCs in a maybe slightly too "happy to talk" way, and although Rekarek (the only one with Skerix that spoke common), immediately shouted her demands and threatened to harm the hostages if they were not met, the players talked her into revealing a bit more than she intended about the situation, and persuaded her to let the mute cleric of the Reaper of Reputation (I know, I know, I might write about it around this forum later) come into the pagoda unarmed to see if the hostages were really there in the first place, and alive and well.
Thus, she (the cleric) was able to meet with Skerix, who looked much more like a strike leader, and who Rekarek didn't dare outright attacking.
Thus, the players understood that the hostages weren't really in danger, and that the claims of both Ama Uomi and Rekarek were supposed to paint them in a more "serious" light (Ama din't talk about the increasingly poor working conditions as the Pagoda's construction was going late, and Rekarek pretended that her killing her human colleagues was intentional).
The players didn't dare enter the Pagoda after they realised it had been rigged with traps, but they didn't even wanted to do it: they were entirely focused on negociating a peaceful solution and establishing clearly what had happened.
In the end, they handcuffed and took to the station both Rekarek and Ama Uomi, fairly confident that the battle leader was the only kobold guilty of anything criminal, and that the chief architect had been too far.
Some of them talked afterwards with Sekrix and the remaining workers, and learned then of Jeremin Hoff's involvement and about the House of Planes.
So, in the end, my players resolved the whole Dragonfly Pagoda by talking it out in the first room, and I gave them full XP for all the kobold encounters.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I seriously cannot believe that it is expected for a lvl 1 party to take on the menagerie after a day of patrolling. I'm surprised there weren't more TPKs from this series of encounters. Very tough series of encounters for even a lvl 2 party.
|
I seriously cannot believe that it is expected for a lvl 1 party to take on the menagerie after a day of patrolling. I'm surprised there weren't more TPKs from this series of encounters. Very tough series of encounters for even a lvl 2 party.
I made it relatively easy for them to capture the animals. They lured the rust monster into one of the wagons with iron, and baited the cockatrice into another one. I don't see how a first level party is supposed to be able to kill a rust monster.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I seriously cannot believe that it is expected for a lvl 1 party to take on the menagerie after a day of patrolling. I'm surprised there weren't more TPKs from this series of encounters. Very tough series of encounters for even a lvl 2 party.I made it relatively easy for them to capture the animals. They lured the rust monster into one of the wagons with iron, and baited the cockatrice into another one. I don't see how a first level party is supposed to be able to kill a rust monster.
I'm surprised they expect a 1st level party to go through 4 encounters that could drain resources, then go to an encounter with 5 or 6 more dangerous encounters that can be dangerous. Even the skill rolls needed to overcome encounters peacefully are 40 to 50% success rate. If you fail, you generally have a fight. Pretty crazy.
|
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010 Top 8
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
My 1st level group managed to take down the rust monster, but I played Rusty fairly dumb--attacking with his antennae first, spreading attacks around to different targets, mostly going after big sources of metal instead of trying to outright murder PCs.
Aside from giving the group a night's rest between patrol and the menagerie, it might be a worthwhile idea to have Ollo give them some healing potions when they head out to the zoo. If you don't want to mess with the treasure, even just giving them the healing items they'd normally find in the vet's wagon would probably be a big help in the early encounters.
The other change I would make is having the ankhrav use its acid cone breath weapon on the crystal window as the PCs show up, instead of hitting the group with it, so its unavailable during the fight. That's a lot of damage to hit the whole party with, and at that point they probably don't have a lot of great in-combat damage mitigation options.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I had the bar brawl and the patrol on day one, and the zoo completely separately on day two. Otherwise it really doesn't make much sense.
The real problem in the zoo is the ankhrav. Rust monster isn't a big threat when you have a blacksmith two metres from you, and the owlbear is tough but doable (one party straight up pulverized him while the other lured him back to his room and shut all the doors). But the ankhrav, oh boy, is TPK material. The players will likely be standing next to each other in a 2 squares-wide corridor, so the breath can get the whole group down to single digits. In both of my games, players went just NOPE after getting hit by it (and I rolled triple sixes once), barricaded the door and had to heal and devise an actual plan, so cutting the acid cone from his attacks might be a good idea.
|
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010 Top 8
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
My players did something similar--though I didn't give them a full chance to rest and plan--just a few rounds to recover as the ankhrav battered and blasted its way through the door.
It turned into a fun running battle back out into the menagerie grounds, with players taking cover around the wagons and attacking with ranged weapons/cantrips.