Back in the day, I played Ultima Online.  If you’re not familiar with it, it was one of the first MMOG’s in the U.S. and is still around today.  UO was very much a sandbox, there were no classes, no levels, no game directed direction to your play.  And in the first year or two of the game there wasn’t a whole lot of content.  Back then content was pretty easy to categorize.  It was random spawn that you go and kill.  No quests, no story lines, no ‘phat lewt’.   But back then programmers and servers alike weren’t all that good and the amount of spawn that was available was way under what was needed to keep players entertained because the apps and hardware couldn’t support it.   We even coined a phrase “Connecticut Online” because the countryside was completely empty of things that might prove dangerous to you.

The combats were pretty simple too, you either hit something with a hard object, shot something with a ranged weapon or hit them with the same spell over and over again *Corp por corp por corp por*.

As a result of being a combat light game, light in that there weren’t a lot of options to choose from and pretty static and infrequent things to use those few options on, players become role players.  Sitting around taverns and talking, hanging out in their crafting shops selling things to their customers, and having pretend wars with groups of ‘orcs’ or ‘elves’ and generally playing a persona rather than playing the game.

Then came EQ which had levels and lots of things to kill.  And introduced to the masses the concepts of tanking, crowd control, healing, buffers and debuffers, getting behind someone for the back stab.  Combat went from going into combat mode and trying to stay next to your target so you could ‘swing’ the sword when your timer ran out in UO to having a toolbar filled with icons of various things you could do and combinations and interactions with other players in EQ.

And roleplaying disappeared completely.  Combat was interesting and going after that next carrot on the treadmill became the most important thing.   Killing 10 of this for a NPC who had one line when you clicked it “Bring me 10 of this” was the extent of game play.  And it was good, or at least enough for 99% of the gamers.

Which brings me to an observation and the basis for this post.  Many people decry 4th Edition as the death of roleplaying because the books don’t have any rules for it, that the books are all about combat.  And in that I think they’re right but for the wrong reasons that they claim and not that it kills roleplaying but that it impacts it.  In an aside, “Seriously people?  You need rules to roleplay?”

I believe a direct correlation can be made, at least by me, as to why this might indeed be the case taking the MMOG’s impact on gaming and applying it to our tables.

It’s because combat in 4th Edition or Hero Systems or Mutants & Masterminds  is interesting, much like combat in EQ was.  It’s entertaining and really isn’t that why we’re playing these games?  To be entertained?

In these types of systems players have a huge ‘toolbar’ filled with various things they can try during combat, powers that let them buff and de-buff, crowd control, heal and hurt, single target and masses of targets.    The sheer number of cool things that a character can do is enough to make one giddy.  The GM has way cool monsters and bad guys to run and pit against the players.   Very little is cookie cutter which his bad guys, he has access to sugar cookies, oreos, gingersnaps, all kinds of tasty variety for the players to consume and enjoy.

Then there are systems like Savage Worlds or Fudge or Spirit of the Century or to kick it old school Advanced Dungeons and Dragons.  These are combat mechanic light much like UO was.  Your toolbar of tricks is very limited, you either turn on auto combat and try and stay near your target so you can ‘swing’ your sword at them when the timer (your turn) goes off or you shoot them with your ranged weapon or you cast the same basic spell over and over again to kill the target.   The GM has the same issue, all his bad guys do tend to be cookie cutter with minor mechanical differences, all sugar cookies but some with white sprinkles instead of blue ones instead of powdered sugar.

As a result the amount of roleplay in my experience both online in a MMOG or offline at the table with your friends can be affected in direct inverse ratio to how interesting and involved the combat system is with the added bonus/penalty of how many new toys (carrots) you gain along the way.   Players act differently when there is a new toy to pick up, a new power to be gained, all just dangling out of their reach waiting for the next block of experience than there is when the prize is simply the doing.   Some game systems promote the journey’s end, while others promote the journey itself.

And I’m not saying you can’t roleplay with any system or that you can’t have fun and entertaining combats in any system.  Obviously you can.  We’ve had periods where roleplaying that lasted for a couple of hours straight without any combat in 4th Edition and had vastly entertaining fights in Savage Worlds.

What I am trying to say is that the system you choose to play can have a direct impact on the results at your table and these impacts can be obvious and sometimes subtle.

So what’s the end game of all this?  Not much to be honest other than perhaps if you want a game that’s heavier in roleplay then perhaps choosing a lighter system might promote that while a group that might be more interested in combat might choose a heavier system.

Savage Worlds lets you as the GM come up with on the fly encounters that are as interesting as any pre-planned encounter simply because it is so stats light.   This isn’t necessarily a rousing endorsement as the variety of attacks, barring magic, psi or super powered settings is pretty limited.  With the ability to shoot, hit or throw something at someone it’s not hard to make a creature on the fly.   This is definitely a pro and a con both.  It’s a pro because it makes it extremely easy for a DM to sandbox a session and to accommodate the players when they bypass his carefully crafted plotlines.   It’s a con in that the bad guys can tend to blur together mechanically.  This puts more creative pressure on the GM to make the bad guys distinct based on something other than their game mechanics.  Which is a pro and con both depending on your players needs and your own creative abilities.

With systems like 4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons or Hero Systems, on the fly encounters requires more pre-prepping, you have to have already created some generic stand-ins to haul out when the players go off the track as in both cases making reasonable balanced creatures on the fly is a hit or miss procedure and requires a fairly deep familiarity with the systems.

In Savage Worlds even after only a couple of sessions it’s pretty easy to just go with ad hoc encounters.

Another thing I’m finding is that much like the original Dungeons and Dragons maps aren’t necessary for a lot of encounters and when they are, they’re much alike, simple line drawings on an erasable map that take seconds to knock out.  4th Edition battles, because of the strength of impact of movement powers/effects and the like really need ‘good’ maps to take full advantage of the system.   Places of difficult terrain, obstacles, pits, shadows, braziers full of flaming oil, patches of ice etc. that the players and NPC’s can use to make use of their abilities.   I have a huge roll of maps that I pre-drew out every Saturday morning for the upcoming battles during my 4th Edition campaign.   Which typically meant the players would encounter those battles and led to a more focused non-sandbox campaign.

Encounters being necessary to play out is another factor.  With 4th Edition the system by RAW requires a lot of battles that are really pretty pointless because they’re designed as resource drains.  To burn off the player’s daily allotment of resources.  It’s a practical guarantee that the players are going to win and the chances of someone dying in the first few battles is pretty nil given a typical setup.   I deviated from this with mine in that I just didn’t have the pointless battles, each battle was typically rated as Hard and required the players to burn a lot of resources to win it.   And then there would typically be enough downtime to recover.  Occasionally I would have the chained battle sequence where the intent was to wear them down but for the most part it was boss battles.

With Savage Worlds when you though add in the wild card factor of any attack by any creature has the chance to kill any other creature with one attack it means that every creature is a force that can’t be ignored and even what would be a pointless battle in 4th Edition becomes something that could have major impact.

As an example in our last Zombie Run session, three of the party escorted a engineer into a nuclear reactor so he could fix a problem.  They ran in to four undead.  In 4th Edition this would be a hand wave at best, there’s just no way 4 minions could possibly cause a problem for even a single dnd character assuming the minions were of appropriate level.   To make the disparity worse in this instance in the first round three of the undead were killed leaving a single undead for the three of them to fight.   And yet this single undead almost killed one of the players and perhaps has due to possible infection.

In our last session which lasted our typical 5 hours roughly, the group had an encounter with Zombear (boss battle), a band of raiders (boss plus horde), an ambush by snipers, another band of raiders (horde) and a group of undead that were played out tactically.  That’s 5 tactical encounters in 5 hours something we never managed with 4th edition and the actual tactical dice rolling portions of the session took perhaps 2 hours of the session total.

In many systems like 4th Edition or Champions or whatever, such encounters would have been unnecessary to tactically play out simply because they wouldn’t, couldn’t  have any impact barring astronomically screwed die rolling.  The player characters would simply have been in no danger from any of it and personally I’d of hand waved it with dialogue, “About 10 minutes outside the base you take fire from ambush positions on the road and…” made up something about what might have happened.  Rather than playing it out as we did.

There’s also a subtle issue with 4th Edition in that since the participants in combat are so diverse that combat becomes a joy in and of itself and with the players and GM’s knowing or unknown influence the combat can overshadow the story simply because there are so many cool things everyone can do in combat.

With Champions, like many of universal systems (GURPs, Mutants and Masterminds) the games can end up where building unique and cool characters and then having them fight other unique and cool characters can end up being the primary source of entertainment simply because it is fun and entertaining to take a pile of build points and see what you can come up, taking a character concept, “I ran over Death in my truck and now I have to take his place.” and then building powers around that.  In our heyday we played a lot of champions and a lot of it was character building and set piece fighting with just enough storyline to let us make more cool characters to use.   This isn’t a bad thing, just another area where the game mechanics influence the game play in a significant fashion.

Anyway as I continue to bounce between the game systems it’s interesting to see the effects the mechanics has on the game play.   If you could somehow manage it, it would be extremely intriguing to me to see how the same group would play through the same storyline but with different systems. But that would require me to break out my time machine and after the last time I’m not doing that again barring dire emergency.

And as you may know in my old age I’ve become a bit aggressive toward speeding mechanics up where possible as slow mechanics just aren’t fun to me.

One of the most common and most easily fixed issues that’s not really applicable to the game mechanics is that  I hear from practically everyone I listen to podcast-wise, regardless of the game system is the GM/DM going “Does that hit you?”, followed by a pause as the player checks their data and then responds “Yay or nay” as appropriate.  With perhaps a 1 in 4 chance of a clever quip or false answer followed by a correction.   Going back decades (literally), I’ve always had a piece of paper with the player’s AC’s or PD/ED or [fill in the protection of the system here] in front of me.   This seems like such a an obvious thing that perhaps it’s easily overlooked.  GM’s deal with monster data and PC’s deal with PC data mind set perhaps?

4th Edition DnD adds a very obvious slowness hook to any game session in that rather than the old school, “I roll a d20 to see if I hit.  I hit?  Okay I roll this d8 and add +X to see if I do damage.” way of combat, a player even at first level has typically 5 or more powers and on top of that various other things that they have to choose from each round and each power has different damage output, different bonuses to hit, different side effects and for any given situation there may be 2 or more powers that are very applicable and a couple of others that are applicable making a decision a time intensive affair. “Do we need to slow this guy down?  Should I unleash my Daily power to try and take it out?  Is someone else having a hard time hitting and I should use this one that grants Combat Advantage or grants that guy a bonus?”

If you follow the site, you’ll know I’m currently trying Savage Worlds.  It’s catchphrase is Fast Furious Fun.  The Fast portion of that really stood out and made it worthy of notice.   It’s an odd little system, unique as far as I know in its use of dice and its dice mechanics.   But I’m finding those mechanics to be very slow to put into practice all things relative. The dice mechanic defies their Fast Furious Fun slogan.  So much so that I expanded my die rolling application for a friend with vision trouble to handle the Savage World mechanics to speed things up by rolling and figuring out the base roll + the wild die + exploding dice with one press of a key.

As a for instance in Savage Worlds, say a PC want’s to Shoot someone.  He rolls two dice, a d6 and a dx where X is his Shooting skill die.  Now if one of those dice roll a max value (i.e. a 6 on a d6 or a 4 on a d4) then you roll it again and add the next roll to the first.  Now we’re up to 3 individual dice to see if we hit.  And if two of those dice roll max we’re up to 4 dice, each separate rolls.  So let’s say we did manage to shoot our target, now we roll more dice, typically 2dx.  And yes if one of those dice roll max value we pick it up and roll it again and add the new roll to the old one.    With 2d6, one in three rolls is going to require us to pick up one of those dice and roll it again.

As you might imagine this is a slower mechanic than some, perhaps most.  Sure something like Exalted where you roll a double handful of dice is going to be slower.  Heck super heroic level in Heroes is slow simply because of the sheer number of dice you have to roll every attack and then count up both the body and the stun values.  Slow kills game play IMO.

Now overall, combat in Savage Worlds is fast but a lot of that is really due to the fact that on both sides, any character has a chance to kill any other character with a single die roll.  Granted it might require two series of really good rolls (to hit and to damage) but the chance is there.   Add in the fact that roughly 90% of the NPC’s can take one hit and down they go.  And the fact that 99% of the creatures, PC/NPC can only take 4 hits and down they go and you have a fairly short life span for any given creature.  Unlike say 4th Edition where a low level solo might have 200 hit points and take roughly 20 hits to go down.

But the actual combat speed is slow and all this boils down to is in virtually every system  for combat a character rolls two sets of dice, one set to see if they hit and then another set to see how much damage they produce.   This has been the basis of combat systems in most RPG’s since we’ve had RPG’s really. And each roll typically has math involved.   “I rolled this, I add this, I have this temporary bonus or minus.  I hit or miss.  Now I roll this, I add this and I have this temporary bonus or minus.”

It seems to me that a unified dice roll should be possible to come up with where the degree of success of your roll to hit determines damage, rather than the vast majority of the binary systems.  Well I guess some where there is a critical hit mechanic could be trinary.  By binary/trinary I mean you either missed, you hit, or you hit as well as you could.  Damage is a completely separate roll and you might do a lot of damage or a tiny bit of damage (or no damage in many systems) and has little to no bearing on how ‘well’ you hit the target with the exception of those systems with a critical hit mechanic which is usually a pretty low percentage chance.

In an aside, there’s ORE or One Role Engine of course  but that system has so many issues with it in terms of math in terms of degrees of viable usable difficulty settings that it’s hopeless, again my opinion, yours can differ.  But I ran a lot of ‘Monte Carlo’ simulations of percentages with this system and the problems surfaced pretty quickly.

I’ll be honest and say my issue with combat slowness has really peaked with Savage Worlds with its exploding dice system piled on top of the creatures having defenses against both getting hit (Parry/Fixed 4) and taking Damage (Toughness value).   To put it in other systems terms everyone has damage resistance, or a minimum value that any damage roll has to equal to have any chance of hurting the target.  Just so you don’t think I’m singling out Savage Worlds, Hero System has the same system with it’s ED/PD (and Resistant ED/PD) but at least in Hero System die rolls don’t ‘explode’ which adds to the time it takes to roll dice.

But is it really possible to have a unified system?  Sure, you can do like we did with 4th Edition and just apply average damage on a regular hit and max damage on a critical hit.  In the long run the values work out exactly the same (within very minor deviations due to rounding issues).   But systems with damage thresholds like Savage Worlds, Hero Systems, Gurps(?) this doesn’t work as well or at all.  And toss in the exploding dice mechanic and it really breaks.  ANd of course this is still a binary system.  Either you hit or you missed there’s no variation where a really good to hit roll hits harder.

To explain the issue in more detail (goodness I’m getting long winded tonight) with these types of systems, in Savage Worlds it’s completely possible that a character could roll some extremely high number, something along the lines of 1% chance of ever rolling something that high and then completely fail to do any damage to it’s target because they rolled low on damage and didn’t break the damage threshold i.e. Toughness value of the target. FWIW this  really steals the thunder of rolling so well on the to-hit, to for instance roll three 6′s in a roll and end up with a 22 to hit and then roll a damage total of 6 against a creature with a Toughness of 7 and I’m tryng to come up with something to make the ‘game feel’ of this system feel better to me.  Right now I’m leaning toward any critical hit (both sides BTW, NPC and PC alike) will always result in a Shaken status regardless of damage.  It might make it a little gritty though and more deadly definitely.

This brings up another issue.  Randomness favors the NPC’s in any System.  The more random the results the more the PC’s get screwed by things.  Why?  Because the NPC’s typically are only subject to a very few rolls.  They just don’t live long enough to be affected by random chance.  PC’s on the other hand live a very long time, barring killer GM’s, and are as a result subjected to LOTS of random rolls.

Okay I’m diverging all over the board now so I guess I should wrap this up.  The sole point for you take away from this I suppose is Speed Kills.  Or rather the lack of Speed in a mechanic.  It kills player attention spans, game flow, energy and overall entertainment.  So anything you can do to get rid of the slowness helps.  And given the most used mechanic of ANY RPG is combat rolls, speeding those up is going to have the greatest effect of anything you can do.

Or such is my thought.  Your thoughts will probably vary greatly.

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Sushanna Enjoying A Sunset

This is our Finale session for the summer, during the hiatus we’ll be delving into the Savage Worlds system.

Everyone is present and accounted for in this session, Biminey, Stak, T’Balktu, Torel, Visra.  Our heroes have reached level 10 in the quest to end the dangers to their little corner of the world.

We join them in Aricee’s lair where the dragon, shifted into human female form, instructs them in their tasks, how they must defeat the Guardian of the Lance of Unmaking, recover the Lance and then go to Darkmith to destroy the Chaosborn.

T’Balktu and Aricee spend a few hours alone while the rest work on their gear and Biminey crafts magical items.  Aricee gifts T’Balktu for his performance with a matching set of axes, the greataxe known as Ghost Slayer and the throwing axe known as Splintertree.  He is pleased as was she.  And it’s not everyone who gets to lay with a dragon.  Which I’m sure will have no dire consequences…

They proceed toward the Guardian’s lair after Aricee assures them that she will help them return after they find out it’s a chute down into a room.  Biminey uses his Ladder ritual to make it easy to descend into the depths.

There they find a floorless room with flipping platforms on gears and pistons to stand on.  As the fourth one comes down the platform flips and almost tosses Biminey [I think] into the bottomless darkness but a quick grab by one of the other’s saves him from certain death. [Yes this was a return to the Save or Die of the old days but it is the season finale and the dangers are ramped up accordingly.]

They spread out and defeat the constructs that are attacking them for serious damage, inadvertently spreading out and reducing the risk of any particular platform flipping over. [A platform flipped on a roll of 15 or high, +2 for each person on the platform over 1.  By splitting up they made it a lot less likely that a platform would flip.  Purely unintentional on their part.]

They moved around the room, jumping from platform to platform with Biminey working his way closer to the central brain to shut it down but the amount of damage the party can pump out swiftly overwhelmed the mobile portions of the construct.  There was another bit of a hair raiser as T’Balktu jumped on the platform that Biminey was on and caused it to flip over sending T’Balktu plunging to his death only to be snagged at the last second by Bimney’s Acrobatics roll (which he has no skill in) saving T’Balktu’s player from having two deaths in the campaign.

Under the platforms they uncovered the Lance and retrieved with T’Balktu nimbly climbing the pistols and gears to get to it.  There was no sign of Aricee so they left the room of the guardian by T’Balktu using the lance to open a passage through the shielding magic.

Aricee was waiting at the top and she had a bit of an interlude with T’Balktu in a frozen moment of time where she gave him her True Name so he could destroy the crystal binding her to her service as the tunnel’s guardian.   When he destroyed the crystal embedded into her chest a two headed dragon shadow was cast from the explosion of light.  T’Balktu kept this bit of information to himself.

They talked with Aricee about what they were supposed to do, “Kill the chaosborn” and she was going to get them to their destination and bring their airship to them and support them in their battle.

[In an aside, with herself free from her captivity she didn't give a rat's ass about the chaosborn, a minor annoyance only to her and simply wanted the party out of her hair figuratively speaking.  When she didn't show up to help, when they had to walk back because there was no airship, and later on as Biminey figures out the whole 'explode the airship' was bullshit the light began to dawn on the group.  "Never trust a dragon." isn't a phrase that came about by whim and whimsy.]

The group found themselves in Darkmith where a war was going on.  They spotted the central power area and headed that way, failing their attempts to sneak through town and were surrounded by undead, summoned by Phy’el Fleshwalker for the battle.  They defeated a huge swarm of undead only to seem hundreds more running after them.  When the undead all stopped and Phy’el himself appeared.  “If you win, remember I did you no harm when I could have.” he says and all the undead drop motionless to the ground as the cut the strings binding them to him.  Phy’el has long held a grudge against Liloth and her King and like all good evil people is more than happy to screw them over for slights they have done him.  And he’s also hedging his bets, he senses the magic artifact the group possesses, trying to curry a little future favor perhaps.

They push on and reach the ziggurat of power where the Chaosborn is being reborn.  Liloth his lover is climbing the tower toward him.

T’Balktu kicks on his Ghost Slayer ability and charges the Creature, slaying it, at least it’s human form, releasing the chaosbeast within.  He continues to use the Lance of Unmaking against the creature, finally destroying it and the group turns its attention to Liloth who’s a little upset at the events.  But the group has grown too strong for this little regional hazard and mops up the floor with Liloth and the pet shadows.

They recover a Shadowblade, a dreadful greatsword from the shadowfey that was the Chaosborn’s weapon and very gingerly maneuver it into a bag of holding without touching it.

They help mop up the city, joining in with the hobgoblin tribes battling the minor darkness’s still released in the city alongside the strange eyeless, mouthless priests of the white king.

Leaving the city, on foot, they trudge through the swamps surrounding the city and stop off to spend a couple of days with the Soul Eaters in their home range, the tattoo’s on their arms are extended by the tattoo artists of the tribe, depicting their battles against the darkness in stylized abstracts.

They continue back to Larkson where they find Teagon working a power play to take over the city and remove the Council.  He’s hired more mercenaries from Anvil and after all the fighting his forces outnumber the Watch.    With the group informing him that the deed is done and the city is safe he bargains with them to join in.

The group does and become partners with Teagon.  They arrange for Garon and the just appointed Merchant faction Councilor Neev to be moved out of power gently as possible.  They work a deal to keep the Watch alive and in their control and direct all martial activities in the city, although everyone understands that with Teagon holding the purse strings that feeds the mercenairies that that control could be tenuous.  But Teagon is smart and wise and understands the power that the group presents so the deal is made and at this time both sides appear to be genuinely interested in keeping it.  The group will receive a 1000 golds a month each for their portion of the bargain, a fortune really for this town although Biminey is going to donate his income to the Watch to help train, equip and restore them.  The Watch lost most of their men, dead or injured beyond fighting ability, and what’s left are the lucky, green and inept without only a small cadre of veterans.

They bring the airship into town and then fly out to the slaver stronghold searching for the two ships full of the town’s women and children, finding only a work crew lead by a slaver working on rebuilding the islands buildings.  They capture them all, interrogate them and then destroy the newly constructed works and building materials and fly back to their city.

Sushanna tells Biminey that one of the until now dead lights on the ship’s consoles lit green for a few hours one day while they were gone (during their walk back to Larkson).

When they get back to the city, there is talk of a flying creature spotted in the skies out to sea, seen more by it’s blocking out the stars than any direct visual.  It was assumed to be the group’s airship but when word got around that it wasn’t then other people stepped forth saying it was a vast flying creature, a dragon certainly.

What it was, what the green light means, where the slavers took the slaves, where did Phy’el wander off to, where the slavers main bases are and what they’re doing, the rebuilding of the city of Larkson and the outcome of the battle of Darkmith, these questions and more will have to wait till we pick up this campaign and enter the Tier of the Paragon’s…

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The priests of the temple of Eris were able to eventually sever the controlling strings of the undead and they all dropped to the ground motionless and the citizen rose up in arms to destroy those wandering the city streets.

As the group arrived back they found Captain Werrick missing one of his legs from the knee down and discovered that he led a force against three figures that seemed to be commanding the forces as well as breaching the walls, a female in white, a mostly nude man who’s flesh morphed and wavered and a dark shadow figure.

They also learned that ‘merchant ships from the south’ had arrived and were taking on women and children to sail them to safety.  Two of the three ships had already left filled to the brim with children and women and the third was still loading.

The group jumped to the conclusion that the ships were slavers picking up an easy profit and headed to the harbor.

They ran into a group of sailors and approached them.  A noble looking individual confirmed that what the group suspected and delivered an ultimatum, the group delivers the airship to the island and they give the women and children back.  If they don’t deliver the airship then they’re going to infect all the captives with the parasites and give them back.

The discussion rapidly went downhill.  The noble turned out to be a fake, while the real noble, a fire mage of some power was dressed as a sailor.  The sailors were quickly put down leaving the fire mage and the slaver lashmaster.  As things took a turn for the worse for the slavers the firemage made his escape using a contingency teleport ring to teleport back to the ship leaving the lashmaster who surrendered to the group.  As he made his getaway he told the group that they’d just doomed one ship full of children and if they wanted the others returned then bring the airship to him.

The gruop took a few minutes to recover, loot and discuss the thing and smoke started rising from the harbor.  They rushed to the harbor and found several of the small fishing ships on fire as well as the docks and warehouse. People  rushed in to quench the flames.  Once it was clear the flames were under control  the group got out their longboat and sailed out to the airship and set off after the fleeing slaver ship.

after an attempt to set the ship’s sails on fire failed, the firemage simply doused the flames, Stak shot a note down to the ship demanding the slavers debark in the ships boats and leave the captives onboard.   The slavers failed to listen so the group started riddleing it with ballista bolts.  The slavers quickly retaliated by lashing their captives to the sides of the ship.  This failed to deter the group and they continued to try and sink the ship.  And yes their ballista bolts hit more than one captive.

On board the ship the firemage weighed his options and found them wanting and performed a ritual that exploded the entire ship, killing everyone on board rather than see group rescue a single one.

The group turned the air ship around and headed back to its usual place with a rather somber atmosphere.   They re-entered the city.  Torel’s new found ability to see the lines of power protecting the city while holding the battle standard lead them to an old reading room now in use by the high priest as a bedroom as he didn’t feel comfortable taking the last high priest’s bedroom.

They found a mosaic in the floor and using the key they’ve been carrying for so long they triggered a lift, the entire floor of the room that dropped them down deep into the earth into a chamber.

There they were accosted by constructs demanding a pass phrase, when it wasn’t forthcoming they fought the constructs.  Torel in his infinite avenger wisdom opened a door and added in another set of constructs.   But with clever use of the Deamon Heart amulet and a failed reaction roll the new buzz saw construct fought with one of the other’s and the two ended up dealing something like 150+ points of damage to each other which was probably one of the few things that could have saved the group.   In total the encounter ended up a level 15 against a level 9 party which would typically result in someone or all someone’s dying.  But by setting two of them on each other they removed roughly 300 damage the group would have had to absorb and added 300 damage to the group’s output.   Call it luck if you will but it saved them.

Inside the second chamber they found the Book of All Things and Biminey was able to recover an ass load of residium from the cylidners powering the protections on the room as well as enough parts to make a new construct, a mobile buzzsaw that he can deploy in combat.

As they left the temple they were met by Aricee, a strange being in the form of a plain looking woman but with the eyes of a dragon.  She opened a portal leading them into her lair where they waded through piles of gold and jewels to a side chamber where they were fed a great meal.

Aricee told them that their best chance in the upcoming battle was to recover the Lance of Unmaking which is located deep in her lair guarded by a creature.  She tells them she guards the lair, the guardian guards the lance and she has a device embedded in her chest that protects the lance from her.

The group is located in an instant between the past and future and will have several days grace before the time in the world ticks over and the chaosborn is freed.   This gives them time to prepare, recover the lance and save the world.

She also tells them that the lance and the banner may not be enough and that it is possible to destroy the airship in a single cataclysmic event that will unmake everything in the blast radius.

We leave our group there as they prepare to descend into the tunnels after the Lance of Unmaking for their final climatic battle against the chaosborn and go down in a ball of flame or emerge victorious.

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Bodies, hundreds of them, most long dead it looked like from their appearance lay scattered, ripped and torn on grounds around the city walls. The walls of the city beyond were breached in several places but the holes were filled and blocked with everything handy from what he could see.  Wagons, push carts, crates, timbers and the rubble of the walls themselves were piled high in the breaches.   The main gates lay twisted and shattered but what looked like ship timbers filled the opening.  There was a sudden pop of light and sigils flared along the walls, twisting red arcane symbols floating above the walls that reminded him of the barrier wardings that Utha had cast in her lair.

The others joined him atop the hill each pausing to stare at the battlefield in silence for several moments.  The bodies lay sprawled, filled with arrows, blasted and burnt by fire or other forces.  They covered a wide spectrum, what were obviously farmers and peasants mixed with hobgoblins and goblins and even larger creatures as here and there a hill giant formed a large mound of dead flesh. 

Most appeared to have been dead for days even weeks, at odds with the time of length the group had been out of the city, obviously foul magics were at work here and the undead army they’d feared for such a long time had materialized, only in their absence.

“What do you make of those?” Torel asked Biminey as the strange symbols flickered into visibility atop the walls of the city. 

The artificer narrowed his senses, reaching out toward the city with that inner force that gave his creations life. His voice was uncertain when he finally spoke, “They’re wardings and artificer origin but they’re… odd.  I get a sense of great age about them but they’re weak, weakening even, running down.”

Stak spoke up, “Those figures on the walls, they’re townies.  I can see the Watch and the Anvil mercs up there along with normal folk.  They’re armed but just barely, a lot of fishing spears and table legs by the look of it.”

Everyone glanced at Stak and then at the minuscule forms, little more than dots in the distance. Visra said, a little incredulously, “You can tell that?”

In answer Stak held up his left hand, the stylized eagle beak running up his forearm from the swirled red patterns across his hand.

T’Balktu grunted, “So we won.”

The avenger shrugged, “Looks like.  Let’s get down there and find out what’s going on.”

The group picked their way through the corpses, the stench even worse close up and it was obvious that all the combatants had already been dead by the time they dropped on this battlefield at least.  The wounds were mostly dry or oozed a black ichor rather than the vats of blood that should have been covering the ground.

A crowd gathered on the walls as they approached and Torel made sure the city standard was unfurled and visible.  A small cheer went up from inside as they made their way closer.

The Captain, his left arm held in a sling next to his body along with Sargent Driskul met them atop the barricade filling the gap where the main gates had been. 

Stak nodded at the upraised eyebrow of the grizzled warrior, holding up his left hand, displaying the red tattoo of the Soul Eaters.  The Sergeant blinked then slowly nodded back.

“Hope we get a better reception than these got, Captain.” Biminey joked as they stopped at the base of the rubble.

“Depends on what news you have to give me.  Come on, Council wants you.  Sergent!”

Driskul glanced behind, “Pyotr and Jenna, get that ladder up here and over the side.  The rest of you lot, get back to your gods damned posts.  Move it or you’ll be defending this wall from outside!”

A long wood ladder came clattering down and quickly the group went up it and over the barricade.  The scene inside was grim, the citizens mixing with Watch and Anvil mercenaries alike atop the wall.   The large courtyard inside, that typically held all manner of carts and vendors was torn up, the cobblestones ripped and torn in a huge circle that encompassed easily a 30 yards across.  Biminey and Visra both flinched at the magic residue lingering over the circle, magic twisted and broken in feeling.

“What happened?” Visra asked holding out a hand, feeling the energies that lay in fragments over the courtyard.

The Captain shot her a look, “Funnel cloud sprung up, ripped up the cobblestones in that circle.  Priests say that let them use it as a summoning circle and creatures poured into the city.  We beat’em but it cost us.  It costs us a lot.  Bodies are piling up in a couple of warehouses on the docks waiting burial.  Same thing happened in four different spots around the city at roughly the same time, same day you left.  That night, an army of undead showed up.  We almost went under but then those showed up” he said jerking a thumb at the flickering wardings, “and the bodies all dropped like someone had cut their strings.”

“Where’d the wardings come from?” Biminey asked.

Captain shrugged, “Not sure on that one, Eris folk weren’t too clear, all I got out of it was they disrupt whatever powers the enemy is using to power the undead.  Surprised you made it through, every time I sent a squad out to try to destroy the bodies they roused long enough to drag them down or force them to retreat.”

Torel glanced up at the standard he held in his left hand and pursed his lips in contemplation.

“We’ll go over everything at the Temple, the Eris priests say we shouldn’t talk in the open, the rain can act as an extension of the enemy they say.  Temple’s supposed to be shielded from it.”

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The campaign is/was designed to end at level 10 as our doughty heroes enter the Paragon tier of play after having faced the regional Big Bad.  I have some thoughts on season two that should be entertaining for the players and take the play in a new direction.

In the interim I’m going to be taking a look at Savage Worlds with a, as usual, home brew setting.  It’ll be a horror campaign with crazed asylum escapees, dark deeds and strange symbols inscribed on the victims although with the usual goat skin leggings crew making an appearance.

Savage Worlds is a ‘light’ game system with a decided different take on things.  The fans (dare I say fanbois?) are pretty rabid about the system but then so are [insert game system here] fans typically.  Myself I like to think I look at the good points of a system and modify the points I don’t like to something I do.  Rarely do I just hate on a system, if you’re having fun with it, then it’s a good system, it just might not be good for me.  Also rarely do I take any game system as written as a System From On High and the rules are sacrosanct and never to be trifled with.  Any reasonably complex system can always (with)stand change.

Anyway, one thing I’m not thrilled with in Savage Worlds is the mandatory need for multiple dice.  With a blind player, dice can be an issue.  Right now since we only use a d20 I wrote a audible dice roller for the player such that he just presses a button and rolls a dice and the results are spoken out loud.  But with Savage Worlds, we’re looking at sequences like “Okay to shoot him, roll a d8 and a d6.  Okay the d8 got an 8 so roll it again.  Okay you ended up with 13 total.  That’s a hit plus a raise so your pistol is going to do 2d6-1 damage and an extra 1d6 for the raise.  One of the dice got a 6, roll it again and add the total.”

That kind of sequence is far from unusual with this system.  It’s only when you can’t see the dice that it becomes a significant issue. Not a game breaker but significant.

Another thing with Savage worlds is it falls back to the “My turn?  I hit him with my bat / shoot him with my pistol.” as the basic go-to option for combat.  Not good or bad in and of itself but it will be interesting in seeing how things go after having a laundry list of things you can do combat with 4th Edition.  Yes I know there are “Trick Maneuvers” you can do in Savage Worlds but those really only add one option, “Opposed check to get a +2 to hit” basically.

On the plus side you have a natural combat speed up since the possible options are a…bit… less to choose from mechanically.

One thing that sticks out to me at first glance as I go over character creation  about Savage Worlds RAW is that Agility is King with a huge effing  K.   Agility influences the most skills, determines your skill at hitting with every possible attack as well as determines how hard you are to hit.  Strength’s only function is to add damage to melee hits and let you carry more.  There’s but a single skill associated with it, Agility has something like 10 skills and Smarts 9′ish.* (see below)  which makes the ‘dex monkey’ or ‘wizard’ cock of the walk in combat by far.

Vigor, the semi equivalent of constitution has no skills.  With this system the strong hero pretty much sucks as a character concept.  He either has to spend double the points to keep his Agility high compared to the Agile or Smart character or he has a huge skill cost penalty, has trouble hitting things and is easily hit.  Strength doesn’t even let him absorb damage better, that’s the demesne of Vigor.  So a melee fighter has to raise three skills, Agility, Vigor, and Strength, where as a ranged fighter only needs Agility and Vigor and a caster typically only Smarts and Vigor or Spirit and Vigor.  All three of them can be equally tough but to be equally effective the melee fighter has to spend 33% more resources than the others.

The biggest source of the problem is that perhaps too much is tied in with Agility.   It heavily influences a characters ability to hit with Melee, Ranged and Thrown weapons by making those with low agility have to spend more points in those skills (double the cost) as well as making them take more damage.

In 4th Edition they avoid the problem by strictly tying Strength to Melee and Agility(Dexterity) to Ranged attacks.  Perhaps it might sense to try it here as well by simply moving Fighting over under Strength?   But then we screw with the swashbuckler character concept.  4th Edition avoids that issue by simply using Str or Dex as attack modifiers by class power, only the basic attacks are strictly Str and Dex based per Melee and Ranged.   A rogue could be using Dex to stab you with a knife.

Ahh tis a conundrum.

* – House Rule Changes (so far) –

• Combined Swimming, Climbing into Athletics under Strength
• Combined Survival and Tracking into Nature
• Changed Notice to Perception
• Changed Persuasion to Diplomacy
• Changed Lockpicking into Thievery and move Pickpockets from Stealth into it.
• Added Insight Skill

With the blood of one of his shaman’s staining his rugs, Nightwalker bids the group good night and they sleep in one of the hobgoblin tents.  Rousing in the morning they set off on a hunting / bait trip taking a small hunting party of hobgoblins with them.

A herd of Dark Horns or One Horns attacks them, 5 of the beasts sweeping over a rise and charging into the middle of them.  The creatures focus on the hobgoblins during the initial wave but swiftly engage the players as it’s painfully obvious that they, the dark horns, are suddenly vulnerable to the blade and edge of their foes unlike the past.

The hobgoblins are killed but the party emerges victorious.  With incredible skills at combat they manage to prevent not one but two of the dark horns from fleeing the combat at the last possible second with an amazing throw of a tanglefoot bag by T’Balktu and a foot race performed by Visra and Biminey after the last one.  [Actions points for the win here, without them at least one if not both of the one horns would have escaped and then been in the battle with the Hunter]

The group cuts the three foot dark horns from the creature’s and stows them away as proof of the encounter and collects the personal effects of the hobgoblins that fell in battle and then burn the corpses.

Stak goes ahead to determine the tracks and see where they lead.  He overhears two voices, hard to pinpoint speaking the toungue of the dragons.  The voices refer to each other as sister and from the snippet of conversation Stak comes away with the thought that they do not like the Spirithunter, referring to him as a trespasser on their domain.  They also reference the group, “they bear that which can give us the true death sister.” before he catches a glimpse of a shrouded shape, seen more by displaced air than sight.  A dragon like shape although with two heads.

They do not travel far before they find themselves in a clearing, dimly lit, dimmer than the day’s light would make it seem.

[Although no one remarked on the coincidence of without searching they ran into the Hunter, it was because he was twisting reality to bring the two of them together.]

Diplomatic talks fail rather quickly and the battle is joined.  The hunter unleashes his deadly bow shots on the party, never missing while his flayed bulls and a single dark horn engage them in melee.  The bulls although formidable proved to be a mere roadblock in the group’s path as they engage the hunter.

The hunter, although he could have fled the battle, elected to stay.  His chaotic nature or a lust for vengeance against the group that has killed his ‘children’ or a sense of invincibility may have driven him to his death.  Or perhaps something else entirely.

The group recovers the Hunter’s bow, Fatebringer.  A gleaming black greatbow with strange properties.  As well as the hunter’s cloak which blends one in with the surroundings as well as for a momentary time can render one invisible completely.

[This encounter could have actually ended without a fight if the party had taken the right tack with the hunter and they could have steered to other pastures.  But "Enough talk!" and the fight was on.]

They head back with their trophies to the Soul Eater tribe and there was much rejoicing, well as much as a on the brink of starving group can rejoice.  NIghtwalker brings them into his sacred tent and totems are set up around the edges.  He tells the group that for their deeds they are being made honorary members of the tribe and can elect to take a totem creature.   Each member does and as they touch one of the totems the red dye on the wood smoothly curls up and out over their left hands and halfway up their forearm, then recedes leaving behind a abstract tattoo that twines about their skin.    The tattoos lend a minor touch of the creatures power to the members of the group.  T’balktu gains the strength of the ox which lets him ignore the hindering weight of his armour, Stak gains the vision of the eagle allowing him to see that which might be missed, Visra gains the silent stealth of the hunting owl that glides on soundless wings before grabbnig its prey, Torel gains the wolves ability to recover from damage that would kill most creatures and Biminey gains the slyness of the fox that lets it slip through a pack of dogs without getting bitten.

[The players did not know the effects of the tattoo's before making their choices.  Mechanically they gained the following - T'balktu isn't subject to armour penalties to skill checks or movement, Stak makes two perception rolls and keeps the highest any time he needs to make one, Visra can make two stealth checks and keep the highest, Torel recovers +2 hit points when he spends a surge and Biminey can dodge one opportunity attack that he might incur during his movement.   These were intended as cool features for the players as well as make them stand out a little more.]

After the ceremony they talk with Nightwalker about their next steps and the Soul Eaters are going to send out messengers to cease hostilities against the town and outlying settlements while the group seeks the missing knowledge that holds the ka or soul of the Strongest Foe.  Biminey translates that as a Book that holds Hash’Kar’s true name.  He mistakenly assumes it’s the amulet he’s been holding onto these long months and hauls it out of its warded and protecting spot in his heavy flail.  Nightwalker looks puzzled, “Why would you give me this?” and then all the shamans keeping watch in the spiritworld start having siezers, muttering or crying out that “He’s coming!”

Three of the spiritwatchers manage to rally but one of them is possessed and Nightwalker is forced to kill him before the Strongest Foe can take over and manifest. But not before the Strongest Foe, King Hash’Kar, chaosborn again, knows what it is that Biminey was hiding, knows that the group has the key that could unlock his doom.

[It was missed during this session by everyone but the Hobgoblins kind of ate the group's horses after they left on the hunting trip.  I completely forgot to mention it an no one else made any note of the fact that they were missing.]

They pack up and rapid travel back to the city of Larkson.  Nightwalker doesn’t seem to happy with them, he’s lost two of his shaman brothers because of the party although he does realize that he’d of likely lost them all if the party hadn’t of shown up and killed the hunter. [Or did they?] After two days travel they run into Liloth in her travel form who unleashes a prince of the abyss on them, a minor one admittedly but still.  The beast almost destroys T’Balktu several times but the persevering healing of Biminey keeps the goliath alive and they destroy the deamon prince’s corporeal form sending its essence back to the abyss there to spend 66 years pulling its tattered form back together.

[This was a triggered encounter that's been pending for a long time awaiting the bad guys finding out the group has the amulet.  mechanically it's leveled up with the party as it waits its turn in the limelight]

The group arrives back at Larkson to find it has been under attack, the walls have been breached in several places as well as the main gates.  Bodies of animated corpses litter the grounds in front of the walls but the city still holds.   The gaps have been blocked with makeshift barricades and strange wardings flicker along the walls.

The group makes it way down through the grisly battlefield, the stench of long dead flesh strong and harsh, something finally able to overthrow the smell of fish that lay about the town.

As they clamber over the rubble and littler that block the main gate we leave our heroes to find out exactly what happened in future sessions.

[Overall this was a little collapses as I want to get to the season ender in the next two sessions as Torel is going to be unavailable for awhile after that so I'm going to compress my kind of planned out 3 or 4 sessions worth of gaming into the next two but I think it'll still be coherent and logical progression.

For the curious Fatebringer has the following stats:  Greatbow - Properties: On critical hit the target is restrained.  Critical damage: 3d8.  On a miss the wielder gains +1 to hit to a maximum of +4.  The bonus goes away once the wielder hits the target or switches to a new target.

Hunter's Cloak - Property: +3 to Stealth skill.  Power - Daily - Minor action: Gain invisibility until the end of your next turn.  The invisibility is lost if you attack or are hit by an attack. ]

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These systems are set up to handle a lot of genre although superheroes is the prevalent one along with most eras with various degrees of success and typically include an assload of additional settings books that add specifics that are related to an genre/era to round them out that in general cover a pretty wide gamut.  Cyberpunk, Fantasy, Wild West, Swashbucklers and Post Apocalyptic etc. are typically published over the years after the initial release of the base system.

One thing and off topic, after dealing with the simplicity that is DnD 4th Edition from a Player and GM point of view (especially since the only dice we use is a d20), other systems feel anitquated. I forsee new gaming systems taking some of the 4th features and expanding them into other genres including a sandbox mode.

Anyway, so I’ve been looking at Savage Worlds, it’s one of the few I’ve not looked at very heavily or used which has a draw in and of itself for that reason.  It’s not as complicated as the other sandboxes, at first glance, which is a plus as I’m too old for complicated for the sake of being simulationist.  As part of my ‘looking’ I looked around for gameplay podcasts using Savage Worlds and found one over at rpgmp3.com on their rss feed called Savage Worlds – Rippers.  The Rippers part references the setting the group is using which is Victorian England from the sound of it circa late 1800′s with a bit of supernatural and of course featuring the most infamous Jack.  Other than Burton of course.

As they’re going through their character design (see I do get to the point eventually) it strikes me how much a sandbox system can force players to make characters where-as a class based system allows players to make characters.  And by make a character I mean give it a personality rather than a list of powers and numbers.

So I toss my mind back over the decades of GM’ing I’ve done and it’s easy to see this repeated.  Game systems that hand a player a character ‘off the shelf’ as in “here, you’re a fighter, you get to do this” make it…. easy(?) for the player to simply accept that and for the… lazy? detached? gamist? player, that’s enough.   Off the shelf characters focus on the What, and the Who is at the players discretion without any natural pressure to define that. And in may cases the What is all that’s of any concern.

Let me interject here that I’m not saying one or the other is bad or better or right or wrong, I’m merely pointing out observed human behavior and some thoughts on underlying causality.

Game systems where the player has to literally build their character from a essentially unlimited collection of parts seems to force them to have a character rather than a collection of numbers.   The Who is forced to be considered even as the What is created.  “Well Miss Angela is a doctor so she should have this medicine knowledge thing and be smart.  And she studied fencing in college so I guess she should have some skill in fighting.”

As opposed to, “I guess I’ll play the cleric.”

To make a construction analogy, when someone builds a house, they’re involved with it from the ground up, they make changes to the floorplan, add arches and decorative bits to the strcuture, put in that big bay window where they can sit and read while enjoying the sun and the view.

When they buy a house, they may put on a new coat of paint or they may not.

Both people could and in many cases eventually do end up with the same ‘house’.  But it’s more likely that the person who bought the house is going to settle for things the way they are when they bought it.

To bring this analogy back to the ‘real world’, as a GM you can help with their paint choices.  There are “10 minute questionnaires” out there that you can pass on to your players, regardless of game system with questions like “How has your character earned a living up to this point?”  “Are there any people, groups or societies that the character is a part of or involved with now or in the past?”  “Where did you grow up?”.   These kinds of things can help the player get a handle on the character before they get to the numbers whether their choice is as simple as which class to play or as diverse as does their weapon have the armour piercing advantage and deal extra knockback…

So as you bring out your class based games and get your players going with new alternate lives, remember to encourage them with word, question and setting to make those characters theirs and not fighter_0001 or blaster_003.  Your game play will be the better for it.

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So with that said, the party was  going to need to seek out the hobgoblins in the region last week, who have banded together.  On the way there I’d come up with a minor POI or Point of Interest that could be engaged or bypassed as the party wished.  These always start out as ‘filler’ material to lend verisimilitude to the world that things happen in spite of the players, not because of them.

There have been several such incidents during this campaign.  What might appear to be a minor encounter just for an encounter’s sake branches the world as the player’s react to it.  The rescue of the people kidnapped when the airship touched down in Darkmith, the rescue of the slaves from hobgoblins, the encounter with the Hill Giant (Rest in peace big fella you had so much ahead of you), the bandit encounter, the woman and child who entered the town bleeding to name a few off the top of my head.  These were all Important Moments In Time and helped determine future events.

This most recent PoI was of a similar nature.  This little encounter started out in my planning as a small little tactical combat opportunity as they searched around the countryside looking for a tribe of hobs to parlay with.  Nothing special, the kind of thing that every DM pencils into his flow chart to make sure he has enough ‘stuff’ on hand to fill the session.

But over the course of the week this little minor side point grew and evolved and here is how it happened.

As the week went by the generic “Necromonger” as it was, your basic necromancer encounter, a creature shunned from town for his stereotypical fetish for the dead.  My initial envisioning was of a necromancer taking advantage of the bodies of a hobogoblin intra warfare site.   The initial single encounter broadened into two encounters and the scenery was filled in.   The generic aka without much interest antagonist turned into the Steppes Hag as I found time to consider the upcoming weeks events.   I envisioned this creature as a minor legend in the area, one that fed on the dead and made them serve her and the encounter grew into three ‘minicounters’.  A kind of minor delve.

Then as I was working on my Rogue’s Gallery of villains on the opposing forces a little note I’d penciled many weeks ago about one of the creatures working for the BBEG back in the day, Utha Plaguebringer now escaped from her prison like so many others of the dark days, caught my eye and the Steppes Hag became Utha and a new plot branching was brought into being.

I’d already set the stage for Utha to make an appearance, her pet, a kind of liche like dragon creature had already been spotted searching the countryside (looking for bodies for his mistress truth be known now after the fact as a kind of foreshadowing but it also had the side benefit of increasing the paranoia of the players).

As I dressed up the encounter a bit more I realized that Utha wasn’t doing her job very well.  So the encounter grew more legs and stretched out.  Instead of just sending out Bonegnasher to spot battle sites, she set up a ritual, a powerful summoning magic that subtly leads people toward her lair and drives them to their natural tendencies to fight.  It was aimed primarily at hobgoblins who enjoy fighting other tribes.  This way she doesn’t have to go looking for bodies, they come to her.  Naturally though as the players traversed the countryside they would be caught in this ritual.  Although they discovered it before walking into the trap as heroes tend to do.  But what makes a hero is what he does with such knowledge.

In addition she’s still bitter about her sister, Liloth gaining the favor of the Dark One and is always scheming ways to curry favor and throw down her bitch of a sister as she sees her.  So she’s concocted a plan to infect the corpses with plague and give them back the semblance of healthy flesh.  These hobgoblins she’ll send back into the tribes where they’ll pass on the infections.

The underlying reason for her actions are many as I inked her into being.  She along with all the others of the Darkmith bunch hate the hobgoblins as they were part of the forces that locked them away and to date still guard against any creature that escapes the wardings of the ancient prisons.  By decimating the tribes she hopes to win the ‘love’ of the Dark One.  In addition committing genocide by disease is just a joy of hers anyway.  She’s not a very nice creature.

In the end the encounter grew from a simple time filler into what I think was a fairly interesting encounter (even if there was no loot ) and the players’ actions or inactions yet again have a direct and major impact on the world.  If they’d not followed up on the encounter, if they’d of not killed her or if they’d of taken too long to kill her she would have escaped and continued on with her plans and the players would have had to deal with the consequences of the hobgoblin tribes, a major if unknown factor in the fight against Darkmith sickening and dying.

As it was they performed a service for all hobgoblin kind, the same hobgoblins by the way who have ransacked and destroyed several farming villages of Larkson and taken the people they didn’t kill into slavery.  Just because hobgoblins have a common enemy with the group, doesn’t make them nice people either.  Not everything is black and white, in fact few things are.

So there you have it, the evolution of an encounter from a generic combat fight into something with interest and ties to the world and the story line and it was simply by spending a little time each day thinking about the planned encounters and past encounters and the forces at work in the world.

Hopefully this will inspire you to turn that next random wandering encounter into something with deeper roots than as a portable bag of experience and gold for your players.

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As the group prepares to depart the city looking for the Soul Eater tribe they’re stopped at the gate by a messenger who delivers a note from Councilor Teagon along with a small pouch.  The note is innocuous enough, wishes them well on their journey and mentions he’d like to discuss the town’s leadership with them when they get back.

The pouch contains a months supply of elvish trail mix and delicacies for 5 people.  It’s a minor bag of holding with a 8 cubic feet of storage space and roughly a 50lb limit on goods.

The group heads south in search of the soul eaters.  On their second day Stak notices a pack of wolves lead by a huge wolf with bony spikes and vertically slit yellow eyes pacing them.  The alpha wolf goes out of it’s way to let Stak see it and appears to be mocking them.   After a couple of hours of this the wolves disappear to not be seen again.

Toward the end of day 2 they realize that they’ve been pulled off their course by a very subtle magic, one that’s pulled them eastward and they arrive at the site of a battle.  Hobgoblins a few mostly whole, others torn to bits litter a large swatch of dry riverbed.  A large tunnel leads into the opposite cliff side.  As they look the area over, two large hobgoblins, bearing the full length tattoos of hands of bane plod out of the cave entrance and each grabs the ankle of a hobgoblin body and drags it back into the cave.

Torel’s avenger senses kick off and he realizes that the two have no aura of life about them.

They devise a plan to ambush the hobgoblins and barely get into position when the two re-emerge and move out gather more bodies.  They’re swiftly and quietly downed by the group.

Stak sneaks into the cave and spots a larger chamber littered with hobgoblin bodies of multiple tribes.  At the far end a female figure is crooning and cackling over the body of a hobgoblin, magical energies flowing from strange crystals in the cave walls through her and into the body and the body is slowly repaired of all damage.

She’s muttering to herself, about how her little pretties will go forth and spread disease and sickness among the guardians and how her beloved will throw down his current favorite and take her up instead.

Stak retreats and informs the others and they move into the caves.  The creature, Utha Plaguebringer, senses their life force and flees, triggering the bodies to rise up as well as locking the chamber behind wardings preventing exit and bringing into life blaster sigil’s that fire flaming rays of energy at the party.

They cut a swath through the zombies, none of which are very strong and Biminey disables the sigils that are flash frying the goliath barbarian.

Together they work on dropping the wardings after dealing with all the hostile threats in the room.   As they destroy the warding there’s a rumble from deeper within the earth and the cavern shakes and dirt and rocks fall free of the ceilings.  There’s also a piercing cry of pain and surprise from where Utha fled.

They proceed deeper and find Utha clawing her way out of rocks near where a large dragon like creature lays buried under new rubble.  The same creature they spotted flying in a search pattern on their way back from the hobgoblin raid.

Utha screams and locks burst from cages holding the last two of her plaguedogs which leap out after the party.

They work well to contain the threat, Stak pouring massive damage into Utha while the rest manuever around the room tying up the others.

Bonegnasher, Utha’s pet flying creature emerges from the rubble only moments before his mistress dies.  Although as usual T’balktu takes the brunt of the damage the fight is of no match for the strength of the party and they down all four of the creatures.

[Note: This battle had four level 7-10 elites.   Bonegnasher's main attack was an 'overkill' which did the trope'ic claw claw bite attack old school style which T'balktu felt the brunt of more than once.  This is another example of where player actions impact the world.  The group could have ignored or retreated from this battle at any time. In that event Utha's plan would have continued on and the party would have run into plagues sweeping through the hobgoblin tribes later on which would have created another situational branching of world events.]

They clean up after the fight, disposing of the bodies with fire and light, dragging them outside.  T’balktu laments the last of his smoking jacket and tosses it on the pyre.

Finding a place to hole up they rest the remainder of the night.  On Visra’s watch she comes awake as temperatures plummet and spots a pair of yellow glowing eyes with vertical slits in the face of a human male staring at her.  As she screams the eyes blink and deep laughter fades away into the distance.

They move on the next day crossing the trail of hobgoblin war party heading in the direction they’d come from after moving west to get back on their original trail.  They elect to not pursue.

They run into two skinless bears, huge dire creatures that rip T’Balktu and Stak into catfood before they’re put down hard.  The city banner reacts to these creatures and Torel, the apparently holder of the banner plants it and feels the flare of powers interacting between the banner and the creatures.  Biminey and Visra vivisect the creatures and uncover powerful components for the making of unique magic items.

That night Torel is surprised by a band of what turn out to be Soul Eaters who enter the camp and give them guest rights for two days and invite them to come talk to the elder of the tribe. The band seems very nervous and twitchy and constantly stare out into the darkness.   The leader of the band Seoul tells the group of the Hunter that is plaguing them and his foul Furies, hairless beasts that are killing them.

The group follows the band to the Soul Eaters camp, a fortified encampment.  There they meet with He Who Walks The Night, an ancient hobgoblin shaman with tattoos down to at least his waist.

They palaver and Nightwalker tells the group of the black Hunter who kills them during the day with arrows that strike and kill them without any sign of the attacker and his creatures which hunt them at night.  How their blades and magic do nothing against the creatures and how they’re dying slowing in small numbers trying to stay alive.

Biminey recalls some lore on this creature, that it was a force of Chaos, called to the chaos that the creatures of Darkmith created, that fed off the energies and occasionally did tasks for the Darkmith king, mostly as the tasks would generate more chaos.

The group and Nightwalker speak long into the day, sharing tales of their exploits, explaining the trophies they bear.  They learn that the hobgoblin tribes were set to guard against creatures escaping Darkmith but over the decades the tribes ‘lost their way’.  Much like the Keepers of Secrets apparently have as he refers to the city of Larkson.  That the Keepers have lost the knowledge that was their sacred trust and Nightwalker now fears that the Darkmith King will find his way to freedom without the means to put him back down again.

The group hears the tales and decide they’re going to help the Soul Eaters with their issue and they share the goodies that Tegaon gave them with the tribe, all of which are starting to show signs of lack of food and the next day they’re going to head out and see if they can get the Hunter to come after them.  They believe that the banner that the priests of Eris made for them will let their own weapons work against the Hunter, a creature of chaos that is allied with the powers of Darkmith.

[DM's Note: The banner does work this way actually.  Merely having it out allows the players to deal normal damage against the Darkmithian's. Planting it and setting up the draining zone actually allows the players to truly kill one of the Darkmith's.   They're a tough breed and hard to give a true death to...

The magic items they’ll get out the Furies are as follows for the curious, they’re not intended to be perfectly balanced for 4th edition but are balanced for my campaign and the finances of the party –

• 3,400 residium – Bear Skull Helm – Property: Critical attacks deal 1d12 additional damage. Daily Power – Demoralizing Roar Blast 3; Wis vs Will; target takes 1d8+4 psychic damage and is weakened and slowed until the end of its next turn.
  “A transparent roaring bears head appears over your head and blasts out a crushing roar at nearby opponents daring them to attack you.”
• 4,000 residium – Bears Heart Amulet – Property: +2 on saving throws versus Fear or Psychic.  Daily Power – Bear’s Fury – Immediate Reaction when first bloodied – Make a melee basic attack, Str vs AC; 1d8+4 damage close burst 1; target’s enemies only.
  “The ghostly image of a bear appears overlaid upon you and spins, clawing everything within range.”
• 5,000 residium – Bear Claw Amulet – Property:    Daily Power – Spend a healing surge and deal 4 damage to any enemy creature that successfully attacks you with a melee attack until the end of the encounter.
  “Ghostly images of bear paws lash out at anyone foolish enough to attack you.”

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A big thumbs up to the developer(s) of the program.

Defenses on custom monsters are invariably screwed up.  Typically if you have NO modified defenses on a creature that you import from the MB then you’ll get the right AC.  FRW though will typically be broken and broken on the high side like +3 to +6.  If you’ve modified defenses down very far then you’ll see a corresponding increase on the + side of FRW.  So if you have for example FRW lowered by 5 in the Monster Builder you’ll find F up by 5 and RW +11 in Masterplan.

You can fix this in MP by going in and modifying your monsters manually until there author gets a fix out.

My apologies to my players for not noticing this earlier.  Luckily for them I’ve only run two sessions using MP at this time and it really only drastically impacted two encounters.

D

We join our group in the aftermath of the hobgoblin raid.  For the curious the hobgoblins in my world are a cross between feudal japan and American Indian.  Highly martial ideology but formed into large tribes that stake out territories and have a lot of intra-tribal warfare as well as fighting anything that invades their territories.

The group has just wiped out a force of the Throatcutter’s tribe.  A sizable force of their better warriors according to Sgt. Driskull afterward as the Throatcutters sent a lot of more well trained than normal fighters on this raid.  For someone familiar with the hobgoblin ways it’s easy to tell a warriors relative skill by the tattoos they bear.  They did lose over half their forces in mercenaries and city watch in the doing though as a result.  A good thing the city sent a well trained force instead of mixing in neophytes and raw recruits.

[DM's Note: The relative 'worth' of a hobgoblin warrior can be judged by the tattoos they wear.  It starts with a tribal identifying tattoo in the palm of their main hand.  As they rise in skill and respect the tattos grow up their arm across their shoulders and down the other arm.  A warrior who has 'gone the distance' becomes a Hand of Bane in the tribes, one of the most feared and respected warrior the hobgoblins have.   Shaman's, warcasters, fleshcarvers, spiritspeakers, etc. have tattoo's that grow out from the top of their heads.  A Speaker Of the Dead, the shamanistic equivalent of a Hand of Bane tattoos will have covered their entire head down to the base of their neck.]

They rescue 31 captives, farmers and crafters that were taken by the hobgoblins out of about 60 and get them bundled up to head back.  The trip back is slower, taking 12 hours rather than 8 due to the infirm from the fighting or the general condition of the farmers.

While hiding in a dense copse of trees lookouts spot a bat winged dragon like creature flying high overhead in figure eights, obviously a search pattern but they go undetected or at least unmolested by the creature who’s search pattern takes it out of sight to the south east.

They’re welcomed back in town as heroes and as it’s well past evening they head off to the Temple of Eris to take a break while Driskull and his aid Baen head off to report and others see to the welfare of the farmers and the wounded.

At the council meeting the next day, which includes the entire group, Captain Werrick, Sgt Driskull, Councilors Teagon, Lerik and Garon and their aids.  Lerik has a new aid, a non-descript human who’s gaze rarely leaves that of the group and who says nothing or even moves much during the meeting.

While the group is reporting Lerik makes outbursts, primarily to himself it seems that they’ve doomed them all, the whole town will now suffer the wrath of the tribes and be destroyed.

Finally Garon has enough of his comments, rants and snide remarks and dismisses him, requesting Driskull to escort the man out of the building.   As Lerik passes the group they recoil a bit at the rank body odor of the man, although appearing up kept and clean he reeks of old sweat.   Lerik’s aide follows his boss out staring at the group the entire while.

Garon presents the group with an award, Dragonshard Daggers, obtained for them by Teagon from a crafter back in the Feywild.  Each dagger gleams of highest quality craftsmanship, the pommels set with a strange quartz like crystal that has a sheen like an opal.  Teagon tells them they are a gift from him and he relieves them of the eladrin custom of a return gift.   *hint hint*

The daggers have the ability that if they are infused with life force (healing surge) they can be used to communicate with a holder of the other daggers.  In addition they have the ability to allow two wielders who are adjacent to the same target to get combat advantage once per encounter as the wielders will be able to time their strikes just so to open a target up for attack.

Biminey wonders out loud where Lerik’s house might be after his rant against them and Garon is a little suspicious of his reasons.  Teagon though gives them a bit of a high sign and a shake of the head and Biminey drops it.

Later that day a commoner arrives at the temple with a note that has directions to a house on it but without any identifying marks.

Torel goes and talks to Captain Werrick and Driskull about their next steps and learns that Driskull wanted to leave to seek out a tribe of hobgoblins that the other hobgoblin tribes hold in high respect.  They are known as the Easters of Souls and their tats are in red rather than black like the other tribes.  Their home ground is far south near Darkmith although with the recent upheavals in the tribes wanderings they may no longer be there.

Meanwhile Biminey and T’balktu follow the directions and reach Lerik’s house.  There Biminey detects strong arcanic energies around the place.   He sends for the others of the group who eventually arrive and he also detains a 2 man patrol of the Watch.

A strong smell of incense hangs over the area near the house.

He tries to open the door, it’s a good lock though and T’Balktu in his barbarian impatience simply scales the wall to see if he can figure out what the problem is.  He notes that the inner vegetation is all dead of the courtyard gardens.   Inside he undoes a couple of bolts and lifts a heavy bar away from the door.

They knock on the house door, taking one of the guards with them, leaving the other outside.  This door yields to Biminey’s artificisistic touch and swings open. Billows of incense waft out, a chaotic melange of all possible flavors.

Inside they find the house empty and Biminey follows the arcane energies to the back of the large residence and into a bedroom, obviously a master bedroom.  A quick search uncovers a trapdoor cleverly hidden under a rug so that it can be opened and closed again from underneath leaving the rug over it.

Stak hears voices from below, a raspy voice demanding Lerik move faster at getting ‘them’ out of the city or he’ll find another tool and Lerik whining that he’s working as fast as he can.

T’balktu tries to head down the shaft but one of the ladder rungs is trapped to slide easily under any weight and he ends up as a noisy thud at the bottom of the shaft.

Down a corridor he spots Lerik talking with a large winged humanoid that appears leprous in Lerik’s hidden church of Bane a very human-o-centric god.  A fight ensues and undead, Lerik’s servants appear and join the fray.  The party is unfortunately tied up in a narrow hallway without much room to maneuver but they eventually get the battle opened up a bit and take out the winged creature which cuts the power ties with the undead.   Lerik is killed during the fight, electrocuted by Lightning Sphere from Biminey which dropped him into a dying state.   Then Visra finishes him off with an AOE invoker power that catches him in it.

[DM's Note: I completely fubarred this encounter in terms of mechanics.  For those not familiar with my house rules I remove the +1/2 level on tohit bonuses and defenses.  This makes it a wash in terms of accuracy but opens the playability range of creatures tremendously.  But this fails if you include the wrong version of the monsters you've made, ones without the -1/2 level modification.  So the players were trying to hit things with essentially a +5 to all defenses for the entire fight.  This resulted in their hit ratio shifting from around 70-75% where I like them to be to roughly 45% or less than half the time.  On top of that they're level 8's fighting level 10 standard soldiers and a level 10 elite controller, typically this is a non-issue with my HR but that shifts the chance to hit down another 10-15% or so and now they're hitting on about 1 in three attacks.  This was my first fight involving creatures this high and I was thinking I was going to have re-visit my numbers.  I didn't want to change the defenses midstride so I put an exit plan in that if the boss was killed the undead would drop as well.  Unfortunately the players didn't kill the boss all that fast.  As a result the fight dragged on.  At the time I was worried I'd hit this whole 'grindfest' that some people complain about but as it turns out it was just a dumbass mistake on my part.

In regards to Lerik, a major NPC dying, I let the chips fall where they would.  I had two possible endings, he dies, he doesn't die.  This way the party got the satisfaction of killing someone they really didn't like.  And that's the sign of a good NPC.]

The watch shows up, brought in by the guard the party sent for reinforcements.  The guard they’d kept specifically to watch what they did ends up being a good witness in on their behalf and by the time the events are reported on, believes he saw everything the party did first hand and he keeps their name clear.  Torel has a nudging suspicion in the back of his mind about the winged figure and it suddenly dawns on him that the facial features look like Lerik’s new aide.  The others don’t see it but are willing to give the avenger the benefit of the doubt.

They head back to their bed and breakfast after reporting on the events.

Reporting to the council after they’re cleaned up they find Garon more than suspicious as to their motives for happening to be there but secretly Garon is also more than relieved to be free of Lerik and his poisonous impact on the town from his position of power as a non-human hater.

Teagon encourages Garon to give them Lerik’s house, a fine residence as befits the leader of the merchants guilds of the town under the ‘rationale’ that they would be best suited to ensure that no further evil influences come through the place.

[DM's Note:  Teagon knows that the party 'suspects' he had something to do with the missing gold shipments.  Much like the bandit leader Warrick, it wasn't anything personal, just business.  Eladrin's in my world are businessmen first and foremost in their cultural outlook.  But he also knows that other races can take things personally so he's making obvious gestures to balance things out as he sees it.]

The party splits up briefly with some visiting the airship and others hanging out in their new house.  T’Balktu arranges for a clean up crew for the blood and gore of the church below.   His leisure time with bottle and a pipe is broken up by screams from the underground area and still in Lerik’s smoking jacket he rushes in to find the commoners fleeing one of their own, the man in a fit of all consuming rage.  T’Balktu drops him with one punch and questions the others.  The one guy was trying to clean the arcane sigil in one corner of the room and went berserk and tried to kill the others.

T’Balktu gets a new cleaning crew and has them move an easy chair down into the underground chamber and continues his enjoyment of Lerik’s goods as he keeps an eye on the new group.

Biminey and Torel wander back and Biminey tries to destroy the sigil.  He’s not paying attention as he counts the empty wine bottles around T’Balktu’s comfy chair and seriously flubs up the disruption.

He spins on the others and attacks.   Torel and T’Balktu eventually get him down and dying.  Only to have him flare up again after they stuff a healing potion down his throat.  T’Balktu proceeds to sit on the lanky artificer while Torel invokes the power of Kord to break the evil force possessing Biminey.

Then they proceed a little more carefully and a lot more cautiously to dismantle the arcanic devices in the underground chamber.

They get the place clean and arrange for Spar to move into their new abode to repeat a warding ritual on the place in their abscence with the hope of making it permanent.  It only takes a year.

[DM's Note: I like such optimism.  That they're going to keep the house, that it's going to be around in a year and that they'll be alive to enjoy it.]

Torel tries to get Captain Warrick to let them take Driskull with them on a hunt for the Souleater tribe but he refuses.  He’s lost too many of his better warriors and Driskull is his best.  He’s not going to risk him on an endeavor that he’s not sure will have any impact on the outcome of the future of the town.  He will give them whatever help he can though as long as it doesn’t weaken the city.  At least without a good chance of results.

[DM's Note: This is both a realistic reason, the city is weakened and Werrick is as I've pictured him a pretty conservative leader.  Giving up what is literally the best fighter the city has right now or his protege in Corporal Baen doesn't sit well with him.  He was willing to send the bulk of his well trained forces on a lightning raid as the reward/risk ratio was good. The fact that they lost over half the force if anything has now made him ultra conservative.    But this isn't as clear cut to him.  There's also a pure game play mechanic reason.  I don't really use DMNPC's unless I have to, they detract from the 'heroes' of the stories and they can end up being sacrificed by players.  Doubt if it would be an issue with this group, they sacrificed one of their own in their quest to help Torn.]

The party gathers supplies for their trip and we’ll embark on it at the next session.

We will not be having a session this upcoming week, we try to do a 3 on, 1 off schedule so that everyone has an off Saturday night they spend without missing a session.

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In attendance for this session are Biminey, Stak, Torel, Visra with T’Balktu being played by Visra as well.

Sushanna is brought out to the airship and started down the path of the Artificer by Biminey.  This after a couple of days and Biminey attuning the master control to her and giving her a artificer familiar grants her rudimentary control of the airship.  In that she can take it down to the ocean’s surface or up above the clouds.

While the rest of them are in town Biminey has crafted a mount for one of the ballistae that was purchased giving it the ability to aim downwards at a 45 degree angle from the bow of the ship.  He also devised mounts for the longboat attaching it to the stern of the ship.

In town Torel and Stak meet with Garon, Werrick the Watch Captain and a new face to them that of Sargent Driskull, a fighter of middle aged years which tells them a lot about his skill levels.

Captain Werrick and Garon have obviously reached something of agreement as to how they should proceed and the group talks with Driskull primarily.  It’s his firm belief and he’s convinced the others that the city needs a show of force or they risk the hobgoblins thinking they’re weak and that would result in the tribes swarming over the city, an attack they cannot hope to repulse.   It’s his plan to strike at one of the villages and wipe out one of the tribes, allowing a few to spread the word.  If they don’t succeed he believes the town is doomed to fall to the hobs.

This makes sense to Torel and Stak and they defer to the old warrior, expert killer that he is, and agree.  The city is going to send 50 men on the mission, 6 heavy squads of 8 men along with Sargent Driskul and a corporal Bael.   They make arrangements to get the mission underway and start picking the men and getting them equipped and arranged and agree to meet back 2 or 3 days for a review to acquaint the troops with the party.

They head back to the ship and pick up Biminey who’s now got Sushanna trained enough to raise and lower the boat.   The group united once again head back to town and head to the Temple of Eris to gather their goods and such and are going to send them to the boat.  Biminey also brought one of his new hirelings, Visra’s old retinue and is having her shop around for a suitable home for them all assuming that real estate given the future of the city and the exodus that is going on will find them a suitable place cheap.

At the temple Biminey finds a beggar child waiting for them with a tale woe.  A man, an elf in his words wants to meet with the group to talk and the man has taken his sisters and threatens them with harm if the group doesn’t show up.  Biminey rallies the troops and they head to a tavern in the dock district.

There they meet with Warrick the leader of the bandits that were raiding gold shipments, that captured them and tried to sell them to slavers and fought with them in the warehouse during a meeting with slavers and Meri, one of Shuk’s seconds, in an upstairs room.  Warrick tosses Torel a scalplock and tells him it will grant them passage to a hobgoblin tribe that he’d dealt with and that he was doing this as a final job for his employer.  He offers them the same general information that Driskull gave them. That hobgoblins respect martial ability.   He tells them how to reach the tribe the trophy will grant them access to, the Jagged Maw tribe.  He doesn’t know why he was tasked with meeting with the party but the money was good.   He comes off to the group while cold blooded, he’s willing to have children killed if the party causes any trouble at this meeting but honorable in his own way, in that he’ll fulfill his side of a bargain.   Meri’s presence is a bit of a puzzle and she’s not forthcoming with much information.

The group backs out of the room and leaves the tavern to be attacked by hobgoblin assassin’s, three of them in the street outside.  The hob’s paralyze the party with poisoned bolts from crossbows and then attack them with garrotes in the street.  The fight carries on for a bit and with two of the hobgoblins down, the third tries to flee.  Biminey knocks him through a tavern window with his thundering armour power and Stak is waiting at the tavern door with his deadly accurate bow as the assassin tries to flee through the tavern.

They recover a pair of gloves that can be form and color shifted at will and that produce small bladed weapons at the wearer’s need.  In addition they recover coup sticks from each of the assassins, one bearing 68 notches, the other two 18 and 19 notches.  Obviously a master and his apprentices.  They strip the bodies claiming valuables and wait for the watch to show up.  They send for Driskull who wonders what the party has done that hobs would send assassin’s after them but the group isn’t very forthcoming with the information.

On one of the bodies they find a note from Warrick wishing them the best if they managed to defeat the assassins and admitting that he’d set them up for the attack after he had his meeting with them. He also pointed suspcion at Teagon one of the three councilors of the city, the one in charge of shipping goods inland by river and wagon.  Mostly river.

They head back to the Temple and find Lerik waiting for them.  Lerik has dug up some ancient law on the books granting the city the ability to tax adventurer’s 10% of their goods although in times of extreme duress the city can raise the cost up to 50%.   Lerik’s aide lets slip the information that the group would have 24 hours to arrange for their goods to be appraised.  Lerik has also hired two body guards that the group reads as being highly skilled, easily their own abilities and probably higher.  On top of that he’s arranged for the Sargent Major of the watch along with Torn and several watchmen to be present as the party is served their notice.

As the group threatens to leave the city they’re given advice to talk to the other councilors and see what can be done about the laws.

They talk to Garon and reiterate their threats to simply leave the city to their fate and Garon swears to deal with the issue, passing along the information that Lerik is just not acting rationally these days and that he seems to have a very personal hatred of the group.

They pass the rest of the day in preparing for their trek in the morning to meet with the soldiers that are going on the hobgoblin raid.  Biminey retrieves the high priests crystal and hides it in the heavy flail he carries for his Dancing Weapon power.

They meet with the soldiers and get introduced all around.  Most of the troops are middle tier, in fact they’re probably stripping the watch and mercenaries of the bulk of their middle experience troops leaving only the young and the old so to speak left in the city.

Lerik finds them later that day, he’s furious and almost insane with rage that they’ve bypassed his attempts to get their goods or them to leave whichever he was going for.  Visra, an impartial observer believes it’s not so much rage as fear is the primary emotion driving Lerik.

Early in the week hours the next morning they head south toward a farming commune on the coastline.  They’re able to stealth their way through the countryside and reach a vantage point.  Stak and a couple of scouts from the Watch kill an observer and they’re able to view the commune.  They make plans, the bulk of the force will attack the commune and wipe out the rank and file of the hobs and rescue the visible captives kept in corrals.   The party will go after the command structure that is set up in tents outside the commune.

A fight ensues and goes well, the group defeating mixed forces of hobgoblin warriors, casters, summoned undead, hill giant mercenaries and a Hand of Bane.  The fight went well for the group, they’re able to take down the hobgoblin forces although one of the hill giant flees toward the end of the battle as it goes badly for them and the warcaster surrenders assuming he’ll be dealt with as other hobgoblins do.  The group turns him over to Driskull to be tortured for information and makes sure he dies.   A few of the grunts are set free to spread word of the deed in typical hobgoblin fashion and the group takes trophies included the Hand of Bane’s flail and the battle standard of the tribe which were known as the Throatcutters.

As the survivors of the battle are patched up and seen to and the captives counted and gathered we bring this session to a close as the group starts packing up the leader’s tent and stuffing it into their bag of holding along with assorted weapons and the like that will come in handy for a town under siege.

[Notes: This was a long session with a lot of non-combat interaction and we got a bit of a late start as the application I wrote for Temple (Biminey) didn't want to work right for me.  Basically it's a dot net app that lets Temple press a mouse button to roll a d20 which is then announced audibly.   But in the end we got going.

I was also using MasterPlan 'for real' for this session.  It has a lot of good features but there are things I would have done differently to speed up usage of the app but overall I was happy with it.  There are some basics that need to be addressed, the ability to add effects that boost defenses for a turn or two, attack boosters and that kind of thing.  But its a very much supported and constantly updated application so there's a pretty good chance it'll continue to be developed.]

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You can still die, for the average person in multiple ways. You don’t have a healing potion. You’re out of surges. You fail your death save three times before you make two successes. [Going to disallow Quickdraw for this particular effect. It's hard to be quick and dying at the same time.]

Because it’s not a standard action you can’t Second Wind. Unless you’re a dwarf of course so this boosts the dwarf’s ability to Second Wind as a minor action. But then the only dwarf in the party is my wife and not killing one’s wife’s character off is probably a good idea if it can be helped. Although I’ve done it in the past.

If you have some other way to heal yourself with a minor action you’re also good.  So leaders or anyone multi-classing into a leader or hybridizing into a leader will be set up fairly well. The rest of them will need to keep a potion and a surge handy.

It makes use of a saving throw that’s already being made so there’s no extra rolls. It simulates a recovery into semi-consciousness. On the downside, any character that is feebly fumbling a potion out of their belt will be subject to discretionary attack by any adjacent hostile although ranged attackers unless they’re sentient and particularly vicious will probably ignore or not notice a prone dying opponent’s movements.

Anyway, thought I’d share.

Dying Condition-

Make a saving throw when you are dying.  If you fail you take one death strike.  Fail three times and you are dead.  If you succeed you can make a minor action.   If an desired result requires two minor actions then they must be made in succession typically.  Example:  Retrieving a potion and drinking it requires two minor actions typically.  If the character makes their save they retrieve the potion.  If they fail the subsequent save then they’re assumed to have dropped the potion and must now spend another minor action to retrieve it from the ground where it may have rolled.

Elisssa has decided to retire for awhile from the adventuring life [Laura wanted to try something else]. The reason that I made up for this was a fairly obvious one, the group (characters) keeps getting on Elisssa’s case about killing the hill giant, not being able to pitch a tent or sail a boat.  For a dragonborn such insults and snide comments are hard to take.  Them not letting her kill the captured slavers was the final straw and furious with the group she stalks off to see her friends and family as soon as they enter Larkson.  She takes with her a couple thousand in gold and Krag’s Axe and Bracers and some assorted trinkets and souvenirs.

Later discourse over the course of the session might reveal that Elisssa may come back as the floating crew of available NPC’s for use by players (Torn, Dash, Sushanna, Kane)

The action starts immediately with the first of three encounters for the night.  Screams are heard echoing through the temple and grabbing their arms the group rushes to see what’s going on.  T’Balktu, Torel, Visra and Stak are joined along the way by a visiting Cleric of Kord from Anvil here to do research at the temple by the name of Spar.  [Played by Biminey's owner Temple]

THe five of them find the room that contains the temple’s main ritual circle filled with a vortex of energies.  People located in the room are being sucked into the vortex and being… reformed as something else.  As the energies die away the group catches a glimpse of Liloth and Phy’el Fleshwalker through a rent in space causing the effects.

An abomination of flesh, humanoid, composed of merged persons in the room roars out a challenge.  It’s back bursts and hunks of flesh drop free to create little humanoid creatures dripping flaming slime. The monkeys immediately start flinging their slime around the room and where the gobs hit, invisible before now runes flare and burn out, a few seconds later the bricks blow outwards in blasts of energies and shrapnel.

The group attacks of course, taking down the big creature and then mopping up the smaller ones but not before they cut a wide swatch through the walls, floor and celing of the room destroying  large sections of the bricks and subsequently the wardings inlaid upon them.

As they stop and catch their breath they hear more screams, deducing (correctly) that this was a diversion while another attack was going on.  They rush through the temple to find the forbidden archives under attack by rats.  A section of the floor has fallen away down into the sewers that run under the town and rats are streaming in, each grabbing a scroll or parchement or tome to flee down the hole with it.

They follow, smashing rats as they go.  In the dank large sewers they run into Krag’s animus which has formed a temporary body out of rats along with other rat swarms.  Due to their positioning Krag has to reveal early on that he can absorb the rat swarms to recover his mass (i.e. recover health) and the group destroys the swarms before working on Krag.  (this made the encounter easier on the group by a considerable amount thanks to their smart thinking).

As the mass of rats that is Krag collapses to stream away a red mist shoots off down the sewers. (Krag’s animus).

They follow the animus (and trail of parchment fragments) to Krag’s lair where he’s been feeding the blood of those he’s slain through one of Liloth’s warps.  A large chamber has been damned up at the doorway forming a pool of blood like liquid several inches deep.   The room is filled with rats each holding a parchment.  Right now the rats are being lifted through the portal bearing the parchments. They turn on the group as Torel and Spar both try to bless the portal to destroy it.  (A whole hella lot of very low rolls).

Eventually the group gets the warp closed and triggers a trap laid into the room turning the blood into a blood elemental.  It’s not designed to be able to stand up against a full group but is aimed to destroy single intruders and the group makes short work of it.

Spar had the idea during the fight to break the dam holding in the blood and if they’d of done that before the fight they could have destroyed the warp and prevented the elemental from spawning but hind sight and all that.

They recovered a bracer and axe that Krag’s been slowly enchanting to replace his lost axe and bracer.  He’s a very good enchanter, at odds with his brutal nature but has a knack for things that deal with blood.  It’s just hard to enchant things when you’re a ghost.   The bracers are similar to Iron Armbands of Power but require a healing surge to activate, after activated they boost edged weapons damage by 2 for the rest of the encounter.   The axe gives its wielder a Immediate Reaction ability that grants them a basic melee attack with the axe when an adjacent target is bloodied for the first time and it deals an extra +2 damage when the wielder is bloodied.

The group retreats from the chamber and heads back to the temple.  They rest and recover and then work on plans.  They talk to the captain of the watch and Garon of the council.  Garon is floundering.  He’s out of his league with the things that are going on and doesn’t know which way to stumble much less lead.  People have been leaving the city out of fear, this is obviously a bad thing for the city’s protection and the party points it out and want him to lock the city down.  He’s reluctant to do that, he doesn’t want to be the ‘bad guy’ or institute the martial law that this requires.  Larkson has always been a free city and preventing the poeple from leaving strikes him too much like slavery, an act that really runs against his core values especially after having lost his children to slavers.  He’s also loath to go against the agreement with the Watch in terms of disbursement of the mercenaries.

He asks Torel and Stak to hire on advisors, a task they reluctantly agree to consider.   The group considers their actions and decide to send a fetch out to Biminey asking him to meet them early.

They purchase a longboat and row out to sea, successfully navigating to their general meeting area.  They discuss things with Biminey and the others.

Biminey asks them to ask Sushanna to come visit him for multiple reasons, the primary one he wants to teach her the ways of the artificer so that she can at times take control of the airship allowing him freedom to leave the ship.

After discussion they’re going to try and lead a band of mercenaries out of the town to gather information on the hobgoblins who are taking small villages and farmsteads captive as a threat for the town to give them some book, a book they believe holds power over the creatures loosed from Darkmith.

We end our session there.

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I use the Monster Builder to create the player’s foes and then use the Export as Rich Text in the app to get the data.  I paste that into a page in MS Word where it looks all nice and neat.  Unfortunately the monster colors are far from printer friendly (massive green, well cyan and magenta, ink usage) and they’re not all that legible when printed.   It’s impossible to apply a theme to them due their oddities in format so I came up with this macro to strip out all the coloring and set the text all to black.  Now they’re very printer (and eye) friendly.

Sub RemoveShading()
‘
‘ RemoveShading Macro
‘
‘
With Selection.ParagraphFormat.Shading
.Texture = wdTextureNone
.ForegroundPatternColor = wdColorAutomatic
.BackgroundPatternColor = -603914241
End With

Selection.Font.Color = -587137025
With Selection.Cells
With .Shading
.Texture = wdTextureNone
.ForegroundPatternColor = wdColorAutomatic
.BackgroundPatternColor = -603914241
End With
End With

End Sub

As it stands, only one person in the group is actually trained in stealth and the other four have pretty low Dexterity all things considered so it makes it simply impossible aside from unusual luck to sneak anywhere as a group.

This train of thought was kicked off by something Chris Perkin’s did in the third Penny Arcade podcast Sept 25 section (I think, could be wrong).  I’d been up 38′ish hours without sleep at that point so I wasn’t tracking 100% but at one point he had one person make a stealth check and the rest just made Assist rolls.  I’m not sure if he did it by accident or what since he makes a lot of mistakes about the game’s rules during the sessions and not 5 minutes later he had them all roll individually again instead of as a group.   [For someone who apparently helped write the game he's not very familiar with the basic mechanics of the game.  I think he does a wonderful job as a DM please don't get me wrong.  But he's failed to correct a lot of mistakes the players have done like Aoefel forgetting to use his weapon proficiency bonus on attack rolls over and over and over.  Oman not getting his Wis bonus on any cleric power with the keyword healing in it.  Just basic game mechanic kind of things.  But then maybe he's not used to having players that don't know what they're doing.]

This started me thinking.  Every time I’ve heard on someone’s podcast about a stealth check being needed, invariably one or more people fail it.  This also has happened every time I’ve done it in my own games.  It gets worse if the group is having to roll against more than one perception check.  This devalues stealth completely except in those instances where the one guy with stealth essentially plays by himself for awhile.

I don’t like that.  I don’t like that the characters don’t have a stealth option, a viable one anyway and I don’t like splitting a party up because it reduces the fun for everyone.

Do I have an option?  Well just now in asking on the forums if someone else had come up with anything my fingers typed out something to the below and as I’m typing this I just came up with another two options which I’ll type down there when I get done typing this.

And this only applies when the game is not in initiative, i.e. out of combat.

Out of Initiative Stealth –

Note: This assumes the group is moving as a group.  If they split up then each group would need to use the appropriate option.  Individuals would be back to making individual checks of course.

Option 1 – Stealth Master – One person is designated the Stealth Leader and they make a stealth roll based on their abilities.  They suffer a -2 penalty on their roll for every untrained person in the group that’s moving with them.  This simulates the master stealther telling the others where to move, what to avoid, fixing their gear so it makes the least amount of noise etc.  Optional – Each untrained member of the group that’s involved other than the Stealth Master makes an Aid Another check.  If they succeed they add +2 to the master’s roll, if they fail the -2 still applies. A member trained in stealth would roll Aid Another and if they succeed they add +2 to the master’s score but if they fail they don’t add -2.

Option 2 – Mini Skill Challenge - Everyone in the party rolls their own stealth check.  As long as they have more successes than failures they succeed as a group.

Option 3 – Cumulative Totals - The party members each roll their own check and their rolls are added together.  If this number is higher than the opposing number they win the check.  The opposing number is generated by multiplying the number in the party by either a flat DC or totaling up all the opposed check rolls.

Thoughts –

The base part of Option 1 is fast, the total number of untrained people is going to be known so it’s one roll for the party, quick and easy.   If you add in the Aid Another then everyone has to roll but it allows each party member to contribute to the success of the endeavor, never a bad thing to promote.

With Option 2 I don’t feel it adds what I’m looking for.  At least in my situation.  With 4 untrained people with low dex in the group they’re going to fail the check more often than they’ll succeed.  I want it to be possible for the group as a whole to sneak onto the castle grounds, over the walls, and into the keep before they’re discovered.  Without just saying “Okay you managed to sneak into the grounds, up and over the walls and are now in the storage areas on the second floor.  Now make stealth checks to avoid getting seen.  Ooops Biminey you must of stumbled into a pile of broken glass, metal and loud noises piled precariously next to you.”

The problem with Option 3 it’s not much better than option 2 and you also have to do math.    But seriously, on the plus side it lets a high ‘overkill’ roll help a lower roll but by the same token a low roll pulls a high one down.

Anyway, that’s how I spent a bit of my afternoon while staring at progress bars.  Comments and thoughts welcome as usual.

[Edit Afterthoughts: The DMG I've been told suggests for a group roll having the lowest skilled person make the roll. While that might make sense, it simply means that we're back to the group not being able to stealth and that's not my point to all this.  So this is what I'm going to start with and work from there -

The party divides the party into groups as they wish each group has to contain at least two people and can contain the entire party.  One person in each group at the players’ choice makes an initial stealth roll.  The remaining members of the group impact this roll as follows – each character Untrained in stealth makes an Aid Another check.  If they fail, they add -2 to the initial roll.  Each character Trained in stealth makes an Aid Another check.  If they succeed they add +2 to the initial roll.   The group has to move as a unit or reasonably so.

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Unless you’re planning on a encounter string, i.e. at least 3 encounters back to back, plan on building your encounter at the far side of Medium or short side of Hard.  You have to adjust this of course for the abilities of both your players and your player’s characters.  So start with medium hards before you go into hards.  I can realistically and demonstrably give my group, warden, avenger, ranger, artificer, warlock(barbarian) level+3/4 encounters.  And yes they’re hard but they’re doable for the most part. I’ve only had one character death from tossing the party into this mix as their sole fight for a day.  And that was due to bad death save rolls as well as heal checks.

When you’re building your monsters, remember that they’re going to be alive for all of maybe 5-7 rounds for the most part.  In the interests of making them interesting give them all 2 or 3 encounter only powers and give them a little bit of synergy among them. 

Example: A standard skirmisher might have his basic +7, 1d10+5 Warclub attack, then encounters of Smashing Blow +7, 1d8+5 and target is knocked prone.  Head Blow: +7 2d6+8 and target is dazed.  Target must be Prone.  And finally Aim Low: +7 1d8+5 damage and target is Slowed.

Then drop them in pairs or trio’s.  One of them does a Smashing Blow on a PC and another one follows up with a Head Blow now that he’s down and the last one Aim’s Low and slows the PC.   So now you have a PC that’s dazed, slowed and bleeding on the ground.

Typically that means he’s going to be able to stand on his turn or attack from the ground.  If you have a trio of these guys then they can simply alternate their three encounter powers over three rounds and beat the heck out of the PC.

The point of this is not, well mostly not, to kill a PC but to force others to interfere on his behalf.  A defender marks the attackers, a warlord pushes one, two people bull rush two of them, a wizard thunderwaves, an artificer thundering armours, whatever it takes to get them off the PC they’ve singled out.  In all things you as the DM should be striving to make them work together as a team, watching out for each other, buffing each other, taking hits for each other.

4th Edition is a balanced edition, significantly more so than any previous edition (please keep the 4e hate spam down about that).  As long as you follow the general guidelines or the Adenture Tools (well worth a one month subscription to get it and the Character Builder) it’s hard to build an unfair monster with just a tiny bit of common sense.   Some combination can be wicked hard, a creature with a minor action to knock prone and a bonus to damage on prone targets is harsh (Needlefang Swarm).  Creatures with auras that stack can be really harsh (Chillborn Zombies) or creatures that have resistances to damage and reduce damage at the same time (Wraith).  These are all examples of monsters that are significantly tougher than their level or exp value warrants as a result (and just bad monster design IMO).

Also as a general rule I really think monsters that Stun should used VERY sparingly.  I don’t use it all, forcing a player to skip their turn “Is Not Fun”.   Dazed is as much of a screw over as I will ever give a player in terms of costing them their turn.

But over time this balance design can lead to encounters that feel the same.  So don’t be afraid to take those guidelines and manipulate them a bit.  With just two or three tiny changes you can drastically alter the feel of an encounter.

By changing the hit points or attack bonus in conjunction with the damage dealt with a power you can rachet up the tension of an encounter in many ways.

As an example, let’s say I build an encounter that’s designed to depict a bandit party that’s venturing into hobgoblin lands to negotiate a deal and the players have been chasing them.  I put in one elite, 5 standards, and 5 minions and generate roughly a level+2 encounter as the culmination of a 3 encounter string, the first two encounters level/level+1 encounters with hobgoblins.

I take the elite and drop his health by 20% but I boost his damage output accordingly.  So he goes from 200 hit points to 160 hit points.  His average damage per round per attack goes from 15 damage to 19 damage.  He’s got a shorter lifespan but hits for more damage so it should equal out assuming no major ‘swinginess’ in the attack rolls.

Two of the standards are his body guards.  They’re not ‘elite’ but I want to show them as being highly trained.  I boost their attack chance by +4 (20% more likely to hit) and drop their damage output by 20% (15 damage becomes 11 damage).

3 of the standards I want to be really annoying as a whole but individually they’re not much.  As a group of highly trained archers who go for the sure shot rather than the damaging shot,  I up their attack by +6 and drop their damage from 15 down to about 8.   So they’re a steady unswerving health bleed on the party.

You could also model the boss of this encounter as a little more brutish but not a true brute, a giant of a human who’s armed with a big slow greatsword, easy to get out of the way of but don’t let it hit you whatever you do.  Let’s decrease his attack chances by -6 and boost his damage by 30% instead.   So he doesn’t hit often but when he does, a player REALLY feels it.

As a DM if you take this to an extreme in terms of damage per hit and 30%+ is bordering extreme then you HAVE to keep an eye on your dice and your players.  You’ve changed the encounter from a fairly steady progression of damage sinking on both sides to something that with a little good/bad luck can be very swingy and really hammer your players and you’re not there to do that.  Or if you are you probably won’t have players for long.

With these simple few tweaks though you can have players leaning forward when the boss rolls, wincing as you roll high and breathing a sigh of relief when you roll low.   And cursing out loud as ‘those %$(!*% archers are chewing my ass off.  Would someone kill those little @$@*(*!s?!”

In terms of encounter make up, make sure to mix things up.  Sure throw in the encounter that’s six giant slug like abominations and make it a straight forward bug hunt.  Easy, simple, not complicated, something every group needs from time to time.

But your encounters that are comprised of intelligent creatures are very likely to run something like boss, bodyguards, guards with optional groups of support and minions.   Or that’s how I see it.  The boss is going to want at least one or two people dedicated to his survival in my opinion.  Warriors or casters that stick with him, intercept attackers that kind of thing.  Then there are the general purpose guards, standards that keep the attackers occupied while the boss does his boss thing, they’re the defensive/offensive line of your encounter.

Then you have support groups that consist of artillery, control and/or healing. Typically these should be the smallest presence on the field as they’re the ones that usually sit in the back and go with range powers, they die easily but sometimes getting to them is just flat out hard.

Minions are just that.  Masses of incompetents who die in a loud messy fashion to the enjoyment of the players.   And once the group gets past level 4 or so, plan on your minions having little to no impact on the battle other than to waste a round or two as the party AOE’s them down.   Any more I don’t even count them against the XP budget of the encounter unless they’re artillery that is going to be widely spread out.  It’s realistically impossible to spread out melee attackers, they have to bunch up to get at the players who typically hang out fairly close together. They’re there to make the heroes cool as they kill six guys with one blast, that kind of thing.

I’d also advise you not to get too crazy on your encounter makeup complexity.  The more creatures with different powers you throw out there, especially if you take my advice and give them all some ‘fun’ powers for you to play with, the more likely you are to forget to use them.  I regularly forget to use Immediate powers that I give to my creatures for instance.

Trying to keep track of multiple powers on multiple types of creatures in one encounter servers not much more than to slow things down. Any more I strive for (but frequently fail to accomplish) no more than 3 types of creatures per encounter although with humanoids it’s hard to do.  My bandit, slavers and hobgoblin tribes just like to cover their bases, they want front line, back line, support, artillery, control, pure power and leadership in every fight.  And it’s hard to say no to them as they make sense when they send in their manpower requests. 

Also keep your players’ characters’ abilities in mind.  A group with a lot of radiant output is going to rip your undead encounters to shreds.   A group without any way to control creatures should run into encounters with fewer but tougher creatures.  A group with massive amounts of AOE’s shouldn’t get encounters comprised of mostly minions as a steady diet.  A group without a lot of ways to spend surges during an encounter needs smaller easier encounters but more of them during their ‘work day’ or few but tougher encounters per day.  Things like this keep in the back of your mind as you’re planning their almost but not quite demise.

And the flip side of that, keep your players abilities in mind as well.  A group who’s sole tactic is “I got this one, you go get that guy.” needs a lighter hand on the encounter difficulty than a group that knows exactly how their powers mesh with the powers of the rest of the team and acts accordingly.

So to wrap this up -

• give all your creatures some nifty encounter powers because that’s fun for you
• don’t be afraid to deviate from the monster building guidelines but do it in a balanced fashion because that’s fun for the players
• don’t make your encounters too simple or too complex, not fun for you
• keep the abilities of your players and their characters in mind, not fun for the players
• and most importantly make sure you and your players are having a good time or you’ll be putting your books away to gather dust and that’s a very un-fun thing to have to do…

I hope this is of some benefit to someone, putting it down at the very least helped solidify it for myself and that’s never a bad thing. Next week (or month or whenever) I’ll try and come up with some thoughts on how to actually run the encounter and give you some excuses for why the archers are all focus firing on the cleric for the 800th time.

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[DM: I want to point out that I rolled like utter [bleep] this session.  My miss ratio was pretty far on the wrong side of the standard deviation on a d20. I only had one natural 20, on T’Balktu of course, and a bunch of 1′s, 2′s, 3′s. ]

The tower taken from the forces defending it our band of heroes takes stock of the situation.  And the phat lewt.  They recover a magic staff, set of robes, some fire arrows and bolts, a couple of healing potions, a stack of what they’ll eventually discover are alchemical bombs and a set of signal flares.

Based on Keri’s notes they know the cave trolls are sent around the island around dawn to help with the construction efforts.  This gives them about 6 hours before then so leaving Biminey to begun work on repairing and re-tuning the airship.  A couple of hours into it he realizes he’s going to have to replace the broken boards of the ship before it’ll be flyable again.

He wakes the others and gives them the bad news.  They decide to go back to sleep and deal with it later.  Biminey joins them in sleeping leaving Torn, Kane and Dash on watch.  Hirelings work well for that.

As the sun peeks up Torel and Stak go look at the avenues of approach to the tower.  On the far side of the chasm separating the tower side from the rest of the island is a extending bridge.  They crank it over and investigate the far side. A couple of smaller buildings are under construction on that side.  Torel preps the area by liberally splashing gallons of oil in the places where attackers might take cover.   
A couple of hours after dawn, the compound forces start wondering where the cave trolls are and send a couple of sailors up to find out what’s going on.  They holler and hullabaloo for awhile but the good guys don’t respond.  One of the sailors twists a rod like the ones that are in the tower and a flare of light flies way up in the air, sparking and sputtering, visible for miles in all directions and then head back to the compound at a jog.

[DM's Comments: I'd planned out a number of scenarios, even had maps ready but the group's actions as happens quite frequently took a turn that I hadn't planned.  Their scheme for the lumber was sneaky and scheming and my possible scenario's didn't quite get that sneaky on their behalf.  I'd envisioned them possibly ambushing the first people up to see what was going on by either setting up in the partially built houses on the far side of the bridge or leaving the bridge down and luring them over to the tower.  But it just really proves yet again one person will never be able to accurately predict what other people will do, 100% of the time no matter how long they've known them.]

Now that the bad guys know something is up, although not what, the group decides to hunker down and prepare to repel an attack trying to come across the chasm and wait in vain for rest of the day with nothing happening although they do spot a sneaky person scouting them out.

[Torel rolled a natural 20 on a perception check or they'd of not spotted him.  After the slavers knew something was up they sent up an assassin who wisely decided not to try anything during the day.  The slavers are expecting another ship of reinforcements which would include at least an overmage if not another ubermage. They also have some high level captives that they've been lead to believe will be highly ransomable. The captives lied by the way to gain time, there's no one left to ransom them.  Hence they're not going to try to frontal attack a tower that they have to try to cross a 25' gap with a 50' fall into jagged rocks.  They're going to wait for nightfall and sneak across under the cover of darkness.]

As the day continues to wind down the group decides to send Stak and Dash, both fairly sneaky bastards over to scout the compound.  They know from Keri’s notes that there is a building under construction over there which should mean there’s lumber.  The two are supposed to try and steal the lumber.  And rather than going around the island they cut across the harbor, using a small cask to carry their gear and to rest with on the mile or so swim.  They’re given two signal flares to use if they need help.

Stak and Dash get over and find no way to get to the lumber, the slavers over there are scattered, hiding in nooks and crannies while several are guarding a building that Keri marked as holding slaves.  Discretion prevails and they return the way they came.  Stak unfortunately failed in his attempt to climb the cliff so they shout for help and then are pulled up the cliff.

They report their findings to the rest.

Our five leave Kane, Dash and Torn to watch the tower as they’ve come up with a plan to not go after the lumber at the compound but instead take the ship and de-construct part of it for the lumber they need.  They get ready and slither down the rope and into the warm salt water and start dog paddling.

[It's about this time that the assassin makes it across and starts scouting the tower section of the island.  He's not sure what to make of the three men that he can find, assuming they must be tougher than they are if they were able to take the tower and goes back retrieves most of the quality forces from the compound and they assualt the tower while our group is slowly swimming across the harbor.  The attack on the harbor kicks off about the time that the group gets to the ship.  The three hirelings immediately know they're heavily screwed and set off two flares.  They three are all level 6 though and they do cut a swath through the attackers but are eventually taken.]

The group reach the ship, Stak going further to steal the longboats from the shore.   Elisssa hits the deck of the ship first due to bad timing on their part but has no trouble killing both slavers on board.  One swing of her axe at the end of a charge cuts the slaver’s arm off which is holding a signal flare.  She spins and takes the head off the other one in the same motion.

The rest climb on board to find the ship is theirs and Stak comes up with the longboats.

The signal flares go up from the tower but there’s just not much they can do for them except continue with the plan.  They wait till down though which isn’t far off and use the ballistae on the ship to let the forces on the shore know they’re there.  Keeping the slavers on the shore occupied, they strip lumber off the non-visible side of the boat.

Lumber in head they set the ship afire and start rowing back to the tower.  The tower forces are waiting for them but aren’t too concerned as the cliffs are almost impossible to climb and it would be very easy to just drop rocks on anyone trying to climb them and knock them off.

Unfortunately for the slavers they don’t know about Biminey’s Ladder ritual. As the ladder springs up and Torel starts climbing his butt off the two at the top realize that things may not be going as planned and start yelling.  They drop rocks but they miss and Torel is able to reach the top of the cliff, Biminey right behind him.

A fight breaks out and both sides are reinforced as forces rush in from the tower and up the ladder but when Torel uses the Deamon Heart to walk the assassin off the cliff and Biminey drops the ladder as he’s trying to climb back up.  Battered, bruised, ribs cracked and leg broken the assassin limps off vowing to come back and kill them all in nasty ways.  Right as Biminey’s firebolt, charged with lightning enters his skull from above.

The fights just clean up this point between the guys the hirelings killed, the loss of the ‘boss’ of the island forces and the fact that the slavers can’t seem to hit a damn thing it’s quickly over.

They capture one of the slaver alchemists and get information from him.  They go back and strike a bargain, one sided, with the remaining neophytes in the tower (all minions) and make them leave.  They recover their battered and beaten hirelings.

Hauling up their construction supplies Biminey and a couple of others get to work repairing the airship while the rest traipse across the island and intimidate or kill the remaining slavers.

In the captive hut they rescue a dwarf noble woman and her retinue.  She has a tale of her city being overrun by hobgoblins and her father putting her and the rest on a boat with a few guards while they stayed to defend the city.  They were picked up by slavers not long after setting sail and brought to the island.  To buy time and preferential treatment they let on to the slavers that a huge ransom would be possible.  The other slaver ship on the island went off to collect said ransom.

Air ship repaired and drivable they take a minor detour to burn the slaver compound to the ground from the air and head back.  They try to investigate one of the small farming villages on their way back, one of the ones that has lost contact with the city and Biminey has a test of wills as something tries to take over control of him through the airship control amulet, forcing him to land the ship.  He breaks free and they flee back to the coast.

Leaving biminey and most of the noble woman’s following on the ship the rest are dropped off outside of town walk in.  They get inside and learn news of the hobgoblin threat and get information from Sushanna of good news.  The Eris researchers are constructing a battle standard that will duplicate the weakening effect of the Larkson wardings for a small area.  They also find out from Sushanna that the wardings of the city are powered  by the life force of people born in the city.  This was uncovered in the research into the standard which after use requires a ritual and life force to recharge to enable it to work again.

We leave our group getting cleaned up in the temple’s sauna’s and breaking the fast.  They have plans for to meet up with  Biminey in two days time, who’s currently flying the ship out of sight of land and above the clouds and making offers of employment to Visra’s, the noble dwarf’s retinue since she obviously won’t be able to pay them.  On the flip side, Visra is going to try and find them employment in the town.

Elisssa, getting a little tired of the group’s actions preventing her from killing who she wants to when she wants is going to depart the group for at least awhile, taking the gold and valuables she’s garnered from their adventures.  She has thoughts of packing up her relatives adn friends on a ship and sailing away from this danger zone now that she knows there are cities to the south, albeit under the threat of hobgoblin attack but at least she won’t have to worry about her mind being consumed and her body used to kill innocents.

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To offer an anecdote, I’m specifically working to avoid a recurrence of a scene in years past where a player, to get away from a particularly gruesome fight metagamed and said, “I can survive an 8 story fall, I jump out the window.”

So I’m making falling damage cumulative and discounting the first 10′.  So anyone can fall 10′ or less without an issue.  For every 10′ farther than that, that they fall, they take 1d10 damage cumulative.

So a 20′ fall deals 1d10 damage.  A 30′ fall deals 1d10+2d10 damage.  A 40′ fall deals 1d10+2d10+3d10 damage.  A 100′ fall deals 1d10+2d10+3d10+4d10+5d10+6d10+7d10+8d10+9d10.

Falling onto a hard surface adds 50% damage.  Falling into a soft surface reduces damage by 50%. An acrobatics roll versus DC 15 can reduce the distance fallen by 10′.

This will very quickly make long distance falling deadly even for high level characters.

[Edited]

Per the comment associated with this I offer up the following alternative which I’m consdering -

For every 10′ after the first 10′ falling damage costs a falling character a healing surge value in damage. So a fall of 50′ equals 40′ of ‘damaging’ fall and kills a healthy character.  This has the benefit (depending on your point of view) of removing level from the equation.   The downside is that this would greatly increase the lethality of even short falls.  Teleporting a creature 30′ up would cost it half it’s health with one power regardless of how much half it’s health is.   So this might end up being a player’s rule only.

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Our group starts off in the warehouse littered with dead bodies, the bodies they’ve slain.  Deciding that the’d be better off if they got the hell out they do so and retreat back to their tavern.  The next day Biminey vists the temple of Eris where he talks with Sushanna and the new high priest and finds out information on their possible foes. Â  King Hesh’tar, his queen Liloth, his adviser Phy’el Fleshwalker and their enforce Krag the Butcher.  Tales of their powers are legendary only surpassed by the tales of their evil.

After telling the high priest they’d already killed Krag, Biminey was a bit taken aback at the priests quesiton, “did you burn the body and scatter the ashes?”  Which they didn’t do.

Other information learned is that the town is a mystical anchor point that keeps Larkson’s curse alive and well on the city of Darkmith.  That the prince’s True Name is located in the city of Larkson and that the very stones of the city are warded against the powers of Darkmith and for one of the creatures of Darkmith to enter the town would render it significantly weaker than it wold be outside the town.

Torel meets with the Captain of the Watch and discusses events.

Shuk meets up with Stak in their tavern and gives him a device that she’d had created in Anvil by an high level artificer there to help with Soozin.  She seems distant to the Stak and doesn’t wish to talk much. It’s obvious that the loss of Dra’kin has hit her fairly hard.

They meet up and compare notes and Biminey leads them to the temple of Eris where they stashed Soozin while they went out to the temple of healing to cure Torn.

Biminey activates the device and it enters Soozin’s throat to go after the parasite.  It warps out and something goes wrong and the parasite splits up the way it’s created to do but lightning flares and the several small parasites swell to the size of large dogs.

The group defeats the giant slugs and Soozin is now healed. [Note: Wasn't planned to be a hard fight unless for some reason not everone in the group happened to be there but as it turned out they were.]

After everything that’s happened to them they pressure the high priest of Eris to allow them to stay on the grounds and he doesn’t take much persuading.  The group has proved formidable to hostile creatures and having them around he can’t see as a bad thing.

Elissa finds Keri waiting for her in her new room in the temple.  Keri has a tale of having been on a boat for three weeks scouting the charts that she lifted from the slaver ship while it was in the harbor.  She reports finding the stronghold listed on the charts and reports that there is an airship attached to a keep on the island.  She also tells Elisssa that the free ride is over now with Dra’kin dead and any future services will be cash in hand.

They discuss further the murders taking place and finally [after DM prodding] determine that the murders are taking place in houses/buildings that are newly constructed, not part of the original town’s construction, wooden.  With the new knowledge of the warded stones and construction it’s not a big leap of deduction to figure out that the wardings are keeping the murderer out. Â  Which they have determined is possibly Krag in spirit form trying to recover his lost corpse.

They take their findings to the Captain of the watch and lead him to make the deductions on his own.  He takes them to the Council who decrees that it would be prudent for citizen’s that are in new construction to find a place to stay that’s part of the original stone construction.  As the group determines that people aren’t yet for the most part taking the warnings seriously they decide to head out after their air ship after making plans for their assault.

They arrange for passage, their money is rapidly depleting.

Arriving at the island, to everyone’s astonishment their plan works, they get on the island and defeat the forces at the keep which is where we leave them.  They have several hours most likely before someone might question why no one has come down from the keep with the cave trolls but they still have the air ship to repair, the master override amulet to tune and unfortunately Biminey is only one man.

[Note: I had a timeline of the coming's and goings of the forces on the island and by chance or luck they hit the island when it had minimal forces.  Also their plan bypassed the forces on the keep and made what might have been a fight that could have seen the loss of some of the group into a fight that while knuckle biting wasn't white knuckle.  At least yet.  But rather than a fairly large fight they managed to defeat the forces in waves due to their actions and negated some of their firepower by a pretty plan and good reaction to the situation at hand.]

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At any rate the net result is T’Balktu has joined the group.  He’s a younger goliath barbarian.  Think of the goliath in my world more as a Hill People than some half elemental race.  Lots of muscles, outdoor types with a hunger for living as large as their view of the world from atop their mountain fortresses.

He was made in a hurry Saturday and I’ve since cleaned it up a little, swapping a couple of things out that didn’t work for a 2handed great axe wielder.

The end result is a veritable damage machine.  If he crits his Ragestrike power he’ll be doing 60 damage.  Not half bad at all.  And with multiple ways to get temporary hit points he should make up a little for his lower defenses.   With low reflex and willpower he’s going to get whacked a lot by critters that attack those defenses.  And unfortunately as I happen to know, more than one of the bosses of this campaign have powers against those.

Against masses of mobs his total damage output should go through the roof and he should be a minion killer from hell.  An at-will that has a blast 3 component if he hits with it?  I’ll have to seriously ramp up the minion count just to break even.

I’ve started him out with Bleeder, his father’s greataxe, that spurs him onward to greater displays of glory as well as an Ironskin belt made by his grandfather out of materials no one in the family likes to talk about.  And I think he may be a good candidate for the Cape of the Red Path they recently found as mobility for him would be a good thing so he can get to the best position on the field to unleash his burst/blast attacks against swarms of bad guys.

Too bad though about Dra’kin.  But failing 3 out of 4 death saves and the healer failing 2 out of 2 stabilization checks?  His death was meant to be.

But T’Balktu should be able to pick up the slack and then some.  And as a front line striker it should help keep the others alive and in better shape a little more.

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Warrick

This was mainly a combat session with two boss battles and was marred by the fatality of one of the group.  I’m not ‘doing’ resurrection in this campaign, so a death is the final curtain, not a revolving door.

We pick up with our heroes after the end of the fight in the Temple with the demonic goddess.  They decided to go try and save Torn by taking a simulcrum to the temple of H’Estar, a goddess of healing, sun and all that.  The temple has been abandoned over time as the area controlled by the hobgoblin hordes to the south have encroached and overrun the area.

Acquiring horses the group heads to the temple where they perform the ritual of healing for Torn, channeling their own life force into the simulacrum they’ve had crafted, the ritual lead by Sushanna, acolyte of the temple of Eris and Biminey’s snuggle bunny.

As the ritual ends the release of magic breaks the illusion that’s been crafted on hobgoblins that are sneaking up on them from four directions. The fight was rough, Stak performing exceptional work thinning the hobgoblin grunts two at a time per round until there were no more, dropping them with a single arrow to a vital location each time.  The remainder dealt with the wardogs, soldiers and the hobgoblin fleshcarver.  The fleshcarver and two other hobgoblins escaped with their lives.

[It was a tough fight - 16 grunts, 5 soldiers, 3 archers, 4 war dogs, 1 fleshcarver, divided up in groups of 4 sets coming in from four different directions. I'm become not a fan of bad guys fighting to the point of stupidity and needlessly sacrificing their lives, at least the bosses of the fight and once the boss breaks and runs there's going to be one or two underlings who are going to see it as their duty to follow after him to keep him safe...]

Unfortunately their healing shortage cost them this time dearly.  Dra’kin, normally safe in the rear, but now up in front due to the four sided attack.  This provided to be ultimately costly to the warlock and left him with his life’s blood draining away on the battlefield at the end of the fight.

[In Dra'kin's defense (and mine), he failed 3 out of 4 death saves while Biminey the best healer in the group, failed two out of two healing checks to try to stabalize him. Apparently the gods of luck, whimsey and statistics wanted him dead.]

At the end of the fight they recovered and performed a second ritual for the simulacrum of Soozin, hoping that it would deal with the parasite lodged in her belly.

They fled home making the trip safely.  There they found Torn recovered, no longer a vegetable although still missing his hand.  Apparently regeneration wasn’t part of the package.  He’s a pit fighter though and while it sucks he can deal.

They find out that there were three days without murders but the last three days there have been a murder a might.

They also found [not sure if anyone actually heard it] that another farming village hasn’t had anyone come into town in awhile which while not unheard of is viewed with suspicion these days.  Maybe it’s nothing, or maybe it’s some evil influence spreading it’s power base.  Who knows?

They contacted Meri and informed her of Dra’kin’s death and told her they had something to give Shuk (the good luck amulet she gave Dra’kin on a braid of Tanner’s hair).  Meri passed on information that an eladrin was in town meeting with strangers in a warehouse in the dock area.

A mercenary showed up at the groups doorstep looking for work, T’Baktu the goliath barbarian.  T’Baktu came into town with the other mercenaries hired by the city but doesn’t really like the mercenary life.  He tried to join the City Watch but the Captain of the watch is suspicous of everything these days and turned him down.  The captain did though point him at our heroic group and offered to pay him gold if he’d spy on the group and inform the captain of their dealings and work.

The group showed up at the warehouse and found it guarded on the outside.  Stak with a bow shot from the gods killed the sentry on the south gate with a single shot through the head.

They crept up to the door and Biminey undid the barring and peeked inside spotting a large group of sailors, bearing tatoos like those they saw on the slaver sailors.

He stepped inside rolling one of his constructs of lightning into the center of the group, killing all six in one shot. [New record by the way].

The rest of the group rushed in and joined the fray.  A group of tougher thugs, two slaver and two bandits were spotted by a set of stairs.  As the screams started a slaver Overmage, and Warrick the leader of the bandits and his shaman stepped out of an office on the second floor.

T’Baktu took several hits in the opening round almost dropping him but he persevered and came back into the fight.  The thugs kept the group occupied while the  overmage, shaman and warrick’s bow decimated their health from above on the walkway connecting two upper level office structures.

Eventually the thugs were dropped as was the shaman.  The overmage descended to lower level to try and get a good usage out of his blast powers but was unable to without hitting his own troops.

Warrick seeing the way the wind was blowing tipped his hat in salute o the other bowman, Stak and fled through the office and up to the roof.  Torel was hot in pursuit but discretion proved the watchword of the day and didn’t follow the leader up to the roof where at least one other thug was on guard duty.

[As it was late and obvious the overmage was going to die I didn't play out the last round or two and just fast forwarded to his demise.]

The group recovered a Trishan Spine Bow from one of the hobgoblin archers and a Cape of the Red Path from the slaver overmage along with some gold  and healing potions.

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Something wicked this way comes....

Excuse the hiatus, we take one week off out of every four and last week we also had a huge snowfall to contend with that made it dangerous to get together.  With any luck we’ll be playing this weekend.

In  the meantime –

“Councilman with all due respect I believe the idea has merit.  Council Lerik’s idea of locking the 5 of them up for a few days to see if the murders stop will harm no one and it might help uncover the truth.”

“See, even the guard are smart enough to know I’m right Garon.” came the oily voice of Councilor Lerik as he leaned forward, thrusting out a finger to point to the chainmail clad form of Captain Warik, commander of the guard.

The creases of Warik’s eyes bunched slightly and then smoothed out at Lerik’s tone, insulting without giving cause for insult. A skill the man possessed in spades, one that Warik couldn’t help but wish would get the man… hurt.  Not killed, he wasn’t that obnoxious but Warik wouldn’t be unhappy to hear that the councilor had met with some mishap, maybe a broken bone or two.  It would be too much to ask that Lerik became a victim to the person or creature that was killing townsfolk each night.

“Captain! Did you hear me?” Garon asked sharply.

“Sorry sir, something occurred to me about the murders that distracted me.”

Garon shook his head, “I said no we won’t be tossing them in jail.  They’ve done well enough by us.  They chased that creature out of the Eris temple, were captured and almost killed trying to solve our gold thefts, we know more about the murders because of them.  No, they stay free.”

“You realize they ‘found out’ information on the murders because they committed them!” Lerik spat out.

Garon leaned forward, planting his palms on the table, “That’s enough!  I know you have issues with them Lerik.  You have issues with anyone who doesn’t fit your god’s image of the ideal.  Oh I know who or what you worship.  So far your belief’s haven’t interfered with your ability to keep the merchants happy and in line but don’t push things too far.  Without my goods to sell and Teagan’s boats and wagons to ship them you’d be a little unpopular with everyone both merchant and commoner so I suggest you give up this little vendetta you have against these people.”

Lerik dropped back into his chair, mouth open and then a look of furious anger crossed his face.  Without a word he rose and stormed out of the council chamber, Jan, the pretty young woman who’d taken Tanner’s place following after an uncertain pause, tossing an apologetic look around the room.

“What a pleasant individual.” Warick growled.

“That’s enough from you too Captain.  We all need to get along.  I know we’ve had our differences, I know you don’t like the changes we’ve pushed down your throat as it were about hiring outside help, which again doesn’t indicate a lack of confidence in your or the Watch’s ability.  But with the slaver raid, the murders and I know you don’t care to believe in them but of late all the temple priests have spoken of auguries that bad times are coming, very bad times.  Better poorer but prepared.  Perhaps if we’d of had these extra troops then my own… Never mind. As I say we need to get along with him and each other for the protection and benefit of the town.”

Warick nodded curtly, “Aye, I can understand your position Councilor.”

“I hear a but in there but I won’t push it.  Please go on, we’ll go over your report and see if we can make anything out of it.  Do what you can to catch this killer and keep our people safe.”

“Aye, that I can agree with.” Warick saluted the two councilors and their aides and turning on a heel left the room.

Teagan, the eladrin in charge of shipping who up till now had been quiet spoke up, “Berylon would you and Spar be so good as to wait in the other room for a few moments?”

The two aides glanced at each other and Berylon shrugged, “Sure, just summon if you have need.  C’mon Spar.”

After the room was empty and the door closed Teagon leaned back in his chair.  Face calm and impassive, eyes wandering over the decorative carvings in the ceiling of the council chambers he spoke quietly, “You know that one is beginning to overstep his bounds.  His hatred of all non-humans is affecting his dealings with me. I know he’ll be dead in 20 or 30 years and be out of my hair but it’s going to be a long 30 years at this rate.  Out of curiosity as he’s without heir or acknowledged relation as far as I know who would inherit if something were to happen to our fellow councilman?”

Garon shot a sharp look at the eladrin, “You know the answer to that and I don’t like where that question is going Teagon.”

Teagon flicked his eyes over and gave a miniscule shrug, “I’m not proposing anything Garon.  I’m just noting that the man has a lot of people irritated at him.  And ever since that deal with the slaver, if it was a slaver, he’s gotten a lot worse.  Did you know he’s pushing all the merchants under his control to get rid of their non-human employees?  I also heard that he wants to erect an altar to that banal spiteful god of his.  Yes you humans make up the highest proportion of the cities population but humans versus non-humans you’re in a distinct minority.  It’s irrational hatreds brought upon people by the ideologies of the likes of that one and his ilk that could end up destroying this town much less the slavers or reavers or whatever it is that the priests are warning us is coming.”

Garon suddenly chuckled, “You know that’s the most I think you’ve ever said at one time.  Yes the man was never pleasant and lately he’s turned downright vile, even to his ‘own kind’.  I think though that you overestimate the draw of his beliefs and the power of Bain.  Did you know he already has an altar to his god in a cellar under his home?  Ahh, see, we both have sources of information.  And do you know how many people in his circle of ‘friends’ and acquaintances actually pay homage to his detestable little godling?  Only twelve that I know of.  Twelve followers out of how many people in this town?  Nay he poses no real threat to the security of the town.  And he’s brilliant at keeping the merchants in line, paying their taxes and not overcharging the commoners.”

Teagon’s lips curled up slightly, “I bow before your wisdom then Garon. Perhaps I shall learn somewhat of it during the time you have left on this plane of existence.”

“We live as the gods decree my friend.  Even your longevity might be cut shorter than you’d like as your gods wish. As for myself, I find it pointless to worry about it. Have you come up with anything we can do or have the Watch do to try and protect the people?”

Teagon shook his head, “Without knowing what we’re dealing with there’s little we can do.  Trying to ward every home, building and store against everything would be impossible.  But if we can find the creature’s nature we might be able to come up with something or so my people tell me.”

“The information that the group gave us was of no help?”

“Not really.  Necromatic arts are pretty far reaching.  We need to know the nature of the creature, if we could get something that belonged to it, an article of clothing or better yet flesh or blood then perhaps those skilled in the arts might come up with a way to track it.”

Garon snorted, “Blood? Hells we can’t even find the blood of the victims.”

“A chilling part of the deeds.  Where is the blood going and what is it being used for.  I fear the answer will not be one we wish to know.”

“Undoubtedly. Let’s get them back in here and start going over shipping needs.  The fish are pouring in from the boats and we’re going to have to get more barrels and crates to hold them.  I’d like another five hundred of the stasis crates as well, we should have planned ahead for this just in case.”

The two men, two of the most influential men in the city began studying the piles of documents that detailed the lifeblood of the city of Larkson, the fishing harvest and its dissemination.

[Edit: Per a reader's comments this is a take on the Taint system from Heroes of Horror, a DnD 3.5 supplemental book.  Thanks for the info!]

The base premise is the characters are exposed to something or do something that ‘bends’ them mentally and or physically.  This can range from pyschosis to turning bestial and many other things. Â  Perhaps wandering the streets of Darkmith and the aura of evil and power that envelops that city might plant a seed of evil in someone.  Or maybe the touch of Liloth’s powers driving one to stab a companion in the throat might leave lingering inclinations to repeat the action unforced.

We will see.

A few snippets from the pdf although a quick perusal shows some missing entries and some small typo’s that could be fixed as well as generalized overhaul to fit my personal needs.

The Touch of Taint
Characters in the Vale that venture into the dark places of the world, or dabble in the waters of evil, run the risk of their minds and bodies becoming poisoned by taint. Mental taint, or depravity, can eventually send one mad, where physical taint, or corruption, can transform a living being into an undead horror.

Acquiring Taint
“Sometimes one’s soul can be filled with evil because of the evil of their actions. Sometimes all it takes is for one to pick up the wrong book…”

Committing acts of unspeakable evil
In cultures throughout the typical D&D setting certain acts earn universal condemnation amongst races and peoples with even the slightest moral code: murder, torture, genocide, and rape as well as fouler acts warp the mind of those committing them and result in the offending character gaining depravity.

This does not represent external evil creeping into the character’s mind, but rather represents the wearing away of one’s moral compass as characters begin to treat others as pawns and toys rather than as individual creatures worthy of respect. Even characters that describe themselves as “hardened” or “jaded” are not immune to gaining depravity in this fashion; indeed, one could argue that being extremely hardened to or jaded about the suffering of others is a sign of one gaining depravity.

Exposure to areas warped by evil
Whether due to the presence of demons, foul creatures from the Far Realms, or simply areas forever marred by evil of a less supernatural variety (such as the execution of an innocent man by a corrupt court, or the shack where a serial killer went to hide his “conquests”) can result in character’s gaining corruption through no fault of their own.

Typically, there are only certain areas in the blighted zone that bestow corruption (the area around the altar where innocents were sacrificed to dread gods), but in the cases of extreme blights, every square foot of the area might potentially bestow corruption. This corruption is typically applied to a character after a certain length of time and isaccompanied by a feeling of instinctive disgust that warn both the player and his or her character that it would be wise to spend as little time in the location as possible.

Certain sanity-rending locations that warp the minds of those who travel through them, like an area tainted by the energies of the Far Realm might very well bestow depravity instead as character’s minds break under the strain of sights alien to any sane man or woman.

Exposure to dread items
While tools and weapons both magical and mundane have no moral significance in and of themselves, the uses they are put to or the techniques used in their creation can sometimes result in them being a vessel of corruption or depravity.

A blade carved from the bones of a whimpering slave carries with it an imprint of the suffering of the one who “donated” the material for the blade and might whisper words of condemnation and hatred to a character who chooses to carry it, slowly increasing his or her depravity. A weapon wielded by a demonic general or an unknowable Far Realm entity might have acquired some of its master’s inhuman corruption, and might plague a wielder with disgusting growths. Then of course, there are weapons and other items specifically crafted by mad cultists or vindictive spell casters that slowly drive their wielders insane with lust for power, or that cause them to rot from the inside out.

Mental Condition –

Treacherous
Foul whispers cloud your mind with images of what you could receive if you struck your companions down. Once per encounter when an ally leaves a space that you threaten, the DM may choose to roll an attack with an attack bonus of your level +3 vs. the will defence of your character to represent the urge to take an opportunity to strike. If the attack is successful, you must make an opportunity attack against your ally. The upside is that your treacherous leanings make it easier to stab others in the back-you gain a +2 bonus to damage against creatures that you have combat advantage against.

Physical Condition

Internal Corruption (Ranked, maximum 3)

Your body is slowly consumed from the inside out by the corruption growing within you. While others cannot see it, it’s effects are all too obvious-for each level of this symptom taken you regain 2 fewer hit points from a second wind and take a -1 penalty to endurance checks. However, the festering growths within your body make you unappetizing to creatures that might otherwise want to make a meal out of you. If a living creature makes a bite attack against you that deals damage, it takes a -1 penalty to all attack rolls and skill checks for each time you have selected this symptom, until the end of its next turn.

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“The wardings of that accursed place hold true still.  They sap my powers more than imagined I.”  A second voice was definitely feminine, a caressing shiver of a voice that spoke of silk and whispers and promises of shadows and touch.

The first figure shrugged with a sinuous wave of its body, “I do not know stay shall I.  My freedom is enjoyable.” The figure gestured idly and nearby a man dressed in the uniform of the Larkson Watch drew a knife across his throat, the cut joining many many others on his body.  As the last of his life’s blood fountained as a scarlet ribbon in the air he slumped to the ground.  Only to rise moments later, dead eyes focused on its master.

The feminine voice changed in a flicker turning into a thing of razors and pain, “Mine husband you shall see free or your usefulness is at an end, know this Phy’el Fleshwalker.”

The corpse white skin of the first split open as the second’s words played over it, bloodless flesh gaping open. With no sign of pain upon its face it smiled slightly and nodded, “An it pleases you my queen.”

The voice, once again silken caresses, “Keep up the pressure on the wards.  Use the humans as you can to subvert them.  The Accursed One’s guardians seek to undo our release and attend to them I need.” Wings of green fire erupted from the second’s back and the body elongated.  The grass for yards around wisped into ash as it rose into the air with a lazy beat of her wings.  Hovering for a moment the solid black eyes looked down at him, “And use your command over the dead and flesh to recover Krag’s animus and restore him.  I do not wish my beloved to be deprived of his personal guard.”

Phy’el turned his head to follow the figure, using the heat of it to track it while the eyes of his head, boiled and burst in the first instants of the wings coming out and caressing his body, slowly regenerated. “Some day my queen.  Some day…”

Ranks of motionless figures jerked in unison minutes later as a single cry of raw anger and rage ripped through the air.  With a crook of his finger he summoned one of them to him.

“I hear you’re asking for Shuk.” Dra’kin started as a voice spoke behind him, the staff of wood he was carving slipping out of his hand and rolling across the worktable. He turned to see one of Shuk’s halflings, Keri he was almost sure.

“Yes, I wanted to check on her, it’s been a couple of days since I’ve seen her and I wanted to make sure she’s all right.”

“That’s why she has me.  Me and Meri. To make sure she’s alright. She went up stream with Meri to Forge.”

“Oh?  Why?”  Dra’kin gestured to a nearby chair and sat on the edge of his bed.

Keri shook her head, “Guild business.  I’m sure you understand.”

“When’s she coming back?”

“Guild business.” the halfling thief replied.

“Uh, okay.  When she gets back could you tell her I’d like to see her.”

“I’ll give her the message.”

“Great.  Are you hungry?  My treat. The council came through with a little gold to thank us for our ‘efforts’ in looking into the murders and for driving the creature out of the temple.”

She shook her head, “No thanks, I’ve got to look into some things.  You can’t give people a chance to get momentum or your place in the order of things becomes at risk.”

There was a tap on the door and moments later it opened revealing Torel standing there, “Hey we’re going to go over to… Well hey there.  Meri?  Keri?”

“Keri.  Meri’s with Shuk who’s…” Dra’kin paused as Keri shook her head slightly, “…busy right now.”

“Mi’lady Keri would you care to join us for the evening meal?” Torel asked with a slight bow.

“Thanks but no, I must be off.” she replied.

“Perhaps next time then.”

“Maybe.  Later Dra’kin.” Keri said, flashing him a look, a warning in it.  Torel stood aside to let her leave, coming further into the room.

“So what about you?  Hungry?”

“Sure, let me get my pouch.”

“So what’s up with Shuk?”

Dra’kin grimaced, “Guild business. Don’t think I’m supposed to talk about it.”

Torel shrugged “Okay, just being polite.  We’re going to try some place that Stak found down on the docks.  Swears they have a fish stew to die for.  Personally I think it’s not the stew but the person bringing it that he thinks is to die for.”

Dra’kin rolled his eyes, “Okay I guess.  But if there’s another gods damned drunken brawl this is the last time I’m letting any of you pick a place to eat.”

Torel protested, “Hey those were all Biminey’s fault!  Him and that damn hand of his trying to steal drinks from drunks.”

“I’m just saying, your fault, my fault, nobody’s fault. I have to jump through another window to avoid being thrown through it and I’m going to burn someone’s pubes off.”  Hellfire flickered to life on the finger he was pointing at Torel.  A sympathetic light pulsed in red crystal in a silver mount on his worktable casting a red glow onto the room.

Torel held his hands up with an innocent look, “Hey hey watch that thing!”

Dra’kin closed his fingers into a fist, the action causing the flames to go out, “Just remember what I said.  Now let’s go I’m hungry enough to eat even bad food now.”

Torel clapped him on the shoulder, then pulling his hand back as Dra’kin stopped to look at it. “Right right, the warlock that walks alone. Come one.”

Dra’kin’s eyes narrowed as the avenger of Kord walked ahead of him, a thoughtful look on his face for a moment before clearing.

In the shadows across the street two figures stirred, one stepping out to follow the warlock and avenger down the street, the other slipping away down an alley.

Image Credits

[Sorry for the delay on the session report and podcasts.  Busy at home and work and Life intruding and all that.]

This session saw the inclusion of a bard, a gnome by the name of Dash, seeking to record the exploits of the “only known survivors of a slaver kidnapping!!!” who met up with them at their tavern but I get ahead of myself.

Present were Biminey, Dra’kin, Elisssa, Stak, Torel and temporary guest star – Dash.

We start our journey with the quints getting back to town from their voyage down to darkmith.  There’s a lot of questions, answers, no answers and the like going on for the first few hours of the session.  The group discovers that for the last few nights a gruesome murder has taken place.  They’re unable to uncover any pattern to the murders, they seem to be random serial killings.  Each body and most times there were multiples, was dismembered and an odd lack of blood was found at each scene.  No one noticed the murders even though in one case it was performed at a whorehouse with thin walls and crowded clientelle.

They interact with the priests of Eris and the Captain of the Watch as well as the council about their past, present and future activities.

The researchers at Eris have a possible solution for Torn.  An old healing temple, now in Hobgoblin lands might be able to channel healing energies still through a simulacrum back to Torn.  Getting there might be a problem though.

A bloodied woman and child arrive at the town and they witness this and join in on the investigation. They determine that both woman and child have been impacted by arcane/necrotic energies and only after the energies are cleansed at the Eris temple’s circle are they able to get anything more than the White Man from the hysterical woman and catatonic child.  A ritual is performed and the woman reveals that a white figure she remembers it as a skeletal unearthly figure while the child remembers it as a man in white robes entered their village a day earlier and brought the dead to life and had them descend upon the villagers doing horrible things to them.  The two of them were then sent to the town to summon aid.

Unfortunately this information was uncovered after the town watch sent out a squad of men.  Once it was known it was a trap, at least the PC’s beleive it to be one, two additional watch were sent after the first squad to warn them but they had several hours head start and it’s unlikely they’ll catch up in time.

A day passes, the group on watch on the city walls but no ‘army of undead’ shows up.  The captain of the watch sends out two squads of the watch’s elite units although the group tries to persuade him otherwise.

The group determines that the murdered bodies are oddly drained of life energies, even dead flesh has some life to it.

Oddly Dra’kin has a hard time finding his girlfriend Shuk during the initial two days they’re back in town.

Anotehr thing of note is it’s been cloudy for the last 10 days, roughly equal to the time that whatever happened in Darkmith happened.

Two of the group were headed to the Temple of Eris to talk to Sushanna when they met her in the street outside.  The vault doors to the forbidden archives were locked, from the inside and although there were three priests in there no one was answering.  The rest of the group was summoned to investigate adn found the vault door sealed by magic.  While Dash got the door open, a summons was sent to the town watch but with the door opened it revealed a odd arcane circle floating in midair at the bottom of the steps.

The group went down into the forbidden vaults and uncovered a powerful female who summoned deamonic pets through multiple portals floating in air.  She was apparently searching for something as there were scrolls scattered everywhere.

While she kept the group busy with the four deamons and a golem crafted up from scrolls and bits of broken tables and stones she continued her search but as her pets dropped she was forced into the combat.

She fled as the combat turned against her, unable to flee through her own portals as they had grown unstable from the arcanic energies released during the fight she was forced to flee through the streets but was easily able to make her escape.

All in all the 5-6 hour session was split fairly equally between roleplay and fighting. The fight did take longer than I was hoping for, with 6 players at the table and 4 standards, 1 elite and 1 solo it was unfortunately an issue.  But the fight wasn’t geared for minions IMO and frankly this group has multiple minion killer powers so to make it a challenge I’d have to pump up the count. Â  THere is another fight though where this might apply…

Night Sky

Interlude – At Sea

The sound of sobbing drew him to the bow of the boat.  THe moon’s light was dim, hidden behind clouds.  Thank the gods that they were normal clouds, not the swirling banks of dark grey clouds lit from within by green flaring lights that they’d left behind at the ancient city of Darkmith.

Tucked into shadow behind two bales of fishing net, Torel found the girl sitting on the gunwhale, feet up on a bale and clutched to her chest.  She was rocking back and forth crying quietly. If the seas had been any rougher than the millpond it was currently he feared she’d have gone over the edge long ago.

Slowly he eased up to sit next to her, keeping just enough space between them to be able to grab her if she went too far back. “Hey,” he spoke softly, gently,”how’s it going?”

The girl’s muffled voice came softly from where it was buried between her knees. “I don’t want to die.  Things keep happening to me and I think I’m going to die and then other things happen and suddenly I’m not and I’m just so tired of it.  I’ve got this… thing inside me, I saw what it did, I don’t want to …” Her tear covered face looked up at him and she reached out to grab his arm in a grip that would leave a ring of bruises around his forearm. “Swear to me, swear on your life, on everything you hold dear in this world and the next that if this thing in me…if something happens…swear that you’ll end the pain.”

Torel didn’t, couldn’t look away from the fierceness of the girl’s gaze and found himself nodding, “Aye, Soozin.  This I swear on my life and my faith, if it comes to that, I will… stop the pain.”

For several long moments the girl was silent, eyes gazing into those of the holy warrior of Kord then she nodded and said simply, “Thank you.”

He moved closer, then hesitantly put an arm around her shoulders.  She leaned into him and he held her, offering what comfort he could.

They sat in silence that way, the salt taste of the water in the air, the gentle breezes from the south, warm and comforting blowing across the ship with the snap of the sails and the creak of rope and pulleys adding their own melody to the night.  Her tears like small raindrops rolling over his forearm.

Then the girl began to speak, voice calm as she watched the water flow past.  Telling him of her life, of growing up the daughter of a seamtress, her father lost at sea.  Of her hopes at the spring festival of finding someone, of her home and her brother, lost in Darkmith. Of Torn’s caring for her and their plans for the future.

“You said Torn was hurt but that the temple priests were going to fix him.  Was that the truth?”

Torel sighed heavily, “As far as I know little one. The temple has vast stores of knowledge and they seemed hopeful they would be able to find a way to heal him.  His brain was hurt during the attack and that’s the part they aren’t sure about.  I’ve seen those who’ve been damaged in such a fashion and I’ve seen them lay in a deep sleep for weeks and then come out of it.”

“And sometimes they don’t.”

“Aye, sometimes.”

“Thank you for the truth on that.”

“We’ll do everything we can for him, I hope you know the truth in that as well.  It’s only another two days and we should be home.  Gods willing he’ll be up and around and waiting for you.”

“The gods will as they will.  Damned be them all.” she said bitterly looking up at the skies.  “By all… what is that?” she whispered.

His eyes turned up as she gasped. A shadow was crossing through clouds overhead, outlined in green fire, the outline was that of a man but with abnormally long legs and arms and giant tattered shadow wings that beat the clouds into a frenzy at its passing.  Fragments of green fire dripped from those wings like water splattering into a rain puddle and each drop burned a section of the clouds away.  It soared without sound, significantly faster than the ship could sail, moving in a weaving graceful pattern, leaving wispy burned away clouds in its wake. 

Rooted to the spot they watched it, unable to look away as it sailed far ahead of the ship and then with a swirling loop it turned inland and vanished in the distance.

A deep terror filled the girl’s eyes as they shook off the spell.  “Do you…?”

Torel shook his head slowly, “No.  But I fear by all that I know that this does bodes dreadful ill for the future.  I fear those meddling fools may have doomed us all with what they’ve unleashed.”

He stood, helping the girl to her feet, “Come we must tell the others of this.”

Source Image

Biminey exits the temple of the Artificers with the knowledge that he can get the group into the grounds without being attacked by making amulets for them that are essentially visitor’s passes to coin an anachronistic term.  He’s also found reference to the rituals and methods needed to repair the elemental ship as well as reference to override controller amulets, a kind of master key, that can be attuned to an airship for the purposes of controlling it much like the original 6 amulets were created during it’s construction.

The group enters the temple grounds and are ignored by the constructs which are going about their programmed business of fighting delaying tactics against the wear and tear of time. Many constructs stand or lie broken and worn out. Bolter turrets mounted in certain areas spark and crackle, malfunctioning while others turn to follow the groups movements.

Down a long flight of stairs they find the outer vault chamber.  The outer door is standing ajar, the inner door is sealed tight.  The sinking of the city into the swamp though, has destroyed part of the wall and there is enough room for the group to squeeze through.

They drop down into a series of hallways, lit by light crystals, panels roughly 4′ x 4′ that are inset into the walls.  The flooring is covered in 6″ of water.  As Elissa steps into one of the three hallways leading out the wall crystals start a slow pulse. Â  When Torel tries to follow the lights start a rapid pulsing and there’s the sound of metal on metal as doors start to go up around the complex.

Constructs start to appear, some spider like with nozzles for mouths that fire sticky webbing, others childlike in size with razored claws and containers of some fluid that lead to large needles embedded into their palms.  The creatures show up scattered out over the course of several rounds though and with the use of corners to prevent being surrounded, focus fire and especially the use of Elisssa’s lighting based breath, Stak’s Azurian longsword which deals lightning damage and Biminey’s Lightning Sphere the constructs are taken down without any of the party going down.

[DM's Note: It hit me after the session that Dra'kin should really be up in front soaking damage.  He has hit points as high as any of the group, a huge number of surges and Hellish Rebuke requires him to get hit to be truly effective. ]

The group investigates the area after the fight, finding mostly decayed and destroyed by damp furnishings, equipment and miscellaneous items.  Dra’kin is blasted by bolter fire as he steps up to open a locked door but the two wall mounted bolters inside are swiftly destroyed.  The room appears to have once held racks of some objects, long gone at this point and was apparently important enough to have secondary defenses with the bolters mounted up on the walls inside.

Down one hallway they discover the end of it has broken apart and light is gleaming from under the water.  As they move closer to look it over, the vines and mosses that have invaded in from the swamp come to live and stand up.  It shoots a cloud of spores that catch the entire party and they all rush forward in fascination to end adjacent to the creature.  Thorny vines swarm up their bodies against the party, all hit with only Dra’kin avoiding the vines as he shakes off the fascination.  Hollow pointed thorns on the vines plunge into their bodies, restraining them and draining them of blood.  [Fairly nasty creature I came up with.  Burst 6 pull as a minor then burst 3 that restrains and inflicts 10 ongoing damage (save ends) which is why I only had the one creature in this fight.  I also had three 20's in a row during this fight.  Unfortunately for me the 20's didn't actually do anything extra as it was just to apply the ongoing 10 and restrain effects.  Damnit.]

They uncover a way through the broken earth and stone and emerge into a vast chamber piled high with crates, timbers and building materials.  Naturally suspicious they use Dra’kin’s familiar to scout the area spotting a large form lying in wait behind a pile of crates.  They move to attack and as they do so there’s a roar of another creature on the far side of the chamber.

Two dragonlike constructs although without wings are enjoined in the fight.  Over the course of the fight two more constructs, comprised of chains and spikes drop into view from above.  Again the party’s tactics have improved and they focus their anger and damage onto single targets for the most part although twice they bunch up nicely and are subject to burst attacks that catch more than one person at a time.  Their sound fire control and especially the lightning damage pull it out although once or twice someone in the party goes down but is brought back up again to re-enter the fray.

During the fight a large quake throws everyone to the ground and the roof high overhead splits open, it was designed to do that so the elemental ships could be lowered into it but the holding mechanism fractures and it opens up partially.

They search the area and uncover two small containers of residium worth 10,000 gold, a master override amulet and enough specialized artificer gear to proceed with the repair and control of the air ship. They also see on a magical map a green dot among many red ones that appears to be nearing the coast line before it gives up the ghost destroyed by the quake.

The exit the chamber by climbing up through the roof [They didn't check but if they had they would have found the water passage now blocked from the quake]

Outside they find the temple structures had suffered serious damage and the constructs are too busy repairing to pay them any attention even if they were so inclined.

Overhead the clouds are boiling, a vicious greenish black tinge to them that cast the city into dark shadow although miles away the skies are clear.  Their first though is that the priests of Eris have breached the tomb of Larkson.  Dra’kin and Biminey both note that a subtle arcanic pressure over the city is now gone.

Rather than resting to recover, their recent activities have left them tired and worn out, they proceed to head to the coastline at the fastest possible route which is through the city. Â  The city creatures seem to have their hands full and they’re unaccosted.

Hearing the sounds of hunting hounds they swing to the side to investigate and find Merik (Merkin) treed up on top of a pillar while savage dog like creatures snarl and bite from below. Â  The party is detected and the hounds vanish into the rubble.  The high priest falls, impaling himself on a fence that surrounds the pillar.  The party arrives just in time to read his lips as he dies, “I didn’t know… gods forgive…”

They search him claiming a crystalline fragment on an amulet around his neck and continue their mad dash to the coast.

Passing through what they thought was merely an overgrown plaza turns out to be instead a grave.  One of the tomb doors shatters exploding and a giant abomination of a creature climbs out.  Standing 12′ tall, its guts hang out, wrapping around his torso, writhing like snakes.  It is Krag the Butcher, storied creature of a dark past.  It spies the party and calls forth its minions which claw their way from not so warded anymore imprisonment and the attack is on.

Stak does a good job of keeping the minions cleared out as they arrive in waves as they make their way up through the earth covering them while the rest pound on Krag. It’s a tough fight but they eventually put him down, even as Torel lies dying on the ground and Biminey after being encased in Krag’s grasping intestines is only released shy of death at the creature’s being killed.

Or so they thought as Krag rises again.  With the most wounded scrambling away, the rest continue to batter the abomination into the ground, this time spending the time and effort it takes to dismember the corpse before they consider it dead.

Almost dead from exhaustion and the toll of being on the go, fighting, sneaking and moving quickly for 24 hours they climb into the vacant tomb of Krag and rest while Stak stands watch.

They recover Krag’s Blood Sink Bracers and his Flensing Axe from the body and tomb.

[They were almost completely out of surges across the party, most were down below half health and of course their dailies were long spent.  All in all I think I got this balance of fight series just about perfect.  See the end of the post for the Blood Sink bracers]

They continue their cautious rush through the city to reach the beach.  There they find three men, emissaries of the slavers, waiting with what turned out to be Soozin.  The elemental ship is in tow on two ships and is disapearing on the horizon.  A third smaller ship lies in the harbor while a ship’s boat is on the beach.

The slavers want knowledge of how to control the elemental ship and they offer Biminey a kings ransom in gold, slaves and power if he has the knowledge and gives it to them.  They believe they will be able to figure it out eventually but they’re not patient men.

During the discourse the emissary which turns out to be nothing more than a slave dressed in finery arranges a deal with the group, one of the options he was given to offer is if Biminey doesn’t know how to control the ship, if they uncover it and provide the deal will still stand. Â  Biminey though has already told them he knows how to do it.  The slave has heard their plans and realizes that most scenarios end with him dead so he counteroffers.  He’ll go back and tell the Overmage on the ship that Biminey doesn’t know yet and will work on it but, and he indicates the two guards which are actually just ship’s cooks, he can’t afford witnesses.  Without a second thought, Biminey and Elisssa fry the two where they stand using his Lightning Sphere and her breath weapon.

The slave hands over a bottle, instructing them that Soozin has to have one drop in water a day or she’ll die. In comes out that he as well has been ‘infected’.

[They assume the girl has been poisoned but it's nastier than that.  They've both been infested with a parasite that's kept dormant by the liquid.  If it wakens it spawns immediately and hundreds of it's spawn burrow their way out of the host over the course of a few of the most painful agonizing last minutes of your life.  This will come out as they talk to Soozin on the trip home.]

The slave rows back to the ship and the group sets off overland, following the coast where they come across the ship that brought The priests of Eris to the area.  They arrange a deal to go back to the city on the boat and learn some boating skills of their own along the way.

Podcast should go out this week sometime.

Modified Image created by me from this one

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Also available through iTunes.

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Also available through iTunes.

Familiar's Eye view of the temple

Interlude – Temple of Artificers

Biminey looked up, cocking his head.  The sound came again, the voice of one of Torel calling from outside the complex.  He put down the scroll he was reading and removed the glasses.  Rubbing his forehead he waited for the headache to go away making yet another mental note to work on the plan for the translation goggles, one that wouldn’t leave him feeling like a foot long spike was being shoved through his head each time he took them off after using them for more than a few minutes.

But without them the scrolls would be nothing more than scribbles and strange alphabets. He tossed the scroll into his pack where it joined a growing selection.  The ancient outbuildings of the temple of artificers had proven to be a wealth of information of curious natures of his craft.  Reluctantly he’d marked several an collected them but had no plans for taking them.  There was only so much space in his pack after all.

Head only pounding now rather than splitting he went outside, grabbing a silvered spear he’d found next to a jumble of parts that had once been one of the spear constructs.  Night had fallen while he was reading and the moon shone down giving the courtyard a silvery blue tint. Â  He headed to the gate, his feet making soft noises on the heavy stone tiles filling the inside of the temple walls.

“What?  I didn’t catch that?” he yelled over the wall.

Torel’s voice came back, “Just checking on you, we’ve found a good place to set up, it’s about 50 yards south, southwest of the gate.  Some walls are still standing and give us some concealment but we can still keep an eye on the gate.”

“Great, I’ll find a place in here to get some rest and keep at it!  There’s a lot of information here to go through but I’ve found a building that holds a lot of rituals and knowledge that seems to be specifically with the air ships!”

“Fantastic!  Okay scream if you run into a problem and we’ll stand here and mourn you appropriately.”

“What a friend you are!” Biminey called back laughing.

“Get to work!  It’s cold out here!  And there are dark priests!”

“Riiiiight!”

The artificer went back in, the building he was currently rummaging through looked very promising as many of the scrolls held illustrations of various ships and ship components. With a sigh at the upcoming pain, he slipped the glasses back on and continued his search.  The hours came and went as he scanned scroll after scroll, the building headache looming larger and larger.

Finally he found it, a set of scrolls outlining how to make field repairs to elemental ships and another set that outlined the control mechanisms.  He scooped them all up, hugging them to his chest before storing them carefully into his pack, pulling out several of the others that he’d collected to make room.

Even tensing in anticipation did nothing to prepare him for the shattering white pain that ripped through his head as he removed the glasses and he was literally driven to his knees by the pain.  As darkness took him, he though, “Perhaps I won’t wear them so long next time.”

Sun was shining through the windows as he woke up, groggy and disoriented and for a few moments unaware of where he was.  Panic set in momentarily before the memories came crashing back. Â  His head was pounding still and it was the work of several minutes before he was able to climb to his feet. And several minutes longer before he realized that the sun was slanting in from the wrong direction.  It was almost evening again with morning come and gone.

“Biminey!?  HEY!!!” called an urgent voice from outside.

He stumbled out, pausing to lean against the door frame.  It took a couple of tries before his voice worked and then he replied, “I’m okay!”

“Baphomat wept!  For the gods sake man, we’ve been calling all day!  Dra’kin lost his little eye familiar trying to see inside and we didn’t know if you were alive or dead!” It was Elisssa’s voice that came back.

“I’m alive!  Mostly! Over did it a little and… never mind!  I’m okay!”

“Don’t worry us like that! Did you find anything!?”

“Right, found something.”  He remembered now what he’d been reading right before he’d dropped and his eyes widened, “Found something?!  I found EXACTLY what we needed!  Let me collect my stuff and I’ll figure out a way to get out of here.”

Gear in hand he headed toward the gate, a panel on the wall inside that he’d seen earlier glowed with a soft pale light much like the light of the crystalline windows of the tower on the island, the gleaming controls of the air ship and the crystal plaque near the tomb of Larkson.  At his command his familiar emerged from from a pouch at his waist and he picked it up and placed it on the panel.  The massive gate slowly began to shift open and he walked through it.

His friends stood just out of range of the guardian bolters atop the walls and waited for him.  Biminey held up his pack, “Got what we need, well I know what we need to do and where we need to find it.”

“Great, where to?”

“First I need to make you some passes that will get you into the grounds.  I found the ritual on how to make a amulet that will get you into the grounds without triggering the defense systems.”

Dra’kin spoke slowly, “And why do we need to get into the temple?”

“Because we’re going to raid the vaults under it of course.”

“Raid the vaults… say that again?”

“I found scrolls that tell me how to repair the damage done to the ship at least enough to get it moving again.  For that I’m going to need residium.  An ass load of residium.  And I’m betting we can find it in the residium vaults under the temple.  We’re also going to need an override amulet of control.  These are also stored for safekeeping in the vaults under the temple.”

“What’s that do?” Stak asked.

“With that I’ll be able to direct the elementals powering the airship and we’ll be able to fly that bad boy anywhere we want.  We’ll be gods damned kings of the world with that thing under our control.”

“Riiiiight…” Torel said rolling his eyes. “Until someone steals it.”

“Or sets it on fire with arrows.” Elisssa chimed in.

“Or he crashes it into a tower.” Stak added.

“Or a….” Dra’kin started to say.

“Enough! I get the point.”  Biminey int erupted wryly.

Elisssa snorted, “Someone has to keep you down to earth. So we just waltz down to the vaults, grab what we need and we’re off to save our ship.  The ship we don’t know where it is?”

“Exactly.  Well maybe not quite that… easily.”

Torel sighed, “So what are we looking at?”

“The amulets I can make should get…”

“Should?!” Dra’kin sputtered.

Biminey continued on, “should get you all onto the grounds and into the main temple.  In there we’ll find an entrance that leads down to the vault.  I should…”

“There’s that word again…And by the way I need a new eye construct.”

“I should be able to get us through that door without a problem.”

Stak asked, “But?”

“The vaults probably have a few safe guards on them.  You know to keep people from doing what we’re wanting to do.  On the plus side, the place is falling apart. There are bits and pieces of constructs laying all over the place where they just gave out.  The nine spearmen that came out?  Those are probably the last working ones.  I got this spear from a pile of parts just inside the door.”

Torel held up a hand and started checking off fingers, “So, just to sum up, you get us into the temple maybe.  We find the entrance to these vaults. We fight our way past guardians, traps and whatever else they might throw on the pile.  That may or may not be working.  We break into the vaults. Damn ran out of fingers. Steal the temple’s loot.  Figure out where our ship is.  Go get it from whoever took it.  Fix it.  And then you pilot us out home again.  Where the city council is probably dying to try and take it away from us not to mention everyone else with a sword and a desire for the power such a ship would give them.”

Biminey grinned, “Yep, that about covers it.  So.  Are you in?”

Torel grinned back, “Of course.”

Image Credits

So yesterday I finally got set up, on our dining room table of all places, it’s just been brutally cold here so the garage was out and I didn’t want to use our gaming table and didn’t want to set up another table as a considerable portion of the house is still carpeted and I imagine plaster spilled on carpet is probably a bad idea so the dining room was confiscated.

I’m using Merlin’s Magic as the plaster, it was the most recommended in terms of being user friendly while still being crazy strong.  I mixed it up per the recommended settings on the HA site to-wit 30 grams of water by weight to 186 grams of plaster. Â  It mixed up pretty well over all.  It’s damn pricey though, mostly due to shipping costs and I’m going to try to find Hydrostone locally or within a reasonable drive which usually goes for $40 per 100lbs.  MM is $40 for 50 lbs and shipping doubles the cost or more.

I’d cleaned my molds and spritzed them with ‘wet water’ and now poured them, actually Laura and I both poured. Â  I poured multiple times and ended up with the scraping method being preferable right now.  I also scraped within a couple of minutes of pouring for best results after trial and error.  Waiting the recommended six minutes resulted in the plaster being too set to scrape easily.

I also tried the ‘glass’ method where you take a piece of glass (I used plexiglass) and lay it down on the molds starting at one edge to squeeze the excess plaster out.  Unfortunately I had issues with air bubbles and weighting and all that. Â  I tried it twice (6 molds altogether) and one or two came out good, the others had bubbles or I ended up with ‘tall’ parts because the glass wasn’t in full contact with the top of the mold in all locations.  The first time I used water bottles which had the advantage of letting me see what was going on but weren’t evenly weighted.  The second time I used bricks so I couldn’t see just how tight the glass was to the mold top.

I may try again with thick glass that would be flexless rather than plexiglass.  But the scraping is working for me as well.

Realistically I could make probably 3 runs an hour if I wanted to really push it and with my current set up time perhaps 4 maybe 5 molds at one time. Â  Of course a lot of this is sit and wait time so if you had a lot of molds you could certainly be busy all the time with weighing plaster and water, scraping, demolding the finished pieces etc.

So now I have 4 or 5 runs of my 3 molds from last night and will probably do several more especially of the standard flagstone wall pieces and the floor tiles.  I’m not sure how much of the rest I’ll need right now.

The express purpose of all this is to build modular layouts in full 3D for playing purposes much like this but at much reduced cost long term. Dwarven Forge stuff is extremely nice looking but just too pricey for a many (myself included).  Although if you only need a smallish setup then it’s probably more cost effective to go that route than buy your molds and plaster.  But nowhere near as fun. Â  As an example you could buy this set up from Dwarven Forge for $109+Shipping or you could buy two molds from Hirst Arts, a wall and a floor mold and a box of plaster for the same money and make about 5 times as many pieces.  And after you go through one box of plaster the next set of 5x the bits and pieces is half the cost because you already have your molds. Â  And you can create your bits and pieces at the height you want, example I’m going to have short walls so it’s easier to see things especially since the map section on my gaming table is high.

All in all the process was pretty simple, a few bits of trial and error as temperture of ambient, molds, water and the  color of plaster and the humidity all have an effect on your plaster and dictate the times needed to wait to scrape off the excess plaster and how long it takes to demold and I’d bet bubble severity.

So if you have some time to spare and the cash to outlay (spread it out among your players as well) and of course the interest then these molds and techniques might be something to consider to raise the bar at your table.

They can tell they’re traveling through town, their own obviously as there are none close enough for their travel time. Then the wagons stop moving and there are a couple of thuds, the wagons shake a bit and next thing they know they’re being released from their captivity by Meri (or is it Keri?) along with some of Shuk’s thugs.  One of the thugs drops a bundle of weapons, maces, longswords and hand bows and the group arms itself.  They’re weakened by their captivity and their first response is to go back to their inn where they raid the kitchen.

While they’re eating one of Shuk’s people comes looking for Shuk and passes on the information that “I seen four men go into the house where yer friend Torn is living with that girl of his.  Shuk asked us to keep an eye on him.  Three of them was sailors I think the other one had chain on…”

The group rushes off to help their friend.  They get to the boarding house to find an elderly woman dead on the bottom floor, apparently in the middle of cooking breads for the day’s meals.  They ease upstairs where they find several empty rooms, one body and then the room of their friend.

A warding of Silence has been chalked on the door as determined by Dra’kin.  He broke the warding and it released its energies in a psychic blast that encompassed most of the group.

Inside there’s been a big battle, three men, sailors by their look lie dead, cut up on the floor.  Torn is in a heap in one corner of the room, his left hand and part of his forearm missing.  Left for dead he apparently managed to loop a thong over the stump before he bled out completely and is unconcious but alive.  His head took a grevious blow though and it doesn’t look good for him.

Biminey healed him enough to stablize him and stop the bleeding.  They noticed the bed sheets were missing and bloody handprints leading out the window.

Leaving by the window they followed the trail around the balcony that ran around the upper story and into an alley way behind.  Signs indicate that someone dropped a body from the upper floor but that it was probably still alive at that time.  The fourth attack is presumed wounded as he or she is leaving bloody hand prints and a blood trail.

The trail heads downhill through the town and the group heads for the docks, they believe they know who it is, someone from the trade ship, slavers they think at the docks.

They’re stopped by a strange figure, a unusually non-descript looking person but as he smiles he reveals a mouth of teeth filed into points. He let’s them know he’s glad he’s found them and whistles for reinforcements. Elisssa believes that he may be concealed by illusion as to his real appearance and several people note a goblin like cadence to his bad Common.   Meri and Keri, show up at this time dropping from the roofs on either side, apparently they’d been tracking this gentleman. Â  Meri tells the gentleman that they don’t approve of ‘outside contractors’ and tells the group to go on, they’ll deal with this one.  The group is happy enough to bail, they’re trying to save Soozin. Â  They catch a glimpse of the figure shimmer then vanish from sight as they’re taking a side street.

As they get to the docks they’re spotted and multiple figures leap off the ship and combat is initated.  The overmage on the ship drops a capture net of magical energies over them as the ship’s forces charge to attack.

The battle is harsh and the group wins but the ship makes it escape.  Part way through the fight they hear a large force of armed men approaching from the city, assuming correctly that it’s watch.

The watch shows up and Tanner, Lerik’s flunky appears from the shadows and speaks to the captain of the watch telling him that the group had killed several people in a nearby warehouse and when they were heard the ship had sent people to investigate andt he party had killed them as well as he can plainly see.  It appeared to the group that Tanner was unusually convincing in his speech.

The party was arrested and tossed into the slam.  The next day Shuk shows up to hear their side of the story.  She arranges for better food and creature comforts with the jailor and leaves.  Another day passes and she shows up again to inform the group that their accuser has ‘apparently left town.’  *wink wink* and tosses Dra’kin an amulet on a braid of yellow hair.  Tanner had yellow hair of the same hue…

The group is informed they’re going to be put to the question, a ritual of Truth and will be asked questions to either prove their innocence or guilt.

They’re moved to the Temple of Eris where they’re subjected to the ritual.  Garon and Teagan ask their questions which prove their inocence more or less.  Lerik though asks if they’ve ever ridden in an airship which they of course have to answer yes.

There’s a bit of an uproar as Lerik is deviating from the program but eventually the group is free’d and allowed to collect their belongings.  They also claim right of victory over the trader ship crew for their gear which they do get.

Biminey agrees to the Ritual of Remembrance for the high priest of Eris and describes the tomb of Larkson and it’s immediate surroundings in vivid detail, every word and description taken down by scribes.

The high priest asks if the group would be ameniable to taking a group of scribes to the tomb.  Biminey puts him off saying he’ll need to talk to the others.

They work out a plan to do so since they’re going that way anyway but by the time they get back to the high priest he’s unavailable.  They wait a day, making preperations, then go back and he’s still unavailable.  Biminey thinks to ask Sushanna and finds out the high priest left with several other priests.

They’ve arranged travel on a small coastal ship and also find out that another ship left that morning with some scribey types on it.

Travel down the coast is mostly uneventful but as they near Darkmouth they’re beset upon by a ship similar in build to the one at the docks only bigger.  They turn to shore where they’re dropped off in boat and their ship beats a hasty retreat before the slave ship.

They work their way through the dangers of the fire swamps and make it to the city (failing my system for abstract combat horribly).  They move inland following the maps that Biminey had uncovered from the scrolls that the little thieves had stolen for him from the forbidden scroll room.  They’re heading for the Temple of Artifice as depicted on their map.

As they made their way they note that the airship is no longer near the top of the tower where they’d left it.  Acting on the assumption there’s no point in going after it if they can’t drive it they continue on to the temple.

They find the temple in an area that’s otherwise mostly destroyed but the temple though is still in good repair.  Dra’kin familiar is sent to investigate and is shot at by guardian constructs like the ones they fought back on the island where they got their airship to begin with. They attack it from extreme range and silver spearman come from the temple but as they stop attacking they don’t pursue the party.  Screwing up his courage Biminey moves closer his mechanical hand out in front.  As something seems to happen he  then approaches the temple.  As he’s looking for a way in the silver spearmen are recalled and he slips through the gate as it opens.

Inside he finds multiple buildings, some holding archives of knowledge, others workshops of artificing.  Constructs roam the grounds, fixing, repairing and guarding the temple.

Through the complicated method of yelling they communicate with each other as to what’s going on and the other four of the group find a semi-sheltered location where they can watch the gate and have some concealment and protection from the elements.

Image Credits

I cut out 1″ square foam core pieces, well technically slightly less than 1″ square.  I also cut out 1″ pieces of the flexible magnetic strip.  I cut the sticks into 4″ long pieces.  Using an x-acto knife I cut a small hole in one corner of the foam core and glued a stick into it.  Once those were all dry I peeled and stuck the magnet bits to the bottom.  I have magnetic receptive game mats.

Using photoshop I made some number flags and some condition flags.  The numbered flags were glued directly to the sticks.  THe condition flags were glued to small pieces of drinking straws.

Now during play I can park a NPC on top of one of the flag bases and can easily see what number it is for the purposes of record tracking and announcing. Â  In addition as an NPC gets a condition I can drop a reminder on it.  By dropping them upside I can designate they go away at the end of the turn (turned over) or if they’re right side up they’re a Save Ends.  I made the status flags pretty generic without numbers because frankly having a marker for every freakin’ option is just too much.  +X ongoing, -X to AC (F/R/W), Save Ends, End of Next Turn, etc and so on. The status markers are just visual reminders when a creature has something odd about it.

If you’re mini’s also have magnets on the bottom of them then they all stick together quite well and you can use the status stand to move them around pretty easily.  Otherwise you just have to be careful when you pick them up to avoid the mini from falling off.

Anyway for $10 or so I made 25 of these with a ton of material left over.

• Biminey’s Static Shock – Range has been changed to 5/10 instead of 5. Â  This gives him a little more reach (out to 10) at the expense of a negative to hit (-2) at the longer range.  When using it at a range of 5 or less it’s the same spell. Power up.
• Biminey’s Healing Infusion – Modified it as such “You or ally in burst regains hit points equal to their surge plus Int Modifier(+5).” This switches it from surge + wisdom mod.  Since the artificer is an int based class, basing their healing on at best a tertiary stat seems off and as the only healer the party needs the boost. Especially with me at the encounter design side of things.
• Stak’s Ferret An Opening is modified to read as such – “Gain Combat advantage against one adjacent target until the end of your turn.”  The original required you to first have combat advantage which then carried over to your next turn even if your co-flanker moved away.  Since that rarely happens I did away with the requirement and it now gives you CA against one target for your current turn.  Same power output, easier to use.  Power up.
• Stak’s Leonine Surge – Removed the dick you clause “If you miss with both attacks you grant CA to all enemies until the start of your next turn.”  When you compare this power against Two-Fang Strike that clause makes the power come up short.  Leonine surge was “Two attacks.  If both hit, deal +2 damage and knock the target prone.”  Two Fang Strike is “Two attacks.  If both hit, deal +Wisdom damage.”   While knocking a target prone is fairly powerful (move action to stand, grants CA while down), it’s not worth the you grant CA to everyone on the battlefield for a full round by any stretch of my imagination.
• Torel’s Oath of Enmity power now reads “When you make a melee attack against your oath target, make two attack rolls and use either one.”  This is a changed from the original removing the requirement which said that your oath target also had to be the only target adjacent to you. Rationale: Less complex situation to use.  Power up.
• Torel’s Deflecting Thunder now reads “Until the end of your next turn the next melee or ranged attack against you instead targets an adjacent enemy to you.”  This removes the exclusion that you couldn’t deflect an attack back on the person attacking you.  Didn’t see any reason for the clause other than that makes it a Reflecting Thunder rather than Deflecting Thunder.  And frankly since Torel’s never gotten this power to work…  Power up.
• Dra’Kin’s Flames of Phlegothos – Added the following:  “Miss: Half Damage”.  It’s one of a limited number of daily powers that either doesn’t have the Reliable keyword or a half damage on miss or some other guaranteed effect.  These are typically because they deal higher than normal damage but with the second gen classes out this is showing its age hence the modification. Because it’s such a high damage spell, half damage is the smaller power boost over Reliable so I went that way with it. Frankly missing with a daily sucks ass  and suckage should be kept at a minimum.  Power Up
• Dra’Kin’s Eldritch Blast – Modified the range to a 10/20 from a 10.  Increased range at the expense of accuracy.  Although the ‘conlock’ has more hit points than anyone he has less defense than most and as a result I think a little more range helps the character.  And a caster based striker with no ranged attack over 10 seems silly. Power Up.

Elisssa didn’t have any powers that I felt were in need of tweaking, the Defender is a solid second generation class and the power’s she’s chosen so far are all right in line with what they should be.

Image Credits

Barring dungeon crawls I don’t really do trivial encounters, that long progression of ‘gimmie’ fights that a DM puts a party through to do a slow drain on their resources to soften them up for the BBEG encounter at the end of the work day.  I certainly run multiple fights in one work day but typically they’re not quantified as ‘trivial’.  Each one has a chance to result in death for someone other than the NPC’s.

Let’s face it, the vast majority of us have limited play time and expending that playtime in fights that are ‘gimmies’ seems wasteful.  Many of these single type encounters can be done using Narrative rather than combat.  But there are times that you do need to show the wear and tear on the group as they go through a long series of encounters but breaking out the mini’s for each one just eats horribly into the time you have to play.

Lately I’ve been using skill challenges to drain surges from the group to simulate small but pointless fights as they flee pursuit through the swamps or try to hide from the hobgoblin tribes while making their way home. Â  But those seem rather flat.

So I’m considering something more combat encounter based and let the party use their combat values against some defensive value, kind of an abstract combat.

The key question is how, I like the 3 rounds and you’re out system I use for skill challenges (duh or I wouldn’t use it right?) rather than the three strikes and you’re out that is the official system. And right now three rounds of combat are close to typical for the group at the level it’s at and seems like a good place to start.

So primarily how to abstract something as tactical as 4th Edition combat is the big question.  I need to work in a way for the players to gain some benefit from the various level of powers, at-wills, encounters and dailies with the understanding that a daily used during an abstract combat encounter is a daily they will not have during that work day.  And we need a simplistic way to simulate buffage.

So my thinking is on any of the three rounds the players can elect to use an At-Will (base), Encounter (bonus), Daily (bigger bonus).  They will take their Attack value for that power, added the bonus for encounter/daily, and then roll against an abstract defense of their opponents.  This isn’t so much to abstract their ability to hit as it is to abstract their ability to do damage.  Encounters and Dailies = more damage output.

Enough failures and they will be forced to expend a surge for each round. Â  So the most they can cost themselves is 3(4) surges per A.C.E. which isn’t out of line with a trivial encounter.

But we also need a way to more equitably spread out the surges lost.  As we all know barring really hard fights it’s typical for some (defenders) to go through an asston of surges while classes that can remain out of harms way might spend none.

So as a first draft let’s see how this flies -

Abstract Combat Encounter System or ACES

Purpose:

To simulate resource drain for a fight the party is expected to win without much risk but without having to take the time to move to a tactical simulation.

Procedure:

The party will negotiate 3 rounds of abstract combat.  In each round each member of the party will pick one of the following, At-Will, Encounter, or Daily.  They will roll a d20, compute their attack roll and compare it to the appropriate DC for the encounter using the AC/F/R/W values as set by the DM.

On any round that there failed rolls are equal to or less than successes the members of the party will lose one surge.

On any encounter that the party does not garner at least one success they will be penalized an additional surge.

Details:

Characters /Attacks -

During each of the ACES rounds each member of the party will choose one of their powers to use.  If the power is an attack power that targets a defense, the character must roll against the appropriate DC/Defense as set by the DM.

If the power also enhances another member of the party then the player may grant/add a +2 bonus to another character’s roll using the Aid Other rules.  If the power does not make an attack against an AC/F/R/W attack but it grants a benefit to another character then the player rolls against a DC+encounter level.  If they succeed then it counts as a success and grants a +2 bonus to the other character’s roll.  [NOTE: Yes this grants higher 'value' to non-strikers in general but what the hell let's give them a time to shine.]

If the power is not an At-Will the character receives the following bonuses where appropriate:

• Encounter +5 to attack roll / Additional +2 bonus Aid Other.
• Daily +10 to attack roll / Additional +4 bonus Aid Other.

Monsters / Defenses / DCs –

The DM will determine the defenses / DC’s of the encounter using the average AC, Fortitude, Reflex, Willpower of the encounter creatures.  You can also use the following values as an overall average across all monster types

• AC = 14+Encounter Level
• F/R/W = 12+Encounter Level

All encounters are assumed to be at the Easy level.  If you wish to simulate a normal or harder fight then add +2 per increase in difficulty that you wish to portray.

Experience / Loot-

The party will earn loot for the encounter just like they would have if it had been played out tactically.

They will earn full experience of the encounter divided by 3 multiplied by the number of rounds they succeeded at with a minimum of 33%, even failure teaches us something.  i.e. if they only succeeded on two rounds then they get 2*33% or 66%.

If they win two out of three rounds they’ll also typically earn some mundane items of value.  By winnign three out of three rounds they’ll also earn some items of higher value or items of a magical nature.

Sacrifice –

One per encounter a character can elect to sacrifice a surge and take one for another member. Â  More than one character can sacrifice for a member but each character can only sacrifice once per encounter.

Major Failure / Death-

If the group fails all three rounds then one player determined randomly is assigned a Death Strike which counts toward their three death strikes for the day and as such can only be removed after an extended rest.

Long Term Usage / Wave Attacks -

Sometimes you might want to simulate a lot of minor attacks, wave situations for instance where the party might have to face 5-10-20… etc trivial fights.

In this case you could instead of each encounter being three rounds, you just decide how many rounds per wave you want simulate. Â  Each round rather than once per encounter a player may sacrifice a surge for another player.

If a character runs out of surges they’re considered out of the combat and the remaining characters incur a cumulative -2 penalty per out of commission character on their die rolls to simulate them being forced to ‘take up the slack’.  If all characters are reduced to 0 surges the encounter is considered lost.

High Level Example: Goblin Warrens for Level 1 Party

Setup: The party has been tasked with cleaning out a goblin warren on one of the caravan trails.  The creatures have been causing issues with the caravans, stealing things at night from the strong ones, attack and pillaging smaller ones after driving off or killing the guards.

Attacks against the goblins have proven of little use with only a few killed.  But now the location of the warren where they’re holed up has been found and the party has been sent to insure that one way or another the raids stop.

It’s assumed that trying to deal diplomatically has failed and there’s no point in talking to anyone but the leader of the goblins and the outside chaff won’t talk.

So the DM figures it’ll take 3 minor encounters to get to the inner sanctum of the goblins.  He chooses to do this with ACES to leave time for the big boss fight whether that turns tactical or roleplay.

The first two encounters are truly easy so the DC’s for those are going to be AC: 15, F/R/W 13 as they’re level 1 encounters.  The third one will see the goblin boss throwing in some of his personal bodyguards so he’s going to crank that difficulty up one notch and that fight will be at DC’s of AC: 17, F/R/W 15.

The final boss battle will be played out normally.

Encounter 1 – Party of 5:

• Round 1 – 4 successes – Result: No loss
• Round 2 – 4 successes – Result: No loss
• Round 3 – Only two success – Result: 1 lost surge

Total: 1 surge lost.  The paladin elects to sacrifice a surge for the cleric and loses two and the cleric loses none.  Experience gained equals 66% of the total.

Encounter 2:

1. Round 1 – 3 successes – Result: No loss
2. Round 2 – 4 successes – Result: No loss
3. Round 3 – 5 successes – Result: No loss

Total: No additonal surges lost. Full experience gained.

Encounter 3:

1. Round 1 – 2 successes – Result: 1 lost surge
2. Round 2 – 2 successes – Result: 1 lost surge
3. Round 3 – 3 successes – Result : No Loss

Total: 2 additional lost surges per party member.  The fighter sacrifices for the wizard and loses three surges while the wizard only loses 1.  The paladin does the same for the cleric losing three surges and the cleric loses 1. Â  Only 33% of the encounter experience gained.

ACES results –

• Wizard – Down 2 surges
• Paladin – Down 5 surges
• Fighter – Down 4 surges
• Cleric – Down 1 surge
• Ranger – Down 3 surges

Comments? Thoughts?

Image Credits

Given I’ve got an artificer and they’re going to be searching for artificer type things something like this might actually find a way into their hands.  Given the secrets of the powder manufacture is currently lost it’s a automatically self limited resource.

Obviously the superior ones would require a feat for all to pick up and use well and the martial ones would require a feat for most.

Image Credits

Original idea presented by DMEric on the official WOTC forums -

The goal of my firearms was to make ones that had a historical basis, but presented an interesting option to players as opposed to either an overpowered “must have” item or a slow loading piece of junk outclassed by bows. The martial level of items represent what, stat wise, amounts to a martial level crossbow. The superior level ones are essentially a superior version of the Repeating Crossbow.

Blackpowder is a rare and “expensive” item from the perspective of a peasant(or lord trying to outfit an entire army), but still trivial to any adventurer past the earliest levels, or very well funded mercenaries, pirates, etc.

My firearms come in two varieties, Martial and Superior. I haven’t designed feats yet, but I think in all likelihood they will just share feats with crossbows, since they are used in a similar manner.

Martial Firearms use breech loading mechanisms (they are loaded from the rear- either from the side sort of like a bolt action rifle or from behind like an old style shotgun), and they use paper cartridges with minnie balls. A minnie ball is a special type of bullet that when fired expands slightly to grip the rifling, allowing one to load the weapon at the speed of a musket, but fire with the accuracy of a rifle. (Historically, the difference was that rifles had “rifling”, tiny ridges that spin the bullet, inside the barrel, while muskets were smoothbore. However, rifles took a much longer time to load than muskets since the bullet had to be very carefully seated inside the barrel w/ a rifle, while muskets could use paper cartridges and just be quickly jammed in.)

• • Pistol  +2  d8 5/10   50gp   2lbs Firearm  Load Minor/High Crit
  • Musket  +2 d10 15/30  75gp 4lbs Firearms Load Minor/High Crit

Superior Firearms are special weapons based on the designs of the famed artificer,Vicento Leorezzi. These weapons, while using a smaller bullet, utilize magazines preloaded with primer, cartridge, and shot, allowing the user to reload the weapon from the magazine by way of the weapon’s finely tuned internal clockwork mechanism. In addition, the improved barrel design alows for accurate fire at longer ranges than conventional firearms. Each magazine holds ten shots, costs 3gp, and requires a standard action to remove the spent magazine and load the fresh one.

• • Clockwork Pistol +2 d6 10/20 80gp 2lbs Firearms Load Free*/High Crit
  • Clockwork Rifle +2 d8 20/40 105gp 4lbs Firearms Load Free*/High Crit

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Shük

[DM's Note: Overall this was a really good session, lots of character involvement, dialogue, sleuthing and clues and all that. We learn a little about the character's past lives, they learn about their city, there's intrigue and mystery, all that kind of thing.  You know, the stuff that 4th Edition makes impossible according to some people because it's just warcraft on paper.  This is one episode of the podcast that I'd recommend you download when it's available if you like that kind of thing.]

We open our movie with our vaunted cast, Torel, Dra’kin, Elissa, Stak, Biminey continuing their journey homeward.  Biminey glad to be alive on this fine day, feeling like he might have almost been dead just moments earlier.

The terrain grew rougher as they continued moving north toward home.  Small rolling hills turning into craggy ravines and cliffs.

It is one such ravine, almost a canyon that they run into their first major issue. A band of goblins trying to be sneaky and the group spot each other at the same time about 100′ between them.  The goblins scream and shout and attack.  Moments later a giant rounds the bend in the canyon, all 11′ of him and the 8′ tree trunk he’s using as a club.  A club that hurts a lot for those that try to stop it with their chests.

Boulders fly, clubs swing in might arcs and goblins die in rapid succession. Deep rough breathing from a nearby cave is heard as Stak passes near and when Dra’kin is knocked flying by a blow from the club landing in the mouth of the crack in the cave wall.

The hill giant retreats from battle leaning on his club, using the language of the goblins he asks if the group wants to join him, “Yu tough’ens, me yu jone up, we split 50/50.”  Torel and Biminey are the only ones that can understand the large creature and Biminey translates the conversation to the others.

But dragonborn fury is not to be denied apparently and Elisssa cuts the discourse short and attacks the giant who roars out in fury and slams Torel back in righteous anger.  The avenger goes flying through the air landing heavily on his ass.  Regardless of their own inclinations the rest of the group backs the dragonborn’s play the giant soon lies dead at their feet.

A giant wineskin filled with the finest dwarven ale is recovered from the giant, a wineskin that they discover much to their delight refills every day with ale.  In addition a magical belt is removed from the hill giants, a belt that Biminey re-sizes to fit Torel.

They continue their climb up through the mountains, avoiding or appearing too tough to take on and the rest of their journey, although tense and eventful yields no further obstacles and within days they arrive at the gates of their home town.

They’re welcomed as semi-heroes for having escaped the slavers and bought drinks and food and lodgings provided without cost to them.

The town Council summons them and there they meet Garon, Lerik and Teagon, the councilmen.  Also, and un-coincidentally, they’re also the three richest men in the city.  Lerik owns merchants and shops, Garon owns the majority of the fishing fleets, and Teagon runs the shipping, primarily by boat to the cities further inland but with some wagon trains.

During their interview it becomes obvious quickly that Lerik, a middle aged human male, doesn’t appear to like non-humans and in fact later on they discover that Lerik is a follower of Bain, a human-centric god who’s teachings propose that humans should be in charge of anything important.

Garon, another older human male, is intensely interested about the group, his daughter and son having also been stolen during the slaver raid during the Spring festival. Unfortunately the group does not recall his children, both in their early 20′s as having been part of their group although it’s possible they were among those first lost in the sealie attacks. Â  Those first couple of days after waking on board the ship were hectic and many people died, unknown and buried at sea.

Teagon, an eladrin also male, age unknown but mature seems indifferent to the group.

The group told their story, changing details and saying they sailed the slaver ship they’d woken on to the coast, landing it in Darkmith and then glossing over the details of their journey.  Specifically keeping all details of the elemental ship out of their story.

Part of an old argument among the council comes out during their interview, Garon wants to hire mercenaries from the the mostly dwarvish settlement inland.  He doesn’t want anyone else lost or to lose someone to slavers ever again, Lerik believes it would be a waste of money, the slavers have already hit the city and undoubtedly will have moved on.  Teagon seems to be worried only about the cost, how can they afford it now. Perhaps after the fishing fleet’s harvest starts up in earnest.

Garon gives each of them 100 gold of his own money, assuming they have no money of their own after their harrowing escape to purchase necessities.

Torn steps forth and tells the group he’ll take charge of Soozin’s protection, as it turns out she’s an orphan now, her father was one of the one’s taken by the slavers and her mother died in childbirth.  He intends to join the guards, his skills with a blade should be of use to them.  Torel steps up and gives him 50 gold to provide for the two of them while the group figures out it’s next moves.

They decide to stay together, their thoughts on that elemental ship they left back in Darkmith.  They spend a few days in town, getting reacquainted with old friends and lovers, Dra’kin renewing his relationship with Shük, a half-orc girl that favors her human side, while Biminey visits Sushanna, an acolyte of the Temple of Eris that he’s friendly with from his visits there going through the god of knowledge’s vast collections of scrolls and manuscripts.

Stak and Torel, both mostly alone in the city venture out together several times, gathering news of current events while Elisssa visits her clan, enjoying several celebrations of her safe return.

Stak and Torel among other things learns of a trader ship in the harbor which is rare in these times of unsafe travel, a typical year might see 4 or 5 trading ships from up or down the coast.

Dra’kin asks his sometimes girlfriend to look into Lerik, the man’s non-human bigotry bothers him, while Biminey uncovers in his trip to the Temple of Eris that all information on Darkmith is in the forbidden archives, Merkin, high priest of the temple blatantly refuses him access to those scrolls saying some knowledge should not be known.

A few days after their arrival they’re summoned before the council again, the council is obviously in disagreement but Garon informs the group of the losses they’ve taken on their trade ships returning from inland being taken by bandits and the gold taken. Â  He proposes that the group recover the gold if they can and he will keep 10%.  Larceny is in their hearts as they ponder this, “Who’s to say how much we recover exactly?”.  Lerik, the bigot, seems in favor of the idea only after his associate, a slightly oily human by the name of Tanner whispers to him about how “wouldn’t Bain approve if these beasts and snakes were killed trying to recover it? ” referring to Stak and Torel, both shifter born and Elisssa obviously.  A whisper overheard by a couple of the sharper eared members of the group.

Teagon seems almost against the idea, saying it’s a waste of time, and they’d be throwing the groups lives away in vain.

The group tells the council they’ll consider the idea and give them an answer in a couple of days.

The ship in the harbor is visited, found to be carrying a high number of skilled fighters, perhaps uncommon or perhaps necessary for any ship to be able to sail the seas and make it safely from port to port.  None of the group who see the ship can say for sure if it’s a slaver ship, a suspicion born of paranoia perhaps as Garon tells Dra’kin when the warlock visits him, pressing for Garon to get on board and search the ship.  Garon agrees to consider the information and says he’ll try and arrange for a visit.

While discussing his inability to get into the archives he needs to get information on Darkmith and the elemental ships, Shük shrugs, “is that all?” and has one of her twin halfing lieutenants show up.  Meri nods, “I can recover items from there for you, it’s a bit of a hassle, hard to get to even for me and I can’t remove much without it being noticed.”

They arrange for her to remove one scroll from several shelves a night and in that way they can zero in on the area that they need.

Torel and Stak interview known survivors of the bandit raids on the ships, finding out that no one before seems to have done much in the way of information gathering and by getting maps they’re able to narrow down the area where the ships are taken by quite a lot.  They also find out that the ships that are taken are always ones in the top percentile of gold coins carried.

This arouse a lot of discussion and suspicion on who might be slipping information, or be behind the stolen gold shipments being stolen.

The group decides to go after the gold thieves, arranging for Meri to continue bringing out scrolls and a forger of Shük’s acquaintance to copy them for Biminey’s return.

After some discussion the group heads upstream to the area where the ships are taken and there Stak finds a trail that leads them to a hidden camp. Â  He sneaks close but not quite close enough to overhear an interesting conversation that occurs between a man dressed in city clothing who enters camp and appears to be warning the bandits that there is someone after them.  The leader of the group turns and starts barking orders for the bandits to break camp.

Stak sneaks out to tell the group, noticing in passing a hidden archer he missed on the way in.

The group tries to stealth up to the clearing but are hopelessly incompetant and find the camp deserted although the bandits gear is still around.  They circle the camp, spotting a couple of archers moving around as they do.  Stak cuts through the camp and the trap is sprung.  Bandits rise up out of shallow pits covered by bedrolls.

The group is dispersed in all directions while the bandits tend to focus their attacks better and although the bandits take their losses in the end Elissa is down, a glaive at her throat while another rests over her heart and a razor tipped arrow is pointed at her left eye.

The eladrin, seemingly bored, speaks loudly enough to be heard across the clearing, “Surrender now or the dragonborn dies.”

With Elissa down and certain to die, Biminey down, bleeding from multiple wounds, Stak with a growing puddle of blood growing under his feet and Torel facing two more archers solo and bloodied, the group drops their weapons and is captured.

They’re expertly tied up, all their gear except clothing removed and bags put over their heads and that’s where we leave our party to await their fate at the hands of their captors.

[DM's Afterword: This outcome was unexpected although at one time I did have some thoughts on increasing the size of the force to make capture a higher percentage chance that I was thinking it would be.  As a result I can work with this outcome, just didn't expect it to happen.  It does show the necessity of focused play in 4th edition.  ALL of the bandits were hurt, most approaching bloodied status but the damage was simply too spread out.  Since even someone down to 1 hp still deals full damage, hurting them doesn't do much, removing someone from the battle is what makes a difference.

The aftermath of this is that, obviously, the group is going to lose their gear.  I'm so NOT a believer in captors conveniently storing all the capturee's gear in an unlocked chest in the next room and leaving a key hanging just out of but not quite reach to the cell door.  I think that's lame.  But because I'm granting bonuses to the characters inherently as a function of being heroes, it doesn't matter.  Gear only gives them gimmicks the way I do it, it doesn't impact their base attacks and defenses etc.  Sometimes gimmicks are useful but this way they're not necessary.

Because of the holidays the next session will likely be on January 2nd.  Stay tuned to see how our plucky but disorganized heroes get out of this mess. ]

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And I’m not saying that if you did run into one of these you wouldn’t find them in pairs or even trios…

Or for the worst offenders, say perhaps a group that killed a high ranking hobgoblin officer that was out gathering toys for the grand hobgoblin marshall’s birthday present, you might run into a whole herd of the things.

You can get a PDF and the monster builder filer here [Download not found]

They headed out through the ruins the next day, north toward home.  Their trip through the city saw them harassed by small bands of ferals but none in forces large enough to do much more than minor wounding and abrasions.  Their pursuit trailed off as they entered a more damaged section of town.

In the center of a curiously free of rubble area they found a crypt of white stone bound in metal that was untarnished, no small feat in the humid air a city sinking into a swamp.  Biminey went to examine it while the others held back out of fear like little kids confronted with something with big teeth and red eyes.

He found a crypt that was constructed of the finest craftsmanship, engraved in runes in the dead language of the city (dead as far as Biminey was concerned) as well as runes of arcanic nature that protected the crypt he thought from outside influences. As he went back to join the party he noticed tall emaciated figures.  It was as if they’d been veiled from his sight until he left the crypt unmolested and then suddenly he became aware of them.  As did the others.

The figures were not much more than leathery skin and bone with arms abnormally long and fingers tipped in claws stained with ancient blood.  More stains covered their faces especially around the very large mouths and down their chests.  Their eyes were sewn shut but they seemed able to see in spite of it as they tracked his movements exactly. Â  The only motion of any of them were the slow turning of their heads and sporadic slow mouth openings revealing rows of needled pointed teeth.  Burned or carved into their foreheads was a sigil that matched the one carved above door to the crypt.  A sigil that Biminey associated with that of the prince who came back to Darkmith and destroyed the city to purge it of the darkness and chaos brought upon it by his soulridden royal family.

Backing away the party detoured around the strange crypt and the stranger guardians and continued on their trip through the ruins.  At least reaching the swamps they hadn’t gone very far when they were attacked by giant crocodiles with huge clamping jaws.  The fight was difficult, movement in the water and deep mud of the swamps making it hard to get around but the group prevailed without serious although most of the people involved in direct melee combat with the crocodiles ended up clamped in their mouths on at least one occasion.

Learning the dangers of the swamps as they continued they found it easier going after time but still very draining.  Then a huge explosion of water in front of them revealed a creature that seemed to be swamp given animate form.  A Swamp Walker surged up out of the water and it’s powers reached out and two trees nearby twisted their roots up out of the mud and dirt and started flailing branches at the group while the swamp walker beat on them with smashing limbs and generating wave surges that attempted to drown them.  The trees were beaten down without much trouble but the Walker took considerable damage before its essence was extinguished and it dissolved back into the swamp of its nature.

[Level 5 Solo Soldier with 2 level 3 Skirmishers.  I didn't find the fight taking 'omg fights take forever in 4th edition against solo's personally.]

The party recovered a strange insect riddled staff in the center of the mass of the destroyed walker that Dra’kin took as his own. [Feyswarm Staff].

Eventually the party survived the swamps and made it to dry land, the lands of the warlike hobgoblins.  Not too far from the swamp they encountered a strange black eyed wolf like creature leading a pack of normal wolves.  After one attack the pack fled leaving behind one corpse.

The next days of travel saw them moving carefully during the day and then digging into the thickets of brush at night to hide as they slept.  One night as Torel sat lonely vigil he spotted an orange glow growing north of their position and just barely caught the faint sound of screaming in the night air. Â  He woke Stak and then the rest of the party and they moved up to investigate.  The party staying well back as Stak stealthed up.

He saw a band of hobgoblins torturing two humans or half-elves, it was hard to say from the fire damage.  Other slaves roamed the camp serving the hobgoblins of which there were about 15 visible.  Then as he was turning away a patrol wandered in to camp, another 6 hobgoblins and 6 more left from the ones that had been resting and drinking.

Stak went back to the others and as a group they attempted to stealth into position.  Then Elisssa tripped and fell into a thicket of bushes.  The hobgoblin warcaster heard the noise and then turned and saw Biminey and Stak standing at the edge of a small drop off.  The warcaster moved up with a savage snarl and used his power to yank Biminey down from the rise.  Biminey smirked a bit and then used the power of his amulet to teleport back up.

The fight was on then and the swarms of hobgoblins rushed the cliff lead by their commander. Â  Deadly hobgoblin archers remained where they were peppering the group with jagged bladed shafts while the grunts shifted up the rise at their commanders orders after the group.

Slowly the hobgoblin forces were decimated even with arrival of the wandering patrol as reinforcements.

For some reason Biminey decided to rush the archers down below and was peppered with shafts and dropped at their feet.  Mostly dead he used his last healing infusion on himself and the two archers shook their heads and shot him twice again, one impaling him through the throat and into the ground.

[Due to a mistake in my math we assumed Biminey was dead at this point. He was at negative 19 health and his negative bloody is 18.  But I doubled the damage on the archer's critical to 20 rather than maximizing it 15.  As a result Biminey only appeared dead to the rest of the group and we'll roll back time and allow the group try to stabilize him.  Which given the plethora of action points left and Biminey's proximity to the group should be a given he'll not die.  On a side note, given the plethora of action points left the group could have certainly have killed one or more of the archers before they got a chance to kill the artificer.  Very much like the death of Aoefel it could have been prevented by the actions of the rest of the group... Perhaps they didn't think I'd kill him given the chance?  Perhaps now they know better....   But because it was an honest mistake on my part in dealing out the damage, I'm fine with rolling back.]

The party searched through the gear of the hobgoblins and came up with a Battle Standard of Might and a Staggering Broadsword along with valuables of monetary nature as some very welcome potions of healing.

[Although I had another overland encounter planned at this point it was getting late and we called it.]

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You can grab a copy of the monster builder files and a pdf here – [Download not found]

And here’s a basic screenshot of the creature you could print out but it doesn’t include the Animate Trees.  Just grab the download for the PDF.

The basic tactics would entail using the swamp spew on its enemies to weaken them by making them easier to hit, then typically it would summon two animate trees and use the surging wave ability to push creatures away that are trying to get flanking on it while just smashing the crap out of everything that approaches.  It does have a ranged attack as a minor action that it can use where plants near the target lash out at it.  If you use this then I’d recommend you add in some ‘high ground’ for one or two characters, a rock pile where a character can escape the minor attack, that kind of thing.  But its your encounter do with it as you will.

swampwalker

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This is just an example of tweaking an existing creature.  I took the Hill Giant which is a level 12 brute, dropped his level in the character builder, reset the damages a bit to nudge him closer to a soldier while keeping the defenses and hit points etc of the brute, and added in a couple of powers as the default Hill Giant would be boring as a boss encounter.  With the other things I’ve got planned for this encounter I think it’ll be a good BBEG level encounter for the group.

You can grab the monster builder file here [Download not found] and an image of the creature below you could print out.

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Hill Giant Runt

Biminey uses the free time to construct two Amulets of Blink – Neck Slot items that provide the following function – Blink (Daily, Teleportation) – Minor action – teleport up to 4 squares.  Elisssa and Biminey take them.

Day three of their voyage after dark they spot lights on the ocean and their course takes them near.  It’s a group of slaver rading ships off loading their ‘cargo’ into two large galleons, home port unknown although Biminey recalls seeing historical tales of travel from back when there was travel between cities of significant nature that cities along the southern end of the west coast used them for hauling goods around.  It’s been decades since their city has seen anything more than small fishing boats that take shelter in their bay blown off course by storms from the tiny ‘towns’ on either side of them along the coast.

Ballistae bolts fly toward them from slaver ships but they arc below their elemental ship’s height.  It will take time for the slavers to elevate their weapons and time isn’t something they have as the ship continues on it’s inexorable course south by south east. Â  Arcane energies flare out from one of the galleons but falls short of them.  With the strong northerly winds there’s no chance the slavers will be able to follow with enough speed that they won’t be lost before daybreak.

They soon pass the point where they believe their city is to the east but the coast isn’t visible to them and there’s nothing they can do.

Day eight of their voyage finally brings the low smudge of coastline to their left.  The ship continues on its journey and the coast grows closer.  The lands once they finally can make them out are flattening out, the rocky coasts of their town long gone.  The lands grow marshy and then turn into full blown swamps even as ruins start to sprout up.  From piles of jungle covered stone to partial upgright walls to almost intact buildings over time.

Dark forms, keeping to the shadows below pace the ship after awhile, its speed drastically decreased as it enters the cities airspace.

A tall step sided tower is seen in the way, canted at a sharp angle obviously as result of the slow devastation caused by the swamp engulfing the city.  This cant is putting it squarely in the way of the ship which continues on.  With a heavy crash the ship collides with the upper part of the tower and sends almost everyone crashing to the deck.

Figures cloaked in living shadow swarm up and around the tower leading into the deck, The attackers consist of literal shadow, small flitting forms of black swirls and coase featured humanoids draped in it.  Larger forms swarmed over the ship grabbing the unskilled citizens and fall over the sides down to the ground below while more engage the combatants of the ship’s passengers. Ranged attackers armed with shadow given substance line the tower’s ledges.

A long fight but our party perseveres and wipes out the attackers but they’ve lost 5 of their 6 companions, only little timithi going uncaptured due to his hiding in the wheelhouse with Bimini.

After recovering, tossing the bodies over the sides our heroes regroup in the dawns morning light to discuss their options.  It’s a toss up as to who is the most uncaring but eventually after listening to Timithi’s pleas to save his little sister the group starts on the trail toward another intact tower they can see rising up from the ruined city about 2 miles distance.

Stak recoverd a suit of Blacksnake Armour which makes him fairly shifty once a day.

On their journey they are attacked by a building.  Or rather someone drops a building on them.  All but Torel are captured by the debris, immobilized trying to get free as archers, feral humanoid creatures open up from a second story on a building facing the now large mound of debri.  Three giants, most likely part goliath drop into view wielding massive steel mauls although one is bearing the black steel, red runed warhammer known as Rockcrusher.  Additional creatures stream out narrow alleyways into the fray, wielding rusty corroded weapons.

The party makes good use of their teleportation powers to escape the stone and debris holding them motionless and engages the attackers.  The archers from above do a good number on the party, Torel, Elissa and Stak taking numbers of missiles in their backs and sides as they engage the maulers. Dra’kin and Biminey engage the feral foot soldiers then turn their attentions to the archers while the maulers are brought down by their friends.

Poor little Timithi is crushed into a pulp during the fight as the party watched with casual interest. His dying words even as ribs ripped his lungs apart and his brains leaked out are “Please sir, please won’t you save my sister.”

Elisssa latches onto the dweomered Rockcrusher.

The group continued on through the streets of the city toward the tower. There they found it sitting in the center of a plaza, the base covered in swirling shadows.  A body falls from the tower above, a gaping hole where her chest had been, a waitress from the Blue Duck in their home town by the name of Lolly.  Yes there were jokes about adverbs.

As they move closer the shadows start to detach and surround the group and then attack, sinking into the very bodies of the heroes with a bitter burning cold of the soul. Using his resounding armour ability Biminey blasts open the door into the tower during the fight.

The first floor proved to be empty but filled with the most noisome furnishings one could ever hope to find.

The second floor appeared at first glance to be the same then slender shadow draped forms erupt from hiding spots under the piles of foul bedding.  Trying to ease into positions where they could inflict devastating damage the heroes proved to be too careful [DM: And my dice proved to suck royal ass.  A problem that occurred with distressing frequency for most of the evening.  I don't' think I've ever had that many numbers below 10 before.]

After a short breather the heroes continued up the tower, finding the third floor as empty as the first.  [DM: As it was getting late and I wanted the boss battle to occur, I pulled the forces from this room which would have further drained the groups resources, it was planned for an addition encounter of 6 level 2 brutes, the same Darkmith Retrievers that had captured the hostages.  As a result there's a bit of a break in continuity but no one noticed that the creatures that had kidnapped the hostages vanished into thin air.  But this is party of what being a DM is about.  Dynamic changing of things to fit the available time, interest and party resources.]

Stak with a stealth ability the likes of which hasn’t been seen outside the training rooms of the local thieve’s guild sneaks up the stairs to look over the rooftop.  He sees pillars of energy slowly eating away the chest away of another of the captives.  The remaining three captives are laying motionless near one edge of the rooftop guarded by the darkmith lurkers they’d fought on level 2. Â  Two dark priests are directing the energies in a ghoulish sacrifice of the captives.

With Elisssa’s battlecry, “Let’s charge them!” the party moves up as a whole to the top of the stairs.  The dark priests react to this intrusion and the fight commences.  The dark priests have the abiltiy to cloak themselves in shadow and vanish from mortal sight but it proves to be of only moderate use to them as they continue to take damage, Stak continually sinking arrows into their invisible forms. With Elissa and Torel taking care of the skirmishers, Dra’kin amusing himself with incredible lack of skill at combat. [DM: Four 1's in a row, I kid you not.]

The battle is tough but our crew is up to the job and downs the bad guys, frees the hostages and looks askance at Dra’kin wondering just which side he’s working on given his complete ineffectiveness during this fight.

We leave our party atop the tower recovering with their rescued captives including little Suizin who’s asking about her brother.

[DM: This was planned to be a little tougher fight than it was but I forgot to use a wonderous item a Jar of Steam that I'd given to one of the dark priests and in general my overall lack of decent dice rolling and Stak's high