So sometime back, I promised to look at other games and occasionally do posts on other geeky insights. Let it not be said I'm not a man of my word.
I probed some players, and got some interest in Shadowrun. So I put one on my schedule, and the first game was last night. I didn't have long to gather players (and, as usual, that old jerk work schedules excluded some otherwise interested players), so there were only two: Joseph and Will from Encounters.
Shadowrun isn't as old as D&D, but it is an 80s classic and much beloved. A brief summary of the idea is that it mixes cyberpunk concepts (a future too-near ruled by corrupt corporations filled with cyborgs and direct brain-link hacking) with with fantasy ones (magic, dragons, dwarves, elves, orks, and trolls). If put under a microscope, the setting makes no logical sense (the "Earth" of Shadowrun is called "the Sixth World" in honor of the old Mayan calendar thing), but it is a lot fun. The built-in excuse for a bunch of mercenaries with no real backstory or identity to team up to commit questionable moral acts is in the title: the Shadowrun. In short, Shadowrunners are criminals for hire, and their job is to commit corporate espionage. They get these jobs because they don't have SINs (system identification numbers, the source of identity in the crapsack future), so they're the perfect deniable assets. And because corporations have multiple layers of security: electronic, guards without guns, magical wards, guards with guns, etc., a good team of Shadowrunners includes Street Samurai (warrior types-did I mention this game of from the 80s when everyone thought, incorrectly, Japan was going to economically conquer the world. It mostly remains due to tradition and the fact that many gamers are Japanophiles) to kill the guards with guns, a decker (brain-to-computer hacker) to get past the electronic security, a hermetic mage or shaman (mages focus of spell-slinging, and shamans are better at dealing with spirits) to deal with the magic, a face to talk to the guards without guns, and a rigger (brain-to-vehicle hacker) to drive the get away van.
Needless to say, technology and history marching on have not been kind to Shadowrun's timeline. In the 90s they did a storyline where Dunkelzahn, one of those newly returned dragons, ran for president and won (I'm pretty sure a certain orange-haired man would have asked to see THAT birth certificate), 2012 has come and gone with no goblinaztion (where normal people "turn into" orks and trolls) and no resurgence of magic, and since the 80s first the internet then the advent of wi-fi revolutionized computing. And unlike the un-history of Paranoia, Shadowrun's lore is deep and broad enough that its almost impossible to ret-con away like a failed comic book plot-line. The history muddles along, reading more like an alternate time line now than a future too near scenario.
Power and option creep have also set in. The fifth edition book has technomancers (magic brain hackers), adepts (use magic to enhance their physical abilities as an alternative to the cybered-up street samurai), and drones (riggers can use these remote control buddies to participate in the run from the safety of the getaway van). Plus it has new rules for wireless networking to make your hacker even more crazy useful. Fifth edition is almost 500 pages-and its to hold all those damn options and the spot rules for them. I'm not against options (let the players do what they want is something most DMs will cringe at, but I want the players to have FUN, dammit), but its a LOT of game to learn. So I was doomed to be a little unprepared.
At its heart, Shadowrun is simple enough. It uses an individuated (read each die separately for a "success") dice pool of d6s. Previous editions used moving target numbers and "exploding" dice (you can re-roll a six and add the re-roll for a higher result), but starting in 4th edition the designers followed White Wolf's lead and set a flat target number. In 1st through 3rd edition, Skill and Attribute were separate dice pools, and it was more difficult to raise a Skill over its linked Attribute (similar to Savage Worlds). Starting in 4th, the dice pool is the Skill + the Attribute (again, following White Wolf's lead). This means dice pools can get huge. The biggest pool from our first night was 11 dice. In SR4, this meant it was more efficient to raise your dice pools by buying up skills. SR5 introduced a concept called "Limits," which cap your successes and are based off of your Attributes and (mainly for attacks) your equipment. This provides incentive to raise the much more expensive attributes. Plus, the Social limit factor's in your character's Essence (the "soul" Attribute, previously reserved to be eaten by cybernetics), so if you want to deal with people, you have an incentive to avoid cybering up.
Since character creation in Shadowrun is a weekend killing endeavor even with players familiar with it (So. Many. Options.), I had Joseph and Will grab pre-gens out of the book and put the stats onto blank character sheets. In the grand tradition of pre-gens, they're not very well put together, but they're playable. Joseph picked a Drone Rigger he named Hector and Will picked a Street Samurai he named Jan (pronounced "Yan"). Both of these templates are orks, victims of rather a lot of prejudice in the Shadowrun world (tusks and an underbite, coupled with being bigger and broader-think "the big dumb guy" stereotype-than humans, are the main reason for this).
So they were down a face, a dedicated hacker (riggers can do some hacking), and any magic support. But damn were they good at murder. I knew we were all unfamiliar with the rules, so I ran a quick-start adventure from Free RPG Day. It's not complex-a corporate suit hires the runners to find his missing son. There were a few hiccups. The adventure was meant to work with pre-gens provided in the booklet, which are overall weaker than the core book's pre-gens, but have a few bits specifically geared toward the adventure. Still, lacking any social skills or proper investigation skills, they muddled through the first bit, mostly by being savvy players. Using tried and true knowledge of kidnapping (its usually someone the victim knows, etc.), they did some investigation. Of course, half the point is that it wasn't a normal kidnapping. The kid kept his backpack, but not any school books, plus (not spelled out in the adventure text proper, but I figured would be the case anyway), he took his jacket and coat and hygiene supplies. They did find that his computer and the security footage from the gated community he lived in had been thoroughly date wiped. After coming up empty on relative and acquaintances, they did some Matrix (because we won't be calling it the Internet in 60 years, apparently-like I said, lore too broad and deep to ret-con away) searching and hit up their "Fixer" (a contact responsible to putting Shadowrunners in contact with employers), they learned that a group of rookie hunters had taken a child to the docks for a hand off.
The found the warehouse complex, and cased the joint. Two mafiosi-looking goons, and some others in the nearby buildings (thermographic vision is useful, isn't it?) What they did next demonstrated why players and vehicles are a volatile mix. First, a side story.
Some years ago I ran a Vampire the Requiem game meant to show off the World of Darkness's fairly robust chase mechanics. The PCs had their Scooby Van (it's always a Scooby Van, mainly because vans are very good for hauling around a large group of people and all their crap around fairly efficiently), when two vamps drove up behind them on motorcycles with Tek-9s. Instead of just having the driver gun it while the passengers shot back, two of the PCs pulled a Matrix 2, and jumped out of the back of the van and onto the on-coming motorcycles to fight the enemy vamps. I know WoD isn't meant to be a cinematic game, but I have a weakness for cinematic moments, so I let them roll to see what happened. It ended being just. So. AWESOME! One landed on the bike perfectly and shoved the other vamp off. The other just kind of ran into the bike, causing it to crash, stranding him and the other vamp, where they proceeded to duke it out. The point of the story is that players and vehicles are a volatile combination. See characters, in a sense, aren't flesh and blood people but a sheet full of numbers that interact with the game world. So why should they behave like a flesh and blood person would? (Don't answer that-its rhetorical.)
So rather than hack the gates or cut the barb wire fences, Hector drove his Scooby SUV (mostly filled with just all the drones ever-priority A Resources at character generation is a lot of money, so you end buying things you do not logically even need) through the gate a tried to run over the goons. In the meantime, Jan jumped out and rolled on the pavement to get to the back door of the building with the kid in it. Like I said, players and vehicles are a volatile combination.
Hector failed to run over the goons, but when he opened the back of his SUV, he let loose all the drones ever equipped with just stupid ridiculous weapons. He was just trying to pin the goons with suppressing fire, but ended up murdering the shit out of them instead.
In the meantime, Jan kicked in the back door, because picking locks is for pussies. He then waited to ambush the two individuals in the building. One of them, a rookie ork Shadowrunner named Hardhat, emerged into the corridor, Jan threw a grenade down. I am, without a doubt, 100% certain I did the grenade rules wrong. Hardhat was still up after the blast (barely). His magic support, an elf mage named Caduceus, came out to failed to hit Yan with a Powerbolt, a basic damage dealing attack spell. I know I fudged the rules on spell casting at this time, too. But I went in knowing I was woefully under-prepared (we all were, really) so we're all on a learning curve for this one.
Initiative is complicated in Shadowrun. If your Initiative is over 10, you can act multiple times in a turn (3 seconds of game time) on different initiative passes. Its complicated, but easy enough to explain, anyway. Jan's next initiative pass was to spray the corridor containing Hardhat and Caduceus with his SMGs (one a hand-held, the other built into his cyberarm). These rules are also complicated. After going through the combat rules, I THINK we got it right (his dice pool takes a penalty, but the defender's defensive dice pool takes a hit, too, and his attack can apply to multiple targets). Even if we got it wrong, I might house-rule this to reduce the amount of dice rolling. Dice rolling is (almost) always the biggest slow down in combat. He shot Hardhat unconscious and killed Caduceus outright.
That taken care of, he went for the kid, Byron Strickland. The boy clearly was suffering from some sort of dissociative personality. In true Shadowrunner fashion, Jan didn't care. He just wanted to get the kid home and get paid. But he did give the kid a cookie.
They got the kid home, got paid, and got a too buggy to use piece of software the dad's team had been working on.
Overall, an inauspicious, but murder-filled start. And there's enough awesome there that I think the learning curve will be worth it.
In review, the rules are pretty simple in the overall, but start to get complex on a zoom in. Shadowrun's combat rules are particularly complicated. Some of it is legacy. FASA, the original creators, was started by a bunch of retired military buddies. Their flagship tabletop product was Battletech, a now classic game of big stompy robots blasting each other with lasers. However, their first RPG was a license of Star Trek that was, surprisingly enough considering the company's background but perfectly understandable given the source material, focused away from combat.
Saturday, April 30, 2016
Thursday, April 28, 2016
Dire Wolves, Ghost Dogs, and Plant Monster, Oh No!
We had a new player this week: Danny. He had a lightfoot halfling rogue named Smeef. Shretz, another DM at the Isle of Games helped him create the character, and the Joseph helped level him up to 5. Having done parties with characters at different levels, I've decided not to allow it at a table I'm running. I have a feeling he hadn't played 5e before, so I hope diving in with both feet didn't spook him. He decided on the Arcan Trickster archetype, so he seemed confident in being able to play a more complex character.
To top it off, Ethan and Andrew returned tonight with Tarkir and Rolan, who also had to be leveled to 5. That totaled up to 9 players. It helped them handle the battles.
As I mentioned before, I pre-rolled the random encounters. One of the joys of being a DM is trying to get the random fall of dice to add up to a coherent or meaningful narrative. Or at least watch as players fill in the blanks on their own. I pre-rolled the encounters, but shifted the timing of one and spruced it up.
First, I had to introduce a new character. The Curse of Strahd has a hook tying into the Forgotten Realms factions appropriate for higher level characters, so I used that to draw in Smeef. The Harpers (his faction) were investigating children stolen by werewolves and taken into the Misty Forest near Daggerdale. So he had teamed up with other adventurers and explored the forest, until the mists separated him from the other adventurers and led him to the Old Svalich road, which led him to the Luna River Crossroads just west of Vallaki, where he met the current party travelling with Rictavio.
The crossroads sign had been damaged, but Lop fixed it with mending. Rictavio bid them farewell, following the sign to Lake Baratok, while the party continued to follow the road towards Krezk. Smeef recognized the symbol of Lathander on Tathora's livery, and decided to remain with his fellow Faerunians.
Not long afterwards, while travelling through the woods, a wolf the size of a grizzly bear stepped out of the mists. Amrus was acting as a scout at the time. He failed to properly hide from the other dire wolves in the area (there was a total of 5) but managed to notice them and warn the party, so there was no surprise. Of course, when I ran the first round I failed to remember that is how it happened, so he got a free sneak attack. The players didn't complain, and it probably wouldn't have mattered in the long run (probably).
Dire wolves, aside from being the emblem of House Stark (I'm ready o swear fealty to Sansa, Queen of the North, right until George R.R. Martin or the show writers decide to kill her) are what 4e would call skirmirshers: fast and tricksy. They have pack tactics, but without ranged weapons it isn't quite so broken. They also trip when they hit. Tarkir and Tathora managed to avoid being tripped, but Cugel and Rolan did not.
Rolan got to use his Druid circle feature to turn into a dire wolf during this battle. He even managed to turn the tables and trip another dire wolf. Tarkir, in the meantime, used searing smite, part of a new family of spells almost exclusively on the Paladin and Ranger spell lists that enhance the next attack. In this case, searing smite adds some extra fire damage to the initial attack and a DOT effect removed with a Con save. I think I failed to remember the effect, but again it won't matter in the long run.
Tathora tried to use her Channel Divinity to heal in an area, unfortunately I had to remind her it only brings a party member up to 1/2 their hit points, so the effect is better for a quick keeping someone from going down (and bring them back up after going down) rather than a top-off.
Cugel also broke out a new spell: major image to create a scary undead bear seeming to rise up out of the road. It allowed him to try to intimidate the wolves, but they have keen senses to help see through the illusion. However, he rolled well enough to spook the wolves closest to the illusion.
It became a little redundant after over half the pack died. I'm a firm believer in animals behaving like animals, and most animals faced with losing a large number of their group and being injured will flee if able.
They continued through the forest and to the Raven River Crossroads and followed the signs to the winery. The road led downhill and became a muddy trail. As the forest opened up to the mist shrouded vineyard valley, they found a corpse guarded by a pair of ghostly dogs. The dogs were initially friendly.
Then, before anyone could loot or take any other action, Cugel cast animate dead to raise the body as a zombie. This encounter, when originally rolled read "trinket," a random spooky object. I integrated it into an encounter from Fifth Edition Fantasy #7: Adventurer's Best Friend. The basic plot of that encounter is a party spotting a fallen adventurer killed by bandits on the road, his corpse guarded by the ghosts of his faithful hounds. I adjusted the plot a little: it was dead Vistana that the Martikovs in the Winery hired to take a message to Urwin the Innkeeper in Vallaki. Instead, he was killed by needle blights in service to the druids of Yester Hill, who had attacked the Winery a couple of days ago.
The idea behind the encounter is rather than "loot first, ask questions later," the typical adventurer approach, they're supposed to give the fallen young man a proper burial to appease the ghostly hounds. If they do loot, it provokes the dogs into attacking. So while the encounter doesn't mention specifically anything about animating the corpse instead, but I'm pretty sure it would count as "desecration," and would rile up the ghost dogs. As they moved to attack Cugel, the one responsible for desecrating their former master, the blights emerged from the woods and attacked.
The spectral hounds are kind of uninteresting monsters. Their defenses are low and their attacks are mediocre, but they have a boat load of hit points. The blights are minor enemies well suited to swarming and shooting. They have low hit points and defenses, don't hit often, but hit hard enough when they do hit.
The ghost dogs focused on Cugel, and in a remarkable show of solidarity, the party sided with him against the dogs. The exceptions were Lop, Ap, Tathora, and Tarkir. Lop and Ap broke out their brand new third level spells. Ap used wall of water to force the blights to clump up on either side of the party. Tarkir used his breath weapon on one clump. Ap used Melf's minute meteors, a spell which creates a bunch of small fireballs, and started shooting them at the blights. In the meantime, Amrus and Smeef focused on sneak attacking the doggies and Rolan used produce flame on them. The problem, though, is that they weren't vulnerable to fire. Tathora threw a spear at one.
When Cugel ran his zombie past its former pets and they refused to take opportunity attacks, the party finally picked up on what might be going on. Cugel opted to end his zombie spell after the party dropped one of the ghosts. Then they focused on the blights.
Ap used another third level spell: lightning bolt, and old standby that does lightning damage in a line. Tathora finally got to use Preserve Life on Tarkir, who had been swarmed by the blights, and Cugel, who had been the focus of the dogs' ire. Overall I was unimpressed with the meteors, but lightning bolt proved as effective a board clear as ever.
The fight over, Tathora examined the corpse and confirmed it had been killed by the blights. The remaining dog made a digging motion, and the party took the hint to provide the Vistana a proper burial. Lacking shovels, they gathered rocks for a cairn. At that point, the dog withdrew an object from a pouch on the Vistana's belt: scrap of paper wrapped around a box. The scrap of paper was a letter from Adrian Martikov to his brother Urwin asking for help. The box itself was the trinket: a locked box that plays a melody at night. Amrus was eager to open it, but Lop examined it first, and the group nixed that idea.
The finished the journey to the Winery, and met the Martikovs hiding out in a copse of trees nearby. They further explained their plight and offered to share their camp site with the party. We'll be picking up there at the beginning of next session.
Danny seemed interested in returning. If he does, it will probably work out fine since Joseph may have to drop out shortly.
Joseph, Will, and Alec were all eager to try out their new spells. I was a little surprised Kyla didn't use any of hers. Although with such a large party, she may not have needed to.
Although they're fun, the marathon combats can get a bit tiring to run, especially with such large groups. It is a bit of a struggle, since you don't ever want to turn away new players, but at some point you do have to say, "Sorry, my table's full." Meeting new players and introducing them to the game are the good part of events like encounters, but the over-flowing table moments and the shifting rosters are the challenges.
A part of me wants to just take a core group of players, tell them "your it, guys," and play another night when its less crowded and we can always use the private room. The store could even get credit for it on the Wizards event website. Of course, I've learned from experience coordinating schedules doesn't always work out. Plus, I like occasionally meeting new people.
To top it off, Ethan and Andrew returned tonight with Tarkir and Rolan, who also had to be leveled to 5. That totaled up to 9 players. It helped them handle the battles.
As I mentioned before, I pre-rolled the random encounters. One of the joys of being a DM is trying to get the random fall of dice to add up to a coherent or meaningful narrative. Or at least watch as players fill in the blanks on their own. I pre-rolled the encounters, but shifted the timing of one and spruced it up.
First, I had to introduce a new character. The Curse of Strahd has a hook tying into the Forgotten Realms factions appropriate for higher level characters, so I used that to draw in Smeef. The Harpers (his faction) were investigating children stolen by werewolves and taken into the Misty Forest near Daggerdale. So he had teamed up with other adventurers and explored the forest, until the mists separated him from the other adventurers and led him to the Old Svalich road, which led him to the Luna River Crossroads just west of Vallaki, where he met the current party travelling with Rictavio.
The crossroads sign had been damaged, but Lop fixed it with mending. Rictavio bid them farewell, following the sign to Lake Baratok, while the party continued to follow the road towards Krezk. Smeef recognized the symbol of Lathander on Tathora's livery, and decided to remain with his fellow Faerunians.
Not long afterwards, while travelling through the woods, a wolf the size of a grizzly bear stepped out of the mists. Amrus was acting as a scout at the time. He failed to properly hide from the other dire wolves in the area (there was a total of 5) but managed to notice them and warn the party, so there was no surprise. Of course, when I ran the first round I failed to remember that is how it happened, so he got a free sneak attack. The players didn't complain, and it probably wouldn't have mattered in the long run (probably).
Dire wolves, aside from being the emblem of House Stark (I'm ready o swear fealty to Sansa, Queen of the North, right until George R.R. Martin or the show writers decide to kill her) are what 4e would call skirmirshers: fast and tricksy. They have pack tactics, but without ranged weapons it isn't quite so broken. They also trip when they hit. Tarkir and Tathora managed to avoid being tripped, but Cugel and Rolan did not.
Rolan got to use his Druid circle feature to turn into a dire wolf during this battle. He even managed to turn the tables and trip another dire wolf. Tarkir, in the meantime, used searing smite, part of a new family of spells almost exclusively on the Paladin and Ranger spell lists that enhance the next attack. In this case, searing smite adds some extra fire damage to the initial attack and a DOT effect removed with a Con save. I think I failed to remember the effect, but again it won't matter in the long run.
Tathora tried to use her Channel Divinity to heal in an area, unfortunately I had to remind her it only brings a party member up to 1/2 their hit points, so the effect is better for a quick keeping someone from going down (and bring them back up after going down) rather than a top-off.
Cugel also broke out a new spell: major image to create a scary undead bear seeming to rise up out of the road. It allowed him to try to intimidate the wolves, but they have keen senses to help see through the illusion. However, he rolled well enough to spook the wolves closest to the illusion.
It became a little redundant after over half the pack died. I'm a firm believer in animals behaving like animals, and most animals faced with losing a large number of their group and being injured will flee if able.
They continued through the forest and to the Raven River Crossroads and followed the signs to the winery. The road led downhill and became a muddy trail. As the forest opened up to the mist shrouded vineyard valley, they found a corpse guarded by a pair of ghostly dogs. The dogs were initially friendly.
Then, before anyone could loot or take any other action, Cugel cast animate dead to raise the body as a zombie. This encounter, when originally rolled read "trinket," a random spooky object. I integrated it into an encounter from Fifth Edition Fantasy #7: Adventurer's Best Friend. The basic plot of that encounter is a party spotting a fallen adventurer killed by bandits on the road, his corpse guarded by the ghosts of his faithful hounds. I adjusted the plot a little: it was dead Vistana that the Martikovs in the Winery hired to take a message to Urwin the Innkeeper in Vallaki. Instead, he was killed by needle blights in service to the druids of Yester Hill, who had attacked the Winery a couple of days ago.
The idea behind the encounter is rather than "loot first, ask questions later," the typical adventurer approach, they're supposed to give the fallen young man a proper burial to appease the ghostly hounds. If they do loot, it provokes the dogs into attacking. So while the encounter doesn't mention specifically anything about animating the corpse instead, but I'm pretty sure it would count as "desecration," and would rile up the ghost dogs. As they moved to attack Cugel, the one responsible for desecrating their former master, the blights emerged from the woods and attacked.
The spectral hounds are kind of uninteresting monsters. Their defenses are low and their attacks are mediocre, but they have a boat load of hit points. The blights are minor enemies well suited to swarming and shooting. They have low hit points and defenses, don't hit often, but hit hard enough when they do hit.
The ghost dogs focused on Cugel, and in a remarkable show of solidarity, the party sided with him against the dogs. The exceptions were Lop, Ap, Tathora, and Tarkir. Lop and Ap broke out their brand new third level spells. Ap used wall of water to force the blights to clump up on either side of the party. Tarkir used his breath weapon on one clump. Ap used Melf's minute meteors, a spell which creates a bunch of small fireballs, and started shooting them at the blights. In the meantime, Amrus and Smeef focused on sneak attacking the doggies and Rolan used produce flame on them. The problem, though, is that they weren't vulnerable to fire. Tathora threw a spear at one.
When Cugel ran his zombie past its former pets and they refused to take opportunity attacks, the party finally picked up on what might be going on. Cugel opted to end his zombie spell after the party dropped one of the ghosts. Then they focused on the blights.
Ap used another third level spell: lightning bolt, and old standby that does lightning damage in a line. Tathora finally got to use Preserve Life on Tarkir, who had been swarmed by the blights, and Cugel, who had been the focus of the dogs' ire. Overall I was unimpressed with the meteors, but lightning bolt proved as effective a board clear as ever.
The fight over, Tathora examined the corpse and confirmed it had been killed by the blights. The remaining dog made a digging motion, and the party took the hint to provide the Vistana a proper burial. Lacking shovels, they gathered rocks for a cairn. At that point, the dog withdrew an object from a pouch on the Vistana's belt: scrap of paper wrapped around a box. The scrap of paper was a letter from Adrian Martikov to his brother Urwin asking for help. The box itself was the trinket: a locked box that plays a melody at night. Amrus was eager to open it, but Lop examined it first, and the group nixed that idea.
The finished the journey to the Winery, and met the Martikovs hiding out in a copse of trees nearby. They further explained their plight and offered to share their camp site with the party. We'll be picking up there at the beginning of next session.
Danny seemed interested in returning. If he does, it will probably work out fine since Joseph may have to drop out shortly.
Joseph, Will, and Alec were all eager to try out their new spells. I was a little surprised Kyla didn't use any of hers. Although with such a large party, she may not have needed to.
Although they're fun, the marathon combats can get a bit tiring to run, especially with such large groups. It is a bit of a struggle, since you don't ever want to turn away new players, but at some point you do have to say, "Sorry, my table's full." Meeting new players and introducing them to the game are the good part of events like encounters, but the over-flowing table moments and the shifting rosters are the challenges.
A part of me wants to just take a core group of players, tell them "your it, guys," and play another night when its less crowded and we can always use the private room. The store could even get credit for it on the Wizards event website. Of course, I've learned from experience coordinating schedules doesn't always work out. Plus, I like occasionally meeting new people.
Saturday, April 23, 2016
Festival of the Blazing Sun
For any reader curious about what I might do other than gaming in my spare time, I spent this morning walking dogs for the Pima Animal Care Center. Getting the animals some exercise and companionship was well worth it, and I recommend it for any dog person out there.
Plus, if any of you are fans of any combination of the Dresden Files and co-operative board games, be sure to visit Dresden Files Cooperative Card Game Kickstarter and back it.
As I mentioned before, Vallaki is an event based portion of the new Curse of Strahd. As a DM, I always enjoy these sorts of adventures because they let the players make (a)moral (and sometimes stupid) decisions. These always end up being a little more interesting than the basic "left, right, or center at the fork" decisions provided by dungeons.
The day dawned gloomy and cloudy even by Barovia standards, and the party joined the rest of the town in the square for the Festival of the Blazing Sun, the greatest festival of the year! ALL WILL BE WELL! They watched a parade of children dressed in shabby flower costumes bring up a wicker sun (no, there wasn't anyone inside) that was then doused in oil. The burgomaster of Vallaki, the self-styled Baron Vargas Vallakovich rode into the square bearing a torch sputtering in the sudden downpour. He attempted to set the wicker sun ablaze, only to have it sputter and go out. This drew a tepid, fearful laugh from one of the assembled town guards. The baron accused the offender of "malicious unhappiness" (This is in the adventure itself. No, I don't know if the writers know Paranoia, but I'm betting they do.) and had him hog tied and attached to the Baron's horse. The baron then dragged the hapless guard around the muddy square for the "entertainment" of the assembled crowd. Ap cast mage hand to free the guard. As you might expect, this redirected the Baron's ire onto the party. He ordered the guards to surround the party, disarm them, and lead them from the town, which they would henceforth be banished from.
Tathora tried to calm the guards, but her words (and low die roll), failed to sway them from the fearsome Baron. Cugel cast invisibility, and from that cover cast rope trick. This handy spell suspends a rope in mid-air that leads to a small pocket dimension that lasts for an hour. If you pull up the rope, you close off the pocket dimension. It allows the party to take a short rest without worry of having to deal with a random encounter (at least until the spell ends and they have to leave the dimension). The party all scrambled up the rope to safety. The incensed Baron wanted them found, stripped, and left in the stocks for a week.
Everyone except Ap, who decided to peacefully accompany two guards to the gates. His original plan was to use crown of madness with the Twin Spell metamagic (a sorcerer feature in this edition-its exactly what it says on the tin: the spell effects two targets). This spell charms a target, and forces it to spend its action attacking a target of the caster's choice before moving. Presumably, Ap planned to have the guards knock each other out before returning to the party. But after seeing them disappear up the rope, he walked the rest of the way, allowed himself to be taken out the gates, then doubled back, found a clear area along the walls (with some Dexterity (stealth) checks) and climbed back over. He spotted a raven watching him, and used chill touch on it, which it took in stride and flew off. That was no ordinary raven!
In the mean time, the rest of the party relaxed in Cugel's bubble while a pair of guards stayed below where they disappeared. Help arrived in the form of Rictavio, who offered the guards some wine (laced with a harmless sleeping toxin) to ease their parched throats. The guards nodded off, so the party left the bubble and joined Rictavio, who asked them a favor. He had been keeping a saber-tooth tiger in his carnival wagon, but some idiot had broken the lock, and the beast got out. He wanted them to recover it before it hurt anyone. He told the party the coffin maker had been found dead, his throat torn out. Everyone was blaming the tiger. Except Rictavio managed to get a glimpse of the body, and he had been dead too long for it to have been the tiger. However, he knew the baron's guards meant it harm, so they had to find it before they provoked the beast. He gave the PCs some wolf steaks to lure it, and went to his wagon to prepare to leave. Since I like narrative coincidences to get a party back together, Ap returned just in time to meet Rictavio.
I ran this as a series of opposed tests. The Baron's bodyguard, the deformed and amoral Izek Strazni and a pack of guards were searching for the tiger while the party searched. Fortunately, the party found it first. They then needed to make some Wisdom (handle animal) checks to calm it and encourage it to follow them. I rewarded clever ideas and role-playing (using mage hand to scratch it behind the ears) and use of tools (tempting it with a wolf steak) with advantage on the roll. They accumulated enough successes to get it following them. However, they failed to evade Izek and his guards on their way back to Rictavio's wagon.
Ap tried to open the fight by using some spells to make himself spark like a thunder cloud. Of course, his bad luck (two threes when rolling with advantage), meant that none of the guards had seen the tale he told of his birth at the tavern. Plus, those guards were genuinely more scared of Izek and the Baron than they were of the PCs. The party opted to rely on non-lethal finishes for the guards, knocking out three (with the help of their cat) before dropping Izek.
I wished I had gotten to use Izek a little more. This brutish thug came complete with a tragic back story: losing his arm and family at a young age and a monstrous deformity: a demonic replacement arm grown for him by the Dark Powers ruling the Demiplane of Dread. The arm let him shoot fire, but the players were aggressive enough to get him melee right away. Of course, he had a big bucket of hit points and hit like a brick. He nearly dropped Sarra in a couple of hits. Cugel once again used Tasha's hideous laughter, but this time had to cast it twice, thanks to Izek rolling a natural 20 on his first save. In the meantime, Tathora got to break out the nuke heals to keep Sarra up. She also got to use spiritual weapon, one of the cleric's best early offense options, allowing ten turns of spell attacks doing 1d8 + Wisdom mod force damage. The best part is that it doesn't require concentration, so it can be used in conjunction with other duration spells, like many cleric buffs and the incomparable spirit guardians.
As Izek fell, he warned the party to watch out for his sister. They searched him for valuables,\ but only found a doll that looked suspiciously like Ireena Kolyana. They managed to surmise (with some Int rolls to remind them of previously revealed plot information) that Isek's sister is none other than Ireena. Tathora used spare the dying, a cleric cantrip that stabilizes a dying individual, to keep Izek alive and left a note on him letting him know that he had been shone mercy.
The rest of guards backed down and offered to cover for the PCs while they escaped. They lead the cat back to the wagon where Rictavio led the tiger in and locked it. They rode the out of town, where Urwin Martikov met them. He renewed his request investigate the winery, both for the sake of a parched Barovia and for the sake of checking on his estranged family. He let them know that they might need the wine to get Ireena and Ismark into Krezk, and told them he would keep the two safe until they returned. Rictavio told them to proceed on Urwin's errand, and to meet him at an old wizard's tower on the shores of Lake Barotok.
As they left, Urwin told Ap that ravens are a sign of good fortune in Barovia, and ought not be attacked, while he rubbed an obvious pain in his thigh. They guessed (correctly) that Ap had attacked none other than Urwin, though they figured he'd use a spell (such as polymorph). They weren't quite accurate, but I'd rather not spoil anything. (Though I think that teaser might be spoiler enough!)
The PCs were done with Vallaki (for now). They've earned the Baron's ire, but managed to save St Andral's church at the cost of the coffin maker's life. They've certainly affected the guards, but only time will tell if they left a mark on Izek. They haven't met with Lady Wachter yet, but may later.
I gave them a milestone, and helped them level up. Fifth level marks the start of the second "tier" in 5th edition. First, the proficiency bonus goes up, making everyone better at (nearly) everything. Second, dedicated spellcasters get access to 3rd level spells. This is where staples like fireball and lightning bolt live for arcane casters. Clerics get spirit guardians (a spell I waxed poetic on in previous posts, but I love it so much I'll talk about it again when Tathora uses it). They also get a raise dead: revivify that works if the target has been dead less than a minute. Also for spellcasters, cantrips get an extra damage die at 5th level. Rogues also get their third sneak attack die. Plus dedicated fighters (Fighters, Barbarian, Paladins, and Rangers) get their second attack. I think I forgot to tell Hillary this, so I'll be sure to let her know when next we meet. I also found I'd been an inattentive DM, and Kyla was further behind in her spellcasting than I thought. I broke out my cleric spell cards and sat down and (hopefully) got her squared away.
I also found out the kids ages, and they were about what I guesstimated. I found that the opportunity for a fight seemed to help keep Blake more attentive and less disruptive. Plus Alec had him sit next to me, which also help, I think. Plus, the last two sessions Hillary sat next to Kyla, who helped her out with combat rolls and kept her on track, too. I'll say it here and say it again in person: thanks Kyla!
The Winery will prove interesting, I think. Since they have another journey ahead, I'm going to pre-calculate travel times and roll for encounters ahead of time like DJ did back during Tyranny of Dragons. I tried the rest, so now I plan to try the best. I think I'll also try inserting some encounters from one of Goodman Games Fifth Edition Fantasy modules to shake things up. I know its technically unofficial, but I doubt Wizards' will send officiality police to stop my game and confiscate my gaming stuff. Plus they'll fit with the overall gothic horror mood of Ravenloft.
Plus, if any of you are fans of any combination of the Dresden Files and co-operative board games, be sure to visit Dresden Files Cooperative Card Game Kickstarter and back it.
As I mentioned before, Vallaki is an event based portion of the new Curse of Strahd. As a DM, I always enjoy these sorts of adventures because they let the players make (a)moral (and sometimes stupid) decisions. These always end up being a little more interesting than the basic "left, right, or center at the fork" decisions provided by dungeons.
The day dawned gloomy and cloudy even by Barovia standards, and the party joined the rest of the town in the square for the Festival of the Blazing Sun, the greatest festival of the year! ALL WILL BE WELL! They watched a parade of children dressed in shabby flower costumes bring up a wicker sun (no, there wasn't anyone inside) that was then doused in oil. The burgomaster of Vallaki, the self-styled Baron Vargas Vallakovich rode into the square bearing a torch sputtering in the sudden downpour. He attempted to set the wicker sun ablaze, only to have it sputter and go out. This drew a tepid, fearful laugh from one of the assembled town guards. The baron accused the offender of "malicious unhappiness" (This is in the adventure itself. No, I don't know if the writers know Paranoia, but I'm betting they do.) and had him hog tied and attached to the Baron's horse. The baron then dragged the hapless guard around the muddy square for the "entertainment" of the assembled crowd. Ap cast mage hand to free the guard. As you might expect, this redirected the Baron's ire onto the party. He ordered the guards to surround the party, disarm them, and lead them from the town, which they would henceforth be banished from.
Tathora tried to calm the guards, but her words (and low die roll), failed to sway them from the fearsome Baron. Cugel cast invisibility, and from that cover cast rope trick. This handy spell suspends a rope in mid-air that leads to a small pocket dimension that lasts for an hour. If you pull up the rope, you close off the pocket dimension. It allows the party to take a short rest without worry of having to deal with a random encounter (at least until the spell ends and they have to leave the dimension). The party all scrambled up the rope to safety. The incensed Baron wanted them found, stripped, and left in the stocks for a week.
Everyone except Ap, who decided to peacefully accompany two guards to the gates. His original plan was to use crown of madness with the Twin Spell metamagic (a sorcerer feature in this edition-its exactly what it says on the tin: the spell effects two targets). This spell charms a target, and forces it to spend its action attacking a target of the caster's choice before moving. Presumably, Ap planned to have the guards knock each other out before returning to the party. But after seeing them disappear up the rope, he walked the rest of the way, allowed himself to be taken out the gates, then doubled back, found a clear area along the walls (with some Dexterity (stealth) checks) and climbed back over. He spotted a raven watching him, and used chill touch on it, which it took in stride and flew off. That was no ordinary raven!
In the mean time, the rest of the party relaxed in Cugel's bubble while a pair of guards stayed below where they disappeared. Help arrived in the form of Rictavio, who offered the guards some wine (laced with a harmless sleeping toxin) to ease their parched throats. The guards nodded off, so the party left the bubble and joined Rictavio, who asked them a favor. He had been keeping a saber-tooth tiger in his carnival wagon, but some idiot had broken the lock, and the beast got out. He wanted them to recover it before it hurt anyone. He told the party the coffin maker had been found dead, his throat torn out. Everyone was blaming the tiger. Except Rictavio managed to get a glimpse of the body, and he had been dead too long for it to have been the tiger. However, he knew the baron's guards meant it harm, so they had to find it before they provoked the beast. He gave the PCs some wolf steaks to lure it, and went to his wagon to prepare to leave. Since I like narrative coincidences to get a party back together, Ap returned just in time to meet Rictavio.
I ran this as a series of opposed tests. The Baron's bodyguard, the deformed and amoral Izek Strazni and a pack of guards were searching for the tiger while the party searched. Fortunately, the party found it first. They then needed to make some Wisdom (handle animal) checks to calm it and encourage it to follow them. I rewarded clever ideas and role-playing (using mage hand to scratch it behind the ears) and use of tools (tempting it with a wolf steak) with advantage on the roll. They accumulated enough successes to get it following them. However, they failed to evade Izek and his guards on their way back to Rictavio's wagon.
Ap tried to open the fight by using some spells to make himself spark like a thunder cloud. Of course, his bad luck (two threes when rolling with advantage), meant that none of the guards had seen the tale he told of his birth at the tavern. Plus, those guards were genuinely more scared of Izek and the Baron than they were of the PCs. The party opted to rely on non-lethal finishes for the guards, knocking out three (with the help of their cat) before dropping Izek.
I wished I had gotten to use Izek a little more. This brutish thug came complete with a tragic back story: losing his arm and family at a young age and a monstrous deformity: a demonic replacement arm grown for him by the Dark Powers ruling the Demiplane of Dread. The arm let him shoot fire, but the players were aggressive enough to get him melee right away. Of course, he had a big bucket of hit points and hit like a brick. He nearly dropped Sarra in a couple of hits. Cugel once again used Tasha's hideous laughter, but this time had to cast it twice, thanks to Izek rolling a natural 20 on his first save. In the meantime, Tathora got to break out the nuke heals to keep Sarra up. She also got to use spiritual weapon, one of the cleric's best early offense options, allowing ten turns of spell attacks doing 1d8 + Wisdom mod force damage. The best part is that it doesn't require concentration, so it can be used in conjunction with other duration spells, like many cleric buffs and the incomparable spirit guardians.
As Izek fell, he warned the party to watch out for his sister. They searched him for valuables,\ but only found a doll that looked suspiciously like Ireena Kolyana. They managed to surmise (with some Int rolls to remind them of previously revealed plot information) that Isek's sister is none other than Ireena. Tathora used spare the dying, a cleric cantrip that stabilizes a dying individual, to keep Izek alive and left a note on him letting him know that he had been shone mercy.
The rest of guards backed down and offered to cover for the PCs while they escaped. They lead the cat back to the wagon where Rictavio led the tiger in and locked it. They rode the out of town, where Urwin Martikov met them. He renewed his request investigate the winery, both for the sake of a parched Barovia and for the sake of checking on his estranged family. He let them know that they might need the wine to get Ireena and Ismark into Krezk, and told them he would keep the two safe until they returned. Rictavio told them to proceed on Urwin's errand, and to meet him at an old wizard's tower on the shores of Lake Barotok.
As they left, Urwin told Ap that ravens are a sign of good fortune in Barovia, and ought not be attacked, while he rubbed an obvious pain in his thigh. They guessed (correctly) that Ap had attacked none other than Urwin, though they figured he'd use a spell (such as polymorph). They weren't quite accurate, but I'd rather not spoil anything. (Though I think that teaser might be spoiler enough!)
The PCs were done with Vallaki (for now). They've earned the Baron's ire, but managed to save St Andral's church at the cost of the coffin maker's life. They've certainly affected the guards, but only time will tell if they left a mark on Izek. They haven't met with Lady Wachter yet, but may later.
I gave them a milestone, and helped them level up. Fifth level marks the start of the second "tier" in 5th edition. First, the proficiency bonus goes up, making everyone better at (nearly) everything. Second, dedicated spellcasters get access to 3rd level spells. This is where staples like fireball and lightning bolt live for arcane casters. Clerics get spirit guardians (a spell I waxed poetic on in previous posts, but I love it so much I'll talk about it again when Tathora uses it). They also get a raise dead: revivify that works if the target has been dead less than a minute. Also for spellcasters, cantrips get an extra damage die at 5th level. Rogues also get their third sneak attack die. Plus dedicated fighters (Fighters, Barbarian, Paladins, and Rangers) get their second attack. I think I forgot to tell Hillary this, so I'll be sure to let her know when next we meet. I also found I'd been an inattentive DM, and Kyla was further behind in her spellcasting than I thought. I broke out my cleric spell cards and sat down and (hopefully) got her squared away.
I also found out the kids ages, and they were about what I guesstimated. I found that the opportunity for a fight seemed to help keep Blake more attentive and less disruptive. Plus Alec had him sit next to me, which also help, I think. Plus, the last two sessions Hillary sat next to Kyla, who helped her out with combat rolls and kept her on track, too. I'll say it here and say it again in person: thanks Kyla!
The Winery will prove interesting, I think. Since they have another journey ahead, I'm going to pre-calculate travel times and roll for encounters ahead of time like DJ did back during Tyranny of Dragons. I tried the rest, so now I plan to try the best. I think I'll also try inserting some encounters from one of Goodman Games Fifth Edition Fantasy modules to shake things up. I know its technically unofficial, but I doubt Wizards' will send officiality police to stop my game and confiscate my gaming stuff. Plus they'll fit with the overall gothic horror mood of Ravenloft.
Saturday, April 16, 2016
Vallaki, Part 1
You'll recall our heroes reached Vallaki last time. I know I used a Final Fantasy VII analogy before, but now I'll use a Fallout 3 analogy. Leaving Death House is like getting out of the Vault. Reaching Vallaki is like reaching Megaton. There's a ton of new NPCs, side quests, and options available. Most importantly, its a place where investigation and role-playing will serve better than combat.
I did a little more prep work than usual for this session. And the players, being players, did thing I didn't expect.
The guards offered them two choices for initial places to visit: the Blue Water Inn and St. Andral's church. They opted to visit the church first. There they found some townsfolk gathering for the nightly service, along with Father Lucian Petrovich, his altar boy Yeska, and frowning, brawny young man with a shovel. After some introductions, Ismark and Ireena went to the altar to say some prayers. Lucain recognized Lathandar's iconography on Tathora's vestments as a deity close to the Morninglord, the primary deity of Barovia. He confided in her a terrible secret: a relic had been stolen from the church, the bones of St. Andral, for whom the church was named. He suspected the culprit was the angry young man, Milivoj. Tathora agreed to help, and the party convened.
They found Milivoj out in the church's graveyard, doing some last minute weeding. Cugel cast charm person. Milivoj failed his save, and Cugel started asking questions. Milivoj's motivations are somewhat muddled in the adventure as written. He despairs over being powerless to help his family against the evils of the valley, but agreed to steal the relics for the coffer maker for a profit. Still, I tried to sort it out and role-play an angry, mistaken young man.
Among other things, he showed the PCs one of the Baron's proclamations:
After crumpling up the poster, Milivoj sullenly told them that all is not well. He did confide in Lop that the coffin maker Henrik Van Der Voort paid him to steal the bones. He provided directions to the coffin shop, and even offered to accompany his new ghoul-cloaked friend in retrieving the relics to atone for what he'd done. He's only a little better at thing killing than a typical commoner (all 10s for ability scores and +2 proficiency bonus; Milivoj has Str 15 and wields his shovel like a club), but they took him along anyway.
Along the way to the coffin maker's they (sigh!) split the party. Ap and Tathora accompanied Ismark and Ireena to the Blue Water Inn, while Lop, Sarra, Amrus, and Cugel went on to the coffin maker's shop.
Splitting the party is, indeed, often unwise. Especially since most parties are heavy on strikers and short on healers and tanks, essential to combat survival. Granted, 5th edition brings back some of the rocket tag aspects of combat lost in 4th edition, but once strikers start falling, without a tank or a healer it starts a rapid domino effect. However, having watched DMs deal with split parties and having had to deal with split parties myself, I also know that DMs kill split parties out of spite. Contrary to popular opinion, a DM is not a WoW server, and can only see to so many things at once. So I told the people going to the inn that they would have to wait while I dealt with the coffin maker party. Fortunately Joseph and Kyla were able to sit relatively quietly and watch their fellow players' half of the story. I did make a pithy reference to the multi-party dungeons from Final Fantasy 6, and we moved on.
They arrived at the coffin maker's shop to find it closed for the evening (this is still part of the same day they spent travelling to Vallaki, remember). The owner angrily shooed them off, even after they had Milivoj try talking to him. So Amrus broke out the thieves' tools and picked the lock. Henrik proved to be a cowardly creature, surrendering right away and spilling the beans about where the bones were hidden: upstairs in the wardrobe. He also warned them about the vampire spawn hiding in the storage room. Our ever intrepid heroes sent Amrus upstairs by himself to retrieve the relics. Amrus went up to Henrik's meager apartment over the shop, found the wardrobe, and relieved it of the hidden bones and some of Henrik's savings. He did explore the vampire infested storage room, exploring two crates marked junk closest to the door. He found some junk, and re-joined the party. He taunted the coffin maker about bluffing about the vampires, and the PCs departed.
We switched back to the Inn. Blake, being a less experienced player, had some trouble understanding that his character wasn't there and kept trying to participate. Fortunately, Alec helped out with this.
They found a crowded tap room with commoners crowded around listening to a half-elf tell tales of life as a circus master. Ireena and Ismark went to secure room and board while Tathora and Ap listened to the circus master's tale of an ill-tempered "oliphant" that liked to stick people into its mouth (yes, I watched The Simpsons when I was younger), and how they had to butcher it for meat. And because I am at heart a terrible person, Rictavio regaled the party with the wonders of ivory and showed them some dice made from the elephant's ivory. I wanted to make sure Rictavio left an impression; he's an important character in the story line (I won't say more for fear of spoiling it for my players following this blog). He asked the PCs to share a tale. Ap told a story and Tathora told a joke. Rictavio recognized them as "not being from around here," and asked Ap and Tathora about their homes in Faerun. They told him a little about the Sword Coast and Waterdeep. I think I might need to loan Joseph and Kyla a sourcebook or two to round out their Realmslore.
The other party members returned the bones to the church off-stage and rejoined their companions at this point. It was dusk, and Rictavio took a wolf steak and a couple of apples from the kitchen for his friend the toy maker. The party retired to their rooms for the evening. Their rest was interrupted by one of those vampire spawn that Amrus was so sure didn't exist. As a DM, I'm a firm believer in making sure that PC actions have later consequences. Fortunately, the Inn was homey enough to count as a ban for vampires getting in without an invitation, so I didn't have to run a battle. But it did scare the bejesus out of them; job done!
The next day, the PCs found Rictavio retrieving more food from the kitchen. Feeling a little suspicious at this point, the PCs had Amrus try to shadow him. Unfortunately, he failed his stealth roll. Rictavio confronted him in a side alley, revealing that his cane was a sword cane (because honestly, he should be that awesome). Rictavio warned Amrus not to make an enemy. Again, I'm hoping Rictavio is leaving a strong impression.
Lop and Cugel both have the incredibly useful identify spell, but lack the material component: a 100gp pearl. Barovia being a bottle, with the only people with the power to leave being the Vistani, the NPCs suggested the party visit them at a camp southwest of town. They journeyed there and found one of the Vistana leaders, a brute named Luvash, lashing another Vistana, Alexei, with Luvash's brother, Arrigal, tries to get him to ease up. The PCs learned that the inebriated Luvash blamed Alexei for losing track of his daughter, Arabelle. The PCs, being mostly good, offered to help find the girl. Luvash agreed to get them a pearl in exchange. Since the other Vistani were drunk when Arabelle went missing, they suggested talking to the dusk elves living nearby.
They met a dusk elf living in a hovel built into the base of the hill the Vistani had camped on. The middle aged male elf suggested they visit Kasimir Velikov, their leader. They met more middle-aged male elves guarding his hovel. They allowed the party in to speak with Kasimir, and they all gave quite a bit of deference to Sarra. At this point Joseph realized that all the elves were male. Kasimir asked them their opinion of Strahd. When they responded that they weren't fans, he hinted that he knew a secret that might help them defeat the vampire lord, and he would tell them once they were more powerful. He let them know that his scouts last saw Luvash's daughter headed north, toward Lake Zarovich.
They tracked the girl to the lake. They found a lone fisherman and a couple of boats on the shore. The boats were five person, but their were six people in the party. After the fisherman proved unresponsive, they waffled between taking two boats or casting enlarge on one boat. The decision was made after they checked duration on enlarge: 1 minute. They rowed out towards the fisherman, who dropped a squirming burlap sack into the lake. Sarra dived in and pulled the bag into their boat, finding it contained a 7-year old Vistani girl, Arabelle. She thanked them. Then Sarra jumped into the fisherman, Bluto Krogarov's boat. She quickly knocked him out, something easy in this edition since when you reduce a foe to 0 hp or less, you can opt to knock them unconscious and stable rather than killing them. I explained this fact to the players, and they captured and interrogated Bluto. The man wanted to try and catch fish to trade for wine, but the lake's fish aren't biting. He intended to sacrifice Arabelle to the lake because the Vistani are "lucky."
The Vistani had also hinted at the recent wine shortage. The PCs seemed to pick up on a theme of alcohol abuse. Not sure how it emerged; unlike Stephen King I've never been an alcoholic. Still, after the now hung over Luvash gave them their pearl, he suggested he talk to the Martikovs about the wine shortage.
They returned to town and spoke to Urwin, who mentioned that the recent wine shipment has been late, and wants the PCs to investigate. However, since it was late in the day, he suggested they wait until after the Festival of Blazing Sun tomorrow.
Lop had one more itch to scratch: finding a history book on Barovia. He was told that only the Burgomaster and the Wachter family are wealthy enough to afford libraries. Rictavio told him about Nikolai and Karl, Lady Fiona Wachter's sons. They're fascinated with the half-elf's tales and would like to know more about the PCs adventures. Ap, having the highest Charisma in the party, told them the story of their adventure in the house with a little bit of spell casting help from Lop. It impressed the Wachter brothers, that they agreed to introduce Lop to their mother at the festival.
The players are a bit frightened. Considering that the adventure is Gothic horror, this is good. I mentioned before the players took their own path. I had dropped a hint for them to meet the toy maker while Rictavio was watching Ireena, but they ignored that to hunt for their pearl. I've also told PCs that the Festival of the Wolf's Head was last week, and the Festival of the Blazing Sun is coming up, and that the town has been enduring weekly festivals for years. I think I'll need to drive this home when they attend the festival next time. The thing that should scare them isn't what will happen to the PCs, but rather the decisions they'll have to make.
I've also begun looking ahead. The festival and the events around will give them a milestone. They're set up to handle the Wizard of Wines next, most likely followed by Krezk. Those two should be another milestone. I much prefer it to counting Xps to make sure they have enough to be an appropriate level for the encounters ahead.
I did a little more prep work than usual for this session. And the players, being players, did thing I didn't expect.
The guards offered them two choices for initial places to visit: the Blue Water Inn and St. Andral's church. They opted to visit the church first. There they found some townsfolk gathering for the nightly service, along with Father Lucian Petrovich, his altar boy Yeska, and frowning, brawny young man with a shovel. After some introductions, Ismark and Ireena went to the altar to say some prayers. Lucain recognized Lathandar's iconography on Tathora's vestments as a deity close to the Morninglord, the primary deity of Barovia. He confided in her a terrible secret: a relic had been stolen from the church, the bones of St. Andral, for whom the church was named. He suspected the culprit was the angry young man, Milivoj. Tathora agreed to help, and the party convened.
They found Milivoj out in the church's graveyard, doing some last minute weeding. Cugel cast charm person. Milivoj failed his save, and Cugel started asking questions. Milivoj's motivations are somewhat muddled in the adventure as written. He despairs over being powerless to help his family against the evils of the valley, but agreed to steal the relics for the coffer maker for a profit. Still, I tried to sort it out and role-play an angry, mistaken young man.
Among other things, he showed the PCs one of the Baron's proclamations:
Come one, come all,
to the greatest celebration of the year:
THE WOLF'S HEAD JAMBOREE!
Attendance and children required.
Pikes will be provided.
ALL WILL BE WELL!
--The Baron--
After crumpling up the poster, Milivoj sullenly told them that all is not well. He did confide in Lop that the coffin maker Henrik Van Der Voort paid him to steal the bones. He provided directions to the coffin shop, and even offered to accompany his new ghoul-cloaked friend in retrieving the relics to atone for what he'd done. He's only a little better at thing killing than a typical commoner (all 10s for ability scores and +2 proficiency bonus; Milivoj has Str 15 and wields his shovel like a club), but they took him along anyway.
Along the way to the coffin maker's they (sigh!) split the party. Ap and Tathora accompanied Ismark and Ireena to the Blue Water Inn, while Lop, Sarra, Amrus, and Cugel went on to the coffin maker's shop.
Splitting the party is, indeed, often unwise. Especially since most parties are heavy on strikers and short on healers and tanks, essential to combat survival. Granted, 5th edition brings back some of the rocket tag aspects of combat lost in 4th edition, but once strikers start falling, without a tank or a healer it starts a rapid domino effect. However, having watched DMs deal with split parties and having had to deal with split parties myself, I also know that DMs kill split parties out of spite. Contrary to popular opinion, a DM is not a WoW server, and can only see to so many things at once. So I told the people going to the inn that they would have to wait while I dealt with the coffin maker party. Fortunately Joseph and Kyla were able to sit relatively quietly and watch their fellow players' half of the story. I did make a pithy reference to the multi-party dungeons from Final Fantasy 6, and we moved on.
They arrived at the coffin maker's shop to find it closed for the evening (this is still part of the same day they spent travelling to Vallaki, remember). The owner angrily shooed them off, even after they had Milivoj try talking to him. So Amrus broke out the thieves' tools and picked the lock. Henrik proved to be a cowardly creature, surrendering right away and spilling the beans about where the bones were hidden: upstairs in the wardrobe. He also warned them about the vampire spawn hiding in the storage room. Our ever intrepid heroes sent Amrus upstairs by himself to retrieve the relics. Amrus went up to Henrik's meager apartment over the shop, found the wardrobe, and relieved it of the hidden bones and some of Henrik's savings. He did explore the vampire infested storage room, exploring two crates marked junk closest to the door. He found some junk, and re-joined the party. He taunted the coffin maker about bluffing about the vampires, and the PCs departed.
We switched back to the Inn. Blake, being a less experienced player, had some trouble understanding that his character wasn't there and kept trying to participate. Fortunately, Alec helped out with this.
They found a crowded tap room with commoners crowded around listening to a half-elf tell tales of life as a circus master. Ireena and Ismark went to secure room and board while Tathora and Ap listened to the circus master's tale of an ill-tempered "oliphant" that liked to stick people into its mouth (yes, I watched The Simpsons when I was younger), and how they had to butcher it for meat. And because I am at heart a terrible person, Rictavio regaled the party with the wonders of ivory and showed them some dice made from the elephant's ivory. I wanted to make sure Rictavio left an impression; he's an important character in the story line (I won't say more for fear of spoiling it for my players following this blog). He asked the PCs to share a tale. Ap told a story and Tathora told a joke. Rictavio recognized them as "not being from around here," and asked Ap and Tathora about their homes in Faerun. They told him a little about the Sword Coast and Waterdeep. I think I might need to loan Joseph and Kyla a sourcebook or two to round out their Realmslore.
The other party members returned the bones to the church off-stage and rejoined their companions at this point. It was dusk, and Rictavio took a wolf steak and a couple of apples from the kitchen for his friend the toy maker. The party retired to their rooms for the evening. Their rest was interrupted by one of those vampire spawn that Amrus was so sure didn't exist. As a DM, I'm a firm believer in making sure that PC actions have later consequences. Fortunately, the Inn was homey enough to count as a ban for vampires getting in without an invitation, so I didn't have to run a battle. But it did scare the bejesus out of them; job done!
The next day, the PCs found Rictavio retrieving more food from the kitchen. Feeling a little suspicious at this point, the PCs had Amrus try to shadow him. Unfortunately, he failed his stealth roll. Rictavio confronted him in a side alley, revealing that his cane was a sword cane (because honestly, he should be that awesome). Rictavio warned Amrus not to make an enemy. Again, I'm hoping Rictavio is leaving a strong impression.
Lop and Cugel both have the incredibly useful identify spell, but lack the material component: a 100gp pearl. Barovia being a bottle, with the only people with the power to leave being the Vistani, the NPCs suggested the party visit them at a camp southwest of town. They journeyed there and found one of the Vistana leaders, a brute named Luvash, lashing another Vistana, Alexei, with Luvash's brother, Arrigal, tries to get him to ease up. The PCs learned that the inebriated Luvash blamed Alexei for losing track of his daughter, Arabelle. The PCs, being mostly good, offered to help find the girl. Luvash agreed to get them a pearl in exchange. Since the other Vistani were drunk when Arabelle went missing, they suggested talking to the dusk elves living nearby.
They met a dusk elf living in a hovel built into the base of the hill the Vistani had camped on. The middle aged male elf suggested they visit Kasimir Velikov, their leader. They met more middle-aged male elves guarding his hovel. They allowed the party in to speak with Kasimir, and they all gave quite a bit of deference to Sarra. At this point Joseph realized that all the elves were male. Kasimir asked them their opinion of Strahd. When they responded that they weren't fans, he hinted that he knew a secret that might help them defeat the vampire lord, and he would tell them once they were more powerful. He let them know that his scouts last saw Luvash's daughter headed north, toward Lake Zarovich.
They tracked the girl to the lake. They found a lone fisherman and a couple of boats on the shore. The boats were five person, but their were six people in the party. After the fisherman proved unresponsive, they waffled between taking two boats or casting enlarge on one boat. The decision was made after they checked duration on enlarge: 1 minute. They rowed out towards the fisherman, who dropped a squirming burlap sack into the lake. Sarra dived in and pulled the bag into their boat, finding it contained a 7-year old Vistani girl, Arabelle. She thanked them. Then Sarra jumped into the fisherman, Bluto Krogarov's boat. She quickly knocked him out, something easy in this edition since when you reduce a foe to 0 hp or less, you can opt to knock them unconscious and stable rather than killing them. I explained this fact to the players, and they captured and interrogated Bluto. The man wanted to try and catch fish to trade for wine, but the lake's fish aren't biting. He intended to sacrifice Arabelle to the lake because the Vistani are "lucky."
The Vistani had also hinted at the recent wine shortage. The PCs seemed to pick up on a theme of alcohol abuse. Not sure how it emerged; unlike Stephen King I've never been an alcoholic. Still, after the now hung over Luvash gave them their pearl, he suggested he talk to the Martikovs about the wine shortage.
They returned to town and spoke to Urwin, who mentioned that the recent wine shipment has been late, and wants the PCs to investigate. However, since it was late in the day, he suggested they wait until after the Festival of Blazing Sun tomorrow.
Lop had one more itch to scratch: finding a history book on Barovia. He was told that only the Burgomaster and the Wachter family are wealthy enough to afford libraries. Rictavio told him about Nikolai and Karl, Lady Fiona Wachter's sons. They're fascinated with the half-elf's tales and would like to know more about the PCs adventures. Ap, having the highest Charisma in the party, told them the story of their adventure in the house with a little bit of spell casting help from Lop. It impressed the Wachter brothers, that they agreed to introduce Lop to their mother at the festival.
The players are a bit frightened. Considering that the adventure is Gothic horror, this is good. I mentioned before the players took their own path. I had dropped a hint for them to meet the toy maker while Rictavio was watching Ireena, but they ignored that to hunt for their pearl. I've also told PCs that the Festival of the Wolf's Head was last week, and the Festival of the Blazing Sun is coming up, and that the town has been enduring weekly festivals for years. I think I'll need to drive this home when they attend the festival next time. The thing that should scare them isn't what will happen to the PCs, but rather the decisions they'll have to make.
I've also begun looking ahead. The festival and the events around will give them a milestone. They're set up to handle the Wizard of Wines next, most likely followed by Krezk. Those two should be another milestone. I much prefer it to counting Xps to make sure they have enough to be an appropriate level for the encounters ahead.
Saturday, April 9, 2016
Out Into the World
The players completed the Death House, and stepped out into Barovia proper. To use a mid-90s Final Fantasy metaphor, they just got out of Midgar.
This makes my job harder, but more fun. Sandboxes give players a lot of leeway to explore, but also leeway to wander into places they could get themselves killed. Or worse. Rather than railroad, I prefer to let NPCs and the setting itself to drop hints pointing the PCs in the right direction.
We had left our players on the doorstep of the house with a small group of villagers across the street, deep in discussion and exchanging a few coppers. Put out, Tathora confronted them. The commoners sheepishly apologized; many outlanders go into the Death House, the name given to the old Durst manor. They pointed out there isn't much more for entertainment aside from wine, which there is a shortage of. Blake asked if they seemed rich, probably planning on having Amrus rob them. Of course, the Barovians wore frayed, heavily patched, hand-me down garments. Lop asked how long the Dursts had been dead, and the Barovians told him for generations. They advised the adventurers to go the Blood of the Vine tavern. They made that their next stop.
The Blood of the Vine tavern is a fixture in the Ravenloft modules, Barovia's run down tavern. There, they met Ismark Kolyanovich, the burgomaster's son. He bought them a pitcher of wine from Arik, the rather mechanical behaving barkeep. Ismark spoke with them, and learned that they had escaped the Death House and found the message from his father. He asked them to help with his sister, Ireena Kolyana. Fortunately, the party was good aligned, and agreed to help. Ismark also told them about the Vistani, including pointing out that the dusky-skinned, brightly clothed women that owned the bar, were Vistani.
Ismark led the PCs to the burgomaster's mansion. It had been recently attacked, and the scars of violence covered the outer walls and grounds. This had the desired effect of unnerving the PCs. Fortunately, Ireena, one of the central characters of the Ravenloft module, managed to charm them with her honesty and courage. They discovered the former burgomaster already dead in a homemade coffin. Ireena refused to leave until they had given him a proper burial. Lop cast levitation on the coffin, and they carried it to the church.
The church, like the mansion, bore the scars of recent attacks. Upon entering the church, they heard prayers and an inhuman scream. This put them on edge during their interview with the mad old priest, Donavich. He agreed to bury the burgomaster, but not until the next morning. When confronted about the scream, Donavich admitted that it was his son, but that the PCs shouldn't convern themselves with that. Amrus probed a little to far into the issue, getting him banished from the church. The PCs made a few guesses about Donavich: that he's in league with Strahd in some way, or that he's using dead souls for some fell purpose or another.
They tried to find lodging at the tavern, but the owners couldn't be persuaded to give them room space. They did advise them to visit Madam Eva at the Vistani encampment by Tser Falls. They told them that outlanders who do so tend to live longer. They ended up staying with Ireena and Ismark at the mansion. When they conferred with Ismark about the Vistani, he warned them away from visiting the encampment with Ireena. The Vistani are spies for Strahd.
Next, to add some ill omen, I had them witness a harmless, but eerie march of the spirits of dead adventurers from the Barovian graveyard up to Castle Ravenloft above. This only furthered the PCs belief that Donavich was in league with Strahd. None-the-less, he performed the burial as agreed the next day. Afterwards, he pulled Tathora aside and advised that they take Ireena further than Vallaki, but all they way to Krezk and the Abbey of Saint Markovia. Returning to the rest of the party, they mulled it over, even considering their suspicions.
They left the village of Barovia then. Curse of Strahd calls for frequent random encounter checks: every half-hour of travel. But it calls for no more than 2 random encounters in a 12 hour period. This means travel is rapid but dangerous enough. Plus, when using the milestone rules, it mean the players shouldn't be dependent on the Xp from random fights to acquire levels.
Their first encounter occurred as they crossed an old stone bridge over the Ivlis river. They met a trapper with glorious mutton chops: Alexandrej Petrovich. He sized up the party and offered to sell them furs. Lop bought an over-priced but warm fox-fur cloak. In Barovia, most available goods are available if their under 25gp in the PHB and even then at ten times the price. I used traveler's clothes (cost 2 gp) as my guideline for price. So Alexandrej wanted 20gp. The party managed to bargain him down to 10. He did find Lop and Cugel entertaining. Fortunately, they entertained the trapper and he never saw Amrus's silver shortsword. The encounter could have gone south very quickly in that event.
After journeying through mountains and the forest, they came a crossroad with an empty gallows. They followed Ismark's advice and went left, avoiding the Tser Pool Encampment encounter for the moment. I'm not afraid to say I went OOC to let the players now that I'd like to have the Tarokka deck before running the reading. Fortunately, there are many options to for the reading other than Madam Eva if they never bother returning here. As they passed through the crossroads, they heard a body fall in the gallows behind them. Everyone saw a featureless body, but Lop saw the body as himself. They traveled past Tser falls, the cross roads leading up to Castle Ravenloft itself, and through another of Barovia's gates.
While passing through the forests, they had their second encounter: with a cackling mad druid and a pack of twig blights. Once again, Cugel broke out his favorite spell: Tahsa's hideous laughter to incapacitate the druid. We had a closer reading of the rules and learned that damage also grants a saving throw against the effect. This didn't matter much in this encounter, but it could have changed the encounter with the shambling mound. The reason it didn't effect this encounter: the first hit on the druid from Sarra was critical and took the druid down to half his hit points in one go.
Ismark and Ireena helped in the fight, Ismark using the fairly powerful veteran stat block and Ireena using the slightly less powerful noble stat block. I should have done a good DM thing and copied the blocks for the PCs to use, giving them more options in combat and making less work for me at the table.
The short version is that the druid died before contributing, and the PCs killed the twig blights before they could inflict any damage. I actually don't mind that Cugel is using Tasha's hideous laughter to good effect. So few players use these sort of control spells with no damaging effects. It's refreshing to see the tactic pay off at the table.
The rest of the journey was uneventful. They arrived in Vallaki. The guards sized them up, and decided they weren't dangerous enough to keep out. Contemplating the wolf heads on pikes surrounding the wooden stockade of the village, the PCs entered. They reached another milestone. The guards suggested the PCs visit the Blue Water Inn, and we broke for the night so people could level up.
I'm looking forward to running Vallaki. It exemplifies a good sandbox adventure: lots of options and directions for the PCs to follow, and so many of those wonderful sub-optimal choices to make that makes table-top role-playing worth it.
This makes my job harder, but more fun. Sandboxes give players a lot of leeway to explore, but also leeway to wander into places they could get themselves killed. Or worse. Rather than railroad, I prefer to let NPCs and the setting itself to drop hints pointing the PCs in the right direction.
We had left our players on the doorstep of the house with a small group of villagers across the street, deep in discussion and exchanging a few coppers. Put out, Tathora confronted them. The commoners sheepishly apologized; many outlanders go into the Death House, the name given to the old Durst manor. They pointed out there isn't much more for entertainment aside from wine, which there is a shortage of. Blake asked if they seemed rich, probably planning on having Amrus rob them. Of course, the Barovians wore frayed, heavily patched, hand-me down garments. Lop asked how long the Dursts had been dead, and the Barovians told him for generations. They advised the adventurers to go the Blood of the Vine tavern. They made that their next stop.
The Blood of the Vine tavern is a fixture in the Ravenloft modules, Barovia's run down tavern. There, they met Ismark Kolyanovich, the burgomaster's son. He bought them a pitcher of wine from Arik, the rather mechanical behaving barkeep. Ismark spoke with them, and learned that they had escaped the Death House and found the message from his father. He asked them to help with his sister, Ireena Kolyana. Fortunately, the party was good aligned, and agreed to help. Ismark also told them about the Vistani, including pointing out that the dusky-skinned, brightly clothed women that owned the bar, were Vistani.
Ismark led the PCs to the burgomaster's mansion. It had been recently attacked, and the scars of violence covered the outer walls and grounds. This had the desired effect of unnerving the PCs. Fortunately, Ireena, one of the central characters of the Ravenloft module, managed to charm them with her honesty and courage. They discovered the former burgomaster already dead in a homemade coffin. Ireena refused to leave until they had given him a proper burial. Lop cast levitation on the coffin, and they carried it to the church.
The church, like the mansion, bore the scars of recent attacks. Upon entering the church, they heard prayers and an inhuman scream. This put them on edge during their interview with the mad old priest, Donavich. He agreed to bury the burgomaster, but not until the next morning. When confronted about the scream, Donavich admitted that it was his son, but that the PCs shouldn't convern themselves with that. Amrus probed a little to far into the issue, getting him banished from the church. The PCs made a few guesses about Donavich: that he's in league with Strahd in some way, or that he's using dead souls for some fell purpose or another.
They tried to find lodging at the tavern, but the owners couldn't be persuaded to give them room space. They did advise them to visit Madam Eva at the Vistani encampment by Tser Falls. They told them that outlanders who do so tend to live longer. They ended up staying with Ireena and Ismark at the mansion. When they conferred with Ismark about the Vistani, he warned them away from visiting the encampment with Ireena. The Vistani are spies for Strahd.
Next, to add some ill omen, I had them witness a harmless, but eerie march of the spirits of dead adventurers from the Barovian graveyard up to Castle Ravenloft above. This only furthered the PCs belief that Donavich was in league with Strahd. None-the-less, he performed the burial as agreed the next day. Afterwards, he pulled Tathora aside and advised that they take Ireena further than Vallaki, but all they way to Krezk and the Abbey of Saint Markovia. Returning to the rest of the party, they mulled it over, even considering their suspicions.
They left the village of Barovia then. Curse of Strahd calls for frequent random encounter checks: every half-hour of travel. But it calls for no more than 2 random encounters in a 12 hour period. This means travel is rapid but dangerous enough. Plus, when using the milestone rules, it mean the players shouldn't be dependent on the Xp from random fights to acquire levels.
Their first encounter occurred as they crossed an old stone bridge over the Ivlis river. They met a trapper with glorious mutton chops: Alexandrej Petrovich. He sized up the party and offered to sell them furs. Lop bought an over-priced but warm fox-fur cloak. In Barovia, most available goods are available if their under 25gp in the PHB and even then at ten times the price. I used traveler's clothes (cost 2 gp) as my guideline for price. So Alexandrej wanted 20gp. The party managed to bargain him down to 10. He did find Lop and Cugel entertaining. Fortunately, they entertained the trapper and he never saw Amrus's silver shortsword. The encounter could have gone south very quickly in that event.
After journeying through mountains and the forest, they came a crossroad with an empty gallows. They followed Ismark's advice and went left, avoiding the Tser Pool Encampment encounter for the moment. I'm not afraid to say I went OOC to let the players now that I'd like to have the Tarokka deck before running the reading. Fortunately, there are many options to for the reading other than Madam Eva if they never bother returning here. As they passed through the crossroads, they heard a body fall in the gallows behind them. Everyone saw a featureless body, but Lop saw the body as himself. They traveled past Tser falls, the cross roads leading up to Castle Ravenloft itself, and through another of Barovia's gates.
While passing through the forests, they had their second encounter: with a cackling mad druid and a pack of twig blights. Once again, Cugel broke out his favorite spell: Tahsa's hideous laughter to incapacitate the druid. We had a closer reading of the rules and learned that damage also grants a saving throw against the effect. This didn't matter much in this encounter, but it could have changed the encounter with the shambling mound. The reason it didn't effect this encounter: the first hit on the druid from Sarra was critical and took the druid down to half his hit points in one go.
Ismark and Ireena helped in the fight, Ismark using the fairly powerful veteran stat block and Ireena using the slightly less powerful noble stat block. I should have done a good DM thing and copied the blocks for the PCs to use, giving them more options in combat and making less work for me at the table.
The short version is that the druid died before contributing, and the PCs killed the twig blights before they could inflict any damage. I actually don't mind that Cugel is using Tasha's hideous laughter to good effect. So few players use these sort of control spells with no damaging effects. It's refreshing to see the tactic pay off at the table.
The rest of the journey was uneventful. They arrived in Vallaki. The guards sized them up, and decided they weren't dangerous enough to keep out. Contemplating the wolf heads on pikes surrounding the wooden stockade of the village, the PCs entered. They reached another milestone. The guards suggested the PCs visit the Blue Water Inn, and we broke for the night so people could level up.
I'm looking forward to running Vallaki. It exemplifies a good sandbox adventure: lots of options and directions for the PCs to follow, and so many of those wonderful sub-optimal choices to make that makes table-top role-playing worth it.
Monday, April 4, 2016
Getting Out of the House
We last left our heroes reeling from a long, tough battle. So they took a short rest.
Alec returned with a new player: Jose. He made a human fighter called Simon. He took the Duelist fighting style against my suggestion to take the protection style. The duelist style really works the best with an Eldritch Knight, since you need the free hand to cast spells. It was a quick and dirty creation job, but getting new players into the game sooner rather than later is better. Joseph and Nathan couldn't make it, so they were down two of their four arcane casters. However, Andrew and Ethan made it, so they had an extra off-tank caster and a tank. Being down the arcane casters, however, may have been a benefit. To novice DMs: when designing and running encounters party composition is an important thing to remember.
As they finished their short rest, they finished looting the footlocker in the bad chamber. They found a cloak of protection, which went to Tathora. There was also a chain shirt, a once amazing piece of armor nerfed a fair bit with edition changes. They also found a spellbook that will be useful to Cugel and Lop once they have a chance to copy spells.
They finished exploring the first basement level, finding cultist and initiate quarters and a well. They found treasure, the most useful of which was a silvered short sword. I reminded the party that Ravenloft, being a gothic horror setting, werewolves and the like are likely in the offing. Amrus ended up keeping the sword.
They finally reached level B2. The first room was a reliquary filled with grisly, but otherwise worthless trophies: a mummified goblin hand, a nothic's eye, an aspergillum made from bone, a cloak made of stitched ghoul skin, among others. Cugel took the cloak, Alec's reasoning being that as a Necromancer, he might as well look as metal as possible (he's not wrong; all the best necromancers look like they walked off the cover of a death metal album).
They went down a short corridor that descended into a flooded chamber blocked by a rusty portcullis. Lop squeezed himself through the bars enough to spot a wheel to raise the portcullis. But, without mage hand, he didn't have a way to work the wheel. Ultimately, Tarkir lifted it up with brute force. The room beyond was the source of the chanting, which the party could now make out as "He is the Ancient. He is the Land,": a flooded room with a five-foot high ledge around the outer wall, a raised dais with an alter in the middle, and a hole in the wall filled with a pile of refuse.
The adventure assumed the PCs would examine the altar on the dais. Adventure writers aren't always correct. This party avoided the dais and searched the refuse pile. They found nothing of value, so Rolan cast produce flame and threw the fire into the pile. The adventure writers did figure something like this might happen.
The refuse pile turned out to be a shambling mound the cultists had dubbed Lorghoth. If the party had gone up on the dais, the chanting would have switched to "One must die!" and when the (presumably) mostly good-aligned party backed down without taking a life, Lorghoth would have awakened and attacked. Instead it woke up when the other triggering event occurred: someone attacking the pile. I still hand the chant switch to "One must die!" as the battle started. I figured that they would need to kite the shambling mound. When you have an eight person party, however, they tend to take the third option: swarm it.
Shambling mounds are Challenge 5. Most of this is in the hit points: it has 16d10+48 hit die (averaging 136 hp). It has an AC of 15, so assuming a +5 attack modifier, the 2nd level PCs are hitting it around 55% of the time. Then there's its attack: +7 to hit with 2d8+4 damage, which it can use twice on the same target and follow-up with an engulf if both attacks hit, which does an extra 2d8+4 a round until the engulfed target escapes. It's also resistant to fire and cold damage and absorbs lightning damage (this last part would have made Ap cry, since he's so reliant on it).
I was expecting to kill a party member a round until they started kiting the monster (it's Move is only 20ft). Instead, it missed with its second slam attack against Sarra, then failed a pair of saves against Cugel's new favorite spell: Tasha's hideous laughter. Thus they managed to kill the "boss" with a minimum of resources.
Which was good. This adventure was set-up like a rogue-like. First you get in, then you need to get out. A party of mostly evil PCs willing to sacrifice a member on the altar would have gotten out scott-free. Those kind of parties are, thankfully, rare. So on returning to the attic of the house, they found things had changed. The windows were bricked up, the inner walls had become rotted, brittle, and filled with rats, and all the doors were replace with a platform gaming classic: scything blades of death. The blades require either a Dexterity (Acrobatics) check or an Intelligence check (both DC 15) to navigate without taking 2d10 damage. Technically, it took 1 minute to make the Intelligence check, but since the game called for going round by round at this point, and I didn't want a player sitting doing nothing for 10 turns to use a better ability to accomplishing their goals. The walls are easy to break: AC 5 with 5 hit points, but each 5-foot section broken through unleashes a swarm of rats (these resulted in a near TPK for the first level Tyranny of Dragons party before I joined). This party had less trouble with the rat swarms. I'm guessing being level 2 (and being a little more durable and having a few more options) and there being 8 people helped. Actually, only 6 people. Andrew and Ethan had to meet a curfew, so they left after the shambling mound was killed.
The last discovery awaited them on the lower floors: chambers with fire places were now filled with poisonous smoke. Jose, being a new player, wanted to test the boundaries of the "you can explore everywhere" in a table-top as opposed to a CRPG, and went into these rooms. He failed a DC 10 Con save and took 1d10 poison damage. He learned that sometimes, description tells you to not explore places for a reason.
All in all, they managed to escape the house with only one casualty: poor Tathora was reduced to 0 hp by the last set of scything blades on the way out the house. Fortunately, escaping the house was a milestone, so the party reached third level. I helped level-up everyone before we broke for the night, with the last "shot" being the battered party back on the streets of the village of Barovia and spotting a group of villagers exchanging money and muttering to each other.
In helping the new players level-up, Alec and I suggested that Hillary and Jose take the Champion fighter archetype. It's the simplest archetype, making it good for new players. But it lacks something veteran players often enjoy: a wide range of options, and a change in the power curve. I'll pause to examine the fighter archetypes before concluding.
The Champion increases the critical threat range to 19-20 at 3rd level and then 18-20 at 15th. It then enhances Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution checks at 7th level, combined with a bonus to jumping distance. Then at 10th level, you pick an additional fighting style. Lastly, at 18th level, you can regain hit points at the start of each of your turns if you're between 0 and half your total hp. It's a very "power" oriented path, but it lacks subtlety or adaptability. The only real choice: the new fighting style, isn't much of a choice. Your initial fighting style guides so many choices right away: what kind of weapons and equipment you'll take and how you'll contribute in combat. As previously said, the Duelist style: +2 to damage when wielding a one handed weapon and nothing in the off-hand, is best for an Eldritch Knight; you need the empty hand to cast spells. The Archery one (+2 to attack with ranged weapons) is good for the Eldritch Knight as well: casting enhances your ranged attack options, making you a better sniper. The Protection style (spending a reaction to inflict disadvantage on an attack on an adjacent target as long as you have a shield), Great Weapon Fighting (re-roll damage dice that come up 1 or 2, accepting the re-roll while using a weapon in two-hands) and the Two-Weapon Fighting (adding your ability modifier to the off-hand weapon when two-weapon fighting) are okay for Champion. Two-Weapon Fighting doubles critical chance, but with the Battle Master Archetype, its two chances for your maneuvers to hit. The only good second choice for a fighting style is Defense: +1 to AC as long as you're wearing armor. Few warm blooded players will take a turtle option for their initial style, but at higher levels a chance to be hit a little less in combat will be a good choice. It's also the only option that wouldn't force a character to change their weapon load-out mid-fight, something a bit easier in this edition, but still a bit problematic.
Well, the adventure has opened up into Sandbox mode starting next week. It will be interesting to see where the PCs go.
Alec returned with a new player: Jose. He made a human fighter called Simon. He took the Duelist fighting style against my suggestion to take the protection style. The duelist style really works the best with an Eldritch Knight, since you need the free hand to cast spells. It was a quick and dirty creation job, but getting new players into the game sooner rather than later is better. Joseph and Nathan couldn't make it, so they were down two of their four arcane casters. However, Andrew and Ethan made it, so they had an extra off-tank caster and a tank. Being down the arcane casters, however, may have been a benefit. To novice DMs: when designing and running encounters party composition is an important thing to remember.
As they finished their short rest, they finished looting the footlocker in the bad chamber. They found a cloak of protection, which went to Tathora. There was also a chain shirt, a once amazing piece of armor nerfed a fair bit with edition changes. They also found a spellbook that will be useful to Cugel and Lop once they have a chance to copy spells.
They finished exploring the first basement level, finding cultist and initiate quarters and a well. They found treasure, the most useful of which was a silvered short sword. I reminded the party that Ravenloft, being a gothic horror setting, werewolves and the like are likely in the offing. Amrus ended up keeping the sword.
They finally reached level B2. The first room was a reliquary filled with grisly, but otherwise worthless trophies: a mummified goblin hand, a nothic's eye, an aspergillum made from bone, a cloak made of stitched ghoul skin, among others. Cugel took the cloak, Alec's reasoning being that as a Necromancer, he might as well look as metal as possible (he's not wrong; all the best necromancers look like they walked off the cover of a death metal album).
They went down a short corridor that descended into a flooded chamber blocked by a rusty portcullis. Lop squeezed himself through the bars enough to spot a wheel to raise the portcullis. But, without mage hand, he didn't have a way to work the wheel. Ultimately, Tarkir lifted it up with brute force. The room beyond was the source of the chanting, which the party could now make out as "He is the Ancient. He is the Land,": a flooded room with a five-foot high ledge around the outer wall, a raised dais with an alter in the middle, and a hole in the wall filled with a pile of refuse.
The adventure assumed the PCs would examine the altar on the dais. Adventure writers aren't always correct. This party avoided the dais and searched the refuse pile. They found nothing of value, so Rolan cast produce flame and threw the fire into the pile. The adventure writers did figure something like this might happen.
The refuse pile turned out to be a shambling mound the cultists had dubbed Lorghoth. If the party had gone up on the dais, the chanting would have switched to "One must die!" and when the (presumably) mostly good-aligned party backed down without taking a life, Lorghoth would have awakened and attacked. Instead it woke up when the other triggering event occurred: someone attacking the pile. I still hand the chant switch to "One must die!" as the battle started. I figured that they would need to kite the shambling mound. When you have an eight person party, however, they tend to take the third option: swarm it.
Shambling mounds are Challenge 5. Most of this is in the hit points: it has 16d10+48 hit die (averaging 136 hp). It has an AC of 15, so assuming a +5 attack modifier, the 2nd level PCs are hitting it around 55% of the time. Then there's its attack: +7 to hit with 2d8+4 damage, which it can use twice on the same target and follow-up with an engulf if both attacks hit, which does an extra 2d8+4 a round until the engulfed target escapes. It's also resistant to fire and cold damage and absorbs lightning damage (this last part would have made Ap cry, since he's so reliant on it).
I was expecting to kill a party member a round until they started kiting the monster (it's Move is only 20ft). Instead, it missed with its second slam attack against Sarra, then failed a pair of saves against Cugel's new favorite spell: Tasha's hideous laughter. Thus they managed to kill the "boss" with a minimum of resources.
Which was good. This adventure was set-up like a rogue-like. First you get in, then you need to get out. A party of mostly evil PCs willing to sacrifice a member on the altar would have gotten out scott-free. Those kind of parties are, thankfully, rare. So on returning to the attic of the house, they found things had changed. The windows were bricked up, the inner walls had become rotted, brittle, and filled with rats, and all the doors were replace with a platform gaming classic: scything blades of death. The blades require either a Dexterity (Acrobatics) check or an Intelligence check (both DC 15) to navigate without taking 2d10 damage. Technically, it took 1 minute to make the Intelligence check, but since the game called for going round by round at this point, and I didn't want a player sitting doing nothing for 10 turns to use a better ability to accomplishing their goals. The walls are easy to break: AC 5 with 5 hit points, but each 5-foot section broken through unleashes a swarm of rats (these resulted in a near TPK for the first level Tyranny of Dragons party before I joined). This party had less trouble with the rat swarms. I'm guessing being level 2 (and being a little more durable and having a few more options) and there being 8 people helped. Actually, only 6 people. Andrew and Ethan had to meet a curfew, so they left after the shambling mound was killed.
The last discovery awaited them on the lower floors: chambers with fire places were now filled with poisonous smoke. Jose, being a new player, wanted to test the boundaries of the "you can explore everywhere" in a table-top as opposed to a CRPG, and went into these rooms. He failed a DC 10 Con save and took 1d10 poison damage. He learned that sometimes, description tells you to not explore places for a reason.
All in all, they managed to escape the house with only one casualty: poor Tathora was reduced to 0 hp by the last set of scything blades on the way out the house. Fortunately, escaping the house was a milestone, so the party reached third level. I helped level-up everyone before we broke for the night, with the last "shot" being the battered party back on the streets of the village of Barovia and spotting a group of villagers exchanging money and muttering to each other.
In helping the new players level-up, Alec and I suggested that Hillary and Jose take the Champion fighter archetype. It's the simplest archetype, making it good for new players. But it lacks something veteran players often enjoy: a wide range of options, and a change in the power curve. I'll pause to examine the fighter archetypes before concluding.
The Champion increases the critical threat range to 19-20 at 3rd level and then 18-20 at 15th. It then enhances Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution checks at 7th level, combined with a bonus to jumping distance. Then at 10th level, you pick an additional fighting style. Lastly, at 18th level, you can regain hit points at the start of each of your turns if you're between 0 and half your total hp. It's a very "power" oriented path, but it lacks subtlety or adaptability. The only real choice: the new fighting style, isn't much of a choice. Your initial fighting style guides so many choices right away: what kind of weapons and equipment you'll take and how you'll contribute in combat. As previously said, the Duelist style: +2 to damage when wielding a one handed weapon and nothing in the off-hand, is best for an Eldritch Knight; you need the empty hand to cast spells. The Archery one (+2 to attack with ranged weapons) is good for the Eldritch Knight as well: casting enhances your ranged attack options, making you a better sniper. The Protection style (spending a reaction to inflict disadvantage on an attack on an adjacent target as long as you have a shield), Great Weapon Fighting (re-roll damage dice that come up 1 or 2, accepting the re-roll while using a weapon in two-hands) and the Two-Weapon Fighting (adding your ability modifier to the off-hand weapon when two-weapon fighting) are okay for Champion. Two-Weapon Fighting doubles critical chance, but with the Battle Master Archetype, its two chances for your maneuvers to hit. The only good second choice for a fighting style is Defense: +1 to AC as long as you're wearing armor. Few warm blooded players will take a turtle option for their initial style, but at higher levels a chance to be hit a little less in combat will be a good choice. It's also the only option that wouldn't force a character to change their weapon load-out mid-fight, something a bit easier in this edition, but still a bit problematic.
Well, the adventure has opened up into Sandbox mode starting next week. It will be interesting to see where the PCs go.
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