The Heirs of Ruin, Play Report 7

After burying the dead, the caravan continued on its way to South Ledopolos. Rather than “Indiana Jones” the trip, I asked them what their characters would be doing for the day. Beth (aka Maximus) decided to strike up some conversation with the caravan leader, a man named Canth. I played Canth as a similar personality to Maximus; serious and disciplined from living a life of danger running trade goods between cities. She learned some rumors about the Giant’s Rib Mountains, as well as the giants from the Silt Sea.

John (aka Branor) did something a bit different, asking if there were any dwarves on the team. I figured, they are going to South Ledopolos, so hell yes. He then asked if they knew his character, to which I decided to give him a chance to improvise, asking, “Do they?” He figured that seeing as his character is a prince of his clan that they should, and I rolled with it, having them be somewhat nervous and offering him some of the “good stuff” that they were packing with them. While he did not learn anything, he got to play his character’s social side a bit.

Randy’s character is trying to figure out magic as part of her background and goals, so when he asked if she nabbed some of the dray’s notes I had him make an Intelligence check because Randy never said he did and I did not think to ask. With a nat 20, I told him that she grabbed a lot of stuff and that she could study it along the way. I had him make a few Arcana checks, and the results indicated that she had determined that the dray was using ritual magic to bind ghosts in order to question them (which Baranus mentioned back in the sewers). Now, I tried to have a nosy half-elf woman badger Sardis about what she was reading, but she rebuffed her, because, well Sardis is not the most social person (or at all).

Just goes to show you that not every NPC is going to get the screen time you had hoped. Maybe I will try a more aggressive approach next time?

Speaking of aggression, Liz really did not have any ideas about what she would be doing, so a botched Insight roll revealed that a small group of men seemed to be ogling her. This made her understandably uncomfortable, so she stuck around Maximus, “just in case”. 

With that bit of socialization out of the way a sandstorm picked up, locking them in place for several hours. They made some skill checks to help round up the animals and erect some hasty shelters, so after it blew over everyone was safe and everything was accounted for. With another hour of digging everything out they were able to cover some more ground before they had to make camp for the night. With the possible threat of some of the caravan members going after Jiga, they kept close to each other and decided to keep their own watch. Fortunately, nothing assaulted them except for an adult silk wyrm with a bunch of young in tow.

The young were really just there behind the scenes in order to occupy the rest of the caravan guards and Canth, giving the characters a chance to show how badass they were and level up because I wanted them at 3rd level before they got into South Ledopolos. Plus, I wanted them to actually finish it off given that they got to see one at action in the first session. Once they killed it the surviving young fled, giving the caravan a hefty boost to the food department. Since they killed it so fast none of the guards died (I rolled a save each round), making Canth very pleased (and affecting the bonus he would give them at the end of the trip).

The next day, Liz (aka Jiga) actually asked if the men that were staring at her yesterday were around–probably hoping that they had died–but found out that they had left sometime during the night and were nowhere to be found. Did they get eaten or desert? Eh, time and drama will tell.

The third day they ran into another hitch in the form of a gith raider ambush; they came out of the mountains, raining javelins because the only stat block I had on hand was for the level 4 artillery ones. Had I brought my laptop I would have had access to other stat blocks, or…shit, I should have remembered the pdf on my tablet. Oh well, I will remember next time if I forget to format all the stat blocks. Anyway, the battle was over pretty quickly despite immobilizing javelins. A lot of the guards were wounded, and some were kidnapped by the surviving raiders, so if they act quickly they might be able to save them.

We’ll see what happens next week.

The Heirs of Ruin Play Report 6

With all the guards and jhakaars slain, the characters were now free to scope out Hakaar’s house. It was night so they could clearly see that there were no lights on, and they could not hear anything from outside, so they concluded that either Hakaar was either a heavy sleeper or that no one was home. A win in either case. The front door was locked briefly before Jiga got her picks on it. Inside they found some alright furnishings, but a fine layer of dust coated almost everything, indicated that the place saw little use, if any. I handled the investigation like a skill challenge, allowing them to use their skills to locate the prisoner (or at the least his prison); it was a pretty easy feat to narrow down the areas of the house that actually saw activity, and locate a hidden passage soon after.

They followed a short passage underground, which terminated at a stone door with a ring of red runes. Branor deduced that red, glowing runes are often a bad thing, while Sardis’s experience with magic more accurately concluded that it was some form of fire based trap. A very low Arcana check confirmed her assessment to the tune of 20 points of fire damage and being knocked on her ass. As if being bloodied was not bad enough, it also alerted Hakaar to their presence.

They sucked it up and opened the door, finding Hakaar standing before a blazing brazier and an unconscious man chained up in the corner; the very picture of villainy. They exchanged some words and threats, but Hakaar’s patience quickly wore out and he summoned a pair of magma beasts in the shape of Large scorpions that flanked the door. This did not stop many of the party from trying to get in, provoking an assload of opportunity attacks, but with the silver lining that Branor got to give his defender’s aura a strenuous workout early on.

Hakaar proved to be a pretty potent pyromancer, tossing around scorching bursts, a burning hands, and even having a few abilities–Elite kickers that felt niftier than another double attack–that let him turn up the heat when characters took fire damage when it was not his turn (which was most of the time, since almost every attack that the enemies had dealt fire damage). In fact, despite having a full suite of party members he actually managed to kill Maximus. Well…I hand-waived it at first, but after Beth’s persistence I finally relented that yes, Maximus did die (by only a few points), but would be raised by the Veiled Alliance anyway so it was all kind of a moot point.

I guess it worked out for the best in the long run, because after Maximus came back to life he retained faint memories of wandering a cold city composed entirely of black glass, which is foreshadowing if I’ve ever used it. Which I did.

So with the prisoner and loot in hand–including a fire elemental that Sardis bound to herself, gaining a gift of fire–the party made it back to Wavir’s enclave, and with nothing better to do was packaged up in crates and shipped out of Balic’s city limits. Once safely out of sight, they were let out of the crates with the understanding that Girias had instructed the caravan to at least escort them to South Ledopolos, which was nice because that will be their launching point to a rumored lost city that they’d heard so much about. We wrapped up the night with a nice attack comprised of sunwarped hyenas and a couple flocks of kestrekels, whereupon I learned that the dwarf knight is really fucking hard to chew through, and the psion is really good at obliterating swarms.

The Heirs of Ruin Play Report 5

After looting the necromancer’s lair they returned to Barunus’s ghost, gathered up his bones, and made their way to the surface. Almost immediately there were spotted by a patrol, which could have easily overwhelmed them had a pair of newfound friends not shown up; a dwarf named Braynor Stoneblood that knew Maximus from awhile back on one of his tours, and a bizarre crystalline entity that could manipulate objects whose named escapes me. After defeating the guards and stealing their uniforms, they decided that the best way to safely get out of Balic would be to get in touch with House Wavir due to Jiga’s connections.

Unfortunately, they had to cross the Market Precinct to get there.

I ran the same skill challenge as before, asking the group to tell me how their characters would try to get there, and got some different–but still impressive–results; Maximus wanted to try the backstreets, Jiga and Braynor tried to mingle with the crowd, and Sardis, well…he got spotted pretty damned quickly by guards on the lookout for “anyone with a mysterious halo”. He legged it, I prompted him for an Endurance check, and he managed to get some distance between them. They split up, trying to surround him, and so he made an Athletics to get on the roof. Maximus tripped one of them, but a botched Athletics roll caused both the guard and him to fall. The guard recognized him pretty quickly, but was silenced by a dagger in the throat (though Maximus lost a healing surge during the scuffle). With Sardis on the roof, Braynor and Jiga rallied the mob against the guards by tricking them into thinking that they’d killed their baby while chasing Sardis. As Sardis moved from rooftop to rooftop, Braynor managed to take the handful left out with a well thrown rock while they were scaling a wall after him.

Again, things flowed really well and seemed much more cinematic. The players didn’t just spam whatever skill had the best bonus, and they seemed to enjoy it a lot more than usual.

At the Wavir estate, they made a deal to help retrieve a prisoner from a minor noble in exchange for safe passage out of the city. Supplied with fresh clothes and an actually balanced party, they staked out the estate for a good while–during which Sardis detected a steady pulse of evocation magic underground–before just storming the walls, which was still pretty effective. It was a fairly lengthy melee briefly made worse when someone got knocked onto the ground and a pair of jhakaars showed up, but ultimately no one got hurt that a few healing surges couldn’t fix. We had to wrap things up there, but next session will be actually getting into the house and figuring out what is going on.

The Heirs of Ruin Play Report 4

After the party destroyed all the undead, the ghost of a dwarf appeared and asked them to avenge his death (as well as the deaths of all the other victims in the pile of bones). He explained that a dragonborn defiler had killed him, bound his soul, and questioned him about a lost city. After it was clear that he had no worthwhile information, the dragonborn discarded his remains. The party agreed, and shortly after setting out to find the dragonborn’s lair hit a hurdle in the form of an insanely complex tile puzzle.

I am generally not a huge fan of puzzles, especially riddles, because I find that they tend to grind the game to a halt as the players spend too long before finally resigning themselves to a score of Intelligence/History checks, or DM mercy. The tile puzzle was 7 x 7 squares and required that a magical circuit pass through four elemental tiles in a specific order before a door would open. Taking a page from Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, I allowed them to make Intelligence checks to “solve” one or more tiles, as well as allowing them to bypass the puzzle entirely by foregoing all XP. This would allow them to work at it for the reward, or just say fuck all and keep the adventure going.

After about half an hour, they solve it they did, to the tune of 300 well-deserved XP.

Inside they found what I described as the poor-pharaoh’s tomb; a sarcophagus surrounded by a treasure trove with more similarities to a yard-sale than treasure; wooden masks, primitive weapons, clay jars and tablets, tattered rugs, etc. Sardis’s nigh-30 Arcana check allowed him to notice an enchanted bone dagger with a scorpion spirit bound to it (+1 poisoned dagger). Once Maximus picked it up however, a skeleton composed of numerous different creatures (bone golem) animated and attacked them, along with a sand golem hidden in the sarcophagus that Jiga easily spotted (and denying me a surprise attack, boo).

After a fairly quick fight, they found a hidden passage behind the sarcophagus. Taking the right passage first, they discovering a cluttered bed chamber with a glass shard that contained a faint glimmer of intelligence, but at least had the capacity to store magic (obsidian spellshard). The final tunnel lead to one-part arcane lab and one-part operating room, complete with the dead body of a dragonborn. Once they approached it, the dragonborn’s ghost appeared and started hurling shadowy bolts. They beat it down easily enough (especially considering that the obsidian spellshard granted necrotic resistance), causing it to take refuge in its corpse which animated as a zombie until they destroyed it, forcing the ghost to reappear for a final showdown.

I gotta say that I am so glad that I read Ghost Story before running this fight, as Jim Butcher provided some great description on ghosts becoming damaged and destroyed. Anyway, once the ghost was destroyed they relived its final memories, in which the dragonborn informed a genasi with festering green markings of the location of something in the Giant’s Rib Mountains, before promptly being murdered. Unfortunately we stopped here, but at least the characters are now privvy to something larger afoot. Hopefully all this talk of a lost city will usher them in the right direction once they get their asses out of Balic.

The Heirs of Ruin Play Report 2

Characters

• Randy’s character, a genasi swordmage/warlock hybrid who is named something like Sars I think
• Maximus, human warlord (Beth)
• Jiga, elf rogue (Liz)
• Kevek, goliath shaman (Kamon)

On day three of their less then luxurious stay at the Criterion, the characters were able to escape after a silk wyrm escaped from its cage while being transported and busted open the cell holding Sars and Maximus. While the guards were busy trying to get it off the handler, Sars managed to sneak out of his cell and use his psionic talent to lift the keys off of one of them. Maximus tried to get a weapon from one, promising to help fight, but they told him to stay put as they knew his reputation as a former general.

The silk wyrm tore off the handlers arm before turning on the guards prodding it with trikals. It briefly transformed into sand, flowing around them to avoid being surrounded, and continued tearing them with its jaws. The guards had gotten lucky with mighty strike, which the wyrm remedied by drinking the blood from one and healing itself. Sars was able to free several other prisoners, incuding Jiga and Kevek. As the guards started to fall, the wyrm eventually fled. The last one standing, faced with a bunch of freed slaves, ran into the hall and sealed the door.

The characters took some time to loot the guards, who of course didn’t happen to have just the weapons they needed, and had to make do with no armor, trikals, and dejadas. Another door lead to the mess hall, which contained a handful of guards and jhakars who were heading over to investigate all the noise. Since the characters were armed and supported by a mob of slaves following Maximus’s lead, they didn’t stand a chance (especially considering that with two leaders, even if I dropped Sars he’d just get back up with more than half his hit points anyway).

The found more weapons and armor that they didn’t like and decided to actually arm the other slaves, allowing them to make attack rolls with an actual bonus. In a storeroom I decided to make things easier on them and let them make checks to find gear suitable for their characters (plus they had character sheets with the “normal” stats and all). A squad of guards, including some more jhakar trackers and a “wielder of the Way” showed up looking for escapees soon after, which they handled by jumping into a waste disposal pit because whatever lives in the sewers probably makes for a more level-appropriate encounter.

Fortunately the managed to snag a single torch, and almost immediately had to fight off a pair of gray oozes that generally enjoyed pre-killed snacks. Kevek’s wild talent let them know which way was north, which made it easy for them to pick the general direction of Balic’s slums before moving on (I gave them a small bonus). After wandering through the sewers for an hour they were ambushed by rats of both usual and unusual sizes due to failing part one of the skill challenge, after which a pair of slaves were dead and Maximus was diseased (he got better, due to a meager DC of 12). Exhausted, they settled down for the day, munching freshly killed rats.

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A major goal of this session was to try and usher them into the waste pit so that they could wander through Balic’s sewers until they found a mini-dungeon with some plot-centric stuff. I was worried that they would try to fight their way through the main hall, but I didn’t want to invalidate that option by making it obviously impossible. While drawing up the map of the barracks, I figured that if a guard could escape he could lock the door from the other side. A character could break it down, but it would take awhile, and included another unlocked door that would point them in the right direction. They went for it, found the storeroom, and leapt into the pit of their own accord instead of facing a very difficult–but still doable–challenge.

Dark Sun Threats

I’ve already got the Dark Sun itch, and this article is a painful reminder. It’s short, featuring all of four new monsters and a pair of themes, but damn is it good. Going in order, we start with monsters.

• The aarakockra darter is a controller that can throw poisonous darts and and a death sentence barbed nets to easily fulfill its role. The darts work like drow poison, dealing ongoing damage and slowing you, before knocking you out if you botch even one save. The the net locks you down, and if you fail that save, you end up restrained. Yeesh. Finally, it has a limited use shift-and-fly maneuver in case it gets overwhelmed.
• Gith dust racers, as their title implies, can run insanely fast, shift after every attack, have recharging flight, and deal bonus damage if they take psychic damage. Oh, and enemies treat adjacent squares around them as difficult terrain, so ha. These things would be murder for a party with one or more psychic characters.
• In a world that is a giant desert, a human fire elementalist isn’t unexpected, and neither is their suite of abilities. They can hit you with a fiery staff, have a basic ranged attack that only deals ongoing fire damage, an encounter-area burst that creates a zone that deals automatic damage if anyone enters it, or ends its turn there, and a smaller area burst that deals damage, slides, and dazes if you were taking ongoing fire damage. To make matters worse? They have an aura that imposes fire vulnerability. I like a monster that has a lot of synergetic abilities, even if it’s a theme that’s been done many times before.
• Finally, the thri-kreen hunter has both a basic claw and chatkcha attack that you’d expect from the mantis folk, and it can also throw two chatkcha with a single action. Not so bad, considering it’s an artillery. Oh, wait, it also has a recharging ability that lets it throw three per round? It’s not even an elite, mind you. To round things out, it can also shift quite a distance and throw thankfully just one (and can only do so at best twice per encounter due to the limited recharge). If things get to hot, it can also jump its Speed without provoking opportunity attacks.

After monsters are themes, the first of which is Defiler Monster.

There’s a lot of powers to choose from, so I won’t go over them all. For starters, this theme gives monsters a +2 to Arcana and Bluff. The attack and utility powers focus on draining life to gain various benefits. Two of the attacks are contingent on defiling attack, which works with any attack that isn’t a charm, and deals damage other than psychic or radiant damage. Like arcane defiling, the attacker gets to roll twice for the attack, and deals bonus damage to the target and one of the attacker’s allies.

Now, there are a pair of Defiler Monster attacks that also work with this: one lets you target any enemy you want within range, imposing ongoing necrotic damage, while the other causes the target to gain necrotic vulnerability. As if that wasn’t enough, you can really give your players a bad day by adding soul tug to the monster, which causes all of its attacks to deal necrotic damage, and that’s just the attacks.

The utilities let you do stuff like deal damage to an ally in order to make an immediate save, gain necrotic resistance, deal damage to the nearest creature to avoid dying, and gaining a necrotic aura when bloodied. You know what? A lot of this would also be great for undead (except for well, the one that just gives you necrotic resistance, they shouldn’t have to pay for that) or necromancer-type monsters.

Last but not least, the Templar Monster theme. This obviously works best for monsters that have reason to serve a sorcerer-king, which means humanoids are the ideal fit. It gives an Arcana and Diplomacy bonus, and also recommends scoping out the Defiler Monster theme for some extra ideas.

For attacks, you can deal automatic psychic damage when bloodied, use an area burst that deals radiant damage, immobilizes, and allow an ally to gain temp hp if it makes an attack before the turn starts, add a kicker effect to your basic attacks that deals automatic psychic damage plus slow to an enemy you hit, and grants an ally an attack bonus, or a use an area burst that targets only enemies, slows, and grants an ally an attack bonus.

Unfortunately, there’s only two utilities. One is an encounter power that causes an enemy to grant combat advantage for a turn, and lets an ally make a free attack against the target after you do. The other is also an encounter powre, and grants an ally an attack and damage bonus if it ends its turn next to a creature that you just attack.

There’s a lot of leader-type powers in there, and like the Defiler Monster, the stuff in here provides a great foundation for giving leaders thematic powers. I could see this stuff being used for a archetypical villain as he orders his lackeys to “stop the cursed do-gooders”.

The first half of the article is great if you’re running Dark Sun or use monsters from it. The latter half, while likewise intended for Dark Sun, is great for any campaign.

Winning Races: Genasi of Athas

If you’re looking for new material on genasi and run Dark Sun, this article has a healthy mix of flavor and crunch material for you.

There’s a little more than four pages of information on history, role-playing, physical qualities, communities, personality traits, and backgrounds. I found it interesting, especially the bits on primordials creating the genasi themselves to help shape the world and fight the gods, before they retreated into a deep slumber. Unfortunately rather than protected the world as the primordials had hoped, they just ended up fighting each other until the other mortal races managed to get a numbers advantage. Then, to make matters worse, the sorcerer-kings managed to drain most of the life out of the world. So…yeah. They’d better hope that the primordials don’t wake up, cause I don’t think they’ll just slap their children on the wrist.

Anyway, I like that it  just comes out and explains some things, which is great for providing a prospecting DM with some solid history to go off of, as keeping the past undefined can be just as limiting for world-building. I also like that genasi aren’t exactly painted in a good light: they don’t seem to particularly like the mortal races, what with the whole killing the planet with life-draining magic, so they could make great villains. Unfortunately, this kind of limits the backstories that would easily allow integration into a party. I suppose since they seem to hate defliers and sorcerer-kings more than about anything else, you could always fall back to that…assuming that’s the aim of your campaign.

On the crunchy side of things, there’s four new elemental manifestations: embersoul, magmasoul, sandsoul, and sunsoul.

• Embersoul: You gain a bonus to Reflex and to saves against ongoing fire damage. You also gain ashfall evasion, which lets you explode into a zone of ashes that removes you from play and deals damage to enemies that end their turn there. 
• Magmasoul: You gain a bonus to Fortitude, and when you take fire damage, you deal bonus fire damage. You gain flowing magma, which turns you into a being of, well, magma. You can’t be subjected to forced movement, are slowed, and deal automatic damage to creatures that end their turn next to you.
• Sandsoul: You gain a bonus to Athletics and Acrobatics and a bonus against conditions that hamper your movement. You also gain sandslide, which makes you insubstantial and lets you move through enemies squares, as well as go through any opening larger than a grain of sand. Very cool.
• Sunsoul: You gain a bonus to saves against ongoing damage based around fire or radiant, and you don’t suffer any problems in the temperature extremes (including sun sickness). Finally, you gain sun flare, which is an AoE that triggers when you’re bloodied, causing you to make an attack that imposes attack penalties to creatures you hit (unless they are bloodied, in which case they are blinded instead). It also deals fire AND radiant damage, limiting resistances. My favorite out of the bunch.

The desert voice paragon path offers a lot of flexibility. The level 11 class features allow you to shift whenever you crit with a totem, gain a new manifestation from the ones in the article, and can deafen and slide creatures close to you when you burn an Action Point. The level 16 one provides a boost to any manifestations that you have, from increasing the range, to preventing creatures from standing up, to dealing automatic damage.

• The level 11 power is a close blast 5 that deals damage, pushes targets you hit, and imposes an attack penalty for a turn.
• The level 12 utility grants temp hps and recharges one of your elemental manifestations.
• The level 20 attack is a nice area burst that creatures a zone and deals automatic damage to creatures caught in it. You can also sustain it and make an attack that slows and deals ongoing damage to creatures inside it. It’s nice that you can maintain it on the off chance that creatures get knocked back in, but you can’t move it at all, so that kinda sucks.

Finally, the four genasi feats are all boosters for the manifestations. Pretty typical stuff, here.

The crunch works in any setting, and is really cool for genasi players. The fluff is intended for Dark Sun, but I could see the creation myth being used in any campaign setting. It’s certainly better than the varied, vague ideas pitched in past Winning/Playing Race articles. It’s also good for DMs looking for a solid Athasian villain.

The Vault of Darom Madar Review

A long time ago two merchant houses got into a fuss over selling the same products, and one took it upon himself to “eliminate the competition” (cue maniacal laughter). Literally. However, the other saw what was coming and did the sensible thing by gathering up all his shit and hiding it where it would be conveniently found when the plot felt it appropriate. Fortunately for the party, that time is now.

The Vault of Darom Madar is the heartwarming tale of a group of adventures robbing someone else’s tomb for a cut of the personal gain. So, it’s like most D&D adventures. It has has two major things going for it; the first is that it takes place in Dark Sun, and the second is that it’s written by Aeryn “Blackdirge” Rudel (whose first name I can now correctly write without looking at it first). It’s intended to take place directly after Sand Raiders (a short adventure included in the back of Dark Sun Campaign Setting), so there’s some synergy to be had if you are one of “those guys” that actually runs the adventures out of the campaign books. If you don’t, then who gives a fuck? This one’s also for 1st-level characters.

This is the first time I’ve seen Aeryn venture out of the Chaos Scar, and he takes advantage of this freedom by dragging the party through several skill challenges and numerous combat encounters as they cross the desert in order to earn their treasure parcels. Many of the combat encounters involve bandits or assassins trying to jump your characters, which keeps with the whole survival-of-the-fittest theme, though for variety a few of the random encounters are all about flaunting the deadly fauna native to the wastes. I particularly like how the solo undead near the end of the adventure is designed; no double-attack or even reliable means to hit multiple targets, instead having the ability to do a recharging small AoE attack and when bloodied can potentially dominate targets, which is a method to work in those extra actions.

At any rate, it looks to be a great primer for people new to Dark Sun, as well as groups who’ve toured the sands before and want to quickly get back into Athas. Despite its meatier fare the adventure looks short enough to get through in a session or two and sets up future adventures by providing the party with a fresh new nemesis to fuck with them.