The Heirs of Ruin, Play Report 9

After a three-week hiatus we finally managed to get in a short session. Having liberated some treasure from some gith mummies, they proceeded through the canyon until they reached the entrance to the gith’s cave. A bunch of gith were gathered outside, doing gith things and playing gith games. Some were stationed on top of rocky spires (using a terrain feature out of Creature Catalog).

The group was able to sneak up and gain a surprise round, though no one bothered trying to topple the spires, which sucks because that would have made it easier for them to take out the hobblers. Did you know those fuckers deal like, 2d6 + 5 damage on their default ranged attack? Even worse, they can roll on a save-ends immobilize, which made it hard for Branor to keep them off of his allies. Despite the elevated terrain and minions, the battle dragged on for awhile due to all of the terrible, terrible rolls, though eventually they succeeded and entered the cave to look for silver and captives.

Deep inside the cave they found a whole bunch of gith gathered around firepits, dining under the light of psionically charged crystals on what could only have been the torsos of human-like victims. Again, despite Branor’s heavy armor and lack of a Dexterity modifier, they managed to gain another surprise round. Most of the encounter was a cluster-fuck of gith minions coupled with a handful of artillery that hung back and tried to pin them down. Again, bad rolls caused it to drag out again, as well as deplete them far worse than it had any right to. 

At any rate, that is where things ended. Long night, longer fights. Hopefully next week there will be better pacing and a stronger focus.

The Heirs of Ruin, Play Report 8

The characters arrived at South Ledopolos and met with the Stoneblood clan to inform them about the fate of Baranus. They buried his bones and held a wake, telling stories and drinking drinks the likes of which could even get a dwarf drunk. Branor asked about any legends concerning the purported city to the west, and got some stock-legend tropes about it once being a great dwarf city that was destroyed during a great war. If nothing else, it reinforced the fact that something was out there. Maximus met with a former war buddy of his, who–after hearing about him being tried with treason, the murdered family, and having to flee Balic–offered him a job cleaning gith out of a cave that he strongly suspected contained silver.

Seeing as they were preparing a trip to the Giant’s Rib Mountains, he figured that extra coin couldn’t hurt.

The next day after their hangovers were cured they set out for the nearby hills, but quickly got caught in a sandstorm. While waiting it out they saw would could only be described as a massive chunk of ground drift overhead, and though the storm soon ended they were quickly spotted by foraging jhakars. They killed the jhakars and scavenged them for survival days before pressing on. After another hour of climbing–or teleporting in the case of the shardmind–they found a cave entrance sealed by a boulder, with a strange symbol painted on it. Being seasoned grave robbers adventurers, they moved the boulder and soon realized from the smell that it was a tomb containing a trio of gith mummies. 

Though their touch prevented Maximus from healing Branor–who was toe-to-toe with all three of them–they were able to rapidly destroy them, and once they got it down to one Sardis just marked it with her aegis and kept away, making it very difficult to land any additional hits. Later I realized that I had intended them for a party of three, and with five people I really should have added a fourth. Oh well, easy 750 XP for them. My main regret is that no one contracted mummy rot.

The Heirs of Ruin: Broken Bonds Adventure

The compiled and organized notes for the first adventure from my home campaign, The Heirs of Ruin, can be found here.

The belgoi commands it.

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: Meet Hakaar

Here is the stat block for the “end boss” for the first adventure in The Heirs of Ruin. I wanted to give him some other multi-attack ability aside from a stock double attack, and ended up giving him a minor action and ability to spread the fire damage around when its not his turn.

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 3

This was a pretty short session as Randy and Beth arrived a bit later than usual due to work, and we had to introduce a new player. Most of the session was devoted to the initial party discovering that they were being followed by an assassin-lead squad of soldiers, “dealing” with them, and learning that the assassin did not really want to be in the business anymore.

So, hey, free striker.

Once the dialogue wrapped up they continued skulking about the sewers looking for a way out, soon stumbling upon a large pile of bones that animated and tried to kill them. The fight was not terribly difficult on paper; some skeleton minions, dwarf skeletons, and an eladrin skeleton that still knew how to use wind magic. All in all the fight had a XP budget of 600 I think. However, one of the eladrin skeleton’s powers–blinding wind–did a hefty amount of damage along with a blind kicker, but only recharged on a six. The problem? I rolled that six, in front of my players, three times in a row.

The pile of bones was intended to be a major terrain feature, being difficult terrain and causing creatures to fall over if they got subjected to forced movement and failed an Acrobatics check, but because the skeleton kept blinding everyone never really had a chance to use its other spells that could knock them about. So…oh well. After smashing all the skeletons, the ghost of a dwarf manifested over the bones, but it was getting late so we decided to leave it at a cliffhanger.

Anywho, here are some pics of the game table, since I kept saying that I would take some and forgetting:

The Heirs of Ruin: Method Mapping

I really dislike drawing maps, so often I try to play out the events of the adventure in my head to get a feel for what might happen (as opposed to what I would like to happen), usually resigning myself to the task of mapping a day or two before game night.

The campaign started out with the players going through a few arena battles before having an ideal chance of escape when a silk wyrm starts wreaking havoc on the place. The intent is that after escaping that they go through a door leading to the mess hall, beat up the guards in there, head into the kitchen, and then use a waste disposal pit to get to the sewers.

When I was writing up the adventure, I figured that not all the guards would get eaten by the silk wyrm, instead fleeing and locking the door behind them, giving the characters extra incentive into taking the other door. The problem is that that whole thing is contingent on the characters not interfering with the guards, and not being slaughtered by a level 3 solo.

When I ran it, the wyrm eventually ran away on its own and the guards followed it, making sure to lock up the prison from the outside. The players armed themselves with loot from the dead guards, and then proceeded as planned when I had a squad of guards show up in the mess hall looking for escapees.

Ultimately it felt like that there was too much that could go wrong, and in the interest of helping things run more smoothly the next time I run (or put it online) I decided to make some hefty cuts to the previous map, making it a bit more straightforward in its purpose. I put the waste disposal in the same room, figuring that it made sense because those cells are not going to clean themselves and it gives the guards a place to go. I also put the whole structure underground, making a lift necessary to access the place. Makes sense, as slaves–as well as dangerous monsters–will now have a very hard time getting out this way.