The Elder Elemental Eye: Week 3 Play Report

My local hobby store generally gives me the Lair Assault and D&D Encounters packets, so that on the off chance that I am needed I can run them. This “off-chance” occurred three weeks in, with two players, both strikers (an elementalist and a monk). Thankfully I’d had some experience running with a group like this. After a quick recap on how they had arrived in the plagued village, found out about the Elemental Eye, and were attacked on their way to find their lair, I told them that they had stumbled into an expansive badlands, and asked how they would go about trying to find the Elemental Eye.

The skill challenge here is really well written, and strays pretty far from the original model of “garner x successes before y failures”. Namely there are a lot of group skill checks, and not all checks incur failures, instead either costing healing surges or modify the DCs of other skill checks. Mostly I like that it kept both players trying, instead of just relying on one player with a massive bonus making all the skill checks. I also really liked the win-lose results; you either learn about an upcoming drow camp, or wander into the middle of it and get ambushed.

There is also an alright social role-play instance with a galeb dhur (earth elemental type thing). Given that I only had two players, I had him sink into the ground after talking to him, only to pop up later during the fight against the row to interrupt a charging spider. Speaking of the drow, I drastically altered their stats; reduced damage,  having each take a few good hits before going down, stuff that I’d been doing in my home games for the past few months. The other player (the one I do not normally game with) didn’t even notice, and both seemed to have a great time.

I really pleased with how the module runs. I have noticed the quality of Encounters gradually improving each time, moving away from an hour-long (or longer) to something that you would more reasonably expect at a home game. I am actually hoping that I get to run again this week, as I left them at the entrance of the dungeon with the galeb dhur in tow and wanna see how it all pans out.

Beyond the Crystal Cave: Encounter 1

Given that the day I am scheduled to run Encounters at Knightfall Games fell on a holiday I did not have the chance to run it, so instead of a play report I am just going to give my thoughts on how the first encounter is written.

The session opens up with the characters waiting for Count Varis, who has summoned them for various reasons. He feeds them the plot–two people have gone missing, and if they are not found there could be problems between Crystalbrook and Sildaine–gives them some cash, and sends them on their way. While going to Crystalbrook they are attacked by xivorts, which after defeating them gives them the street cred required to talk to Lady Tamora, who gives them more information before they go to Sildaine to talk to the quest herald there. Eventually the session wraps up under the assumption that the characters are going to the Crystal Cave.

At a glance the hook is pretty weak, and a lot of the interactions and dialogue seem rushed, which is understandable because the Encounters format is intended to be wrapped up in an hour or two. This also leads me to the other problem, which is that I could see players who did not attend week 0 (which in my store no one did), and having the issue where they end up having to shoehorn their character into the plot. I ran into this in the past while running Songs of Erui; a player showed up with a warforged fighter and basically had to tag along with the rest of the group because they are on a time-sensitive mission. It can work, but it can also easily detract from social roleplaying.

The actual encounter part looked alright. The characters face off against a band of seven xivorts, some bloodied and one missing an encounter power, as they harass some locals of Crystalbrook. There is some difficult terrain, but the real heavyweight is the mist, which creates a really big lightly obscuring zone that moves at the start of each turn. The townsfolk kind of hang around the edges. I guess you could have them try and jump in if things go badly (which they should not), or just give the characters someone to actually rescue besides an empty town square.

Things I Would Change
I would have added more buildings (and actually furnished them if they were going to be open) and just yanked the food carts. It does not looks like a half-ass mashing of a street and market square. Also some things that the characters could drag and drop to give themselves cover against the ranged attackers (like a barrel or something). Finally, even if I did not want to actually have guards in the combat, I would at least add in some flavor text indicating that the guards were actually there doing stuff. Failing that, I would at least have been dead guards on the map to show that they were around to do their job.

Oh yeah, I would also have someone aside from the town drunk be the one to vouch for them after everything was said and done.

March of the Phantom Brigade, Week 4

After brawling with a pair of oozes, the heroes returned from their scouting mission and reported the ruins to be currently clear of any threats that their Passive Perceptions could detect. With that technicality out of the way, the caravan pulled up stakes and made its way into the ruins of Castle Inverness. Once inside the civilians began to unload the wagons and setup shelters, when suddenly a ghostly tower appear over the central ring of ruined stones, which rapidly solidified into an actual tower with strangely (more so?) lacked any visible entrance. Splintershield and the other priests sprung into action, beginning a ritual that would consecrate the ruined foundation, and ideally stop anymore ghost buildings from popping up.

Unfortunately there was the more pressing matter of an undead horde, which would have been pounding on their gate if they had one.

The encounter started out simple enough: a trio of zombies and a bunch of decrepit skeletons shambled towards the castle. They had the advantage of higher ground and a choke point. That, and I rolled a 0 for the zombies’ initiative. The scout went first, rushing the closest zombie and killing it with a crit (zombie weakness). Burning an action point, he then killed another zombie with a crit. I’m just glad that he nothing else was nearby for him to swat with his off-hand weapon.

Randy was here this time, playing a White Well fey-pact hexblade with lots of radiant attacks, which allowed him to slip into melee and bloody the last zombie with a single hit. Liz’s thief managed to reduce it to a single hit point with a well-thrown dagger, but the tiefling mage couldn’t polish it off before it got the chance to miss Randy with a grab attack. Luckily, the eight decrepit skeletons were able to surround the scout and Randy to get several hits in. Last but not least, the sentinel wrapped up the round by crushing a skeleton (every kill counts).

On round two, the players took down a few skeletons, but somehow were unable to breach all 13 points of the zombie’s AC (even hitting it’s whopping 11 Reflex proved to be a Herculean task). Things got even worse when undead clambered out of the ground before anyone else could go. Yeah, they weren’t able to act, but surrounded almost everyone so that the ones that could act got combat advantage. Most of the heroes spent their turns taking out a skeleton, but the tiefling turned everything around when she used fountain of flame, an area burst 1 that deals damage and creates a zone that deals automatic damage to any enemy that enters the zone, or starts its turn there.

This not only took out most of the skeletons and immolated the last zombie, but incinerated more undead when they tried to pop up on the next round. With just ten or so skeletons left, they were on the home stretch, so I had some more zombies pop up with the next wave to make the encounter actually challenging, as well as give some of the new guys a XP boost. With everyone but the tiefling packing a full rollout of encounter and daily powers, it was just a matter of time before they won. Really, the worst I did was 20 damage to Randy’s character with a max-damage grapple-punch.

One round later, they found themselves victorious. Most of the players lacked any treasure from rolling poorly at other tables on previous weeks, so I threw them a bone in the form of a +1 luck blade. Since NO one but Liz used a blade of any sort, it went to her, and she passed her amulet off to someone else to keep things fair. Despite the heavily stacked odds and XP budget, this was a pretty easy encounter. Next week, its time to check out the ghost tower, which sounds like something about of a Dr. McNinja comic.

Edit: Oh my fucking god, I forgot to wrap up the chapter with the role-playing encounter at the end…well, I’ll just have to do that next week. >_>

March of the Phantom Brigade, Week 3

There was considerably more social interaction this week, as Liz and the crew scouted out the ruins of Castle Inverness. The players, not knowing what to expect, were exceedingly cautious in their investigation. Well, most of them that is. Every player but one tried to sneak towards it, searching for access points and threats, while the warpriest just galloped around it on horseback. I think the idea was that she would try to make herself an obvious target, so as to make it easier on the rest of the party.

When nothing happened, the warpriest then strode towards what amounted to a gate and loudly proclaimed her presence. Everyone else? Quietly creeping up a wall some ways away. Again, nothing happened, which just intensified their paranoia. The explored the graveyard, and were relieved (disappointed?) when nothing clambered out to attack them. They checked the shattered towers, which contained no gargoyles, swarms of murderous avians, or even kenku. I feel like there’s a Doctor Seuss verse coming on…it came without oozes, it came without rats, it came without boxes of treasure and traps!

Eventually, they did stumble on the encounter: a pair of ochre jellies kicking back in the fountain. The clue is that out of everything in the ruins, the fountain is the only thing that isn’t overgrown with vegetation. Liz noticed this right away and made a beeline for it, which was bad because they had a nasty Stealth bonus and were elite brutes. Fortunately, they went almost dead last and had a pretty miserable attack bonus for level 3.

Most of the battle consisted of the mage sitting on top of a wall, blasting both oozes with arc lightning, while the scouts carved up one, and the thief and warpriest took the other. As brutes, they had a lot of hit points, and when bloodied neatly divided into two smaller critters. Yeah, you divvy up the hit points, but their damage output doesn’t change. I really like this because they deal 2d6 + a lot of acid damage initially, and when they get bloodied basically get to make two attacks. Oh, and since they can shift it makes it very easy to flank for a better attack bonus.

It was a really nasty fight, especially with the lack of a defender, and I almost took down three of the characters. The warpriests ability to grant damage resistance with her at-will, plus a well-timed sun burst (everyone gets a save) alleviated much of the damage, while having three strikers made whittling through the hit points a quick task. In the end, I think they were expecting more…harrowing, considering they were skulking about a purportedly haunted castle.

The only consolation prize was a basic amulet of protection, though Liz and another player found an interesting cornerstone with ancient writing on it. Spoiler: it’s not pertinent to the plot, but more of an easter egg for those who played in Greyhawk. I hope they aren’t expecting something, well, useful out of it. Oh, they also learned the name of a woman from a past adventuring party. It’s also not a need to know thing, but foreshadows a future encounter. Next week, they get to hold off a horde of undead as the priests try to cleanse the ruins.

EDIT: Liz also got her first Fortune Card reward, Indestructible (or some such).

March of the Phantom Brigade, Play Report 2

I’d gotten along really well with the group from my first week of running Encounters, so it kind of sucked that this week all of them (including Liz) ended up at another table, meaning that I had to start from scratch with a new group and figure out what they did last week in order to maintain continuity. Apparently, they did a lot worse, taking a few causalities during the stirge attack–including some of their own. Regardless, Malgram determined that they were capable of handling themselves, and left the soon-to-be-scholar Faldyra in their charge so that she could go rummage in the woods for non-descript “rare herbs”.

Remember, splitting up the party is never a bad idea.

The encounter this week was variable, with a modifier depending on if you went into the mountains or stuck to the forest. Since this group ventured into the mountains, they got to take on a pack of hungry drakes. These classic 4E baddies came in two flavors, guard and spitting. Guard drakes are a soldier-type that deals a lot more damage when they’re close to an ally. I described it as the drake becoming notably more frenzied when its kin were nearby, hinting that the party should try to divvy them up asap. Spitters on the other hand are an artillery with a particularly nasty ranged acid attack, which deals out 11 damage on average (compared to a somewhat tamer 7-point bite).

The thief went first, rushing into melee. She hit with a basic melee coupled with a backstab, and managed to retroactively lump on Sneak Attack the following round when we realized that she has combat advantage for that initial attack. Fortunately, I rolled initiative for each type of drake separately, otherwise she would have been tagged with five attack rolls. On the same note, I also missed with both guard drakes. Bleh.

The cavalier trundled up and managed to capture both drakes in his aura. That was fine, since they were both
close enough to benefit from the damage boost. The tiefling caster (wizard, I think) kept double-tapping them with lightning, the enchanter tried to get the spitters to bite each other, and the hunter AoE-ed everything with arrows (usually missing, even with aspect of the wolf). The highlight of the night was when the enchanter managed to hit every single monster with burning hands. Though he missed the cavalier, I pointed out that burning hands has a Miss effect, so he ended up taking a couple points of damage.

Oh well, that’s what hit point sponges are for.

On the following rounds, the warpriest got into melee with the three spitting drakes, and might have died had he not healed himself, using his at-will to give himself damage resistance, and used second wind with an Action Point. The hunter and tiefling caster tried to help him out with long-range attacks, but weren’t able to kill them before they got off another acid volley. The cavalier–who would have excelled at taking them on in melee thanks to his auto-punishing aura–was busy with two very pissed off guard drakes (1d10 + 9 damage per bite).

Eventually, after several well-placed crits, the thief and tiefling caster managed to take out the guard drakes, allowing everyone to focus on the spitters. They tried to flee, but when half the party has a range of 10 or more…good luck! All in all, this was a very brutal encounter, and I’m due to the damage output of the monsters I’m surprised no one died. Fortune Cards were available, but again weren’t used much (which might have helped even the odds). Despite the close calls and semi-frequent missing, they were an awesome table to game with.

Next week, they finally get to the ruins of Castle Inverness.

March of the Phantom Brigade, Play Report 1

I ran the first session of March of the Phantom Brigade last Tuesday, something that I’ve never done because the local game stores in my area usually have virtually no participants, or unpleasant stereotypes that like to use houserules such as, “spend a standard and move action to pick something up”. No, to find a genuine oasis in my gaming community, Liz and I made a 45-minute trek downtown to Guardian Games. I go there mostly for the early releases, but they’ve also got a large store with a friendly atmosphere.

Only one person brought a legit character, so the other three at my table had to use pregens, resulting in a party of an elf scout, human mage, eladrin warpriest, and human cavalier (played by Liz, since she decided to venture out of her comfort zone of rogues). We didn’t bring Fortune Cards, instead using someone else’s community deck, which was met with almost a universally positive response–even though there wasn’t a noticeable increase in power.

The adventure hook was pretty straightforward: protect a bunch of NPCs as they made their way to the ruins of Castle Inverness so that they could setup kip. Seeing as I recall Castle Inverness originating from a particularly nasty adventure from an older edition, I think they were thinking of the wrong castle. At any rate, they had the chance to interact with a couple of key NPCs–Brother Splintershield and Malgram (sp?)–before heading out on a journey that prompted various Oregon Trail jokes, such as “save versus dysentery”.

The first day everything went accordingly, and people were in high spirits. At the start of the second day they turned off the road, and that’s where things went south in more ways that one. The wagons kept getting damaged, animals had to be tended to, and the constant arguing between Splintershield and Malgram wasn’t helping. At one point they hit a fork, and the characters intervened to help determine their next course: taking a shortcut through mountains, or going the long route through a somewhat more level forest. The scout suggested that the forest would be a lot easier on the wagons and horses. The choice didn’t have an immediate effect, but would help determine a future encounter.

On the third day, calamity struck in the form of four stirges while their wagons were stuck crossing a 10-foot wide, stream, I guess. The setup is that the players are on the other side when the stirges attack. If they attack a commoner, they instantly die. If they hit a horse, well, those have 25 hit points (giving them about 3 rounds). Characters can use a skill check to free a horse, causing it and an adjacent commoner to flee off of the map and granting everyone bonus XP for their trouble.

Thankfully, the stirges went almost last. This gave the cavalier and scout a chance to cross the stream to get into melee, and the mage a chance to zap one with a spell. When it came time for the stirges to act, the one that got shot went after the mage, while the rest went after the closest targets, which happened to be the scout and a horse. Stirges are pretty easy to hit until they get attached to someone, after which they get a +5 to AC and Reflex. Luckily for the scout, both stirges missed him, but not so much for the mage, who would be bloodied by the time her turn started.

While the warpriest and mage tried to get the stirge off, the cavalier and scout spent a few rounds cutting down the pair in front of them. One managed to get ahold of the cavalier, but was chopped off by the scout before it could inflict too much damage. Since stirges cannot make melee basic attacks while attached, the mage was able to blast one off the horse before it died. Combat wrapped up once the warpriest clubbed one off the mage, after which everyone ganged up on the last one.

Everyone had to burn 2-3 healing surges, but since all the NPCs survived they got quite a bit of XP for just one hour-long session (over 200). I assured them that the next session that they’d find something, though it would be random since this season uses a table at the front of the book. Next week, they’ll get to meet a new NPC and tackle a random encounter.

Hexblade Impressions

I got to try out the infernal-pact hexblade as part of D&D Encounters tonight, which was a blast for two reasons; the first is that I was the only person in the general area aside from Shazbot that had a copy of Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms, but the second is that I like being able to conjure up a hellish sword of dark energy that deals 14 damage on average. Reminds me of the end of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.

It was the grand finale of Chapter 1, which had us stumble into a clearing while searching for someone. I don’t recall the exact plot behind the encounter because the store owner was doing it on the fly and hadn’t really read up on things. All I know is that it was a storm warpriest, dwarf slayer, and me up against a trio of lizardfolk, dragonborn, and “crazy guy”. Despite having a new guy and being outnumbered, we kicked all kinds of ass.

Unfortunately, it was only one encounter so I can’t say for certain how well the class holds up in the long term, but its a solid concept that I wholly endorse. The hit points and damage output are superb, and the Armor Class ain’t too shabby. Having Charisma and Constitution as two key stats (go tiefling racial mods!), combined with the class bonus, ensures that my Fortitude and Will are pretty high to boot. Finally, since one at-will is usable as a melee basic makes Strength a pretty distant concern, and I think I’ll focus more on Intelligence for a better Reflex and Arcana.

Since the store owner gave me a copy of both Chapter 1 and 2 for Keep on the Borderlands, I might use it for my own group for play reports.