Scions of Punjar: Session 2

I was unable to run our biweekly Punjar game last week due to a pretty bad case of food poisoning, although I suppose I got what I asked for, ordering tacos at 2am at the local 24 hour hole-in-the-wall. We also got off to a late start, by about 2 hours, due to a really long and engaging discussion about 4th Edition, mechanics and game theory in relation to previous editions of D&D. It really is exciting to see people so enthusiastic about and interested in 4th Edition. Antioch and I were recently discussing how so many new people are stepping up to the plate and getting behind the screen, and how everything really is more “accessible and elegant”.

When we last left off the party entered the bandit lair in the abandoned iron mines and had taken out a group of orc guards and forced the last remaining orc of the group to surrender. Jester and Bart used their “persuasiveness” to learn that these orcs had taken up residence in the mines when the ore dried up and the humans left. The group of bandits entered the mines and offered them easy work and decent pay as guards in exchange for use of the mines, and they learned that the bandit leader was called Haledon. He also traded, in exchange for his life, the info that the bandits have been hired by some human witch to exhume bodies for her. The party let the orc go, and as soon as he walked over to a table to gather his things he began pulling on a rope hanging from the wall. The next thing the orc knew he had a kukri buried in his face.

The party then proceeded down a long uphill corridor that contained a mine cart track, obviously an area for transporting ore. Even though the group failed perception checks, most of the group rolled higher than the mine cart trap on initiative, moving out of the way as the flaming mine cart laden with spears and axe blades came rolling down the track. Amanda’s character was able to dodge the mine cart, however the cart exploded into flames as it rolled off the end of the track and hit the wall and she took some heavy fire damage. After this the party engaged an elite ranger and an elite rogue (the ones who had set the mine cart trap) and seemed to have a pretty easy time with this encounter mostly due to the bard and tempest fighter taking out the rogue pretty quick.

After this the party proceeded on and basically plowed through 2 different rooms that served as barracks that were full of bandits. These encounters were a lot of fun and took up much of the session. Before I go on I should note that Amanda begged me to let her change her doppelganger sorcerer for a deva druid, which was fine by me. I can totally picture a deva druid living out in the Great Black Swamp which surrounds Punjar. Anyways in these encounters the druid was able to do some decent damage to the weaker bandits with her Flame Seed attack as the bard and tempest fighter ganged up on the bigger guys. Amongst all this Bart the minotaur was wailing on any bandit brave enough to step up to the front lines. After looting all of the bodies and ransacking the rooms, including a couple of other empty rooms and stumbling upon a small – ok huge – treasure stash the group moved on.

Honestly, I think the only real complaint I or Antioch have about the Dungeon Crawl Classics so far is the treasure parcels. Back when I ran Forges of the Mountain King I handed the module over to Antioch and let him just totally redesign all of the the treasure in the module to sync with the treasure parcel list in the DMG. While this has been my favorite DCC so far the treasure handed out to the party seems more than a little too generous. One parcel to note, in the Cleric’s Chamber in the bandit lair, the party can stumble upon 55 platinum pieces after a DC 25 thievery check. I have decided not to fix it this time and just see how much money the party ends up with at the end of this adventure, and check it to their level to see if it’s unbalanced.

Moving on, the party stumbled upon said Ceric’s Chamber and explored it a little, and spied a man holding a flaming longsword watching them from the hall a bit ahead of them. When they spotted him he immediately turned around and entered another room, slamming a door behind him.

I think it was Bart who kicked the door in, finding Haledon, the finely dressed bandit leader, sitting at his desk, watching them and looking a bit defeated. Talibah the tiefling bard stepped up and Antioch rolled pretty high on his Diplomacy check.

They were able to find out more about the “witch” who had hired the bandits to exume bodies for her in Punjar’s vast graveyard, but that even he had not seen her, only communicating through her raven familiar. He knew that she was living in the old abandoned windmill, but has been too afraid to approach it. They learned that she was raising the bodies as undead minions and stashing them in various places around Punjar and that she was planning to attack someone within Punjar very soon. One of the main places she was stashing the undead was in some family tomb inside Punjar’s graveyard ward known as the City of the Dead. The party wondered if it was the same tomb they have been hired to investigate by the Dev’shirs.

Haledon tried to reason with them that he was just trying to make a living the same way they were and that their paths just happen to cross. There was no reason to fight as the party had taken out most of the band he had spent so much time and resources building. That didn’t really work too well with Jester and Bart however. Also, as a way to scale down on the raining of treasure I role played Haledon into guilt-tripping the party from taking his +2 flaming longsword, stating that it was a family heirloom and that they could even have the clothes on his back if they would only leave him his sword. It worked. 😉

Knowing that they would be facing a lot of undead the group agreed that the next place to go was back into Punjar and see if they might be able to hire a cleric or paladin to take along with them to the tomb. We lost Adrian for this and the rest of the adventure who was playing Bart due to personal reasons, so Josh and Antioch have been taking turns playing Bart. I’m still deciding if the best course of action is take take Bart out, replacing him with a cleric of the same level, or have the party hire a 1st level cleric NPC. We shall see.

*Update

I am considering making the search for the cleric as maybe an urban skill challenge, though Antioch’s bard has a high Streetwise score. Suggestions are welcome.

Scions of Punjar: Session 1

*Spoilers*

Cast:

Jester – Halfling Tempest Fighter
Talibah – Tiefling Bard
Bart – Minotaur Fighter
Ayla – Doppleganger Chaotic Sorcerer
Willy – Halfling Rogue

The premise of the hook for this adventure was that the current party was the same group who had been previously hired by Punjar’s Thieves Guild to take out someone called The Beggar King, and by eliminating him eliminating a threat to the entire city. This is when I ran Sellswords of Punjar a few months back. Since Players Handbook 2 previews are out I let the players in the group make new characters, as long as we assumed this was the same adventuring band from the previous adventure. Anyways, after dispatching the Beggar King rumor of the event spread and the group started bulding a reputation within Punjar, reaching one Lady Dev’shir, of a minor noble family within Punjar, who’s foppish son Elam had discovered a family heirloom ( a necklace) in a pawn shop – an heirloom that was known to be buried in the family tomb. Enraged by this and the fact that her son was visiting the pawn shops and therefore gambling again she sent him, alone, to a tavern known as the Laughing Manitcore within the Devil’s Thumb ward of Punjar, where the band of sellswords were known maintain as a base of operations.

As Elam entered the Laughing Manticore, early in the afternoon, he immediately spotted the party as they were the only ones in the place. Incredibly nervous at being in this part of town, Elam approached the group and stutteringly came right out with the proposal, that “Mother” was willing to hire them for a job, and pay a hefty sum to have it taken care of. Bart could smell Elam’s fear and jocularly put his arm around Elam, disturbing him more as Jester continued to throw large knives at a dart board on the wall. Part of the deal, Elam told them as beads of sweat poured from his forehead, was that they must escort him back home.

The Party met with Lady Dev’shir at the family estate where she further explained the job, the pay of 1,000 gp each, and gave the party directions to both the pawn shop and the Dev’shir family tomb. The party decided to investigate the pawn shop, hoping to find any leads as to who had sold the necklace.

The party entered Oskar’s Pawn shop and began to ask about the necklace, finding Oskar to be quite tight lipped. When diplomacy didn’t work Bart had to be held back from tearing up the place. It was Intimidate Skill Test time and he successfully made his intimidate checks and Oskar reluctantly informed them that he received it from a regular customer name Latimer, but did not know where Latimer acquired it. This is one of the best parts of the module to me so far – the listed Skill Tests for interacting with Oskar. I really like 4th Edition Skill Challenges, and despite what some grognards say, it does leave social role playing in tact. It actually makes it more challenging while making the character’s actual abilities a factor. So much for 4E’s loss of realism. Anyway Oskar also informed them that Latimer can usually be found at a tavern known as the Famished Froghemoth, and gave them a description of the half-orc. Because Talibah did roll some good numbers during her Diplomacy Skill Test, I did not have Oskar alert the Souk (ward) guard, and the party headed for the tavern – leaving the shop intact ;).

The party entered the bustling tavern and started to discreetly ask around about Latimer, well almost discreetly. Bart decided to intimidate one of the serving wenches (rolling really high) and she angrily told him that he was a regular gambler here, then not so politely told him to leave. All the while Talibah was sitting down near the hearth playing her flute. After a short while the group noticed a very suspicious looking tiefling with two thugs enter the place, obviously looking around for someone or something. Not long after that the front door opens and a half-orc matching Latimers description starts to walk in, eying the tiefling he gasps and turns right around, the three pursuing him out the door. The party quickly follows and initiative is rolled, the fight taking place in a back alley.

The two thugs are disposed and the party makes a deal with the tiefling – that he can have Latimer, they just want to question him first, and he accepts, knowing that continuing the fight would not be in his favor. Latimer is intimidated into spilling the beans: that he is a member of a group of bandits who have been holding up in an abandonded iron mine outside the city, where it is located, and that they have been hired by some spooky witch to exhume bodies from the City of the Dead ward. He doesn’t know why and doesn’t care, only happy to be pocketing shiny trinkets off the corpses he can sell for gambling money. Armed with the information they leave Latimer to his fate and head back to the Dev’shir estate.

Lady Dev’shir is only more infuriated by this information and the pay is raised to 1,200 gp each if the party can put a stop to whatever it is that’s going on. She urges them to go to the family tomb to make sure it is secure, however the party decides to head straight for the bandit’s lair. “Fish rot from the head down,” Talibah remarked.

The party made their way into the abandoned iron mine and snuck up on a group of orcs sitting around a table, playing a game of knucklebones. They took out all but one, including an orc cleric, and forced him onto surrendering, and this is where the session ended. It’s always best to end a session on a cliffhanger, even when it’s one as simple as that.

Overall I really like this module, and the group really liked it as well. Looking forward to the next session.

The two dollar module is back!

The two dollar module is back! This 4E-compatible module sends the heroes to an ancient cave occupied by cultists dedicated to the Mists of Madness. Defended by ancient death traps and weird arcane seals, the caves conceal an antediluvian vault, the resting place of an archlich whose reign predates recorded history in the Known Realms. Undisturbed for untold eons, now the machinations of the cultists and their eladrin master threaten to awaken the archlich, to dire ends that none can predict. From Goodman Games.

Check it out! Click here

The Forgotten Portal Playtest & Review

Whelp, last night we sat down to both play The Forgotten Portal and tryout a few of the preview classes from Player’s Handbook 2. Red Jason can probably comment more about his experience as a bladeling invoker, so I’ll try to adhere strictly to the adventure bits, starting with the bad.

There are several typos where silver is written as sliver, and some of the treasure seemed a bit much in the early parts of the adventure. I’m generally pretty flexible on the whole treasure parcel system, but by the time they walked out of the caves they’d amassed almost 1,400 gp and a pair of +2 items. In hindsight there were only four of them, but without any kind of parcel list its difficult to figure out just how much loot I should remove without going through the entire adventure and documenting every cent like some kind of achaeologist accountant.
To put things in perspective since I am such a rules whore, 1,400 gp is the equivalent of the item parcels 5, 6, 7, and almost 8 for a level 4 party (DMG, pg 126).

Back to the adventure, we managed to just get out of the cavern before stopping, which had us plow through three encounters involving a few solo bouts and an extremely dangerous level 10 elite. At level four.
Red Jason ran into a similar problem in Forges of the Mountain King where a level 1 party had to face off against a couple level 8 zombies, but its really a simple fix to downgrade them to more manageable challenges: I just sheared off a few points from each defense and reduced the hit points by a percentage. More importantly, I did this all on the fly once I noticed it.
To summarize, I would more carefully consider the placement and difficulty of elite and solo monsters. They are already harder to hit than a normal monster, and the ramped up hit points can turn things into a slog-fest as the players try to gradually whittle through ten tons of hit points.
One of the players took issue with the at-will charge that inflicts a save-ends stun condition. Most monsters of the heroic tier have it last for a turn, or after a failed save, but the ghoul can actually do a kind of setup on a stun with its bite. I think its certainly incredibly dangerous given the nature of the fight, and probably would have reduced it to stunned with a dazed aftereffect, myself.
Finally, I would have preferred that the map was displayed right before the actual encounters are setup (aka, delve-format), but I suppose that by sticking it on the back cover you wont have any difficulties locating it. Still, I like the delve format because it helps you figure out precisely where things are meant to go. To be clear, this is really more of a nit-picky issue.

On the flipside, there isnt a lot of setup to The Forgotten Portal within the actual book, but its very easy for a DM to drop this into an established campaign. I mean, if you have a jungle in there somewhere, you’re good to go. I dont know all the workings of the world-as-written by Goodman Games, so we just picked a hook that everyone agreed on and I dropped them into the jungle right smack in front of the waterfall. This was fine because, hey, its just a playtest session.
After that its a mad trek through monster infested caverns before arriving at the village Teputzittoloc, after which point the party ventures into an ancient pyramid at the behest of the distraught villagers there. There’s more to it than that, but I dont want to spoil the plot beyond what I just did. The adventure was an enjoyable read (very much like a Conan story) and also easy to run. Very pulp, if thats your sort of thing.

As a kind of “acid test”, I didnt actually read much of it before hand just so I could see how hard it would be to run as a pickup sort of thing, and the ride was smooth almost the entire way. Granted, we only got through a few encounters, but I’m confident that if we continue it next week I wont need to study it before then.
All in all, Goodman Games does an excellent job of setting the stage and delivering as much solid adventure as they can. Red Jason was a bit put off by the initial price tag, but I think its safe to say that he certainly got what he paid for, even though we only got through about a quarter of the adventure. The first few encounters were fun and very easy to narrate. I like the aztec-theme of the adventure, which isnt something you see a whole lot. The names of monsters, NPCs, and what-have-you are very hard to pronounce (meaning that I basically cant), but it adds to the exotic flavor and makes for good times as the players try to do it themselves.

I like that the adventure has an implied time limit, in that if they can get there and back fast enough they can get a free ride out of the jungle. Not a lot of adventures have this kind of restriction, but its good because it helps usher the players forward and avoiding the one-encounter-a-day syndrome where they just take extended rests whenever they feel like because, well, they can. I think my group often underestimates their capabilities, and this helped them press forward even when they’d expended their action points and dailies.
Presumably if they for some reason fail, it’ll be an arduous trek through wilderness and Skill Challenges before they can find civilization again. Its mostly an in-character reason, since in reality a Skill Challenge is just extra XP…
…and speaking of XP I want to shift back to the encounters for a bit to laud the author on the encounter with frogs, of all things. Very engaging and required a lot of thinking from the group, since they could blind characters on a hit, and were free to leap about the incredibly-hard-to-climb pillars, just out of Reach. My only nit-pick here is that since the venom blinds them on a hit, that it might have worked better as a secondary attack or recharge power. Otherwise, very fun encounter. For me, anyway.

I can really see how things have changed in since Sellswords of Punjar (the only other DCC that I read). First, the book is a lot thicker and felt more durable. The adventure seems to have more background and is easier to read through. They dont go into as much depth as Pathfinder, which is a very good thing, instead giving you what I consider to be the right amount of background that although only the DM gets to know, doesnt occupy the lion’s share of the module. For a $16 adventure, I think its definitely worth the money.