The 3.5 Red Hand Of Doom Handbook for DMs [Major spoilers!] - WIP, PEACH!

[Saintheart]

I wonder what the impact would be, on missing out your airsupport elves. Does it really matter, or is it just flavor?

Mostly flavour as far as the VP count is concerned. The owls sure as hell couldn't take on Abithriax (only PCs with well-adapted boots for wading in blood are allowed to do that sort of thing ;) ) but the Hand does seem to have access to manticores (a couple of them show up, I think, in the Battle of Brindol) and certain a chimaera at least. If those flying opponents are being used in the battle that's a fairly significant advantage since they allow aerial recon, dropping stuff on people, and manticores are viable archers against low-level NPC troopers. I think it's implied that these are the targets that the flying elves are meant to be engaging against, and without them Brindol's defenders are at something of a disadvantage. And if your party hasn't learned how to fly or engage aerial targets at range, I suppose that'd be a tricky part of the battle to manage for them. Even then, though, it'd be more annoying than anything else -- I'd guess manticores by level 9 or 10 would just be fishing for 20s as they wheeled around the party, since not much else is likely to get through a charged up PC's defences by that point.

There's also, I suppose, the old Two Towers advantage: humans are decent archers, but the elves have nothing to do in the swamp but (apparently) shoot lizardmen and sniff toadstools all day :D -- thus making a force of about 250 very good archers. For the next bit I'm drawing rather freely from David Gemmell's book Legend, though he I think did a fair bit of research into the topic of defending a walled city or fortification.

The basic theory is that a good wall levels a 10-to-1 numerical disadvantage on the part of the defenders, simply because it's horribly expensive to get up and over the wall to begin with. And that's before you consider good archery. Basically, an archer who could make every single shot count or hit would be a potent defensive advantage on a wall which was being swarmed -- remember Brindol, unlike a lot of "real" cities, has no buildings outside its wall, and consequently anyone trying to scale the wall has to get across a "killing ground" -- bare earth with no cover and thus a free field of fire for archers. Historically, most defence of walls from direct assault usually focused around pushing ladders off the wall or dropping various horrible things on people climbing the wall, but if you added a third 'layer' of terrifyingly accurate archers that would make the death toll even higher. On the other hand, like I said, the Blackfens can only muster a total of 250 archers all up, which is spreading 'em pretty thin if you're going to put them on the walls.

(It's stream-of-consciousness, I know, but this might be an interesting tactical feature for the discussion with the Lords ... do you man the elves on owlback, which makes communication faster across the battlefield, or do you man them on the wall, which will kill more of the enemy in the initial charge?)

[Saintheart]

Just some random thinking, and I guess opening it up to some brainstorming or vox pop:

How can one build the Audience With The Lords encounter to not suck, or at least to matter?

By way of recap, this is the meet-and-greet you do with Brindol's lords ahead of the battle, when you're deciding strategy and whatnot. Basically it comes down to a series of Diplomacy rolls.

Its significance appears to be solely mathematical: the party gets a maximum of 8 VP out of it if you choose right. But that's all that looks to happen out of it, since as we know the Lords' strategy doesn't make any difference in whether you have the given encounters in the Battle of Brindol or not. Decide to have the clerics all running around the battlefield rather than all holed up in the Cathedral of Lathander, whoopee, lose 2 VP and Kharn still goes to try and step on a church in your town anyway.

There's also that some of the tactical "decisions" to be made are so blindingly obvious you'd have to be a Blathering Idiot 20 to not cotton onto the fact they're stupid.

I'm talking here in particular about
(a) whether or not to station Brindol's entire army outside the walls and engage the Red Hand in the field rather than use the wall, and
(b) whether the lords have any sort of plan for the wall being breached at all.

Leaving aside that NPCs are meant to be dumb so the PCs can be smart by comparison, even debating these issues doesn't seem to accord with logic or common sense on the part of the lords. By this stage the lords know they're heavily outnumbered and that freakin' dragons are with the Hand. Jarmaath himself is an ex-adventurer who's fought Regiarix himself in the past, so he's well aware of the destructive capacity a dragon can bring to the battle.

Engaging outside the walls breaks all suspension of disbelief for those reasons, as does the failure to even contemplate the walls falling or make contingency plans given the force against them.

Without having given it a lot of thought, it seems to me there's three possible approaches one could take to this issue:

(1) Have the tail wag the dog. Make the audience encounter very significant in that the whole course of the battle, including where and how the encounters take place, hinges upon the decisions the lords make in this meeting. For example, no clerics holed up in the Cathedral means Kharn doesn't push for the Cathedral, but instead pushes ... somewhere else.

This seems to be a pretty involved process which requires some deep thinking, since you're literally not planning for one set of encounters, but several sets of encounters dependent on how the PCs choose here. Still, might be a nice thought exercise for us...?

(2) Make the consequences of the Audience more personally significant in the vein of the "Suicide Mission" from the game Mass Effect 2. Those of you who've played that game will know the general gist: in the final mission of ME2, if you pick the "wrong" person to lead a team or for a particular task, that person or someone else in the party dies.

In the case of the Battle of Brindol, you've got a number of NPCs that hopefully the characters have come to know and who are potential targets for Rocks Falling by the GM. Maybe one could make a set of subtractions from the VP total that apply so in some cases there truly is no "right" decision.

For example, the cleric decision: if you station all the clerics at the Cathedral, then they can heal people better (+2 VP), but Tredora Goldenbrow dies (-2 VP) because she's more obliged to be on the battlefield and consequently more open to enemy fire. Result is no net VP increase even if you make the right choice. In instances like this you can perhaps suggest to players that they are putting NPCs they've gotten to know at risk, so the players then have to balance the risk to those NPCs against the risks of not choosing the right strategic choice.

(3) Make some cosmetic changes to the Audience so at least the more obvious decisions aren't quite so, well, bleeding obvious.

Anyone want to kick it around a bit? Other suggestions, thoughts?

[Menteith]

Well, looks like I'm going to DM a modified RhoD Campaign this summer. I only have limited experience DMing, and this guide is a godsend. Just want to say thank you for making and updating this!

[Saintheart]

Most welcome, Menteith. It's as much fun as it is work.

[BerronBrightaxe]

Mostly flavour as far as the VP count is concerned. The owls sure as hell couldn't take on Abithriax (only PCs with well-adapted boots for wading in blood are allowed to do that sort of thing ;) ) but the Hand does seem to have access to manticores (a couple of them show up, I think, in the Battle of Brindol) and certain a chimaera at least. If those flying opponents are being used in the battle that's a fairly significant advantage since they allow aerial recon, dropping stuff on people, and manticores are viable archers against low-level NPC troopers. I think it's implied that these are the targets that the flying elves are meant to be engaging against, and without them Brindol's defenders are at something of a disadvantage. And if your party hasn't learned how to fly or engage aerial targets at range, I suppose that'd be a tricky part of the battle to manage for them. Even then, though, it'd be more annoying than anything else -- I'd guess manticores by level 9 or 10 would just be fishing for 20s as they wheeled around the party, since not much else is likely to get through a charged up PC's defences by that point.

There's also, I suppose, the old Two Towers advantage: humans are decent archers, but the elves have nothing to do in the swamp but (apparently) shoot lizardmen and sniff toadstools all day :D -- thus making a force of about 250 very good archers. For the next bit I'm drawing rather freely from David Gemmell's book Legend, though he I think did a fair bit of research into the topic of defending a walled city or fortification.

The basic theory is that a good wall levels a 10-to-1 numerical disadvantage on the part of the defenders, simply because it's horribly expensive to get up and over the wall to begin with. And that's before you consider good archery. Basically, an archer who could make every single shot count or hit would be a potent defensive advantage on a wall which was being swarmed -- remember Brindol, unlike a lot of "real" cities, has no buildings outside its wall, and consequently anyone trying to scale the wall has to get across a "killing ground" -- bare earth with no cover and thus a free field of fire for archers. Historically, most defence of walls from direct assault usually focused around pushing ladders off the wall or dropping various horrible things on people climbing the wall, but if you added a third 'layer' of terrifyingly accurate archers that would make the death toll even higher. On the other hand, like I said, the Blackfens can only muster a total of 250 archers all up, which is spreading 'em pretty thin if you're going to put them on the walls.

(It's stream-of-consciousness, I know, but this might be an interesting tactical feature for the discussion with the Lords ... do you man the elves on owlback, which makes communication faster across the battlefield, or do you man them on the wall, which will kill more of the enemy in the initial charge?)

Using the owls to balance the manticores sounds like a good plan, even when they aren't mentioned, it makes sense for the adventure. The adventures take the dragons, giants and powerful enemies. The army and militia takes the main body. The owlriders take the manticores.
Communication on the battlefield can be done via signs, flags, etc, you don't need the owls for that. If you are killed, you've lost you communication, which isn't too good. And, IIRC, don't they use the spell telephatic bound to communicate?

I would assign 3 owlriders to the adventures for air support (protect the wizard) and for recon. It also makes these riders a target, so the adventures have to protect them to keep the continual air support. If they don't have them attacked by manticores or goblins on the roof. They would have to use magic and/or a party member in the air to solve this problem.


The ratio varies though, based on the height of the wall (the higher, the better), the quality of the wall, the number of defenders, the wide the path on top of the wall, etc. But Gemmell did a whole bunch of research, so a average ratio 10-to-1 seems decent to me.
As soon as you have attackers on the wall and you have to go melee. This means the archers have to have another area they have to stand and shoot or else they become useless (like in the Two Towers).

Brindol not having buildings outside the city doesn't make sense indeed. Considering it takes over 1,5 months before the battle of Brindol, I would argue they had time tear down the buildings. With the rubble they could build some additional catapults, extra ammo, enforce the city wall, etc..

Considering this... 1,5 months is a pretty short time to do this. it would make sense that they would ask the adventures to do things to slow down the army (like the bridge). Depending on how much they slow down the army, it gives Brindol more and more options for defense inside and outside the city.
for example:
- tear down all buildings outside the city, as far as you can;
- set up traps, pits, etc outside the city, making it harder for big things to come near the city (like a battering ram);
- get food inside the city and use the strategy of the Scorched Earth for the area surrounding the city (or half the vale).
- build archer ramps on top of houses in the city. Should the city be breached, the ramps can be use to rain death on the goblins.
- make extra weapons/arrows and have several places in the city, so they are easily accessible.
- I'm sure there are tons more

Hope this is usefull.

Cheers,
Berron

[Natael]

I've ran into an issue with the Battle of Brindol and the advancing horde, and that may be due to having an unseen seer/rogue and smart players. They were able to evacuate Drellin's Ferry pretty quick, used personal flight and spells to make travel really quick, so they finished up Rhest ahead of schedule as well. In the mean time they started just messing up the Dawn Way, putting in pit traps and moving huge boulders into the way (between spells and burrow speed they did a pretty good job).

Before Brindol, the aforementioned unseen seer/rogue wound up sniping out Vaaranthian (who became a half-white dragon for my game and was with the army for the last stretch), as well as sneaked in and killed Skather before the battle (though I had Kaal get her high level rogue minion to disguise himself as a hobgoblin and assassinate Jaarmath in the middle of the siege). Also used some nice night attack trips to kill about half the giants in the army.

At Brindol they dug a moat around the city with spikes in it, set up a bunch of plants to burn once the army arrived, and sealed the gates with stone shape. I did kind of a bad job reacting to it I think, kind of ignored it, but will let them at least know that they held off most of the army, just that Kharn/Ulwai/Ghostlord together basically curb stomped everything on their way in. If Ulwai wasn't using control weather to shut down the city's archers, I'd say the Red Hand should have mostly been stopped due to the intense prep the party did.

[Starbuck_II]

Kept entering game recruitments where when I joined this game dissolved so I was thinking of DMing it soon myself.

I was considering E 6 or E8 (basically 2 more levels past E 6, mostly because then reincarnate is possible choice for life bring back thing).
Also Pathfinder and Gnomes e6 classes together (they can choose between them).

Would limiting it to E6 or E8 change the balance of the module significantly?

Any hardships for PCs if I did limited to e6/e8?
It would make the dragons and giants more scary I think as they likely have more HD than classes possible for players.

[Saintheart]

Kept entering game recruitments where when I joined this game dissolved so I was thinking of DMing it soon myself.

I was considering E 6 or E8 (basically 2 more levels past E 6, mostly because then reincarnate is possible choice for life bring back thing).
Also Pathfinder and Gnomes e6 classes together (they can choose between them).

Would limiting it to E6 or E8 change the balance of the module significantly?

Any hardships for PCs if I did limited to e6/e8?
It would make the dragons and giants more scary I think as they likely have more HD than classes possible for players.

I would like to be able to respond to this one, but I'm utterly ignorant of E6/E8 beyond having heard of the name - so I really hope somebody offers a word here?

Natael, on one hand I congratulate your players - that level of intense preparation surely indicates a lot of thinking about it, and if they were "lol don't care DM will see us through to the last encounters" they wouldn't have gone to all that trouble. That means they either believe in you as a Crazy Prepared DM or they believe in the module. Either way, looking at it philosophically, mission accomplished as a DM, IMHO.

As to how to deal with the impression of not much of it mattering ... well, two measures I'd suggest if you've got the opportunity to fix it.

First is to take them for a little walk back to the gates where Ulwai/Ghostlord/Kharn stormed through. Express the utter devastation left behind. We're talking buildings flat, thirty men suffocated in castings of Blizzard by the (druid) Ghostlord -- at level 12, the Ghostlord actually is powerful enough to obliterate the Red Hand bar Abithriax all by himself with one cast of that spell. That might indicate how strong those three guys were.

Second, suggest that it's because they caused so many problems for the Red Hand, and only because they really, really enraged the leaders of the Red Hand, that the bosses actually were stupid enough to make the attack themselves and burn up most of their abilities before facing your PCs. On one hand, it's caused Brindol a hell of a lot of damage, but the destruction would have been a lot more complete if your players hadn't done what they did.

Third, I'd call that a sort of critical success what they did. I'd say you upgrade their rewards after the battle to account for it. Rather than giving them bigger and better boots of blood to wade in, how about deeding them Vraath Keep outright? Maybe have a little scene where some legalist argues about their right to claim the Keep (they've still got the Deed, one would hope), then Jarmaath steps in and overrides the jurist and hands the Deed over personally to them.

I do take the point on board, though: thanks for the AAR, and I'll have to look into upgrading the guide to warn DMs about uberprepared or canny players.

One point I'd raise for next time, and it's armchair quarterbacking, but: how the heck did they get pit traps and boulders big enough to stop an entire army in its tracks? Unless the boulder's the size of a mountain, the Vale's all open plains and wouldn't heavily inconvenience an army to deviate through. More details on this aspect?

[Natael]

First is to take them for a little walk back to the gates where Ulwai/Ghostlord/Kharn stormed through. Express the utter devastation left behind. We're talking buildings flat, thirty men suffocated in castings of Blizzard by the (druid) Ghostlord -- at level 12, the Ghostlord actually is powerful enough to obliterate the Red Hand bar Abithriax all by himself with one cast of that spell. That might indicate how strong those three guys were.

I am not familiar with the blizzard spell (and could not find it in SC/PHB), I am however definitely planning on showing how horribly messed up Brindol's army is from those three, as it is the same thing they did to the Red Hand. Have to figure out how well used their spells are today, probably need to use a lot since the party is pretty heavily outgunned with GL and Ulwai being around. If they kill Kharn, I'll probably make the GL able to be negotiated with if they try.

One point I'd raise for next time, and it's armchair quarterbacking, but: how the heck did they get pit traps and boulders big enough to stop an entire army in its tracks? Unless the boulder's the size of a mountain, the Vale's all open plains and wouldn't heavily inconvenience an army to deviate through. More details on this aspect?

Nimon's Gap has a fairly narrow passage through it. When explaining things to the party I told them the grasslands would be difficult terrain, so they focused on the dawn way to divert the army into it. Also did a scorched earth to evacuated cities (destroyed the crops) and trapped the roads in them (which worked for the first city as the book does say the army stops in them). I'll probably need to do a better job on looking into it next time.

I think the big irony in RHOD is that the more your stall the army for preparation, the less time you have to get to the fane and stop Azarr Kull.

The first time I ran RHOD, I found the group slightly tough to manage due to having a 5 person party that also contained 3 panthers, 3 gorillas, a giant crocodile, and a follower.

[Saintheart]

I am not familiar with the blizzard spell (and could not find it in SC/PHB)

It's in Frostburn. Summary of what the spell does can be found on this page: http://dndtools.eu/spells/frostburn--68/blizzard--1300/ ... for a level 12 druid, that's a 1200 foot radius effect with 12 feet of snow dropped on the victims in 12 rounds. Temperature drops below freezing, so anyone without an Endure Elements spell is going to get a cold at least, as well as have to deal with 1d6 nonlethal cold damage per round while trying to dig themselves out of a snowdrift.

The first time I ran RHOD, I found the group slightly tough to manage due to having a 5 person party that also contained 3 panthers, 3 gorillas, a giant crocodile, and a follower.

Truly, dude, you have an awesome parties.

[Natael]

I'll keep Blizzard in mind for later, if I run it again. While the Kharn fight didn't actually put up as much of a fight against the party as I hoped for (though the Ghostlord did a good job), most members got a few minutes of glory for the session (even Sorrana took out a ghost lion). I'll have a couple of weeks to figure out what I am doing in the fane. The party teleported within a hundred feat of the fane, so next session the Tyraggian fight should be fun, he's nice and burly, plus I used some feats to bump him up to good maneuverability.

[Saintheart]

Looking forward to seeing how that turns out, Natael; we're a bit short-ish on comment for the Fane.

In other news, I've updated the Battle of Brindol section to include the brief notes above on the Audience with the Lords and on a very elegant streamlining of the Battle of Brindol that Glyphstone came up with in his Pathfinder RHOD campaign. If you're looking for a way to avoid the Battle becoming a melee grind and instead cutting it down to three crucial encounters (Streets of Blood, Sniper Attack, and the Final Battle) then conceptually this might be what you're looking for.

Also added in another build for the Ghostlord, which is just freaking scary and which again has to be credited to Glyphstone: Druid 5/Ur-Priest 7. Again, it's elegant and it does fit a lot better than blighter. Druid renounces nature, and thus loses divine spellcasting; about the same time he becomes a lich; about the same time he starts stealing magic from the gods rather than worshipping any of them. Works beautifully, and given Ur-Priest's abilities at level 7, which include potential 7th level spells if he's built right, gives this one a lot of curbstomping potential against a party. Hasn't been used, but I can see the potential.

[The Glyphstone]

For the Ghostlord's Ur-Priest build, it's worth noting that he needs some help getting the caster level to make his phylactery - either the Practiced Spellcaster feat (+4 CL, caps at HD), or the Pathfinder trait Magical Knack (+2 CL, caps at HD).

[ThiagoMartell]

I'm planning on starting a campaign that uses Red Hand of Doom then jumps to Expedition to the Demonweb Pits (all in Pathfinder).
However, I've been thinkin - is there a similar adventure that spans levels 1-5 that I could use to start this? I can't even remember the last time I started a game at level 1.

[GreyMantle]

Re: ThiagoMartell

There's always the 3rd edition adventure path: The first two modules are Sunless Citadel and Forge of Fury. Sunless Citadel goes from lvl 1 to 3, and Forge of Fury is 3 to 5.

I've DM'd Sunless Citadel, and it's a lot of fun, in a fairly retro way. And Forge of Fury seems to be popular. You could probably rework them to take place in the Elsir Vale with minimal problems.

From a more practical standing, though planning a campaign that is going from 1 to the teens seems a bit ambitious. Are you sure that your group will stay together for that long? If not, I'd probably recommend starting with RHoD, as that will probably be a more enjoyable adventure than either SC or FoF.

[deuxhero]

Don't the free PFS modules do that level range? Can't comment on quality.

[ThiagoMartell]

There's always the 3rd edition adventure path: The first two modules are Sunless Citadel and Forge of Fury. Sunless Citadel goes from lvl 1 to 3, and Forge of Fury is 3 to 5.

Hm, it could work. Those adventures are quite modular. Thanks a lot.

I've DM'd Sunless Citadel, and it's a lot of fun, in a fairly retro way. And Forge of Fury seems to be popular. You could probably rework them to take place in the Elsir Vale with minimal problems.

Forge of Fury is basically "walking into the Mines of Moria", isn't it? Dunno if these initial adventures should take place in the Elsir Vale, though.

From a more practical standing, though planning a campaign that is going from 1 to the teens seems a bit ambitious. Are you sure that your group will stay together for that long? If not, I'd probably recommend starting with RHoD, as that will probably be a more enjoyable adventure than either SC or FoF.

I usually start in the mid-levels and end in the high-levels (my last campaign was 6-16), so it's not very different from what I usually do. I'd be trying this with new players, though. I think I'll just ask this opinion. Thanks a lot, this thought hadn't ocurred to me.

Don't the free PFS modules do that level range? Can't comment on quality.

They are kind of rooted in Golarion,though, aren't they?

[Saintheart]

Forge of Fury is basically "walking into the Mines of Moria", isn't it? Dunno if these initial adventures should take place in the Elsir Vale, though.

If you want them to, there's undefined locations within Elsir Vale that could at least support Forge of Fury. The Hammerfist Holds, which are located in the Wyvernwatch Mountains, being the mountain range on the southern end of the Vale, are basically a small collection of dwarven towns rather than a dwarven kingdom as such.

There's room to suggest a dwarven kingdom in the southeastern section of those mountains was shattered by the raiding orcs of Forge of Fury. The dwarves, retreating from that end of the mountain range, eventually established the Hammerfist Holds at the western end of the Wyvernwatch Mountains. This would probably have to happen before or around the time of the rise of Rhestilor, but it's workable.

The Sunless Citadel is intriguing since its Big Bad seems to be a twisted druid -- which is interesting given the Ghostlord is also a twisted ex-druid. Possible locations here include up in the Giantshield, which is the northeastern mountain range of Elsir Vale; in this case, the nearby village of Witchcross might serve, since it by RHOD contains a druid circle which might be a useful origin point for the module's Big Bad.

[Natael]

I've done the Forge of Fury --> RHOD before. The plot hook wound up being that the dark dwarves in FoF had restarted the Forge and were selling large amounts of weapons/armor to the Red Hand, hence all the MW equipment. The party found a letter detailing the weapon shipments, so the party went to the Elsir about a week's travel to investigate.

[ThiagoMartell]

I've done the Forge of Fury --> RHOD before. The plot hook wound up being that the dark dwarves in FoF had restarted the Forge and were selling large amounts of weapons/armor to the Red Hand, hence all the MW equipment. The party found a letter detailing the weapon shipments, so the party went to the Elsir about a week's travel to investigate.

I ended up just going straight to RHoD, but I still want to do this eventually.

I'm doing this both in Eberron and in Pathfinder, so I ended up with a lot of stuff to convert. It's been a fun conversion process, though. I'm stealing a lot of ideas from this handbook.

[Saintheart]

I ended up just going straight to RHoD, but I still want to do this eventually.

I'm doing this both in Eberron and in Pathfinder, so I ended up with a lot of stuff to convert. It's been a fun conversion process, though. I'm stealing a lot of ideas from this handbook.

That's the whole idea!

Although any insights/builds/advice on Pathfinder in particular would be worth mentioning if you've got a free moment and are inclined to do so. Handbook's pretty thin on that aspect. :D

[ThiagoMartell]

That's the whole idea!

Although any insights/builds/advice on Pathfinder in particular would be worth mentioning if you've got a free moment and are inclined to do so. Handbook's pretty thin on that aspect. :D

Well, I just finished converting Wyrmlord Koth to Pathfinder and he looks quite good. Since there is the racial feat Scent of Fear, I gave him cause fear as a spell, instead of charm person. If anyone gets close, he is going to demoralize - between racial bonuses and Intimidating Prowess, he sports Intimidate +18. AC of 24 (buffed), 71 hp. I gave him mighty wallop (since draconic bloodline gives mage armor for free), and he attacks at +10 for 2d8+6 with his masterwork morningstar. I've yet to choose items, but I'm inclined to use his original gear, because he looks strong enough as is.

I'm running the Hobgoblin Bladebearers as 5th level Warblades and the Veterans as 4th level Fighters.
We'll probably have a game thursday so I'll let you guys know how well it went.

[Saintheart]

Thanks for that!

[Natael]

Running the last session for my group today, Tyrgarun and Azarr Kul fights. I'm going with a more desolate Fane and adding Kul's devil concubines into the final fight to try to challenge my players.

To not just make this a worthless plug, one thing I've found with my players, who have had pretty good flight capabilities throughout the game (spells, DFA, half-fey) is that dragons should get those improved flight feats so that they don't get horribly out maneuvered. I've bumped Tyrgarun up to "good" flight, and hope it is enough to deal with. The dragonfire adept has been getting pretty damn good with dispel magic against my buffs, so divine defiance has been a godsend with my clerics, rings of counterspell (dispel magic) would be a definitely good magic item to give your creatures.

I've got a lot of custom builds put together for my campaign, I'll hopefully remember to write them up for the forums, they should be somewhat useful for people.

[ThiagoMartell]

I'm thinking about making Azarr Kul a rakshasa wielding Kamate. That's how he lured the hobgoblins in, with their ancestral weapon. He would be the only rakshasa in the horde and no one would know his true nature. I'm in doubt if I should make him a half-dragon rakshasa, if I should give him dragon disciple levels, or if I should give him Warblade levels and draconic bloodline through a feat.
I think the Warblade option is the most powerful for its CR (Warblade being non-key, after all).
Kamate is a surprisingly good weapon for a boss.

[Malachei]

I'm thinking about making Azarr Kul a rakshasa wielding Kamate.

Excellent idea for Azarr Kul. I've been toying with the idea of making major villains gestalt characters. I'd love Azarr Kul to pack more melee punch while also keeping him a viable caster.

I've made Koth a Bugbear Rogue 2 / Sorcerer 7 with fireball and Practiced Spellcaster. The sheet is here. The battle is here, and Koth throws his first fireball here. The fight ended with three PC deaths out of seven characters, IIRC.

Even though the party is strong (38 point-buy, max. HP at start), it is only moderately optimized. Of course, with the large party size, action economy advantages set in. I didn't run any of the fights by the book, which I'd say are too easy for an average four-person party, but this was the first fight I felt they were really challenged.

[evil-frosty]

Hey, I have been running RHOD the past couple months and have used this guide extensively and it has helped me by leaps and bounds. Currently my group is in the middle of the Streets of Blood encounter. They failed to disrupt the hatchery so they have some more razorfiends to deal with which they have come to loath. But they also failed to kill V so I have her becoming a fifth wave all on her own.

Though I do have one concern at the moment. The party failed to kill Abbie so when they reach the Fane they will have to fight both Abbie and Tyragun which might be too much? It is a party of 7 and they will be level 9 by the time this rolls around. I'm wondering if the encounter will become a TPK. The party consists of a half ogre ftr/barb(five intelligence and plays it very well), 2 warmages, a ranger/stonelord, a human barb type, and then 2 modified cleric necromancers(basically they have access to all necromancy spells plus two domains which are death and healing i believe.)

And something I did at the beginning is I made Koth a druid with wildshape and natural spell he became quite the annoying pest to the party and he almost escaped except the aforementioned ranger got a lucky crit and killed him. Also another change I am going to make to the fane is that the upper fane is just invested with demons and devils now because of the random magical energies which should be a nice change of pace. Then somewhere in the lower fane there will be some more spawn of tiamat(namely a godslayer paired up with either some razor fiends or a blackspawn stalker).

[Saintheart]

On solving the Abbie/Tyrgarun problem: Abithriax is meant to stay and fight to the death, so I'm not sure how the party failed to kill him.

Assuming he does survive, though, one possibility is this: you can fiat it that he fled the battle, thus disgracing himself and Tiamat. Offscreen, when he showed back up at the Fane to report the outcome of the battle, Azarr Khul was that displeased that he and Tyrgarun killed the red dragon outright for his failure...and then raised him as a zombie. A zombified red won't have any of the red's breath attacks or access to magic, or its spell resistance. It's basically a big trundling lump of hitpoints for the party to kill, and it might illustrate to the party just how insane Khul's scheme is.

[evil-frosty]

On solving the Abbie/Tyrgarun problem: Abithriax is meant to stay and fight to the death, so I'm not sure how the party failed to kill him.

Assuming he does survive, though, one possibility is this: you can fiat it that he fled the battle, thus disgracing himself and Tiamat. Offscreen, when he showed back up at the Fane to report the outcome of the battle, Azarr Khul was that displeased that he and Tyrgarun killed the red dragon outright for his failure...and then raised him as a zombie. A zombified red won't have any of the red's breath attacks or access to magic, or its spell resistance. It's basically a big trundling lump of hitpoints for the party to kill, and it might illustrate to the party just how insane Khul's scheme is.

Could work. And on how they failed to kill him Abbie was at 8 hit points left and up in the air after dropping the aforementioned half ogre, and I was thinking he would not have been stupid enough to charge back down after being left at 8. So I decided for him not to be suicidal.

[Saintheart]

I'm thinking about making Azarr Kul a rakshasa wielding Kamate. That's how he lured the hobgoblins in, with their ancestral weapon. He would be the only rakshasa in the horde and no one would know his true nature. I'm in doubt if I should make him a half-dragon rakshasa, if I should give him dragon disciple levels, or if I should give him Warblade levels and draconic bloodline through a feat.
I think the Warblade option is the most powerful for its CR (Warblade being non-key, after all).
Kamate is a surprisingly good weapon for a boss.

Only just replied to this as I only just got round to looking back at Tome of Battle. Must say, if we're only going by fluff then Kamate even works in with Azarr Kul's story even if you leave him as a hobgoblin; if he's more or less a true champion of the hobgoblin race, then it makes sense Kamate would come into his hands. The rituals for awakening the sword certainly can be shoehorned into Azarr's life story as he progresses to level 11 or so.

You do waste three feat slots, though, leaving Kul as a pure cleric: EWP (bastard sword) and Martial Study and Martial Stance are the minimum investment required to use the weapon at all and then get the benefit of Stance Agility. I suppose you could cut it back to one feat if you made a custom martial discipline item like the Crown of White Raven which gave access to an Iron Heart stance...

Maybe one can put the weapon into Kharn's hands, particularly a Ruby Knight Vindicator build as described in the handbook -- if you're willing to go up to a RKV 7 build it gets more interesting since many of the sword's effects require swift actions to activate, and a RKV 7 gets to burn turn undead attempts for extra swift actions per round.