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

**Elder_Basilisk** · 2017-06-26, 06:21 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Elkad

I realize I'm late to this, but since the thread floated back up...

Tens of thousands of troops don't walk on the road. Even if they follow the road, they are in columns off it. Which means the whole mess moves at off-road speeds.
Several hundred wagons full of supplies turns every damp spot into a muddy quagmire that tries to eat the last wagons.
Scouts report things, that even if incorrect, pause the whole column, or cause it to deploy from marching order to fighting order.
Patrols and raiding parties are covering far more ground, but the base speed is very low.

10 miles a day is good time for a 20th century infantry division on a long march, and that's supported with trucks on decent roads instead of wagons and building your own bridges at every stream.

That's a good point. Minor quibbles to follow:

A. As written, the Red Hand is about 4,000 individuals, not tens of thousands. They'll still probably be marching in columns off-road though.

For plains, Road/Trail would still be 1x movement. Trackless would be 3/4. For hills it's 3/4 and 1/2. If we use those modifications, something still has to be slowing the Red Hand's march in order for them to be making 4 miles per day rather than 8-16 miles per day depending upon the terrain and whether you think a column within sight of the road uses the trackless column or not.

B. I'm not sure that supporting with trucks actually makes a difference to the speed modern infantry moves at. It probably reduces the baggage train and enable the infantry force to carry a lot more stuff more reliably and with less effort but I suspect that the primary limiting factor is the speed of the mark 1 foot rather than the truck/wagon/etc. Some historical figures seem to bolster this view. A lot of sources cite the Roman legions as able to march 15-18 miles per day with setting up and tearing down a fortified encampment (Vegetius said 18 modern miles for recruits in five summer hours which may translate to 6 modern hours but appears to have been a full day regardless) and carrying a heavy load along the way. (On a forced march some sources say that they made 10 to 20 miles). I assume that's over essentially plains but it matches up pretty well with D&D's encumbered overland movement speed.

Other sources indicate that Caesar's legions made ten miles per day on their approach to the battle of Sabis which probably indicates some amount of delay caused by terrain and scouting, etc.

C. So therefore, one assumes that the delay is due to things like having to build bridges at every stream, sabotaged wagon trains, switching from marching order to battle order, etc.

D. However, those things won't slow the army's advance by 30-66% unless someone on the side of Bova/Brindol makes it happen. So, how do they happen and what could keep the forces of Brindol/Bova from doing them?

A1. Switching from marching order to battle order. This is going to be a big time sink, especially if a lot of the army needs to mass in one place. The Brindol/Bova forces can make it happen whenever they want by simply assembling a large force in battle formation in the way. However, if they are not able to subsequently withdraw, they will be destroyed in the upcoming battle. Since the Red Hand has superior cavalry (500+ goblin wolfriders) and heavy aerial forces (Abiathrax, the manticores, wyverns, etc), this is only going to be an option if the aerial forces are out of play and terrain (perhaps a bridge) prevents the wolfriders from mounting an effective pursuit. The assembled big hitters of Brindol/Bova are enough to keep Abiathrax from being able to destroy the retreating force by himself but probably not if he were supported by the other aerial forces so those need to be out of play.

A2. Building a bridge over every stream. Destroying and seizing bridges is one of the classic parts of maneuver warfare. You would expect the forces of Brindol/Bova to destroy every bridge before the Red Hand makes it but the Red Hand might send advance forces to try to seize and hold important bridges (like they did at Skull Gorge and like the raiders tried to do with the ferry at Drellin's Ferry).

A3. I'm not sure what the forces of Brindol/Bova could do to create quagmires in the road or other likely wagon spots. Soften earth or stone might do the trick.

A4. False scout reports. Hallucinatory Terrain and connecting lots of Illusionary Walls together to build illusionary structures (An illusionary guard tower or bridge might cause Red Hand forces to be diverted and then to have to rerout) seem like the big ones here though they are limited by the range and the fact that only Immerstal or people he gives scrolls to can manage these.

A5. Sabotaging the wagon trains seems like it would be a very risky tactic for the defenders of the vale. There aren't many NPCs who would be likely to be able to sneak in and pull it off. Maybe Old Jorr, Rillor Paln (if he's on board with the defense which he probably isn't), and Delora Zann would have the abilities. I can't think of many more off the top of my head.

Any other thoughts?

**Zombimode** · 2017-09-08, 05:17 AM (ISO 8601)

While my current campaign is still good underway, it is time to start preperations for the next. And my mind is set on finally running RHoD.

I want to set RHoD in a distinct Setting, but my custom Settings are neither finished nor fitting for RHoD. Thus, the "big three" of the published Settings remain.

While I enjoyed Aslan Cross' foray into Eberron my plans for this particular Setting are different (I'm not interessted in a Eberron "backdrop": if I am to run an Eberron campaign, I will fully embrace the Setting. It would overshadow RHoD themes and plots.)

I haven't touched the Forgotten Realms for almost a decade now and probably the only thing I would use FR again would be a Baldurs Gate inspired campaign (which is still on my ever-growing to-do list).

Thus remains Greyhawk which is the most fitting for RHoD anyway in my view. My interest for Greyhawk has grown in lately and I'm looking foreward to run a campaign there.
The question is of Course: which Region to use for the Elsir Vale?

I agree that Sterich is probably the best fit. But Elder_Basilisk is doing this so masterfully (and in the same style I like to run my campaigns), I feel there is nothing else for me to add

So I want to try something else.

Surveying Annas exellent Greyhawk map I think I've found another possible spot: the Hold of the Sea Princes.

My information on the Sea Princes are sparse. So far I'm working from the following sources: the modules UK2 and UK3 ("The Gauntlet" and "The Sentinel", set in the Hold of Berghof), From the Ashes and Annas Map. I probably should get a copy of Living Greyhawk Gazeteer (LGG).

In From the Ashes the Sea Princes have stopped being a sovereign political entity. Instead they are completely subjugated by the Scarlet Brotherhood. Annas Map on the other hand places the core lands of the Sea Princes (the eastern part containing the all-important ports and the islands) under Brotherhood control. But the western parts (New Veluna, Wavestone and Berghof) seem to be independent with Hokar as the new capital.
Thus I conclude that since From the Ashes the Brotherhood has withdrawn from the western parts and my mind is already working on the "how".

Map for reference: Hold of the Sea Princes

But at first, let go through EB's list of requirements:

Originally Posted by Elder_Basilisk

What do you want for RhoD?
A. A relatively small scale area where the Red Hand would be a serious threat.
B. An area that is not affected by the large-scale conflicts and forces. The conflicts between Greyhawk and Turrosh Mak, Iuz and Furyondy, the North Kingdom/Great Kingdom and Nyrond/Almor, etc should be a non-factor otherwise they will overshadow the plot. (And any guard or army strong enough to stand off the forces of Iuz or Turrosh Mak or the North Kingdom, etc is strong enough to handle the Red Hand).
C. An area that provides a reasonable match for the geography. There should be a reason for a road (old or new) to cross a chasm (skull gorge bridge) before coming to a river that is a significant obstacle (Drellin’s Ferry) about 100 or so miles from a small fortified city (Brindol) which is far enough from major borders, army camps, etc that the Red Hand significantly outnumbers the nearby military forces.
D. An area that is politically decentralized and/or disorganized so that Brindol or its equivalent does not expect immediate aid from Dennovar and such that whether or not to aid Brindol is a decision the Dennovar equivalents would make rather than a duty of whoever commands Dennovar’s military with no need for a political decision to be made.

A. While the map I've linked lacks a scale, the area currently under Sea Princes rule is not much larger than the Elsir Vale. The scale is thus comparable.
For population I have no figures, but judging from the map New Veluna and Wavestone don't seem densely populated. UK2 coins the population of Berghof to a few thousand.
So far I would say that A is met.

B. The Hold is not ivolved in any of the listed conflicts. There IS the issue of the neighboring/occupying Scarlet Brotherhood but I feel can add color to RHoD instead of overshadowing it. With the information available to me I would mark B as fulfilled.

C. The geography is more difficult. It might result in substantially adding to the relatively featureless lands of New Veluna and Wavestone.
But lets review what we do have:
- the Hool Marches provide a stand-in for the Blackfens. There is no Lake Rhestin but it is not needed for RHoD anyway.
- the lands bordering the Hool River and the Hool Marches are heavily forested. Those areas can stand-in for the Witchwood.
- the lands west between the western bank of the Hool River and the Mountains (are those the Hellfurnaces?) are unsettled wilderness. A Thornwaste stand-in could be placed there.
- the eastern end of the Kamph Mounains would be a good place to put the Hammefist Holds. I have no idea if there are canonically drwarven settlements in the area but it seems like a good fit. The Hammerfist Holds are also a very small comunity so it makes sense if they kind off "fall of" the big maps.

Things that are not as easy:
- There isn't really an Elsir. The Hool River marks the border. There IS a river between New Veluna and Wavestone, but if this river can be used to give Drellins Ferry its strategic importance for the plot largely depends on the attack vector of the Hand.

All in all, C is not to bad. But the geography and placement of RHoD localities requires some more thought and possible changes.

D. When the Scarlet Brotherhood took over, there wasn't much of a centralized government left in the Hold. The majority of the nobles had been assinated. Considering the former importance of the Hold as a naval power, I doubt that New Veluna and Wavestone (and Berghof of course) had held much importance political or military wise before the occupation. Sure, now this is all that is left of the Hold. But with old nobility pretty much gone and the only recent independence from the Brotherhood the power structures have to be rebuild. It is easy to see how things are decentralized and a bit chaotic right now in the Hold.
Now, the map shows two possible stand-ins for Brindol: Mitrix and Hokar. While I have already decided that the Battle of Brindol will take place at Mitrix (since that city matches Brindol in size and fortification), nobody in the Hold will have this information. If it appears that both cities could be targets for the Hands first attack, both cities will be reluctant to send significant help to the other.
While Hokar is much larger than Mitrix, it is also conviniently unfortified. Thus, it is not a no-brainer to retreat to Hokar and likewise leaving Hokar for Mitrix is unlikely considering Mitrix smaller size and Hokars significance as the capital.
So, D looks fine as well.

Futher considerations:

UK2 details that the current borders of the Hold are the result of conflict and conquest of a (human) civilisation that was in the area before the Sea Princes. UK2 only talks about Berghof, one can easily extrapolate from that a stand-in for the Rhestilar Kingdom (probably of Flan origin). Other structures like Vraath Keep and Skull Gorge Bridge can also be attributed to this former Kingdom. Why those places have fallen in disuse can neatly explained by the naval focus of the Sea Princes: the heart of the Hold before the occupation clearly lied in the ports and islands. New Veluna, Wavestone and Berghof were backwater provinces.

Concering political isolation and non-interference by other powers:
The number of neighboring powers is limited. There is Melkotia, which is a small city-state nation. Wealthy (thanks to gem mines) but also very defensive. There is also wilderness and the Hool March between Melkotia and the Hold to make an attack on the Hold not much of a problem that Melkotia needs to be concerned about. When word reaches Melkot that an army of Hobgoblins invades the Hold, the most likely response is to buckle up. Not to send reinforcements to the Hold to which the relations had been difficult in the past

Likewise the Yeomanry is defensive in nature.

The Yuan-Ti Lands of H-Thiss Kaa will definitely not rush to the aid of the predominantly human lands of the Hold. While they might be worried about the Hand, I can't see them taking preliminary acions against the horde. Given the elitist nature of Yuan-Ti and there own significant religious focus I don't see them as potential allies for the Hand. If anything the actions of the Yuan-Ti will be something to worry about after the events of RHoD. I have to think further about the role of the Yuan-Ti in RHoD, but I can't see them as a dirupting element.

The Scarlet Brotherhood is an interesting case. Much depends on how you picture the current state of the Brotherhood and how the Hold independence came to be. In my vision, the Brotherhood realized it was stretched to thin and when tensions were rising in the western Hold, it gave up the lands with only a short struggle. In general the Brotherhood concentrates on holding its key assets (like the former Holds city-ports).
One point is clear: the Scarlet Brotherhood is a villainous faction in the lore of Greyhawk, so one would not expect an intervention due to honor or compassion.
The Brotherhood is also to powerfull to feel really threatned by the Hand and has a big enough own agenda to be a natural ally for the Hand.
I really have to think about the Brotherhood's role in RHoD more but I feel it could add quite some color to the campaign. Stuff like offers of assistence that nobody in the Hold really wants but might feel the need to take anyway, low-level involvement for and against the hand, or just as a looming threat in the backround.

The existence of the Brotherhood has other effects, too: it effectively cuts of the Hold from the rest of the world. And the distinction between an occupied Hold and a partialy independent Hold (or the belief of the possibility thereof) might not even exist in the eyes of the rest of the world. This is especially true if I set RHoD relatively shortly after the western Hold gains independence from the Brotherhood (two years, tops).

This is what I have so far. Comments are appreciated

The most important unanswered question as of now is: from where does the Hand orginate and what is their vector of attack?

**Zombimode** · 2017-09-08, 09:02 AM (ISO 8601)

Ok, I've purchased the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer on DriveThroughRPG and read the chapter about the Sea Princes.

... wow.

The Situation is much more bleak and quite different from what I had imagined. But also very very interesting. And I still think the Hold of the Sea Princes makes a good Setting for RHoD.

I have to process this new Information. It only concerns the cultural and political make-up of the region. The geographical features (and challenges) remain the same.

**thorr-kan** · 2017-09-08, 10:27 AM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Zombimode

Ok, I've purchased the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer on DriveThroughRPG and read the chapter about the Sea Princes.

... wow.

The Situation is much more bleak and quite different from what I had imagined. But also very very interesting. And I still think the Hold of the Sea Princes makes a good Setting for RHoD.

I have to process this new Information. It only concerns the cultural and political make-up of the region. The geographical features (and challenges) remain the same.

I think your research has given you a pretty good location. Bleakness might make it even better.

Unfortunately, I don't have anything to add.

**Zombimode** · 2017-09-09, 08:29 AM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by thorr-kan

I think your research has given you a pretty good location. Bleakness might make it even better.

Thanks

Things just fall into place. I made an map based of Annas Sea Princes map incorporating the RHoD locations: link

Ommissions/additions/alterations:
- spatial relations of the settlements to each other are a bit different then in Elsir Vale thanks to New Velunas geography.
- a river named "Elsir" is added to the map
- Aulbersmill replaces Witchcross, as I will use Beasts of Aulbersmill* (Dungeon 131) to start the campaign. But I might add Witchcross as "Elsircross" somewhere upstream
- Elsircross is renamed to Illercross
- I forgott Prosser
- Lodger is a new addition: it is a centre for lumber work
- Industrious is a mining town detailed in this article. In short: it is ruled by a "queen" that transforms the townsfolk into obedient human-inscect-hybrids
- Hoolton marks the location of the Hool Halfling detailed in the linked article

While I try to keep the towns taken from RHoD recognizable I will have to adapt and expand upon their description to make them an organic part of the western Holds. This is WIP.

A note on the scale: the distance between Skull Gorge Bridge and Mitrix (Brindol) is about half (75 miles) the distance in the original (150 miles). I don't think this will be a problem: First, the timeline in original has been reported as to forgiving anyway. The reduced scale might tighten things up in a good way. Second: Travel times count for much and those are cut by half for the party as well.

Also in production:
A Survey of the Current State of the Western Hold
Hool Chronicles: A Brief History of the West Bank Goblinoid Settlements

Random nice detail: In my adaptation, Rhest was the regional capital when the lands of the Hold where part of Keoland. During the Sea Princes conquest of the area, Rhest suffered heavy damage. In the following years, a cultural shift drove many people to the coastal regions of the Hold, and Rhest was left in ruins. Since then it sank into the slowly expanding Hool Marsh. Now for the nice detail: RHoD describes that Lion motives are common in the ruins of Rhest. But the Lion is also the symbol of Keoland. Things just fall into place

* The adventure has no connection to the plot of RHoD. Instead it will serve as an introduction to the independent lands of the former Sea Princes for the players. The adventure itself is not originally set in Greyhawk and thus oblivious to the Hold's troubles and stipulations, but it lends it self very well to include those themes. In addition, it is a nice non-linear mystery/puzzle solving adventure to form a nice contrast to the linear and action-driven RHoD.

**Elder_Basilisk** · 2017-09-13, 12:15 AM (ISO 8601)

Very interesting alternate adaptation to Greyhawk. I really like the way that you've matched up the geography. While my northwest Sterich adaptation offers a somewhat more linear and constricted approach for the Red Hand complete with several strongholds and choke points along the way, the open terrain on your map is a much closer match to the geography of the original adventure's map. (The most notable difference is that the players are going to have to go behind Red Hand lines and cross two rivers to get to the Ghost Lord's lair. That should eat up some time and be an exciting part of the adventure too).

Now it's interesting to think about how the Hold of Sea Princes setting impacts the adventure in terms of tone and non-timeline/mechanical elements. The Elsir Vale in the original adventure is fantasy good-guyland with its token bad guy (Baron Trask), crimelord (Lady Kaal), and corruptocrats (Terrelton) and my adaptation largely preserves that. A set of standard heroic adventurers are likely to unambiguously be on the side of the human powers and to work closely with them and the humans will largely work together. The Hold of the Sea Princes is very different. If you take the Living Greyhawk approach, they're pretty much villains who are fighting off conquest by even more heinous villains in the Scarlet Brotherhood. Listed alignments are CN, CE, N, NE, LE. And based on the description, CN is a pretty generous analysis of the majority inhabitants.

Now depending upon how you read the Gazetteer, the tone is either bleak or positively grimdark.

If you take the most obvious interpretation of the Gazetteer, it appears that emancipated slaves are returning to the blood gods of their jungle upbringing and running Aztec style human sacrifice and cannibalism when people aren't looking and control pretty much everything in the area you are looking at running in. The city of Hokar is an island of semi-sanity between the Olman ex-slaves and the Scarlet Brotherhood Herdsmen/Black brotherhood but even there the rulers are playing the game of thrones Lannister and Littlefinger style and are likely to weaken their fragile alliance enough for the Brotherhood to take over or the Olman to slaughter their former oppressors in the attempt to game some fleeting and illusory advantage over their rivals. That's how I read the Gazetteer, but it seems like it would be hard to run the adventure in that setting.

On the other hand, if you modify it a bit take the view that the western portion of the Hold not under Scarlet Brotherhood or Keoish control has some (few) emancipated slaves and some roving bands of escaped slaves sacrificing people in the jungles, but is overall is still similar to the pre-Brotherhood social order you can run the timeline of the adventure but rather than discussions about the timing of evacuations, I would expect the various councils in the Hold of the Sea Princes to be discussing whether they can arm their slaves to fight the hobgoblin hordes or whether they ought to slaughter at least some of them--maybe all of them--before the hobgoblins get there. After all, they can't free the slaves. Then how would they run their plantations once they won? And they can't arm the slaves. The Olman probably hate them as much as the hobgoblins do and even if they realized that the hobgoblins will slaughter slaves and masters alike, they would probably turn on their former masters as soon as the danger was past. And if they just abandon their slaves, what if the hobgoblins press them into service? And if they bring them to Mitrix in chains, what then? Can they bring enough food? And can they be sure that they won't sabotage the defense out of spite? It's going to be a very dark set of choices that the PCs have.

The analysis of unity and military response is also very different.

The Keoish forces in the north are not really in a good position to help even if they wanted to. There's a lot of marsh between them and the area of the battle. And they're a heavily infiltrated low morale backwater force riddled by disease as I read the Gazetteer. Probably the kind of place that King Skotti sends incompetent or troublesome officers to fail and be canned and where able officers would only be stationed if they had somehow angered their superiors. Still, they might be willing to send some aid but they would probably demand fealty or tribute to Keoland. If you take the canonfire article for the game, they're under siege by the Brotherhood and are totally out of the big picture.

You could probably leave them out of the adventure entirely with the disease ridden/poor morale/incompetent and infiltrated excuse, but they might make interesting PC patrons. PCs could easily be virtuous or competent agents who were exiled to the backwater career-ending posting for angering the wrong corrupt official. And they could have been sent down into the independent areas of the hold as spies or even agents. Giving the PCs an agenda that doesn't line up directly with the equivalent of Speaker Wiston/Lord Jaarmath etc would be an interesting twist and could lead to interesting decisions and sidequests.

The Scarlet Brotherhood is in the east and is apparently split between the black brotherhood and the herdsmen. No doubt their presence forces Hokar to maintain much of the aid that could otherwise be sent to Mitrix in place in order to guard against the Brotherhood. But the Brotherhood could sabotage defenses or offer aid with a (unacceptable?) price or do both. That would also be an interesting twist. It wouldn't have to be "submit to the brotherhood for our aid" either. It could be as simple as "allow some agents of the black brotherhood freedom to operate from your land and they will help defend the city in return for a safe haven to strike against the Scarlet Brotherhood. They promise (if asked) only to sacrifice hobgoblins or people from the Scarlet Brotherhood side of the border to Tharizdun."

I would think that you need to find some way to incorporate the cults of Wastri into the Rhest portion of the adventure. Perhaps they would be unsavory potential allies who take the place of the Tiri Kitor (and almost certainly don't have giant owls).

Having Nurklenak impersonal Sakatha reborn or otherwise use the legend of Sakatha from the canonfire article would be another interesting twist for the Rhest part of the adventure. It would change a few things--he would probably need a hat of disguise or something. Saarvith and Reggie would be "emisaries of a foreign power" who bring support for the Lizardman holy war and lend prestige to the fake Sakatha by treating him as a lizard king. Replace the ogres with blackscale lizardfolk and you're done. The hobgoblins in the bell tower could become lizardfolk too or they could be the rest of the embassy--Saarvith and Reggie's guards were quartered in the bell tower while Saarvith and Reggie have quarters in "Sakatha's" palace as the honored guests.

**Barlen** · 2017-09-13, 02:44 PM (ISO 8601)

I love that this is still an active thread!

I just finished running RHoD in Greyhawk an reading the last couple posts I figured I would describe what I did here.

The campaign started at level 1 with a quick 1 shot I wrote. Level 2-5 were done in Restinford, from Secret of Bone Hill, which I located in Mystic Bay in the Duchy of Urnst. I have the Baron then send them to help his father in law, the Duke of Womtham, in Nyrond for RHoD.

Using ghmaps.net as a reference:
Deghulan becomes Brindol. I did move it about 10-20 miles west of its map position so that the distance between Brindol and Drellins ferry remained consistent. Owlsthorpe became Drellins ferry. I then placed the other towns along the road shown. The dwarven stronghold for the dwarven mercenaries was placed in the mountains 16 miles north of Nimon's Gap.

Skull Gorge bridge was located in the mountains near what is labeled Pelleur keep. Cinder Hill (the mustering point for the hoard) was located past that, with the Fane Looming over Cinder hill on the mountain behind it. They don't go there early because of the hoard mustered there at the base.

The witchwood was place between Owlsthorpe and Pelleur keep. The terrain and distance matched pretty well once you assume its all forest in that area.

The blackfens were a little trickier. I changed the terrain to the south to accommodate what I wanted to do. The road going south from Deghulan was moved west a bit. The east-west road that ends up at the cracked tankard inn was removed as was the cracked tankard inn. The hills immediately south of the brindol-drellins ferry road became mountains. So did the hill west of the river going south from Drellins ferry. I allowed a split in the river where the cracked tankard inn is shown going west into a valley surrounded by mountains. The blackfens and the ruins of Rhest were located in this valley.

The Ghostlords lair was stuck deep in the mountains east of the cracked tankard inn.

The general purpose of the terrain changes was to setup 3 possible land routes from Brindol to Cordrend. The main one being the road due south of brindol which then turns east when it gets south of the mountains. The second going into the valley with the blackfens but east of Rhest lake. The third along the river going south from Drellin's ferry.

This was due to a military build up to protect Cordrend from a potential threat from Great Kingdom (united kingdom of Ahlissa) forces in Innspa on maneuvers. This is just a phantom threat in my campaign but served as a reason to tie up military that would respond to the hoards invasion. It also serves to add a good reason for keeping those roads open as supply routes. The main road is cut off due to diplomatic reasons where I used the coup attempt from the Nyrond King's younger son as a backdrop. A baron who controlled that road to the south sides with the coup and began stopping stealing the supplies before the coup actually happened. This is just background, the PCs get sent off to keep the other roads open where they meet the hoard.

The reason I didn't use Sterich is the road used for the Dawnway is basically a road to nowhere. Destroying the skull gorge bridge is meaningless. With this route the road is a main supply route to Knurl and when they drop the bridge it actually is a sacrifice. This adds some nice tension to the plot.

**Zombimode** · 2017-09-18, 10:11 AM (ISO 8601)

Elder_Basilisk: Thank you for the Reply

I finally get to it:

Originally Posted by Elder_Basilisk

Now it's interesting to think about how the Hold of Sea Princes setting impacts the adventure in terms of tone and non-timeline/mechanical elements. The Elsir Vale in the original adventure is fantasy good-guyland with its token bad guy (Baron Trask), crimelord (Lady Kaal), and corruptocrats (Terrelton) and my adaptation largely preserves that. A set of standard heroic adventurers are likely to unambiguously be on the side of the human powers and to work closely with them and the humans will largely work together. The Hold of the Sea Princes is very different. If you take the Living Greyhawk approach, they're pretty much villains who are fighting off conquest by even more heinous villains in the Scarlet Brotherhood. Listed alignments are CN, CE, N, NE, LE. And based on the description, CN is a pretty generous analysis of the majority inhabitants.

Now depending upon how you read the Gazetteer, the tone is either bleak or positively grimdark.

If you take the most obvious interpretation of the Gazetteer, it appears that emancipated slaves are returning to the blood gods of their jungle upbringing and running Aztec style human sacrifice and cannibalism when people aren't looking and control pretty much everything in the area you are looking at running in. The city of Hokar is an island of semi-sanity between the Olman ex-slaves and the Scarlet Brotherhood Herdsmen/Black brotherhood but even there the rulers are playing the game of thrones Lannister and Littlefinger style and are likely to weaken their fragile alliance enough for the Brotherhood to take over or the Olman to slaughter their former oppressors in the attempt to game some fleeting and illusory advantage over their rivals. That's how I read the Gazetteer, but it seems like it would be hard to run the adventure in that setting.

On the other hand, if you modify it a bit take the view that the western portion of the Hold not under Scarlet Brotherhood or Keoish control has some (few) emancipated slaves and some roving bands of escaped slaves sacrificing people in the jungles, but is overall is still similar to the pre-Brotherhood social order you can run the timeline of the adventure but rather than discussions about the timing of evacuations, I would expect the various councils in the Hold of the Sea Princes to be discussing whether they can arm their slaves to fight the hobgoblin hordes or whether they ought to slaughter at least some of them--maybe all of them--before the hobgoblins get there. After all, they can't free the slaves. Then how would they run their plantations once they won? And they can't arm the slaves. The Olman probably hate them as much as the hobgoblins do and even if they realized that the hobgoblins will slaughter slaves and masters alike, they would probably turn on their former masters as soon as the danger was past. And if they just abandon their slaves, what if the hobgoblins press them into service? And if they bring them to Mitrix in chains, what then? Can they bring enough food? And can they be sure that they won't sabotage the defense out of spite? It's going to be a very dark set of choices that the PCs have.

It is an interessting idea to have the western Hold more or less in a pre-War state. For me there are other things to consider, though: the needs of my players, and my desire not to change too much with RHoD.
For my players I know that risking limb and life to save a society of slave-holder would be a very hard thing to sell. So I can't have it be that way.
As for running RHoD I want to preserve the general structure of the adventure as much as possible.

This has driven me to a somewhat more moderate interpretation of the western Hold. I will probably give a more detailed overview later on, but for now the key points (and assumptions):

First, I don't believe in the concept of a "villainous populace". Sure, governments can be tyranical or oppresive, a nation can be imperialistic, and a culture can be acceptive/affirmative of practices that would be seen as abhorent in other cultures. The slave trade and slave-holding of the Hold is a good example for this.
But the majority of the Holds population was not to different from those, say, in Keoland: just normal people being occupied with normal daily lifes like farming, fishing and crafting. Also, during the occupation by the Brotherhood and the subsequent clashes between slaves and slave-owners as well as the Brotherhood civil war and subsequent uprising by the slaves and the Holds population in general, it was the former upper-class that took the majority of the damage (to the point that the pre-War upper-class does not exist anymore, maybe save for fringe-regions like Berghof).

The time of the occupation, the civil war and immediately after the independence brought violence and chaos. Of course, nobody wants it to be that way and while there are power struggles to fill the void left by the Brotherhood on the local level most people desperately try to get things back to normal.

With that out of the way, key features and developments (somewhat unorganized):
- it is now about 1-2 years after the Brotherhood retreated from the western Hold
- the majority (at least 70%) of the Olman slaves are born in the Hold, and thus have never seen the Amedio Jungle or experienced "true" Olman culture
- the acceptance of slave holding and trading was declining in the middle and lower classes of the population during the last decades (see the try of Prince Jeon II to abolish the slave taking)
- the occupation and the slave uprisings have destroyed the former upper class: they are either dead or went into hiding. Those childs that were hidding in the advent of the occupation are now young adults. They have emerged in loosely connected groups like the Fraternity of the Brazen Blade.
- all major mining operations as well as the fruit plantations and sugar industry were operated by slave labor. The loss of the fruit and sugar productions is crippling because it was instrumental for the Holds former wealth. Many people that were involved in the production and trade find themselves out of work.
- while most of the normal farming, fishing and stock farming was in the hand of free folk, the Hold relied on grain imports. People are adapting, but food shortages are a thing.
- in the early days of the independence, bands of ex-slaves and other people driven to banditry roamed the land. Things are getting better now, especially in New Veluna. Bandits and plunderers (Olman or otherwise) are still a problem though.
- The emergence of priest in the ranks of the Olman marks an important turn in the developent of the Hold: these priests gather the olman under their banner and direct their actions to a purpose. The different groups are largely unconnected and their aims are widely different. Some of them carve out dominions adhering to the worst and most alien aspects of the olman religion and culture. Others are trying to establish order in a more moderate fashion.
- a large part of the western Hold is now under the de-facto control of those Olman priests (but again, these groups act independently)
- other towns have elected councils to make decisions
- everything is pretty isolated from each other. Things are slowly improving, but it is not an easy process. The relations between the olman priest-rulers and the native population are often difficult.
- Mitrix is effectively under the control of Tezcatlipoca-based cult calling themselves the "Smoke Jaguars" in the Common Tongue. The leadership is divided between Huemac (replacement for Lord Jarmaath) for the wordly matters and High Priestress Zanyah (replacing Tredora Goldenbrow). The Smoke Jaguars act as the city guard and law enforcement. Within their ranks there is an elite cadre of so-called "Jaguar Warriors" that follow the traditions of this age-old Olman warrior caste.
- the western Hold has become a refuge for the Black Brotherhood. Some are acting more in the open than others, but they are a power factor to be considered. Lady Kaal in Mitrix is an example for a Dark Brotherhood member acting in the open.

The Keoish forces in the north are not really in a good position to help even if they wanted to. There's a lot of marsh between them and the area of the battle. And they're a heavily infiltrated low morale backwater force riddled by disease as I read the Gazetteer. Probably the kind of place that King Skotti sends incompetent or troublesome officers to fail and be canned and where able officers would only be stationed if they had somehow angered their superiors. Still, they might be willing to send some aid but they would probably demand fealty or tribute to Keoland. If you take the canonfire article for the game, they're under siege by the Brotherhood and are totally out of the big picture.

Exactly. Keoland is pretty much out of the picture.

You could probably leave them out of the adventure entirely with the disease ridden/poor morale/incompetent and infiltrated excuse, but they might make interesting PC patrons. PCs could easily be virtuous or competent agents who were exiled to the backwater career-ending posting for angering the wrong corrupt official. And they could have been sent down into the independent areas of the hold as spies or even agents. Giving the PCs an agenda that doesn't line up directly with the equivalent of Speaker Wiston/Lord Jaarmath etc would be an interesting twist and could lead to interesting decisions and sidequests.

I haven't spent much thought about the possible hooks for the characters yet, but I generally prefer them to be locals for the strong motivation of defening ones homeland (shattered as it may be).

The Scarlet Brotherhood is in the east and is apparently split between the black brotherhood and the herdsmen. No doubt their presence forces Hokar to maintain much of the aid that could otherwise be sent to Mitrix in place in order to guard against the Brotherhood. But the Brotherhood could sabotage defenses or offer aid with a (unacceptable?) price or do both. That would also be an interesting twist. It wouldn't have to be "submit to the brotherhood for our aid" either. It could be as simple as "allow some agents of the black brotherhood freedom to operate from your land and they will help defend the city in return for a safe haven to strike against the Scarlet Brotherhood. They promise (if asked) only to sacrifice hobgoblins or people from the Scarlet Brotherhood side of the border to Tharizdun."

Those are all good ideas. I especially like the ambiguity of having them work (seemingly) both for and against the Hand.

I would think that you need to find some way to incorporate the cults of Wastri into the Rhest portion of the adventure. Perhaps they would be unsavory potential allies who take the place of the Tiri Kitor (and almost certainly don't have giant owls).

I haven't made up my mind about the Tiri Kitor in the adaptation yet. I will keep the Wastri in mind.

Having Nurklenak impersonal Sakatha reborn or otherwise use the legend of Sakatha from the canonfire article would be another interesting twist for the Rhest part of the adventure. It would change a few things--he would probably need a hat of disguise or something. Saarvith and Reggie would be "emisaries of a foreign power" who bring support for the Lizardman holy war and lend prestige to the fake Sakatha by treating him as a lizard king. Replace the ogres with blackscale lizardfolk and you're done. The hobgoblins in the bell tower could become lizardfolk too or they could be the rest of the embassy--Saarvith and Reggie's guards were quartered in the bell tower while Saarvith and Reggie have quarters in "Sakatha's" palace as the honored guests.

I really like this idea :-)
The alliance with the lizardmen is one of the poorer explained aspects in the original RHoD (baring the superficial similarity of also being reptiloid, lizardmen normally do not have strong relations to dragons by default). Drawing the Lizardmen of the Hool Marshes to the cause of the Hand by tapping Sakatha cult is both a neat explanation for the alliance and is fitting for a Mindbender like Saarvith.

**TotallyNotEvil** · 2017-09-18, 08:38 PM (ISO 8601)

So, I just got carried away helping the players build their characters, and suddenly, they are mid-high OP and level 8 after Skullgorge. And they have a Dread Necro and a YA Ozzyrandion body.

I suppose your average Red Hand mook is about to learn a maneuver or three

**Zombimode** · 2017-09-19, 04:59 AM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Zombimode

The leadership is divided between Huemac (replacement for Lord Jarmaath) for the wordly matters and High Priestress Zanyah (replacing Tredora Goldenbrow).

Scratch that. In this configuration there is no room for Lars Ulverth. Instead, Huemac takes the place of Ulverth. Lord Jarmaath will be.... Lord Jarmaath, albeit a younger Version.

The old Lord Jarmaath was one of the 27 nobles that were killed during the initial assassin run of the Brotherhood. The Young Jarmaath (I need names... I'm away from books right now, so I don't even have Lord Jarmaath's first name at hand...) was a mere 16 at that time and he was brought to a hiding place. After the western Hold was left to it's own devices by the Brotherhood the Young Jarmaath (not a Lord anymore) strode boldly into the City of Mitrix which he views as his rightful inheritance - only to discover that his name did not provide him any rights or power. He found the City in the Hands of the former slaves, and some of them had not forgotten that people bearing the Name "Jarmaath" considered them property at one point. He also discovered that his Name was not too well received by his own People as many of them felt abandoned and left to the mercy of the Brotherhood by their rulers.
But with his charms and bold demeanour he found an unlikely ally: High Priestress Zanyah. By becoming her Lover he found a way back into the politics and power structure of the City. He has no official title but he often acts on behalf of Zanyah as the face of her rulership when dealing with then Holds natives. Any despite this face is made fun of (because the nature of his relationship to the High Priestress is not exactly a secret) and looked down upon, this Arrangement has improved the relationship between the olman rulership and the native Population of the Mitrix and surroundings.

Personallity-wise I picture this version of Jarmaath could have become the Lord Jarmaath that is described in RHoD but because how things have turned out differently he is more naive and more desperate. He hates how pretty much everbody views him (as a powerless and naive vestige of the old government that has abandoned the Hold to it's grim fate, or as an elevated boy-toy) but he is begrudgingly playing his part for the better of the people. Although his heart is noble at the core the situation has tainted it.

**TotallyNotEvil** · 2017-09-22, 08:51 PM (ISO 8601)

The party is tired of getting pincushioned by arrows, so they are pumping their AC quite a bit.

Has anyone had a good time adding DFA to the standard Red Hand squads?

**Eldariel** · 2017-09-23, 01:25 AM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by TotallyNotEvil

The party is tired of getting pincushioned by arrows, so they are pumping their AC quite a bit.

Has anyone had a good time adding DFA to the standard Red Hand squads?

Yup. Added Bard/Marshals as a lieutenant level leader to most Goblin and Hobgoblin formations while also making the baseline numbers a bit more scary (Goblin Riders as Rangers with Knowledge Devotion, veteran melee as Crusaders). Makes them much more scary but that scariness of course has a target in its forehead - thus more tactical too.

**Elder_Basilisk** · 2017-09-23, 04:46 PM (ISO 8601)

I'm running Pathfinder but I've done something similar in my conversion. Most hobgoblin units have a low level cavalier sergeant to grant teamwork feats and pack a little personal punch and some major ones have a Bard as well. Sometimes a low level cleric as well. Inspire courage plus haste from a scroll is good. Good hope too if I'm going all out. If there's a cleric I can drop bless and use a scroll of prayer. A cavalier with the right order can use dazzling display. Depending upon the teamwork feats and the level of the bard (Ulwai and Nurglenak are the best bards the PCs have faced), that could be as much as +10 to hit (includes +4 from volley fire) and -3 to the PCs attacks which makes a big difference when a base Red Hand Veteran is sitting at AC 23+ or so with Shield Wall active. A character who can power attack to one shot them can come from hitting on an 11 to needing a 14.

**Elder_Basilisk** · 2017-09-23, 04:55 PM (ISO 8601)

On the hold of the Sea Princes RHoD, I don't think the boy-toy Lord Jaarmath can really fill the role that Lord Jaarmath does in the default RHoD. The base Lord Jaarmath is the respected leader of the city who commands loyalty from the Lions and who imperils the defense of the city when dropped by a poisoned arrow.

The boy toy version is not the leader of the city-that's Huemac and your Tredora equivalent. He doesn't command loyalty-Huemac or the priestess do that. And in the unlikely event that he's still the best fighter in the city, his incapacity is not really going to change too much. Based on what you're going for, I'd assign Lord Jaarmath's role to Huemac and invent a new character to be the Lars Ulverth equivalent. Huemac's chief of staff or executive officer would fill that role without missing much. Or you could cut Lars Ulverth entirely. Soranna or one of the Lions could easily take his place in the cut scene introducing Kharn and it's not as though he has a major part to play in the council.

**aReallyGreatAxe** · 2017-10-15, 11:22 PM (ISO 8601)

Hi all! I just finished a runthrough of Red Hand of Doom as a player, and I have to say, there's a lot of things I really liked! In fact, I'm planning on running it myself next year.

I was in CoffeeIncluded's game which she posted about previously.

However, there doesn't seem to be too much of a player perspective on this thread, so I'll contribute a long, rambling post. I have read both the module and the entirety of this thread.

Spoiler: Party composition

Show

For perspective on why we had some difficulties at certain points, here's the party:

1.) Wizard (First time player)
2.) Druid (that's me! Also a newish player.)
3.) Ranger/Rogue (First time player) later replaced by a ranged fighter
4.) Warder (Pathfinder class, essentially support melee)
5.) Paladin/Favored Soul who joined before the ghostlord.

I'll probably remember the most details about events happening to my druid- sorry.

Spoiler: A word of caution

Show

While I do have a lot of positive things to say about the changes my DM made, I would caution that if one improves every fight, you'll wind up with every battle being won by the skin of your player's teeth. While that's fine for climactic moments, it can lead to player frustration if it's EVERYTHING.

Spoiler: Part I: The Witchwood

Show

Marauder Attack
I believe my DM used "Napalm Hellhounds" here and throughout. They were useful in showing new players that the hand was a force to be reckoned with, judging mostly by the fact that I can remember the effects of the clinging breath weapon over two years later.

We were able to get some information on the horde from one of the regulars we managed to capture.

Random Encounters
I seem to recall some running from assassin vines? However, a recurring theme of this adventure is that the random encounters lacked some of the pizzazz the more fleshed out ones did. While they were an incentive to get those owls,
they were far from my favorite fights as a player, and I'm glad we barely had to deal with them after Rhest.

Vraath Keep
So far, so good, right? Vraath Keep is where the difficulty spiked, and it was our own fault. First off, they decided to let me make the plan, and we wound up trying to burn down the keep. Vraath Keep is stone. I am not very clever.

The whole keep wound up triggering at once, with a split party. The druid went into the negatives and the Ranger/Rogue died, only to be brought back with the staff of life, which at the time was modified for use by my druid. I no longer have the staff's modified stats, but I know it involved a slightly house-ruled version of last breath.

Koth must have been modified, because he had a hawk familiar. It ah, embarrassingly enough, was what put my druid in the negatives. So not a useless class feature in this case, although this is probably not true for everyone. Otherwise, I found the fight to be arranged so the difficulty could range from normal to very, very hard depending on how smart the party is.

Skull Gorge Bridge
Skull gorge bridge was another difficult fight, and very justifiably so, as it was a dragon! Due to a lucky crit on diplomacy with Old Warklegnaw, followed by some kind of good roll on a heal check to help treat her disease, she (a female werewolf in this incarnation) actually helped us in the battle! The archers lit the forest on fire, which was dramatically convenient in cutting off our means of escape. I think the archers were quite hard to beat too.

A lucky crit on knowledge(Architecture), followed by an actually decent plan, and we were able to drop the bridge itself while the fight was still going on.

Ozzy was nearly our undoing. I think his size may have been upgraded, but he definitely did not have spell resistance. His breath weapon sliced away HP like butter, the wolf companion getting to negatives twice, but after a long fight we finally managed to catch him atop one of the towers-he almost escaped before the wizard dropped him with a cantrip. A cantrip! On a dragon! It is one of my favorite boss fights ever for that simple fact.

Cinder Hill
The horde was enlarged from the book's description, which I think was very effective.

Back in Drellin's Ferry
Coffee included a murder mystery somewhere around here, completely reworking Jarret. It was great fun to play through, I would highly recommend that DMs let out their inner Agatha Christie.

Spoiler: Part II: The Ruins of Rhest

Show

I actually do not remember the plot hook that got us here. It may have been the roadblocks? I seem to remember a roadblock. Either the second was not included or we forgot about it.

Spawn of Tiamat
The razorfiend fight was terrifying. He was much more mobile than the party, and I believe nearly took down the warder with a critical and put both my druid and animal companion into the negatives with the breath weapon. (Hm, I sense a recurring theme here...) Either way, everyone was either in the single digits or unconscious by the end.

Unless Coffee would like to correct me, an unmodified razorfiend scared us enough that we were genuinely worried abut them in the Fane of Tiamat. For parties like us at least, they don't require any upgrading.

The Tiri Kitor
Coffee has already mentioned this further back in the thread, but she really fleshed out the Tiri Kitor encampment and the ranger/rogue's involvement.
I won't rehash those points.
Instead, I want to talk about one NPC she introduced that I really, truly, absolutely hated. His name was Nikau, he was one of the owl riders, and he started off as a fairly run-of-the-mill jerk. More on him later.

Rhest
Coffee also covered this pretty thoroughly upthread. Overall, it went better than could be expected, including dressing the Warder in stolen armor while the enemies were in the next room, lots of nearly dying (That town hall really is a killing jar) and killing Saarvith while engaging Reggie on Owlback... he got away, due largely to his being our first encounter with SR. His escape came back to bite us.

Also, there was a large, loud, and long argument IC about the razorfiend hatchery. The Warder sensibly wanted to destroy them, as they are evil. My druid.... did not. After much discussion, my druid was allowed to keep an egg, I'm sure to the DM's eternal headache.

...I am not sorry.

Well, that wound up a bit wordier than I had planned. I'll stop now, both to sleep and because I believe Coffee would like the honors of posting our finale.

**CoffeeIncluded** · 2017-10-22, 12:01 AM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by aReallyGreatAxe

Hi all! I just finished a runthrough of Red Hand of Doom as a player, and I have to say, there's a lot of things I really liked! In fact, I'm planning on running it myself next year.

I was in CoffeeIncluded's game which she posted about previously.

However, there doesn't seem to be too much of a player perspective on this thread, so I'll contribute a long, rambling post. I have read both the module and the entirety of this thread.

I'll provide some DM commentary, but I think this is a really valuable perspective. I hope you're all ok with this.

Spoiler: Party composition

Show

For perspective on why we had some difficulties at certain points, here's the party:

1.) Wizard (First time player)
2.) Druid (that's me! Also a newish player.)
3.) Ranger/Rogue (First time player) later replaced by a ranged fighter
4.) Warder (Pathfinder class, essentially support melee)
5.) Paladin/Favored Soul who joined before the ghostlord.

I'll probably remember the most details about events happening to my druid- sorry.

Spoiler: A word of caution

Show

While I do have a lot of positive things to say about the changes my DM made, I would caution that if one improves every fight, you'll wind up with every battle being won by the skin of your player's teeth. While that's fine for climactic moments, it can lead to player frustration if it's EVERYTHING.

The party was not particularly optimized but this is an excellent point to make. In hindsight I should have eased up on the encounter difficulty a little bit, but it all worked out in the end.

Spoiler: Part I: The Witchwood

Show

Marauder Attack
I believe my DM used "Napalm Hellhounds" here and throughout. They were useful in showing new players that the hand was a force to be reckoned with, judging mostly by the fact that I can remember the effects of the clinging breath weapon over two years later.

We were able to get some information on the horde from one of the regulars we managed to capture.

Oh they were all napalm hellhounds. Those were a lot of fun to run, even though they did go down easily. They were definitely annoying though.

Random Encounters
I seem to recall some running from assassin vines? However, a recurring theme of this adventure is that the random encounters lacked some of the pizzazz the more fleshed out ones did. While they were an incentive to get those owls,
they were far from my favorite fights as a player, and I'm glad we barely had to deal with them after Rhest.

I found them to be boring and too much of a time sink as well. Unless I could write them in, I let the random encounters go.

Vraath Keep
So far, so good, right? Vraath Keep is where the difficulty spiked, and it was our own fault. First off, they decided to let me make the plan, and we wound up trying to burn down the keep. Vraath Keep is stone. I am not very clever.

The whole keep wound up triggering at once, with a split party. The druid went into the negatives and the Ranger/Rogue died, only to be brought back with the staff of life, which at the time was modified for use by my druid. I no longer have the staff's modified stats, but I know it involved a slightly house-ruled version of last breath.

Koth must have been modified, because he had a hawk familiar. It ah, embarrassingly enough, was what put my druid in the negatives. So not a useless class feature in this case, although this is probably not true for everyone. Otherwise, I found the fight to be arranged so the difficulty could range from normal to very, very hard depending on how smart the party is.

Just so you know, I am never letting you live that one down.

I gave Koth that extra level and gave him Practiced Spellcaster. I also gave him a hawk familiar for a bit of flavor--he does have bonds to other creatures. Also, be thankful I decided to not make the minotaur a barbarian with diehard. I figured that once you had the entire keep on your heads at once, that would have given you a TPK. And I needed to change that staff because as a druid you couldn't use Raise Dead. I had a feeling the players were going to die a lot, so I put in 1 charge of Reincarnate in place of Raise Dead, added 3 charges of Last Breath (the one that cause the change race effect), and kept the heal spells in place.

Spoiler alert: My feeling was correct.

Skull Gorge Bridge
Skull gorge bridge was another difficult fight, and very justifiably so, as it was a dragon! Due to a lucky crit on diplomacy with Old Warklegnaw, followed by some kind of good roll on a heal check to help treat her disease, she (a female werewolf in this incarnation) actually helped us in the battle! The archers lit the forest on fire, which was dramatically convenient in cutting off our means of escape. I think the archers were quite hard to beat too.

A lucky crit on knowledge(Architecture), followed by an actually decent plan, and we were able to drop the bridge itself while the fight was still going on.

Ozzy was nearly our undoing. I think his size may have been upgraded, but he definitely did not have spell resistance. His breath weapon sliced away HP like butter, the wolf companion getting to negatives twice, but after a long fight we finally managed to catch him atop one of the towers-he almost escaped before the wizard dropped him with a cantrip. A cantrip! On a dragon! It is one of my favorite boss fights ever for that simple fact.

Can I just say that was amazing?! A hard-hitting round sent Ozzy down to 2 HP. As he flew back to the other side to heal, Hugor's turn came up. He cast Ray of Frost, and rolled max damage, sending Ozzy to -1.

Cinder Hill
The horde was enlarged from the book's description, which I think was very effective.

Don't forget Yulidna!

Back in Drellin's Ferry
Coffee included a murder mystery somewhere around here, completely reworking Jarret. It was great fun to play through, I would highly recommend that DMs let out their inner Agatha Christie.

Heehee, that was actually during the timeskip before all this, but I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Spoiler: Part II: The Ruins of Rhest

Show

I actually do not remember the plot hook that got us here. It may have been the roadblocks? I seem to remember a roadblock. Either the second was not included or we forgot about it.

Yeah, it was the roadblocks. You only found the first one though. Also, I changed the motivation behind the roadblocks from, "Keep reinforcements from getting to the Vale" to, "Keep the Vale away from the Razorfiend eggs".

Spawn of Tiamat
The razorfiend fight was terrifying. He was much more mobile than the party, and I believe nearly took down the warder with a critical and put both my druid and animal companion into the negatives with the breath weapon. (Hm, I sense a recurring theme here...) Either way, everyone was either in the single digits or unconscious by the end.

Unless Coffee would like to correct me, an unmodified razorfiend scared us enough that we were genuinely worried abut them in the Fane of Tiamat. For parties like us at least, they don't require any upgrading.

The razorfiends are no joke. For the first encounter, the players encountered the razorfiend in a marshy area where there were little islands that melted into the water. While the players' movement was hindered by the bog, the razorfiend was easily able to swim around and either spray acid or eviscerate the characters. I was afraid I would have multiple deaths from this fight.

Seriously, the razorfiend was introduced as a straight-up That One Boss fight. By the end of the campaign, they were still Demonic Spiders, still capable of taking a frightening amount of health off the warder and nearly disemboweling the wizard on a good hit. Treat them with respect, DMs. Players, be afraid.

The Tiri Kitor
Coffee has already mentioned this further back in the thread, but she really fleshed out the Tiri Kitor encampment and the ranger/rogue's involvement.
I won't rehash those points.
Instead, I want to talk about one NPC she introduced that I really, truly, absolutely hated. His name was Nikau, he was one of the owl riders, and he started off as a fairly run-of-the-mill jerk. More on him later.

Can you believe it all started because Nikau's alignment came up as Neutral Evil when I rolled for it?

Rhest
Coffee also covered this pretty thoroughly upthread. Overall, it went better than could be expected, including dressing the Warder in stolen armor while the enemies were in the next room, lots of nearly dying (That town hall really is a killing jar) and killing Saarvith while engaging Reggie on Owlback... he got away, due largely to his being our first encounter with SR. His escape came back to bite us.

Also, there was a large, loud, and long argument IC about the razorfiend hatchery. The Warder sensibly wanted to destroy them, as they are evil. My druid.... did not. After much discussion, my druid was allowed to keep an egg, I'm sure to the DM's eternal headache.

...I am not sorry.

I am not sorry either. This led to some of the best moments of the campaign, and so much roleplaying and character growth.

Well, that wound up a bit wordier than I had planned. I'll stop now, both to sleep and because I believe Coffee would like the honors of posting our finale.

I'd love to hear more if that's ok with you.

**aReallyGreatAxe** · 2017-10-22, 02:58 AM (ISO 8601)

Thanks for the input, Coffee!

Spoiler: Return to the Tiri Kitor

Show

After all the hullaballo at Rhest, the party went back to the Tiri Kitor, with my druid smuggling a razorfiend egg and blatantly lying to authorities about having destroyed them all. Somehow, she passed all the bluff checks.

Well.

All except one.

Nikau, that awful elf I mentioned earlier, rolled well on his sense motive. And started blackmailing my druid, threatening to tell the rest of the Tiri Kitor. As a player, I hoard money and items until I have enough to get what I want, so this was VERY lucrative for him. He made off with a bunch of scrolls and 90% of her gold.

(This was all 100% fine with me as a player, by the way. And also easily avoidable. I don't think Coffee expected me to actually go through with it... but I *really* wanted that egg.)

Also, we identified the phylactery and heard some rumors about the ghostlord.

The alliance was secured, and we got giant owls.

Spoiler: Part III: The Ghostlord's Tower

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Why is this the chapter title anyway? That stone lion is not a tower. (That I know of)

Also of note is that I completely forgot the staff of life had charges of heal. (I had assumed it was for diseases and didn't investigate further. Ah, the joys of being new.)

Spoiler: On the way

Show

While in the thornwastes, we ran into a random encounter with some.... manticores I think? Sphinxes? Griffons? Some greek mythological creature, and our first random since acquiring flight. They were absolutely infuriating and killed the Warder, who was reincarnated into an orc.

We also found the Arena setup that Coffee described earlier, and acquired the Paladin/Favored Soul. Giving him a backstory involving the Ghostlord really helped fan the IC flames of hatred.

The razorfiend egg also hatched, promptly followed by a natural 20 on handle animal to have him not be hostile. I named him Captain Bubbles (because I panic when I'm put on the spot to name things, ok?) Coffee required a whole lot of handle animal checks to not have him turn on the party. Daily, until we'd earned his trust. I don't know Coffee's DC, but I rolled consistently well and had invested heavily in handle animal. And we argued about him again, this time with the Warder making my druid promise to not fight the Ghostlord in exchange for letting Captain Bubbles live.

Now, I'm not going to review the module for the stone lion as we didn't actually explore most of the lair, and are going to be having a follow-up one-off to finish off the Ghostlord, so I don't want to spoil the layout for myself. So all we've got to go off here is my memory. Oh dear.

Spoiler: Varanthian

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The party actually managed to spy varanthian going out hunting before rescuing the Paladin/Favored Soul but, for whatever reason, we did not successfully enter the lion without getting into a fight with her. I think she may have returned from hunting while we were noodling around? Either way, she grappled and swallowed the Ranger/Rogue in the first round, then almost ate the warder before we managed to kill her. The druid was unconscious again due to her breath weapon, so I suppose this probably came pretty close to a TPK. But nobody actually died, so.... yay?

Spoiler: Ulwai

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After Varanthian, we busted into the lion screaming for ulwai to come out and fight...and fought a few punchy-types (maybe monks) and an enemy caster, which was our first experience with how battlefield control can help. He had web. We were not ready. He escaped and joined in on the next day's festivities.

Then, mostly out of spells and HP, we yelled some more and found Ulwai, who Coffee changed to be a much more tragic figure. A temporary truce was called for the night, with the Warder being left as collateral (which led to some lovely Warder/Ulwai dialog- they really were excellent foils for each other.) Also, the rest of the party hid the phylactery inside the dead Behir because we didn't want Ulwai to pickpocket it off of us, and we figured she wouldn't think to look there. (There may have been a miscommunication about what bards can do somewhere along the line, and I guess the experienced players were too amused to correct us.)

The fight was held in the open mouth of the stone lion, which really served to showcase Ulwai's Stormsinger abilities (I have read her statblock, it's cool!) and took the wyrmlord alive! I believe Coffee gave her some more Stormsinger and changed her skill point allotment, as well as having some monks and the caster with web (which we were better prepared for this time) as backup.

Well, alive for a little bit. We told her we'd kill her if she tried to escape, then started arguing about whether it was ethical to kill her then reincarnate her so we could tell the Ghostlord we'd killed Ulwai, as nobody in the party could bluff worth anything. Luckily, she used the argument as cover and tried to escape, and we killed her. And after a long, loud argument IC, reincarnated her. Which she was willing to, because we had dealt fairly with her and she had great respect for the Warder in particular. Ulwai rolled human. It was glorious.

She also spilled the beans about Kull being in the mountains, but I think we had him confused with Koth and didn't worry too much.

Spoiler: The Ghostlord's lair

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Fun fact, we didn't explore the whole thing! There was a ghost lion, which was our first encounter with an intangiable enemy and quite fun. Then another one, which was solved by the wizard having saved some sort of undead-controlling and/or scaring scroll.

Then were the bonedrinkers, fluffed as the Paladin/Favored Soul's former companions... that made for a fun fight, very atmospheric, being in the same room as the paralysis-puddle and the orb of doom.

Speaking of the orb of doom, I still don't know what it was, just that if you throw sticks at it, it seems to do something bad to the sticks, so we dubbed it the orb of doom and decided to ignore it. Can't bargain with a fellow if you destroy all his toys.

We found the Ghostlord very quickly after that, and IC were eager to quickly make a deal and get out. We were able to make that deal, given we had the phylactery, and were able to truthfully tell him we had killed Ulwai, but her body was not in any state to be made undead. (In front of Ulwai's face, no less! She was tied up on the back of the dire wolf.)

The Ghostlord was... a little nuts, liked to talk to himself and didn't much care for us. There was an interesting dynamic with my druid, as due to a vision quest before the campaign, she was horrified that following in his footsteps was a possible future of hers. (In retrospect, Coffee was really setting up some of RHoD's events. Great blue beast in the mountains, anyone? I think this was an excellent idea, led to much puzzling over what the vague descriptions could have meant and trying to predict threats based on incomplete information. Would recommend.) Coffee also strongly implied that the Ghostlord had started down his dark path with bringing back his animal companion as a skeleton, and considering the druid was obsessed with her companion and Captain Bubbles.... lovely contrast.

Eventually, we gave him the phylactery... and ran away, very fast, before he changed his mind. Of course, we did stop to drag the paralyzed dire lion out with us.

Spoiler: Marked for Death

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Somewhere around here, we ran into the Marked for Death encounter. The Paladin/Favored Soul really shone here, smiting both the greater barghests into oblivion and causing a lovely string of interparty conflict. In case you can't tell, we really like arguing IC. Coffee obviously had leveled it up so it could be a challenge at this level, and it was fun, flavorful, and lead to some great character-building moments.

What was a little less successful was investigating a ruined village on the way back, as I can't recall anything about it other than that it was a thing and I think we fought some Hand there.

Spoiler: Part IV: The Enemy at the Gates

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Spoiler: General Pre-Battle

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I think Coffee used a different map for the city of Brindol.

Also the system for training the populace recommended in this thread was used- it proved very helpful, and while complex was a way to make us feel like we actually had an effect on the preparedness of the city.

My druid chose to help repair the walls, and while I now know there was no actual, in-game effect, Coffee did a FANTASTIC job of making me feel like it mattered during the giants' barrage.

Also, Nikau continued blackmailing the druid to keep the aid of the Tiri Kitor, until she finally told the wizard and Ranger/Rogue about it and they started plotting his death. Seriously, we IC hated this guy. Enough to seriously consider bringing in the Paladin on the murder plot. Ran out of time before the battle so never got to effect it though, which is probably a good thing for the alliance.

There was also a month of no-game-time before the battle, which we all used... to actually spelunk the rulebooks. I learned a lot, and everyone found a whole bunch of SR: No spells and other things to use, as we were paranoid about the dragon, as well as a lot of one-time-use items that could help us survive a large battle.

Spoiler: Captain Bubbles

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Also, around this time we got a feat, and I approached Coffee about maybe spending it to allow Captain Bubbles, the Razorfiend, to fight with the party. She, being fantastic, agreed, provided he was severely weakened from the base razorfiend due to, y'know, being a baby. I don't know how many stats I can post here, but he was small in size, significantly weaker, slower, and had the breath weapon reduced to 2d6 with a very low DC. His damage was single digit unless he crit. He did, however, have enough HP that he wouldn't die in one hit.

Basically, he functioned in combat as a flanking buddy, and was mostly there for flavor reasons.

Spoiler: Regiarix

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Instead of helping with the preparations, my druid decided to help fix the walls due to having stone shape + knowledge(architecture). (I told you we weren't optimized.) There, she befriended some strangers named Miha and Reginald, and found the walls were being sabotaged, weakened with some kind of acid! She and Reginald also struck up a bit of a romantic interest.

Eventually, the rest of the party was called to secretly watch the walls one night, only to find, surprise surprise, Reginald and Miha sneaking around suspiciously. Miha claimed to be doing the same thing, that her friend Reginald had suggested they go out and watch the walls, see if anything suspicious happened. When confronted by a... less than diplomatic Warder, Reginald revealed himself to be.... Regiarix! A crazy flying fight ensued as, cover blown, he raced to the center of the city to try to free Ulwai, with the Warder in his talons. He DEFINITELY had spell resistance, as we might have kept setting fire to the Warder instead of the dragon with AoEs. He was brought down right outside of the prison, coming within inches of achieving his goal.

The druid and the wizard became very suspicious of Miha, and essentially drove her from the city. My DM assures me that in this iteration we were just being paranoid, she was an innocent bystander as the spy role was filled by Regiarix. (And I was so excited too when I read the module and questioned her... turns out I'm not always right).

Then the Ranger/Rogue left and was replaced with a Ranged Fighter.

Spoiler: Audience with the Lords

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I believe Coffee took all of the suggestions given in this thread, so the choices didn't seem too ridiculously obvious. There was quite some argument over where to put the clerics, if I recall correctly. We also put Immerstal the Red at the top of the tower, with orders to cast darkness on the top if the battle appeared lost, which was our signal for retreat, and he could drop the bridge after Jaarmath got across.(I believe Immerstal may have been lower level in this iteration. Also, there was more to the plan, but obviously I'm not the one who makes and remembers good plans.)

The Tiri Kitor leader, Jaarmath, Immerstal, and the party all had telepathic bonds. Possibly Tredora as well.

Spoiler: Save the Walls

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There were definitely ogres here, and they packed a bigger wallop than the giants. I don't know if coffee lowered the wall's hitpoints or just described the rocks as hitting really hard, but it was very effective in getting us moving.

Spoiler: Abithrax's Rampage

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I believe Abithrax was buffed a bit.

It wound up not mattering.

We'd prepped for a month specifically to take down a red dragon.

I don't know if he even made it to his second turn.

Letting it happen was probably the best thing Coffee could have done- we were having a lot of trouble with just the average encounters, so having us take down something we'd been fearing since cinder hill (albeit at a large expenditure of resources), was fantastic!

Spoiler: Streets of Blood

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General: We were given about 10 militia, one lion of brindol, three tiri kitor archers, and a messenger to hold the line. a wand of spore field was used to keep the enemy from dashing past, and helped control the flow of enemies from the side street our map had.

First wave: The archers, plus our ranged fighter, managed to take care of the manticores pretty neatly. There were some martial adepts included here, which were a bit frustrating until we figured out they were using maneuvers, not just... magically countering our every move. Some of the militia and one archer died, so we sent the messenger for reinforcements. The druid got knocked out by manticore spikes, and the wizard was in the single digits.

Second wave: I believe one berserker got through, the barricade was largely wrecked, and some more of the militia died. The druid was briefly unconscious. Again. (Honestly, Coffee didn't pull her punches, the druid only survived all these knockouts because this party was very, very vigilant about being able to get each other back up quickly.)

Third wave: The messenger returned with a handful of militia (which we really needed at this point). The thunderlizards would have wrecked us, but the wizard cast black tentacles to slow them down, and the Warder's higher level abilities had come online, allowing her to become a blender if the battlefield lines up right.

Spoiler: Sniper attack

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Very mixed feelings about this one. First of all, whatever casters were used were a pleasant surprise and a fun fight! I doubt they were just war adepts. They flew around, but the ceiling was low enough that they could still be reached with a jump check, which was very exciting! Captain Bubbles the Razorfiend actually managed to deliver a killing blow (with 6 damage, if I recall correctly), despite being in single-digit HP himself.

So, not entirely useless.

However, Skather must have been modified, and I'm not sure I agree with all of what was done. First off, he hid invisibly upstairs, which is fine- he's an assassin, he should be hard to find. However, he popped out of hiding and used some kind of instant-death ability on the Paladin/Favored Soul. I think it may have been an Assassin's death attack? Not knowing that this kind of ability existed, especially for something we had been told was just a sneaky fellow with poisoned arrows, it felt... honestly rather unfair. Like there wasn't any action we could have taken to prevent it. I'm fine with everyone dying, but I do prefer the deaths to be due to either bad decisions or the luck of the dice.

The Paladin/Favored Soul got brought back with a last breath, but it did leave a bit of a bad taste.

If you do choose to use Assassin, maybe consider using the paralysis effect rather than the outright kill if your players aren't familiar with the class. Actually, that might be fun, maybe a hostage situation!

Spoiler: Final Battle

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This was a fun one, OoC! The hill giants and ogres provided some very effective support- bolstered by the fact I made a very poor tactical decision and had my druid try to rush them. That... was very stupid. In my defense, it was at the end of a long night. They swiftly put the druid and her companion into the negatives, with the druid at -9. They were brought back up the next round, but the dire wolf was killed by an ogre. Sad, but.... that was a very dumb decision I made.

Kharn flew around, and may have been a Ruby Knight Vindicator, as he certainly had maneuvers, as well as fire resistance! (Which is bad because we, as a party, had a thing for fire) Eventually though, he went down to the Paladin/Favored Soul and Warder's attacks.

Spoiler: After the Battle

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Lord Jaarmath gifted us with some things (including rights to Vraath keep. My druid instead requested that the Tiri Kitor be told about Nikau's blackmailing. I can't imagine that went well for him.

) and the party almost parted ways.... until he let us know we had to take on Kull.

Also, the Dire Wolf companion didn't get raised.

Spoiler: Victory?

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The moment Kharn fell, Coffee tallied up our victory points in front of us. Slowly. Deliberately. Not telling us how many we needed to make. It was possibly the best way to reveal this mechanic.

I can't recall if we got all the VP for killing Ulwai, as she did um.... get better.

So yay, Brindol was saved!

Alright, I'll let Coffee respond to this bit, and then post the Fane of Tiamat. (Maybe by that time we'll have gotten to the Ghostlord in our follow-up game, and I'll have some more to say about him or the design of the rest of his lair.)

**CoffeeIncluded** · 2017-10-22, 12:33 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by aReallyGreatAxe

Thanks for the input, Coffee!

Thank you for sharing your perspective!

Spoiler: Return to the Tiri Kitor

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After all the hullaballo at Rhest, the party went back to the Tiri Kitor, with my druid smuggling a razorfiend egg and blatantly lying to authorities about having destroyed them all. Somehow, she passed all the bluff checks.

Well.

All except one.

Nikau, that awful elf I mentioned earlier, rolled well on his sense motive. And started blackmailing my druid, threatening to tell the rest of the Tiri Kitor. As a player, I hoard money and items until I have enough to get what I want, so this was VERY lucrative for him. He made off with a bunch of scrolls and 90% of her gold.

(This was all 100% fine with me as a player, by the way. And also easily avoidable. I don't think Coffee expected me to actually go through with it... but I *really* wanted that egg.)

Also, we identified the phylactery and heard some rumors about the ghostlord.

The alliance was secured, and we got giant owls.

If any of the leaders of the Tiri Kitor had passed that bluff check, that would have been it. They had to deal with the razorfiends killing and eating their own people; no way would they have let you leave with one of their eggs.

Nikau felt similarly but also felt that as long as that greenspawn wasn't an active danger, he might as well get something out of it in return. Like blackmail. Part of him also figured that you'd learn about the dangers of greenspawn razorfiends the hard way, and again might as well get something out of it beforehand. Make no mistake, if he thought that the greenspawn you adopted was going to be an active threat to him and his people (especially his daughter) he would have directly intervened, whether it be telling the leaders of the Tiri Kitor or killing it himself. That actually very nearly happened.

As it is, I love that you got so invested in this NPC!

Spoiler: Part III: The Ghostlord's Tower

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Why is this the chapter title anyway? That stone lion is not a tower. (That I know of)

Also of note is that I completely forgot the staff of life had charges of heal. (I had assumed it was for diseases and didn't investigate further. Ah, the joys of being new.)

Spoiler: On the way

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While in the thornwastes, we ran into a random encounter with some.... manticores I think? Sphinxes? Griffons? Some greek mythological creature, and our first random since acquiring flight. They were absolutely infuriating and killed the Warder, who was reincarnated into an orc.

We also found the Arena setup that Coffee described earlier, and acquired the Paladin/Favored Soul. Giving him a backstory involving the Ghostlord really helped fan the IC flames of hatred.

The razorfiend egg also hatched, promptly followed by a natural 20 on handle animal to have him not be hostile. I named him Captain Bubbles (because I panic when I'm put on the spot to name things, ok?) Coffee required a whole lot of handle animal checks to not have him turn on the party. Daily, until we'd earned his trust. I don't know Coffee's DC, but I rolled consistently well and had invested heavily in handle animal. And we argued about him again, this time with the Warder making my druid promise to not fight the Ghostlord in exchange for letting Captain Bubbles live.

That's around the time I stopped running random encounters, for exactly the reason you'd think. And the DC started at 25 and gradually went down as you made more and more successes. Failures would raise the DC again. When the DC was lowered to 10 I considered him tame enough that you'd be able to handle him. Though he's still a vicious little killer.

Now, I'm not going to review the module for the stone lion as we didn't actually explore most of the lair, and are going to be having a follow-up one-off to finish off the Ghostlord, so I don't want to spoil the layout for myself. So all we've got to go off here is my memory. Oh dear.

Spoiler: Varanthian

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The party actually managed to spy varanthian going out hunting before rescuing the Paladin/Favored Soul but, for whatever reason, we did not successfully enter the lion without getting into a fight with her. I think she may have returned from hunting while we were noodling around? Either way, she grappled and swallowed the Ranger/Rogue in the first round, then almost ate the warder before we managed to kill her. The druid was unconscious again due to her breath weapon, so I suppose this probably came pretty close to a TPK. But nobody actually died, so.... yay?

Yeahm she reentered her lair as you all slept and went to rescue Rhenner. Also I kinda misread her stat block; she wasn't supposed to do all of that in one round. Ah well, it all worked out.

Spoiler: Ulwai

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After Varanthian, we busted into the lion screaming for ulwai to come out and fight...and fought a few punchy-types (maybe monks) and an enemy caster, which was our first experience with how battlefield control can help. He had web. We were not ready. He escaped and joined in on the next day's festivities.

Then, mostly out of spells and HP, we yelled some more and found Ulwai, who Coffee changed to be a much more tragic figure. A temporary truce was called for the night, with the Warder being left as collateral (which led to some lovely Warder/Ulwai dialog- they really were excellent foils for each other.) Also, the rest of the party hid the phylactery inside the dead Behir because we didn't want Ulwai to pickpocket it off of us, and we figured she wouldn't think to look there. (There may have been a miscommunication about what bards can do somewhere along the line, and I guess the experienced players were too amused to correct us.)

The fight was held in the open mouth of the stone lion, which really served to showcase Ulwai's Stormsinger abilities (I have read her statblock, it's cool!) and took the wyrmlord alive! I believe Coffee gave her some more Stormsinger and changed her skill point allotment, as well as having some monks and the caster with web (which we were better prepared for this time) as backup.

Well, alive for a little bit. We told her we'd kill her if she tried to escape, then started arguing about whether it was ethical to kill her then reincarnate her so we could tell the Ghostlord we'd killed Ulwai, as nobody in the party could bluff worth anything. Luckily, she used the argument as cover and tried to escape, and we killed her. And after a long, loud argument IC, reincarnated her. Which she was willing to, because we had dealt fairly with her and she had great respect for the Warder in particular. Ulwai rolled human. It was glorious.

She also spilled the beans about Kull being in the mountains, but I think we had him confused with Koth and didn't worry too much.

On a personal note, I absolutely love the changes I made to Ulwai that turned her from your standard sexy female villain into a nuanced tragic figure, who in another light and another tale would be considered a hero to her people. She went along because she was willing to do whatever it took to get back alive and to the horde to enact her vision of a united Plavaan race.

I did give her another level of Stormsinger and a few other skillpoints, and gave her Dimension Door as a panic button. The temporary truce was because Ulwai wanted to talk to Kia, and possibly recruit her over to the side of the Hand. She didn't know Kia's backstory, and missed the hints because although she's extremely charismatic and fairly intelligent, she only has 8-10 wisdom.

Spoiler: The Ghostlord's lair

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Fun fact, we didn't explore the whole thing! There was a ghost lion, which was our first encounter with an intangiable enemy and quite fun. Then another one, which was solved by the wizard having saved some sort of undead-controlling and/or scaring scroll.

Then were the bonedrinkers, fluffed as the Paladin/Favored Soul's former companions... that made for a fun fight, very atmospheric, being in the same room as the paralysis-puddle and the orb of doom.

Speaking of the orb of doom, I still don't know what it was, just that if you throw sticks at it, it seems to do something bad to the sticks, so we dubbed it the orb of doom and decided to ignore it. Can't bargain with a fellow if you destroy all his toys.

We found the Ghostlord very quickly after that, and IC were eager to quickly make a deal and get out. We were able to make that deal, given we had the phylactery, and were able to truthfully tell him we had killed Ulwai, but her body was not in any state to be made undead. (In front of Ulwai's face, no less! She was tied up on the back of the dire wolf.)

The Ghostlord was... a little nuts, liked to talk to himself and didn't much care for us. There was an interesting dynamic with my druid, as due to a vision quest before the campaign, she was horrified that following in his footsteps was a possible future of hers. (In retrospect, Coffee was really setting up some of RHoD's events. Great blue beast in the mountains, anyone? I think this was an excellent idea, led to much puzzling over what the vague descriptions could have meant and trying to predict threats based on incomplete information. Would recommend.) Coffee also strongly implied that the Ghostlord had started down his dark path with bringing back his animal companion as a skeleton, and considering the druid was obsessed with her companion and Captain Bubbles.... lovely contrast.

Eventually, we gave him the phylactery... and ran away, very fast, before he changed his mind. Of course, we did stop to drag the paralyzed dire lion out with us.

This part had a lot of character foils, something I would highly recommend to break up the combat. Especially since RHoD is a longer campaign. I'm really glad you enjoyed the vision quests and hints that I set up!

Also it was a very good idea to book it when you did. I made the Ghostlord a bit more morally gray; the futile cycle of revenge is a recurring theme in my setting and I played it out with him as well.

Spoiler: Marked for Death

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Somewhere around here, we ran into the Marked for Death encounter. The Paladin/Favored Soul really shone here, smiting both the greater barghests into oblivion and causing a lovely string of interparty conflict. In case you can't tell, we really like arguing IC. Coffee obviously had leveled it up so it could be a challenge at this level, and it was fun, flavorful, and lead to some great character-building moments.

What was a little less successful was investigating a ruined village on the way back, as I can't recall anything about it other than that it was a thing and I think we fought some Hand there.

It was one of the towns that the Hand destroyed. The conflict after the Marked for Death encounter was very setting and party specific (briefly, the warder finally had a mental breakdown because she was denied the acceptance of her neighbors and her own goddess's favor and blessing for her entire life because of her race, while the Paladin/favored soul just woke up one day and got it) but it was excellent.

Spoiler: Part IV: The Enemy at the Gates

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Spoiler: General Pre-Battle

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I think Coffee used a different map for the city of Brindol.

Also the system for training the populace recommended in this thread was used- it proved very helpful, and while complex was a way to make us feel like we actually had an effect on the preparedness of the city.

My druid chose to help repair the walls, and while I now know there was no actual, in-game effect, Coffee did a FANTASTIC job of making me feel like it mattered during the giants' barrage.

Also, Nikau continued blackmailing the druid to keep the aid of the Tiri Kitor, until she finally told the wizard and Ranger/Rogue about it and they started plotting his death. Seriously, we IC hated this guy. Enough to seriously consider bringing in the Paladin on the murder plot. Ran out of time before the battle so never got to effect it though, which is probably a good thing for the alliance.

There was also a month of no-game-time before the battle, which we all used... to actually spelunk the rulebooks. I learned a lot, and everyone found a whole bunch of SR: No spells and other things to use, as we were paranoid about the dragon, as well as a lot of one-time-use items that could help us survive a large battle.

I used a different map, and reinforcing the walls did make a bit of a difference during the spy subplot. It's also a good thing you didn't kill Nikau because doing so would have seriously jeopardized the alliance wit the Tiri Kitor.

Spoiler: Captain Bubbles

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Also, around this time we got a feat, and I approached Coffee about maybe spending it to allow Captain Bubbles, the Razorfiend, to fight with the party. She, being fantastic, agreed, provided he was severely weakened from the base razorfiend due to, y'know, being a baby. I don't know how many stats I can post here, but he was small in size, significantly weaker, slower, and had the breath weapon reduced to 2d6 with a very low DC. His damage was single digit unless he crit. He did, however, have enough HP that he wouldn't die in one hit.

Basically, he functioned in combat as a flanking buddy, and was mostly there for flavor reasons.

Spoiler: Regiarix

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Instead of helping with the preparations, my druid decided to help fix the walls due to having stone shape + knowledge(architecture). (I told you we weren't optimized.) There, she befriended some strangers named Miha and Reginald, and found the walls were being sabotaged, weakened with some kind of acid! She and Reginald also struck up a bit of a romantic interest.

Eventually, the rest of the party was called to secretly watch the walls one night, only to find, surprise surprise, Reginald and Miha sneaking around suspiciously. Miha claimed to be doing the same thing, that her friend Reginald had suggested they go out and watch the walls, see if anything suspicious happened. When confronted by a... less than diplomatic Warder, Reginald revealed himself to be.... Regiarix! A crazy flying fight ensued as, cover blown, he raced to the center of the city to try to free Ulwai, with the Warder in his talons. He DEFINITELY had spell resistance, as we might have kept setting fire to the Warder instead of the dragon with AoEs. He was brought down right outside of the prison, coming within inches of achieving his goal.

The druid and the wizard became very suspicious of Miha, and essentially drove her from the city. My DM assures me that in this iteration we were just being paranoid, she was an innocent bystander as the spy role was filled by Regiarix. (And I was so excited too when I read the module and questioned her... turns out I'm not always right).

Then the Ranger/Rogue left and was replaced with a Ranged Fighter.

Spoiler: Audience with the Lords

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I believe Coffee took all of the suggestions given in this thread, so the choices didn't seem too ridiculously obvious. There was quite some argument over where to put the clerics, if I recall correctly. We also put Immerstal the Red at the top of the tower, with orders to cast darkness on the top if the battle appeared lost, which was our signal for retreat, and he could drop the bridge after Jaarmath got across.(I believe Immerstal may have been lower level in this iteration. Also, there was more to the plan, but obviously I'm not the one who makes and remembers good plans.)

The Tiri Kitor leader, Jaarmath, Immerstal, and the party all had telepathic bonds. Possibly Tredora as well.

Spoiler: Save the Walls

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There were definitely ogres here, and they packed a bigger wallop than the giants. I don't know if coffee lowered the wall's hitpoints or just described the rocks as hitting really hard, but it was very effective in getting us moving.

Spoiler: Abithrax's Rampage

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I believe Abithrax was buffed a bit.

It wound up not mattering.

We'd prepped for a month specifically to take down a red dragon.

I don't know if he even made it to his second turn.

Letting it happen was probably the best thing Coffee could have done- we were having a lot of trouble with just the average encounters, so having us take down something we'd been fearing since cinder hill (albeit at a large expenditure of resources), was fantastic!

Spoiler: Streets of Blood

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General: We were given about 10 militia, one lion of brindol, three tiri kitor archers, and a messenger to hold the line. a wand of spore field was used to keep the enemy from dashing past, and helped control the flow of enemies from the side street our map had.

First wave: The archers, plus our ranged fighter, managed to take care of the manticores pretty neatly. There were some martial adepts included here, which were a bit frustrating until we figured out they were using maneuvers, not just... magically countering our every move. Some of the militia and one archer died, so we sent the messenger for reinforcements. The druid got knocked out by manticore spikes, and the wizard was in the single digits.

Second wave: I believe one berserker got through, the barricade was largely wrecked, and some more of the militia died. The druid was briefly unconscious. Again. (Honestly, Coffee didn't pull her punches, the druid only survived all these knockouts because this party was very, very vigilant about being able to get each other back up quickly.)

Third wave: The messenger returned with a handful of militia (which we really needed at this point). The thunderlizards would have wrecked us, but the wizard cast black tentacles to slow them down, and the Warder's higher level abilities had come online, allowing her to become a blender if the battlefield lines up right.

Not much to say here; you guys did a fantastic job. I made Immerstal an elderly female hafling in case the wizard wanted to interact and have a foil to work off of, but sadly it never happened. You guys did a wonderful job handling the encounters and the Streets of Blood is where Kia truly got to shine.

Also I was astonished at how easily you took down Abby. I did not expect that from you.

Spoiler: Sniper attack

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Very mixed feelings about this one. First of all, whatever casters were used were a pleasant surprise and a fun fight! I doubt they were just war adepts. They flew around, but the ceiling was low enough that they could still be reached with a jump check, which was very exciting! Captain Bubbles the Razorfiend actually managed to deliver a killing blow (with 6 damage, if I recall correctly), despite being in single-digit HP himself.

So, not entirely useless.

However, Skather must have been modified, and I'm not sure I agree with all of what was done. First off, he hid invisibly upstairs, which is fine- he's an assassin, he should be hard to find. However, he popped out of hiding and used some kind of instant-death ability on the Paladin/Favored Soul. I think it may have been an Assassin's death attack? Not knowing that this kind of ability existed, especially for something we had been told was just a sneaky fellow with poisoned arrows, it felt... honestly rather unfair. Like there wasn't any action we could have taken to prevent it. I'm fine with everyone dying, but I do prefer the deaths to be due to either bad decisions or the luck of the dice.

The Paladin/Favored Soul got brought back with a last breath, but it did leave a bit of a bad taste.

If you do choose to use Assassin, maybe consider using the paralysis effect rather than the outright kill if your players aren't familiar with the class. Actually, that might be fun, maybe a hostage situation!

I swapped Skather's class from Ninja to Rogue/Assassin, and Andrian rolled a natural 1 against the death attack. Honestly, that session erupted into a lot of arguments and ended with a sour feeling. If we had the chance to do it over, I wouldn't do what I did.

Seriously, DMs, think carefully before throwing that Death Attack at the players.

Spoiler: Final Battle

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This was a fun one, OoC! The hill giants and ogres provided some very effective support- bolstered by the fact I made a very poor tactical decision and had my druid try to rush them. That... was very stupid. In my defense, it was at the end of a long night. They swiftly put the druid and her companion into the negatives, with the druid at -9. They were brought back up the next round, but the dire wolf was killed by an ogre. Sad, but.... that was a very dumb decision I made.

Kharn flew around, and may have been a Ruby Knight Vindicator, as he certainly had maneuvers, as well as fire resistance! (Which is bad because we, as a party, had a thing for fire) Eventually though, he went down to the Paladin/Favored Soul and Warder's attacks.

Kharn was indeed a Ruby Knight vindicator! And by the way, I still feel bad about McSnorkles. I didn't want to kill the wolf, but it's what the ogre would have done.

And saying you have a thing for fire is a bit of an understatement.

Spoiler: After the Battle

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Lord Jaarmath gifted us with some things (including rights to Vraath keep. My druid instead requested that the Tiri Kitor be told about Nikau's blackmailing. I can't imagine that went well for him.

) and the party almost parted ways.... until he let us know we had to take on Kull.

Also, the Dire Wolf companion didn't get raised.

Spoiler: Victory?

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The moment Kharn fell, Coffee tallied up our victory points in front of us. Slowly. Deliberately. Not telling us how many we needed to make. It was possibly the best way to reveal this mechanic.

I can't recall if we got all the VP for killing Ulwai, as she did um.... get better.

So yay, Brindol was saved!

Alright, I'll let Coffee respond to this bit, and then post the Fane of Tiamat. (Maybe by that time we'll have gotten to the Ghostlord in our follow-up game, and I'll have some more to say about him or the design of the rest of his lair.)

**thorr-kan** · 2017-10-22, 09:07 PM (ISO 8601)

The DM/Player back-and-forth recap is both a hilarious read and an excellent debriefing on the campaign. Thanks, folks.

**aReallyGreatAxe** · 2017-10-22, 11:07 PM (ISO 8601)

Thank you, Thorr-kan! They're fun to write as well.

Regarding the wolf: seriously, with a tactical decision that bad, someone should have died, and it's only right that he did. Plus it was good for the story that something important should be lost at the battle of Brindol, made the victory feel more hard-won.

And now on to the Fane of Tiamat!

Spoiler: Part VI: The Fane of Tiamat

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Spoiler: General Fane

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You'll probably notice that there's overall a whole lot less of the random devils showing up throughout the Fane.
Personally, I think this was a good decision. The encounters left each served a narrative purpose, and having some rooms without foes let there be a feeling of tension.

Also, the party was on a first-name basis with Azar Kull, and he will be referred to as either the full name or "Azar", because his name is not entirely polite in one of the languages a player speaks and we could not take him seriously otherwise.

Spoiler: On the way

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There were some teleportation shenanigans needed to get to the general area of the Fane. The Warder's player wasn't able to make it for a few weeks, so the party at this point was just Druid(and razorfiend), Wizard, Paladin/Favored Soul, Ranged Fighter. All classes that operate best on a few encounters a day, right? (Well, except for the fighter.)

The lack of random encounters was rationalized by the fact the Fane was churning out evil energy, and honestly worked better to set the mood than a bucket of randoms could ever have done. We'd been in these mountains before, and they were crawling with nasties.

And now.

Emptiness.

Like they'd all run from something far worse.

Spoiler: The Mark of Tiamat

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On the approach to the Fane, we saw the fancy door and realized something... kinda important. We no longer had a rogue. So we started fussing about ways to bypass or break the door, and Tyrgarun pulled his ventriloquism act. I think we all assumed it was magic mouth.

Then he opened with a very damaging fireball, and revealed himself (And we recognized him as the great blue beast!). Fortunately, our wizard managed to hit him with a hold monster.... and he rolled a natural one on the save. So, at very low health, we were able to swarm the dragon. He got off one more breath weapon before he died, one-shotting the wizard, who'd had full health previously, and nearly taking the rest of the party with him. I can't imagine how we would've beaten him had that hold monster not hit.

The Paladin/Favored Soul had the staff of life at this point, now reverted to its original stats, and he used last breath to bring back the wizard. All the staff had remaining at this point was the three charges of heal.

Spoiler: Dragon's Lair

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This room was a great little treasure area, full of flavor for the different dragons. It was at this point that we realized that we no longer had a rogue and would have issues bypassing any traps. Luckily, the wizard got a wand of fireball, and the druid still had the staff of storms, so... we decided brute force was probably the way to open doors from now on.

We attempted stone shape to bypass the door, but failed knowledge(architecture) enough that we had to wait around for some hobgoblins to try to enter, then run through the door before it shut and kill them all, then blow open the door to the next room with a fireball. We were... a little paranoid about traps after the Mark of Tiamat.

Spoiler: Foyer

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So, the abishai opened this fight by immediately successfully summoning more abishai. The wyverns fulfilled their roles as trundling sacks of hitpoints, and the abishai's fast healing was enough to be worrying without being so much as to actually annoy us players without a way to overcome it.

Spoiler: Guard Barracks

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Our Paladin/Favored soul was not very careful opening doors, and would up getting immediately surrounded here. I believe the blackspawn were as printed in the book, but one thing Coffee did that I really liked is she had one flee up into the torture chamber when things started looking rough. My druid pursued, and this led to triggering the torture chamber while a few blackspawn were still alive.

While, challenging, this led to a real feeling that the Fane was interconnected, without bringing the whole place down on us at once.

Spoiler: The Torture Chamber

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The bone devil started out... by summoning another bone devil. This led to a challenging extension of the guard barracks, as we were already low on health from the blackspawn. The walls of ice were useful to the bone devils by splitting up the battlefield and proving themselves to be effective opponents! (Note that we have a house rule in effect that spells with one-round casting time take effect on the tail end of the caster's turn- it makes things like enlarge person and summons more viable in combat. These fights where the devils can summon more devils were probably affected by this ruling more than most, as for example the abishai doubled in number on the first turn.)

We also found Eulidna, an oread we'd befriended earlier and glimpsed at cinder hill, in the iron maiden, barely alive. We took her to the guest chambers, and managed to wake her up enough to say that Azar Kull was planning something and we had to hurry.

Of course, we as the players assumed this meant that we had to complete the Fane all in one shot or lose, and didn't adequately communicate this back to the DM. So we kept going, even though resting would have been a very good idea at this point.

Spoiler: Priest Cells

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When we came to the door of the priest cells, we decided we couldn't risk a fireball to blow it open without bringing the passage down on top of us, so the Paladin/Favored soul loudly broke down the door and was immediately hit with a dominate person.

I'm sure these were leveled up using some advice in the handbook, as I recall there being more of them and of several different types.

The Paladin/Favored Soul then was brought into the room, with the only witness (my druid) failing a sense motive check to realize he was dominated.... and assuming he'd turned traitor. He and one priest escaped through the secret passage while the rest of us fought.

Now, down our primary melee fighter, this was a challenge, and the druid and wizard burned the last of their third-level-and-up spells. Having the priests surround us was a great tactic, and if it weren't for fire resistance between 10 and 20 on basically everyone making AoE spells less deadly for the party, I doubt we could have gotten out of that one without a death.

The Paladin/Favored Soul was brought to Azar and forced to answer a few questions truthfully: Who was with him, what were his companions planning (luckily, we didn't really have a plan), what they knew about Azar's plans, and so on. Important to note: At this point, the Warder was not here.

Then The Paladin/Favored Soul was put in Azar's private quarters under the watchful eyes of the erinyes. The plan was to make him the final sacrifice to open the portal.

I think this was a very effective use of mind control, much better to further the story! And the rest of the party got whipped into a fury to hunt down and kill the "traitor".

Spoiler: Kitchen and Council Chamber

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Coffee skipped the night hag, probably because the party... let's just say there had been arguments on what constituted cannibalism, so she would not have made any more horrifying impact than the party had already done to itself.

We actually never got around to opening the council chamber.

Spoiler: Great Temple of Tiamat

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And we marched into the temple yelling that the traitor come out and fight us! Which immediately triggered the wyverns. This was a very tough fight, as we were reduced to basically level one spells and a rapidly depleting wand of fireball and staff of storms, plus the ranged fighter. I believe produce flame made its first appearance since level five. The wyverns were fun in that they flew and dealt a lot of damage, but they were more reckless than many other enemies and were played as if they weren't aware of what the different characters could do, which was lovely. Coffee did a great job of playing them as not being very bright.

Spoiler: Cavern of the Guardian Spawn

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Upon entering this room, we found one priest seemingly talking to something, and actually managed to sneak up on him! One almost-max-damage fireball and a few arrows later, and he was dead.. but the greenspawn razorfiend was both hurt by the blast and alerted to our presence. It was during killing the priest that we finally discovered the "complete the Fane in one shot" miscommunication, so Coffee took the razorfiends... and downgraded it to one very deadly green beast. We did not want to fight this thing and tried diplomacy. It uh... didn't go well, but eventually we managed to kill it. Barely.

When the priest died, it wound up breaking the dominate person on the Paladin/Favored Soul. He, cleverly enough, managed to bluff the Erinyes into letting him escape, and he ran back, retracing his steps with the priest until he got to the cavern of the guardian spawn- where the rest of the party almost incinerated him.

I really respect that Coffee was able to recognize the miscommunication and deliver a fight that was both challenging and survivable.

Spoiler: Cavern of the Guardian Spawn, part II

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The party then retreated and spent the night in the guest chambers with Eulidna, the barely-alive ally. Unfortunately... she didn't survive the night, and the party was woken up by the sudden occurrence of a wight attack.

This was an excellent thing to do if your party winds up rescuing an ally from the bone devil's clutches! Just when they think they're safe and have blocked the door... Plus, it was a great RP moment for the Wizard, as he loved her.

Anyways, after that was resolved, it was back to the Cavern! On the way, we heard razorfiends up ahead and... again, tried to start diplomacy. While we were doing that, a whole bunch of shadows popped out of the walls and attacked! This was an excellent idea, having the shadows move to a new, previously explored area, when their presence was truly unexpected! We rolled wonderfully on the miss chance. However, diplomacy with the razorfiends didn't go so well, obviously, and we started fighting them. With natural ones. Followed by natural ones. I think I personally had four in a row, and the fighter got a whole bunch too. So these last two razorfiends took far longer than they should have to put down.

The Warder rejoined us at this point, having been teleported in by Immerstal.

Spoiler: Outer Sanctum

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This area was changed up a bunch from the module! It featured several hobgoblin priests and one of the Erinyes! It turned out to be very effective against the good members of the party, namely the Paladin/Favored Soul and the Warder. Of course, my gut reaction was "Let's destroy the altar, it'll obviously try to kill us!". It uh, worked a little? The altar started reforming almost immediately, and a religion check to find out what the thing was revealed that my druid is very lucky not to have died from magical backlash (as the cleric note in the book).

The mental image of the slowly reforming altar is one of my favorite in the module- it's a small detail, but beautiful.

Spoiler: Summoning Room and Treasure Room

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Not much to say about the summoning room, other than we closed the door and decided to deal with that later.

The treasure room, on the other hand.... Remember how we didn't have a rogue? Luckily, our Warder spoke pretty much every language, so the top of the stairs trap was deactivated easily.

But we took one look at those chests and decided they *had* to be trapped. They were simply too fancy to not be trapped. And, having various reasons to really, really hate the red hand, we wanted what's inside, or at least didn't want the hand to have it.

So my druid used call lightning from the staff of storms in an attempt to blow open the green chest, which set off the trap, but blew it near enough the next one that there was a bit of a chain effect, helped along by lighting whenever things looked like they were dying down, and the chests were damaged enough to be deemed "safe".

Most of the gemstones broke, the art was on fire, the potions were mostly broken (although we did get a few bull's strength) and I think some of the magic items were destroyed. But considering the lack of a rogue, this was better than could be expected.

At this point we realized that Azar would be our next opponent, up through the hole in the ceiling, and actually made a plan! But first we realized that we had some duplicate items, one use items, buff spells that couldn't all be used in one fight, and the like, and after buffing each other all up, we realized there were some leftovers.... so we decided to buff the heck out of Captain Bubbles, the baby razorfiend. Because why not.

Still not all that helpful, unless by some miracle he crit, with that x3 modifier. (of note is that he had never critted since his joining the party, despite participating in the entire battle of Brindol and every fight in the Fane. I just rolled poorly.)

We climbed the animated rope up, with the warder being invisible, since her presence was not known.

Spoiler: The Inner Sanctum

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First of all, as nobody in the party had ever bothered with dispel magic, she created some magic orbs to which the silence effect was keyed. This way, it would still be a nuisance taking rounds to destroy, but there was some way out of it. I think it was an excellent change.

Azar looked up from his work and noticed the Paladin/Favored Soul just barely entering the room.... everyone rolled initiative, and Azar rolled pretty high... but someone he was not expecting got a natural 20. Azar was blindsided by the charging, invisible Warder, who had already climbed the rope. She deals a whole lot of damage on a charge, and knocked him prone.

So Azar's tactics were changed a bit, as he managed to defensively cast invisibility. Efforts to find him were hampered by the fact that nobody could communicate, half the party prioritized the orbs (because obviously the masonry in this place wanted to kill us), the other half of the party was trying to hit the invisible Azar, and Abishai flew in from every side.

Eventually the orbs were shattered, and a few AoEs served to pinpoint a 30' or so range Azar was in, while carving off a good chunk of his health. The Abishai proved to be worthy opponents, and the other Erinyes appeared to join in the fun, which kept our attention divided and Azar unfound. The Paladin/Favored soul used one of the staff of life's Heals on Captain Bubbles when he was sent to 0. (Again, it's the final battle, why not have Mr. Flanking Bonus around?)

Azar eventually revealed himself, but died once we managed to get him in melee. On the top of the Dais, dramatically enough. Everyone was hurting, and hurting badly. (Well, the Wizard was at full. But the Warder was in single digits). But the battle was won!

Then his dying prayer was heard, and Tiamat oozed Herself through into the material plane. We all got one standard action as she clawed her way through. Wands of snake's swiftness were used so basically we got a lot of free hits on her, but the Paladin/Favored Soul used his to drop a Heal on the Warder, and Captain Bubbles managed to score his very first critical, taking off twenty-some HP.

And then she was free! Her first action was a fiery breath that engulfed a large chunk of the party, and would've killed the Warder and the Wizard if it hadn't been for that heal and fire resistance, respectively. Her bites served to bring nearly everyone to 10 or lower, and one killed the Paladin/Favored Soul outright.

We retaliated with some very high damaging hits from the Warder, a few little damages from the Wizard and Druid.
The Aspect of Tiamat was looking rough, but we were looking even worse. One of the party was dead, and everyone else was so low that the next breath weapon would almost certainly be game over.

And then, it happened. Captain Bubbles, with his lowest initiative, actually managed to hit with his first two attacks, dealing twenty or so damage total. The third though, the third was a critical. He had a x3 modifier, and rolled very well on damage. I believe the exact number was 34. Over fifty damage, from the creature that barely ever hits, and even then only deals single digits.

And She died.

Captain Bubbles, the silly little greenspawn razorfiend with his tiny attacks, killed a God.

The very God that had created him.

Spoiler: Notes

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1.) The Paladin/Favored soul was brought back through a successful UMD on a raise dead scroll, which may or may not have been aided by the fact we also broke the staff of life to help.

2.) Final death tally: five and an animal companion.

3.) Final level: 10

**Eldariel** · 2017-10-26, 07:08 AM (ISO 8601)

Spoiler: Sniper Stuff

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Very mixed feelings about this one. First of all, whatever casters were used were a pleasant surprise and a fun fight! I doubt they were just war adepts. They flew around, but the ceiling was low enough that they could still be reached with a jump check, which was very exciting! Captain Bubbles the Razorfiend actually managed to deliver a killing blow (with 6 damage, if I recall correctly), despite being in single-digit HP himself. So, not entirely useless.

However, Skather must have been modified, and I'm not sure I agree with all of what was done. First off, he hid invisibly upstairs, which is fine- he's an assassin, he should be hard to find. However, he popped out of hiding and used some kind of instant-death ability on the Paladin/Favored Soul. I think it may have been an Assassin's death attack? Not knowing that this kind of ability existed, especially for something we had been told was just a sneaky fellow with poisoned arrows, it felt... honestly rather unfair. Like there wasn't any action we could have taken to prevent it. I'm fine with everyone dying, but I do prefer the deaths to be due to either bad decisions or the luck of the dice.

The Paladin/Favored Soul got brought back with a last breath, but it did leave a bit of a bad taste.

If you do choose to use Assassin, maybe consider using the paralysis effect rather than the outright kill if your players aren't familiar with the class. Actually, that might be fun, maybe a hostage situation!

I swapped Skather's class from Ninja to Rogue/Assassin, and Andrian rolled a natural 1 against the death attack. Honestly, that session erupted into a lot of arguments and ended with a sour feeling. If we had the chance to do it over, I wouldn't do what I did.

Seriously, DMs, think carefully before throwing that Death Attack at the players.

Then again, level 9-10 is the point where death spells and death effects begin to really become commonplace (before that only random enemies like Cockatrices or Gorgons do it) so it should be a part of the paradigm shift. It's worth noting that Assassin's death attack in and of itself is rather limited: it requires 3 rounds of study during which the assassin must not be detected (thus, simple See Invisibility with potential Spot-check would ruin the death attack), it must be performed with a melee weapon and the save DC is based on class level + Int (really low in most of the cases) so if the party has decent saves and some ways to reroll natural 1s (e.g. Alter Fortune spell, items that do it or such), it's actually not very likely to work. And it puts the Assassin in harm's way. And on this level party divine casters/item users already have access to Last Breath/Revivify so there are means to immediately revive characters who have died.

So there's counterplay available but certainly, natural 1s on saves vs. death effects can be huge bummers and of course, being occupied with the War Adepts one might not think the Assassin is looking for an opening to take somebody down. So definitely understandable that it felt bad and level 9-10 is one of the big paradigm shifts in the kind of stuff that's available, which can kinda sneak in on the players as nothing in the game aside from your own spell lists really warns you that suddenly you might die to a single bad roll. Probably an issue with expectations in part too; if the players don't expect the shift, it can feel like a huge bummer.

That said, currently I favour running Skather as a Justice of Weald and Woe instead. He qualifies off the bat with his HD and the class with the arrow-related spells, some Ranger-stuff, Sneak Attack and poison use meshes pretty well with the original. Though Swordsage/Assassin, Assassin and even Rogue are certainly all reasonable options too. Justice would give up the short sword aspect and focus on the archery aspect on the double. I could imagine an Arrowsplit shot with purple worm poison taking down Jarmaath

**aReallyGreatAxe** · 2017-10-26, 09:01 AM (ISO 8601)

Spoiler: Sniper Stuff

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Originally Posted by Eldariel

Then again, level 9-10 is the point where death spells and death effects begin to really become commonplace (before that only random enemies like Cockatrices or Gorgons do it) so it should be a part of the paradigm shift. It's worth noting that Assassin's death attack in and of itself is rather limited: it requires 3 rounds of study during which the assassin must not be detected (thus, simple See Invisibility with potential Spot-check would ruin the death attack), it must be performed with a melee weapon and the save DC is based on class level + Int (really low in most of the cases) so if the party has decent saves and some ways to reroll natural 1s (e.g. Alter Fortune spell, items that do it or such), it's actually not very likely to work. And it puts the Assassin in harm's way. And on this level party divine casters/item users already have access to Last Breath/Revivify so there are means to immediately revive characters who have died.

So there's counterplay available but certainly, natural 1s on saves vs. death effects can be huge bummers and of course, being occupied with the War Adepts one might not think the Assassin is looking for an opening to take somebody down. So definitely understandable that it felt bad and level 9-10 is one of the big paradigm shifts in the kind of stuff that's available, which can kinda sneak in on the players as nothing in the game aside from your own spell lists really warns you that suddenly you might die to a single bad roll. Probably an issue with expectations in part too; if the players don't expect the shift, it can feel like a huge bummer.

That said, currently I favour running Skather as a Justice of Weald and Woe instead. He qualifies off the bat with his HD and the class with the arrow-related spells, some Ranger-stuff, Sneak Attack and poison use meshes pretty well with the original. Though Swordsage/Assassin, Assassin and even Rogue are certainly all reasonable options too. Justice would give up the short sword aspect and focus on the archery aspect on the double. I could imagine an Arrowsplit shot with purple worm poison taking down Jarmaath

You make a good point- there probably was a bit of an issue with expectations, as I'm not sure anyone in the game had played at such high levels before (yes, not really high, but higher than the ~5-6 that's usual). Besides, reincarnate/raise dead/last breath and so on caused a lot of arguments in this group, but that's player-specific. (And death rules are
extremely group-specific, as literally every dm I've had has done it differently)

I suppose if your players were aware of this sort of thing, the death attack could be a fun strategic part of the game, what with trying to disrupt the assassin before he can pull it off! I personally don't like it, but I can see the attraction.

On the other hand, Disciple of Weald and Woe looks fantastic for when I DM this myself- the party won't have dealt with a potent archer since Skather (and perhaps not even then), so it could be a great way to mix up the battle of Brindol! Have you run this fight yourself, would you have any advice on how best to make use of this style? I was thinking sniping from the top of the stairs while they're fighting the Warpriests.

**Eldariel** · 2017-10-26, 12:19 PM (ISO 8601)

Can't say I'd have run Skather as a Justice of W&W yet - I just happened to think of it as a result of reading of the Assassin Skather (which I also think is a very interesting angle; both are great antagonist classes which don't mesh that well with normal parties). That's definitely a bit of a shift away from the jack of all trades Skather into a more focused Archer Skather, but not necessarily a bad trade-off. One thing this does lead to is that there'll be no stealthy melee sneaks the party faces for the entirety of the campaign; Skather is basically the only "Rogue-type" in the whole. Last I ran him it was with a simple Swordsage 6, which is kinda cool in that it's one of the few opportunities to run a high level ToB opponent for the party (the other ones are really Ulwai, Kharn and Azarr Kul, of which I prefer martial setup for Kharn only - though I like running Karkilan as a Crusader 2 as well). It does make him a few steps more dangerous a fight but level 5 maneuvers (off HD 6/Swordsage 6), while potent, lack the instagib ones still. But they do contain some very powerful ones and he's certainly a martial opponent to be reckoned with in this leveling scheme. He does suffer of serious action economy disadvantage though and if the party has multiple casters with disabling spells of even Glitterdust calibre, he only has one counter a turn to protect himself (though his saves are respectable). If he can't begin taking out PCs relatively fast he'll inevitably get mauled though he has decent tools for escaping, and the casters can actually be really potent if rebuilt with intelligent spell selection for their given task in the battle (supporting the assassin).

That said, Justice could definitely be fun especially if you went a different route with Saarvith (I made him a Mystic Ranger with a focus on summoning as the Horde lacks a proper Druid and he's the only real option - though he still keeps the bow and can use it very well). The CoR arrow spells add a rather unique flair to the whole fight and his low SA adds a bit from cover (enough to take Craven) without really being the main focus of the fight and he has some interesting abilities like melee shot and the 1/day +10 insight. Poisons, ranger spells, Ranged Weapon Mastery and decent skills and general utility definitely make it an alluring option. Particularly the spells which add a few really nasty tricks into his arsenal (particularly if you scrounge the Ranger archery spells from other sources as you definitely should, and give him 16 Int instead for that 3rd level extra daily spell).

EDIT: Though let me fully recommend running Swordsage Skather too (you'll need to grab Poison Use somehow, and Longbow/Shortbow proficiency + Rapid Shot if you wish to keep that part in his kit - I solved all this by going Ranger 2/Swordsage 4 and taking Master of Poisons feat). Shifting Defense is a delicious defensive stance as is Pearl of Black Doubt coupled with his more than respectable AC. I went TWF (ITWF from the Gloves of the Balanced Hand) with Weapon Finesse, TWF, Master of Poisons, Adaptive Style, Darkstalker - Track and Rapid Shot from Ranger (Favored Enemy: Human). To use Shadow Blade he'd need a Shadow Hand stance but that's not necessary, really. Could also dip Barbarian instead if you want the Pounce + Bounding Assault combo in the mix, which would also add the option of adding a form of Rage/Frenzy (probably Whirling Frenzy) to the mix. Then just on-hit damage, extra hit maneuvers and things that allow him to slip around. Note, you don't really need TWF as Swordsage maneuvers add enough pain just at face value though.

**CoffeeIncluded** · 2017-10-26, 02:39 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by aReallyGreatAxe

Thank you, Thorr-kan! They're fun to write as well.

Regarding the wolf: seriously, with a tactical decision that bad, someone should have died, and it's only right that he did. Plus it was good for the story that something important should be lost at the battle of Brindol, made the victory feel more hard-won.

And now on to the Fane of Tiamat!

That is all true but I personally feel bad about killing wolves.

Spoiler: Part VI: The Fane of Tiamat

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Spoiler: General Fane

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You'll probably notice that there's overall a whole lot less of the random devils showing up throughout the Fane.
Personally, I think this was a good decision. The encounters left each served a narrative purpose, and having some rooms without foes let there be a feeling of tension.

Also, the party was on a first-name basis with Azar Kull, and he will be referred to as either the full name or "Azar", because his name is not entirely polite in one of the languages a player speaks and we could not take him seriously otherwise.

Frankly if I had to do multiple random encounters a session, that would have taken way too long and just bogged down the game even more. We're all very busy people and it would have been unnecessary, unfun filler. I left what was important in there and I'm glad you enjoyed it and let there be tension.

Spoiler: On the way

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There were some teleportation shenanigans needed to get to the general area of the Fane. The Warder's player wasn't able to make it for a few weeks, so the party at this point was just Druid(and razorfiend), Wizard, Paladin/Favored Soul, Ranged Fighter. All classes that operate best on a few encounters a day, right? (Well, except for the fighter.)

The lack of random encounters was rationalized by the fact the Fane was churning out evil energy, and honestly worked better to set the mood than a bucket of randoms could ever have done. We'd been in these mountains before, and they were crawling with nasties.

And now.

Emptiness.

Like they'd all run from something far worse.

Yes! That's the other reason there weren't many random encounters! Yulidna's purpose was to guard the seal on this place. Remember when you helped reinforce the seal and saw a glimpse of something dark and writhing underneath the mountain?

Well, without Yulinda, and with Azar's work, that seal was weakening and you saw was was crawling out...

Spoiler: The Mark of Tiamat

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On the approach to the Fane, we saw the fancy door and realized something... kinda important. We no longer had a rogue. So we started fussing about ways to bypass or break the door, and Tyrgarun pulled his ventriloquism act. I think we all assumed it was magic mouth.

Then he opened with a very damaging fireball, and revealed himself (And we recognized him as the great blue beast!). Fortunately, our wizard managed to hit him with a hold monster.... and he rolled a natural one on the save. So, at very low health, we were able to swarm the dragon. He got off one more breath weapon before he died, one-shotting the wizard, who'd had full health previously, and nearly taking the rest of the party with him. I can't imagine how we would've beaten him had that hold monster not hit.

The Paladin/Favored Soul had the staff of life at this point, now reverted to its original stats, and he used last breath to bring back the wizard. All the staff had remaining at this point was the three charges of heal.

I had to do quite a bit of rapid jury-rigging and workarounds and generally being merciful to make up for your lack of a rogue or any way to disarm traps, since the Fane was full of them. Thankfully you were all extremely creative, which helped!

Looking back, yeah if it wasn't for that hold monster a lot more people would have died. It all happened so fast that I didn't realize it except in hindsight. But that was an excellent use of a spell.

Spoiler: Dragon's Lair

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This room was a great little treasure area, full of flavor for the different dragons. It was at this point that we realized that we no longer had a rogue and would have issues bypassing any traps. Luckily, the wizard got a wand of fireball, and the druid still had the staff of storms, so... we decided brute force was probably the way to open doors from now on.

We attempted stone shape to bypass the door, but failed knowledge(architecture) enough that we had to wait around for some hobgoblins to try to enter, then run through the door before it shut and kill them all, then blow open the door to the next room with a fireball. We were... a little paranoid about traps after the Mark of Tiamat.

Play up the flavor, guys. The dragons are major villains in their own right and they all have their own distinct personalities. Also, I have many regrets and no regrets giving these pyromaniacs so many fireballs.

Your plan would have worked if you hadn't rolled so badly, by the way.

Spoiler: Foyer

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So, the abishai opened this fight by immediately successfully summoning more abishai. The wyverns fulfilled their roles as trundling sacks of hitpoints, and the abishai's fast healing was enough to be worrying without being so much as to actually annoy us players without a way to overcome it.

Spoiler: Guard Barracks

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Our Paladin/Favored soul was not very careful opening doors, and would up getting immediately surrounded here. I believe the blackspawn were as printed in the book, but one thing Coffee did that I really liked is she had one flee up into the torture chamber when things started looking rough. My druid pursued, and this led to triggering the torture chamber while a few blackspawn were still alive.

While, challenging, this led to a real feeling that the Fane was interconnected, without bringing the whole place down on us at once.

Come on, Andrian was running up and down the hallways, slamming doors open and screaming for everyone. All the blackspawn had to do was gather around the door and ready actions to attack whomever opened it first. They were as printed in the book, and I'm glad you liked that sudden improvised plan! I figured that while these blackspawn were fanatics, there's no way they wouldn't get help that was right beyond the other door.

Spoiler: The Torture Chamber

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The bone devil started out... by summoning another bone devil. This led to a challenging extension of the guard barracks, as we were already low on health from the blackspawn. The walls of ice were useful to the bone devils by splitting up the battlefield and proving themselves to be effective opponents! (Note that we have a house rule in effect that spells with one-round casting time take effect on the tail end of the caster's turn- it makes things like enlarge person and summons more viable in combat. These fights where the devils can summon more devils were probably affected by this ruling more than most, as for example the abishai doubled in number on the first turn.)

We also found Eulidna, an oread we'd befriended earlier and glimpsed at cinder hill, in the iron maiden, barely alive. We took her to the guest chambers, and managed to wake her up enough to say that Azar Kull was planning something and we had to hurry.

Of course, we as the players assumed this meant that we had to complete the Fane all in one shot or lose, and didn't adequately communicate this back to the DM. So we kept going, even though resting would have been a very good idea at this point.

Just so you know the summoning more devils wasn't guaranteed. They just happened to roll pretty well. And yeah, that little misunderstanding would have some consequences down the road, although thankfully it didn't end up too dire.

Spoiler: Priest Cells

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When we came to the door of the priest cells, we decided we couldn't risk a fireball to blow it open without bringing the passage down on top of us, so the Paladin/Favored soul loudly broke down the door and was immediately hit with a dominate person.

I'm sure these were leveled up using some advice in the handbook, as I recall there being more of them and of several different types.

The Paladin/Favored Soul then was brought into the room, with the only witness (my druid) failing a sense motive check to realize he was dominated.... and assuming he'd turned traitor. He and one priest escaped through the secret passage while the rest of us fought.

Now, down our primary melee fighter, this was a challenge, and the druid and wizard burned the last of their third-level-and-up spells. Having the priests surround us was a great tactic, and if it weren't for fire resistance between 10 and 20 on basically everyone making AoE spells less deadly for the party, I doubt we could have gotten out of that one without a death.

The Paladin/Favored Soul was brought to Azar and forced to answer a few questions truthfully: Who was with him, what were his companions planning (luckily, we didn't really have a plan), what they knew about Azar's plans, and so on. Important to note: At this point, the Warder was not here.

Then The Paladin/Favored Soul was put in Azar's private quarters under the watchful eyes of the erinyes. The plan was to make him the final sacrifice to open the portal.

I think this was a very effective use of mind control, much better to further the story! And the rest of the party got whipped into a fury to hunt down and kill the "traitor".

Notice that Andrian always seems to massively blow those super important saves that he just can't afford to fail?

I actually used the priests straight from the handbook, just changed their strategy a bit. Actually, you had a bit easier time of it since one of the higher-leveled priests left with Andrian; he wasn't really expecting that domination to work and no way was he going to risk such an amazing prize. That was a pretty clever use of AoE spells and damage resistances though, and one that the party ended up doing quite a bit because of their love of fire.

And thank you; I'm glad that you thought the use of mind control was good! Actually, when Andrian blew that save I called the campaign for the night. Partially because it was late, but mostly because I needed to think about what to do and also needed to talk to Andrian's player. I have some control issues that can crop up if I don't keep them in check, and when I have an NPC enemy Dominate a PC (or do another type of mind control; this was my first encounter with full-on Domination), I need to bring the player aside and discuss general thoughts and ask if there are any hard boundaries or lines, that way I don't inadvertently step all over them. It's similar to the Session Zero talk I have with players. There's no way I can anticipate every issue that might come up, but at least it's a place to start and sets the idea that it's ok to break character if things are getting too uncomfortable. And if I don't realize it, because I can be a social moron, please let me know.

Spoiler: Kitchen and Council Chamber

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Coffee skipped the night hag, probably because the party... let's just say there had been arguments on what constituted cannibalism, so she would not have made any more horrifying impact than the party had already done to itself.

We actually never got around to opening the council chamber.

The druid likes to wild shape and eat her enemies. Her animal/magical beast companions would often join in.

Spoiler: Great Temple of Tiamat

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And we marched into the temple yelling that the traitor come out and fight us! Which immediately triggered the wyverns. This was a very tough fight, as we were reduced to basically level one spells and a rapidly depleting wand of fireball and staff of storms, plus the ranged fighter. I believe produce flame made its first appearance since level five. The wyverns were fun in that they flew and dealt a lot of damage, but they were more reckless than many other enemies and were played as if they weren't aware of what the different characters could do, which was lovely. Coffee did a great job of playing them as not being very bright.

This is the part where I should have realized that it was player misunderstanding and not Vinca furiously charging after Andrian while dragging the other characters with her. By the way, only Vinca could have convinced herself that Andrian had turned traitor.

Spoiler: Cavern of the Guardian Spawn

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Upon entering this room, we found one priest seemingly talking to something, and actually managed to sneak up on him! One almost-max-damage fireball and a few arrows later, and he was dead.. but the greenspawn razorfiend was both hurt by the blast and alerted to our presence. It was during killing the priest that we finally discovered the "complete the Fane in one shot" miscommunication, so Coffee took the razorfiends... and downgraded it to one very deadly green beast. We did not want to fight this thing and tried diplomacy. It uh... didn't go well, but eventually we managed to kill it. Barely.

When the priest died, it wound up breaking the dominate person on the Paladin/Favored Soul. He, cleverly enough, managed to bluff the Erinyes into letting him escape, and he ran back, retracing his steps with the priest until he got to the cavern of the guardian spawn- where the rest of the party almost incinerated him.

I really respect that Coffee was able to recognize the miscommunication and deliver a fight that was both challenging and survivable.

That priest was returning to his room, whistling to himself in the satisfaction of a job well done. He was going to go back, brew up some tea, say his prayers, and go to sleep.

And then you blew him up.

You monster.

And don't worry about it. It was my bad, and also gave me a chance to shake things up once you were all rested.

Spoiler: Cavern of the Guardian Spawn, part II

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The party then retreated and spent the night in the guest chambers with Eulidna, the barely-alive ally. Unfortunately... she didn't survive the night, and the party was woken up by the sudden occurrence of a wight attack.

This was an excellent thing to do if your party winds up rescuing an ally from the bone devil's clutches! Just when they think they're safe and have blocked the door... Plus, it was a great RP moment for the Wizard, as he loved her.

Anyways, after that was resolved, it was back to the Cavern! On the way, we heard razorfiends up ahead and... again, tried to start diplomacy. While we were doing that, a whole bunch of shadows popped out of the walls and attacked! This was an excellent idea, having the shadows move to a new, previously explored area, when their presence was truly unexpected! We rolled wonderfully on the miss chance. However, diplomacy with the razorfiends didn't go so well, obviously, and we started fighting them. With natural ones. Followed by natural ones. I think I personally had four in a row, and the fighter got a whole bunch too. So these last two razorfiends took far longer than they should have to put down.

The Warder rejoined us at this point, having been teleported in by Immerstal.

What happened to Yulidna was specific to my world. Remember San de Sol, and what was underneath? Think of the Fane of Tiamat as an even bigger version of what lay under San de Sol. Just being there was sucking all the Arcana out of the area; it's why I had everyone except Clay roll fort saves. If you had failed then you would have woken up with a negative level.

The DC wasn't high but Yulidna had been trapped in the Fane for about a month; Eventually she failed that save, and that made it easier to fail another, and another...

By the time you rescued her she was down to level 1 and had only a 50-50 shot of making her next save and surviving the night. A restoration or taking her out of the Fane could have saved her, but she didn't know that and was too incoherent to effectively communicate it if she had.

Spoiler: Outer Sanctum

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This area was changed up a bunch from the module! It featured several hobgoblin priests and one of the Erinyes! It turned out to be very effective against the good members of the party, namely the Paladin/Favored Soul and the Warder. Of course, my gut reaction was "Let's destroy the altar, it'll obviously try to kill us!". It uh, worked a little? The altar started reforming almost immediately, and a religion check to find out what the thing was revealed that my druid is very lucky not to have died from magical backlash (as the cleric note in the book).

The mental image of the slowly reforming altar is one of my favorite in the module- it's a small detail, but beautiful.

Hey, if you had a chance to rest and regroup, then so did they!

Spoiler: Summoning Room and Treasure Room

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Not much to say about the summoning room, other than we closed the door and decided to deal with that later.

The treasure room, on the other hand.... Remember how we didn't have a rogue? Luckily, our Warder spoke pretty much every language, so the top of the stairs trap was deactivated easily.

But we took one look at those chests and decided they *had* to be trapped. They were simply too fancy to not be trapped. And, having various reasons to really, really hate the red hand, we wanted what's inside, or at least didn't want the hand to have it.

So my druid used call lightning from the staff of storms in an attempt to blow open the green chest, which set off the trap, but blew it near enough the next one that there was a bit of a chain effect, helped along by lighting whenever things looked like they were dying down, and the chests were damaged enough to be deemed "safe".

Most of the gemstones broke, the art was on fire, the potions were mostly broken (although we did get a few bull's strength) and I think some of the magic items were destroyed. But considering the lack of a rogue, this was better than could be expected.

At this point we realized that Azar would be our next opponent, up through the hole in the ceiling, and actually made a plan! But first we realized that we had some duplicate items, one use items, buff spells that couldn't all be used in one fight, and the like, and after buffing each other all up, we realized there were some leftovers.... so we decided to buff the heck out of Captain Bubbles, the baby razorfiend. Because why not.

Still not all that helpful, unless by some miracle he crit, with that x3 modifier. (of note is that he had never critted since his joining the party, despite participating in the entire battle of Brindol and every fight in the Fane. I just rolled poorly.)

We climbed the animated rope up, with the warder being invisible, since her presence was not known.

Again, I was being nice and I'm glad that I was.

Spoiler: The Inner Sanctum

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First of all, as nobody in the party had ever bothered with dispel magic, she created some magic orbs to which the silence effect was keyed. This way, it would still be a nuisance taking rounds to destroy, but there was some way out of it. I think it was an excellent change.

Azar looked up from his work and noticed the Paladin/Favored Soul just barely entering the room.... everyone rolled initiative, and Azar rolled pretty high... but someone he was not expecting got a natural 20. Azar was blindsided by the charging, invisible Warder, who had already climbed the rope. She deals a whole lot of damage on a charge, and knocked him prone.

So Azar's tactics were changed a bit, as he managed to defensively cast invisibility. Efforts to find him were hampered by the fact that nobody could communicate, half the party prioritized the orbs (because obviously the masonry in this place wanted to kill us), the other half of the party was trying to hit the invisible Azar, and Abishai flew in from every side.

Eventually the orbs were shattered, and a few AoEs served to pinpoint a 30' or so range Azar was in, while carving off a good chunk of his health. The Abishai proved to be worthy opponents, and the other Erinyes appeared to join in the fun, which kept our attention divided and Azar unfound. The Paladin/Favored soul used one of the staff of life's Heals on Captain Bubbles when he was sent to 0. (Again, it's the final battle, why not have Mr. Flanking Bonus around?)

Azar eventually revealed himself, but died once we managed to get him in melee. On the top of the Dais, dramatically enough. Everyone was hurting, and hurting badly. (Well, the Wizard was at full. But the Warder was in single digits). But the battle was won!

Kia's sudden presence changed everything. Azar wasn't expecting that and it completely ****ed him up, taking off over a third of his health in one go. He couldn't cast Antilife Shell before getting away because it would have trapped him in there with her, and then I misread the casting time which led to a lot of unnecessary confusion--sorry about that, by the way. Instead he cast Invisibility and ran, eating AoE spells while trying to get his Antilife Shell and buffs up. I am not exaggerating when I say that Kia's opening attack completely changed the course of the battle.

Then his dying prayer was heard, and Tiamat oozed Herself through into the material plane. We all got one standard action as she clawed her way through. Wands of snake's swiftness were used so basically we got a lot of free hits on her, but the Paladin/Favored Soul used his to drop a Heal on the Warder, and Captain Bubbles managed to score his very first critical, taking off twenty-some HP.

And then she was free! Her first action was a fiery breath that engulfed a large chunk of the party, and would've killed the Warder and the Wizard if it hadn't been for that heal and fire resistance, respectively. Her bites served to bring nearly everyone to 10 or lower, and one killed the Paladin/Favored Soul outright.

We retaliated with some very high damaging hits from the Warder, a few little damages from the Wizard and Druid.
The Aspect of Tiamat was looking rough, but we were looking even worse. One of the party was dead, and everyone else was so low that the next breath weapon would almost certainly be game over.

And then, it happened. Captain Bubbles, with his lowest initiative, actually managed to hit with his first two attacks, dealing twenty or so damage total. The third though, the third was a critical. He had a x3 modifier, and rolled very well on damage. I believe the exact number was 34. Over fifty damage, from the creature that barely ever hits, and even then only deals single digits.

And She died.

Captain Bubbles, the silly little greenspawn razorfiend with his tiny attacks, killed a God.

The very God that had created him.

The Aspect of Tiamat was going to use the Green Dragon's poison gas cone breath next, for the same amount of damage. Combined with four bite attacks, and that probably would have been a TPK.

Captain Bubbles put her at -3 HP with that crit.

I cannot think of a better way to end the campaign.

Spoiler: Notes

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1.) The Paladin/Favored soul was brought back through a successful UMD on a raise dead scroll, which may or may not have been aided by the fact we also broke the staff of life to help.

2.) Final death tally: five and an animal companion.

3.) Final level: 10

The only reason I let you use UMD untrained was because you broke the staff of life to help.

Thank you so much for playing, and I am so happy you enjoyed it. [/QUOTE]

**Goladar** · 2017-10-29, 08:49 PM (ISO 8601)

I'm running RHoD in the Channath vale and I was wondering if anyone had advice on how to link Forge of Fury((setting it in the forest south of Sarahdush) to RHoD. I'm thinking of having the dragon be part of Azarr Khuls forces, but I'm not sure how to flesh that out and get my PCs to the other side of the continent. Any advice would be much appreciated!

**Fizban** · 2017-10-29, 11:51 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Eldariel

One thing this does lead to is that there'll be no stealthy melee sneaks the party faces for the entirety of the campaign; Skather is basically the only "Rogue-type" in the whole.

This reminds me of Greenspawn Sneaks with their innate 2d6 sneak attack and bag of acid ~~eggs~~ flasks. As a fast breeding horde race you can justify as many as you want to throw sneaky touch attacks.

Not sure if it's been gone over before, but making the whole horde dragonspawn instead of hobgoblin warriors gives them a lot more special ability options: acid flasks and breath weapons don't care about armor, much better at sapping both PCs and well equipped armies. And as always I find an army of level 2+'s and PC classed guys (as the horde is written) in complete violation of city generation rules -but an army comprised of several dozen tribes of lizardfolk, greenspawn sneaks, and whitespawn hordelings, is legit: no training required, just get them pointed at the puny humans with no scales or secretions (and since hobbo regs have upgraded gear, you can slap leather armor and crossbows on them the same). Replacing 3,000 hobs with 65 tribes of 45 base lizards gives you 130 guys with 3-6 extra levels and 65 guys with 4-10 extra levels, as well as a core infantry that's just better.

Which granted, now that I look at it, isn't too far off from the hobbo horde's numbers if you also evaluate them as tribes. If we ignore the warrior/veteran/regular/sergeant levels, their higher level guys aren't too many. 190 3rd/4ths is equivalent to 95 tribes of lizardfolk, but the hobbos are shorter on higher level guys with only 33. That's about right for 10 hobbo tribes of 100 -but then they should only have 150+10 for the 3rd+ 4th/5th range. Which means the hobbs should be more smaller tribes, which means they're short on higher level guys. The goblin riders can be a dozen goblin warbands, which covers both them and the worgs. It's the free levels on those masses of hobs, gobs, and bugbears (the berserkers) that irk me: hundreds of level 2's and 3's when they should be warrior 1's, my verisimilitude is displeased. Lizardfolk and dragonspawn don't have that problem, and sneaks/hordlings have AC bypass to remain threatening without just mobbing like zombies.

That's pretty useful to know even if you don't want to replace them with lizards though: I've always thought the Red Hand's available number of casters was too low to support fighting the PCs, as even a single raid could wipe most of them out. Turns out they're actually short on high level guys, so you can add more to the horde's reserves without breaking the tribal budget any worse than it already is. Basically I think the Red Hand should be lizards out of a swamp - I actually had an idea to kindof invert the terrain, with the lizard-hand coming out of the swamp instead of hobbos out of the mountains/waste, the tiri kitor becoming snow elves on a mountain with steepness and high altitude instead of swamp, razorfiends replaced with iceskidders in a ruined castle, and a white dragon diving out of a perpetual cloudbank rather than a black dragon that can hide in the water.

Huh, there's another idea for taking the adventure structure and turning it to other factions: has anyone mentioned yuan-ti before? Rounding up a bunch of yuan-ti tribes gets you a 4/2/1 ratio of Purebloods/Halfbloods/Abominations, at listed CRs 3/5/7. With innate alternate form, mind control, and battlefield control. Put a couple tribes of those in charge of some lizards and you've got yourself a threat. Of course that kinda defeats the purpose of needing to stop the [razorfiend hatchery] and [undead creation], since the yuan-ti are tough and magical enough they don't need them. They could be used as a replacement mission instead: the lizard or even hobbo tribal army is trying to recruit a tribe of yuan-ti to send in the halfbloods and abominations, who would present a supernatural threat the town simply can't handle. So the PCs have to either assault and pick them apart or disrupt the alliance -maybe even through social skills and intrigue/subterfuge with other yuan-ti tribes.

You could adapt the whole adventure over to lizards and yuan-ti aiming at a foothold in human territory, with a ritual to summon a bunch of snakey demons and an avatar of Sseth. Which could then lead into a reveal that it was secretly led by cultists of Sertrous, as snakey bad things start/keep happening while you go off on some other middle adventure after the "RHoD" scenario. I haven't read City of the Spider Queen but it might fit, maybe cut down a little.

**ksbsnowowl** · 2017-10-30, 12:39 AM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by aReallyGreatAxe

If you do choose to use Assassin, maybe consider using the paralysis effect rather than the outright kill if your players aren't familiar with the class.

Heck no! The Hand is in it to win it. No way Skather is going to waste an opportunity to outright slay a foe as dangerous as the PC's are to the Hand's chances at success.

Originally Posted by CoffeeIncluded

I swapped Skather's class from Ninja to Rogue/Assassin, and Andrian rolled a natural 1 against the death attack. Honestly, that session erupted into a lot of arguments and ended with a sour feeling. If we had the chance to do it over, I wouldn't do what I did.

Seriously, DMs, think carefully before throwing that Death Attack at the players.

Around 7th or 9th level there is a paradigm shift in the game. Teleportation magic, raise dead, save-or-die spells. It's not like Assassin is some obscure class; it's Core, and it's freely available in the SRD. But, I can absolutely see how it could catch new players off-guard.

I've used Death Attack to kill characters twice. The first time was when I ran a revamped version of RHoD in a homebrew, Norse-themed world, with a tanarukk and troll army with demon support, rather than a goblin army with dragon support. Due to other world-specific aspects of the campaign, the Master of the Yuirwood PrC, and magically traveling between menhir circles was a part of the set-up. The tanarukk army used the menhirs to move the army across the landscape faster, and a former PC-turned-DMPC had levels in the Master of the Yuirwood class, allowing the party to make use of the menhir circles to move around more quickly, and in a more controlled fashion than the tanarukk army. As the DMPC's purpose had been served, we were at the mid-campaign climax that was my equivalent of the Battle of Brindol, and I wanted to impress upon the PC's the danger the world was in, my Skather-equivalent nailed that DMPC with a Death Attack, killing him instantly. It drove home the danger, pissed the PC's off, and made a large impact on the players.

If killing a PC is something the DM doesn't want to do with Skather, I suggest targeting a powerful ally that is with the party. Someone the party will sorely miss.

The next time I used it, I was running Expedition to the Demonweb Pits. Again, right around the time of the module's climax (PC's were 11th level). There is an assassin that witnessed the party doing some mischievous stuff in the Demonweb. He set an ambush that worked to his advantage, and one of the PC's walked right into it, as he was investigating the bait. Failed his save with nat 1, used his Luck Domain ability to reroll, again rolling a nat 1... dead PC. Luckily they were "ahead of schedule" for the timer on the climax, and had time to get the dead PC Reincarnated the next morning, before heading into the climax location.

**ksbsnowowl** · 2017-10-30, 01:54 AM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Goladar

I'm running RHoD in the Channath vale and I was wondering if anyone had advice on how to link Forge of Fury((setting it in the forest south of Sarahdush) to RHoD. I'm thinking of having the dragon be part of Azarr Khuls forces, but I'm not sure how to flesh that out and get my PCs to the other side of the continent. Any advice would be much appreciated!

Well, the western part of the Forest of Mir (the one south of Saradush) is approximately 1,000 miles from where this map places Drellin's Ferry, but half of that could be "red lined" Indiana Jones style with a boat trip from Almraiven or Mintar to Lushpool or Sheirtalar. The only big problem you have is that the main road from Sheirtalar to the above map's location of Drellin's Ferry has the PC's coming at Drellin's Ferry from the wrong direction, and they'd run into the Skullgorge Bridge before arriving in Drellin's Ferry.

So what you should do is make some minor plot excuse at the conclusion of Forge of Fury to get the PC's to travel to some small town that's not on the big 3.5 FRCS fold-out map, and make it along the added-in minor road that would lead to Drellin's Ferry (running east-west between the Misty Vale and the Bandit Wastes). Heck, make it Assardoth on the west end of that FR RHoD map I linked to.

When I ran Forge of Fury I inserted a little side adventure of my own to level the party a bit more before moving on to the 7th level adventure in that old 3.0 Adventure Path. When they solved the murder mystery, the town's mayor gave them the murdered adventurer's papers, including a note from the dead party's cleric asking his party mates to return a relic to his temple, and a contract that the PC's could fulfill with their current line of adventuring. Thus I manipulated them to travel over 500 miles toward the location of the next adventure. Perhaps have your PC's solve a murder in your version of Blasingdell, after they finish with the Forge?

Wait, better idea. Have the PC's find a dead party of adventurers in the Forge (possibly near the black dragon's lair), which has similar papers on their bodies. If you didn't use the "Baron weapon collector sends PC's to find more Durgeddin blades" plot hook with your party, then you could have the dead party be there for that reason, with a contract. The PC's find the contract, realize they have several Durgeddin-made weapons at this point, and find the terms of the contract to be VERY generous. They might just be willing to travel to this minor noble's home in or west of Assardoth, seeking to fulfill the contract, in the hopes the minor noble will pay them for the same rare items we was sending the other party to collect. He could then hire them for some other minor mission, such as taking an important letter to someone in Drellin's Ferry, or Rethmar (Brindol), though giving them incentive to go to Rethmar too early might mentally side-track them too much.

I know that doesn't tie the Black Dragon into the Red Hand's plot, but it could get your PC's into the right area for the next leg of your campaign.

Edit: When RHoD came out, it had a "web enhancement" that was a little pre-adventure to help DM's lead into RHoD. It was basically a goblin cave (maybe with an Ogre or Troll "boss") that the PC's could come upon in their travels. When they defeated the foes and searched for treasure, they would find letters to the Ogre and his goblin minions, along with gifts of gold, that were basically diplomatic overtures to entice them into joining the Red Hand's cause. You could place a similar note in Nightscale's hoard, foreshadowing what is to come. Smart PC's will want to look into it. Figuring out how to word said letter in a way that gets your PC's to approach Drellin's Ferry from the "right" direction will be hard, though (unless you combine it with something like the dead party contract I described above). Here is the article.

**Goladar** · 2017-10-30, 09:15 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by ksbsnowowl

Well, the western part of the Forest of Mir (the one south of Saradush) is approximately 1,000 miles from where this map places Drellin's Ferry, but half of that could be "red lined" Indiana Jones style with a boat trip from Almraiven or Mintar to Lushpool or Sheirtalar. The only big problem you have is that the main road from Sheirtalar to the above map's location of Drellin's Ferry has the PC's coming at Drellin's Ferry from the wrong direction, and they'd run into the Skullgorge Bridge before arriving in Drellin's Ferry.

So what you should do is make some minor plot excuse at the conclusion of Forge of Fury to get the PC's to travel to some small town that's not on the big 3.5 FRCS fold-out map, and make it along the added-in minor road that would lead to Drellin's Ferry (running east-west between the Misty Vale and the Bandit Wastes). Heck, make it Assardoth on the west end of that FR RHoD map I linked to.

When I ran Forge of Fury I inserted a little side adventure of my own to level the party a bit more before moving on to the 7th level adventure in that old 3.0 Adventure Path. When they solved the murder mystery, the town's mayor gave them the murdered adventurer's papers, including a note from the dead party's cleric asking his party mates to return a relic to his temple, and a contract that the PC's could fulfill with their current line of adventuring. Thus I manipulated them to travel over 500 miles toward the location of the next adventure. Perhaps have your PC's solve a murder in your version of Blasingdell, after they finish with the Forge?

Wait, better idea. Have the PC's find a dead party of adventurers in the Forge (possibly near the black dragon's lair), which has similar papers on their bodies. If you didn't use the "Baron weapon collector sends PC's to find more Durgeddin blades" plot hook with your party, then you could have the dead party be there for that reason, with a contract. The PC's find the contract, realize they have several Durgeddin-made weapons at this point, and find the terms of the contract to be VERY generous. They might just be willing to travel to this minor noble's home in or west of Assardoth, seeking to fulfill the contract, in the hopes the minor noble will pay them for the same rare items we was sending the other party to collect. He could then hire them for some other minor mission, such as taking an important letter to someone in Drellin's Ferry, or Rethmar (Brindol), though giving them incentive to go to Rethmar too early might mentally side-track them too much.

I know that doesn't tie the Black Dragon into the Red Hand's plot, but it could get your PC's into the right area for the next leg of your campaign.

Edit: When RHoD came out, it had a "web enhancement" that was a little pre-adventure to help DM's lead into RHoD. It was basically a goblin cave (maybe with an Ogre or Troll "boss") that the PC's could come upon in their travels. When they defeated the foes and searched for treasure, they would find letters to the Ogre and his goblin minions, along with gifts of gold, that were basically diplomatic overtures to entice them into joining the Red Hand's cause. You could place a similar note in Nightscale's hoard, foreshadowing what is to come. Smart PC's will want to look into it. Figuring out how to word said letter in a way that gets your PC's to approach Drellin's Ferry from the "right" direction will be hard, though (unless you combine it with something like the dead party contract I described above). Here is the article.

Thank you for the detailed advice!

I think I'll definitely use the Dead Party hook. What do you think about having them take a boat down the River Talar from Sheirtalar? I'm thinking I can change that first encounter to an attack from the shores. I'll probably have to switch the heckhounds to some type of flying creature...

**Dr_Dinosaur** · 2017-10-30, 11:24 PM (ISO 8601)

I notice the Pathfinder section is mostly about mechanical changes. Has anyone considered running RHoD in Golarion? Considering the state of the River Kingdoms I think they’d be a decent place to set it, or perhaps Isger or (for a whole different flavor) the Hand could be representative of Kaoling’s expansionist forces over in Tianxia.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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