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

Saintheart · 10-09-2010, 09:28 AM

The Red Handbook of Doom
A 3.5 DM's Handbook for running The Red Hand of Doom

Introduction

The Red Hand of Doom is generally accepted as one of the better published modules for D&D 3.5. It’s that popular that every few weeks it seems someone is either starting a campaign journal about it or asking a query on how to handle some issues on it. On the other hand, it has its flaws and adapting it to different milieu or different parties can be kind of complicated. That’s where this Handbook/resource/FAQ/whatever comes into it. If you’re looking for help on how to better run the game, some fill-ins for some of the background fluff or mechanics, or a few licks that some DMs have tried which seemed to make the campaign run a bit better, this is where we’ll try to provide the answers and resources.

Yes, it's a Handbook, but always under construction, so please contribute!

If you’ve run Red Hand of Doom (abbreviated as RHOD from here on in for sanity’s sake) and have some good advice for DMs, we’d love you to share it. As the title indicates: this is to be more or less the subject of rolling updates, so feel free to share content, resources, maps, tips, etc. for running RHOD. Stuff that looks really good (depending on space) will then get edited back into this original handbook. I do have plans to fill out the entirety of the posts that follow, so don't worry: this handbook is to be completed.

But Saintheart, there's a WOTC Archive which addresses RHOD!

Just to save you some clicking around: yes, it theoretically does exist, in the same Heisenbergian way that nothing on the Net ever really disappears, but several Fine Minds round here have gone looking for it. Alas; it appears in the Great Upgrade that massive resource was lost except for one or two links that were not connected to WOTC (and which I'm slowly panning for gold as we go.) That's part of the reason I'm spending so much of my time doing this. Just thought you might like to know.

Table of Contents

Post 2: Overview of the campaign, who to run it for, and common considerations
Post 3: Fixing the fluff: tips on adapting RHOD for different D&D settings, and filling in some historical loopholes.
Post 4: Drellin’s Ferry through to Skull Gorge Bridge
Post 5: The Blackfens and Rhest
Post 6: The Ghostlord’s Lair
Post 7: The Battle of Brindol, sidequests, and other Elsir Vale encounters
Post 8: The Fane of Tiamat
Post 9: Other Resources, Links, and Campaign Journals

Thanks in advance to all of you, but I'd also like to unfairly single out AslanCross, Saph, and Kjones in particular since these guys basically did the trailbreaking for this handbook via their excellent campaign journals, which inspired this handbook and are still well worth a read on their own.

I would also like to add a very special thanks to Lightwarden, who mentored me (and still is!) through RHOD and taught me most of what I know about D&D 3.5. Many thanks, Light.

Saintheart · 10-09-2010, 09:29 AM

Overview of the campaign, who to run it for, and common considerations and issues that arise

Always a good idea to be prepared.

How many players can be run in RHOD?

Spoiler

Kjones, who wrote one of the campaign journals referenced below and did a lot of thinking and reviewing of RHoD while doing so, says “the Red Hand of Doom is balanced for a party of four core-only PCs - specifically, a meatshield, skillmonkey, healbot, and blaster. With more than four, action advantage against single foes becomes a problem, though these kinds of battles are relatively uncommon. The solution to this is relatively simple; you can toss in an extra couple of monsters into most battles without too much trouble.”

On the other hand, as with most published adventures, if you start going above 6 players, you’re going to have to seriously rework of encounters simply because of the sheer weight of numbers. A couple of extra monsters at the same level doesn't really cut it with those numbers.

It is possible to run RHoD for a party of eight – on the author’s personal experience -- but again on the author’s personal experience I don’t recommend it if you want to portray the party as being under serious threat much of the time. You can safely ignore all but the most vital NPC allies for the 8-man party, simply because the party’s collective firepower is going to stand up to most challenges that the adventure throws at it (and then some).

You will need to seriously upgrade the encounters with a party of 8. Each time will probably become a balancing act between cakewalk and total party kills because of the party's collective ability in such numbers. With 8, it crosses the line from action advantage to sheer damage output per round that unbalances the campaign. One of the quickest and dirtiest alterations you can make to redress the balance with 8 players is to double the saving throws and hitpoints of every "default" opponent, which notionally makes every encounter an overwhelming one for a party of 4 and presumably therefore able to be handled by a party of 8.

Alternatively, with this number of players consider starting them off at level 4 rather than level 5, although again you need to just keep an eye on the fights to see that you're not edging into TPK territory. One of our contributors who ran an 8-player RHOD campaign did an XP calculation and concluded it's still relatively safe to run 8 people and not risk them falling well behind the notional level progression of the campaign.

Note, however, that the same rule doesn't apply in the other direction -- i.e. unless you're going to give the party double digits in levels, I don't recommend trying to run RHOD with 3 or less players. Levelling the party up to 6 simply isn't going to cut it because action economy works against them at 3 characters or less. Gestalting may help the problem somewhat. In any event the first couple of hostile encounters in the game should be used as a gauge for the party's capabilities, since if they get heavily rolled in "Marauder Attack" it's probably going to be tough going for them in the remainder of the campaign.

Kjones goes on to say “The second issue is more problematic. Any group deviating from this "default" configuration [of the ‘four pillars’ of D&D parties] will find many of the encounters to be unchallenging and unfun if run as written. This, too, can be rectified without too much trouble. NPC spell selections should be completely reworked, in light of the fact that many NPC casters have save DCs that are too low to be considered threatening.”

What levels of party can RHOD be run for?

Spoiler

RHOD itself recommends starting players at level 5 with an expected topping out at level 10. (One of the most amusing sidebars in the book is the one where James and Rich contemplate a party that is able to defeat the entire Horde – giants, dragons, Kharn, mages and all included -- by itself. In such a scenario, they suggest that “you might not be running the adventure for the right character levels.” Understatement FTW!)

IYou'd be pretty silly to try and run the unaltered adventure for a higher level party than, say, starting at level 6 maximum. For parties starting at level 7 and above most of the fights are going to be cakewalks, or at least won’t seriously threaten the characters. Even at level 5, generic hobgoblin squaddies as written in RHOD (and which the party’s likely to face regularly for 75% of the adventure) are credible threats only in large numbers and backed by spellcasting support.

After all, the most powerful spellcaster opponent in the entire adventure -- if you exclude the Ghostlord, over whom the party should be seeing a big blinking sign that reads "CURBSTOMPER HERE, DO NOT FIGHT" -- is meant to be Azarr Khul at level 11.

Disclaimer: yes, you can run RHOD for higher-levelled characters than starting at level 5 or 6. Nothing stopping you except the risk of breaking suspension of disbelief and kicking off the RHOD Arms Race, which you'll see references to later on.

Also remember that the Vale itself isn’t terribly well-resourced: the highest-level spellcaster Elsir Vale might ever have access to is Aragathos (the sorcerer 10/dragon disciple 2 in Dennovar) but who is also meant to be Sir-Not-Appearing-In-This-Film. The PCs are eventually going to wind up equal to, or greater than, most of the Vale’s best spellslingers and warriors assuming a level 5 start. (In particular if you’re running a bunch of ~~immature folk~~ chaotics or neutrals who like to smash the town guard of every settlement they come across, this … may become a problem, to take a leaf out of James and Rich’s book.)

How much reworking does RHOD need?

Spoiler

Timing in the campaign

Spoiler

One issue that seems to crop up again and again is that the Horde moves too slowly, not too fast, for adventuring parties given the notional timeline in the book. The ‘countdown to destruction’ is one of RHOD’s best selling points, but the time limits for activities are pretty generous in practice; most savvy parties will meet the deadlines and then some.

Particularly in the first parts of the adventure, the party can earn itself literally weeks of downtime ahead of the Battle of Brindol, especially if they secure giant owls from the Tiri Kitor in the Blackfens.

RHOD suggests giant owls can make 56 miles per day, which assumes 8 hours of travel per day at 7 miles per hour. What they miss is that RHOD takes place in the summer, which increases the hours of daylight out to 10 or so (or so savvy players will note) thereby granting more travel time. 70 miles per day is a potent speed advantage to a party that only needs to cross about 150 miles to get to its next major encounter location. Also bear in mind that if the party’s scooting around the countryside on owlback it makes suspension of disbelief slightly harder when assassination squads start jumping out of nowhere to ambush the party. (On the upside, though, hey, no wandering monsters!) It's even more significant once the party wizard hits level 9 and picks "Teleport" as one of his spells: even if he's not boosting his caster level, that's 900 miles of travel per spell.

Based on the campaign journals and experiences in the various threads we've seen, you’re more likely than not to have your party back at Brindol well ahead of the Horde, and the authors' contemplated race against the clock to beat the Horde there is less likely to come about.

Your options to deal with a party who gets back to Brindol ‘early’ are basically: sidequests from Brindol; have the Red Hand move faster right from the get-go; allow the party to just rest up and prep for battle; or have the Horde move at the speed of plot. Of these, options 1, 2, and 3 are going to suspend disbelief a lot easier than option 4. In particular there isn't a lot of time to craft items across the rest of the campaign, so depending on how much time they've got this may be a convenient moment for them to get ready. There are also some good options for parties to help prepare for the battle by boosting defenders’ capabilities, which we’ll discuss later on. I don’t recommend suddenly having the Horde pick up speed because at the end of the day it is an army on foot, and armies on foot do move a lot slower than small adventuring parties – logistics still plays a part.

Parties who are ‘late’ on the timeline are comprehensively dealt with in the RHOD book, so nothing more need be said on that topic.

Notes on Victory Points

Spoiler

The Victory Points 'system' that RHOD builds as a way of seeing if you've done "enough" to destroy the Horde is an variant on the usual thing, and at first glance looks like a good old 'hundred percent completion' challenge in a regular video game.

Do you have to massage the encounters or set up a railroad in case the players decide to do something off the wall and miss an entire encounter area? For the most part, no: the number of points you pull from various tasks are sufficient that generally where you lose them in one area you can make them up again elsewhere. The biggest area to make up on, though, is the Rhest encounter: if the players decide to thumb their noses at the Tiri Kitor, a lot of VPs go with them, and you (might) need to make a couple more Horde leaders vulnerable to killing.

Two issues that a lot of DMs seem to get confused on with VPs:

(a) Does getting more than 40 VP = automatic victory in the Battle of Brindol?
(b) Do you tell the players about the VP or give them a running count of how many they have?

The answer is No to the first; Sort of to the second.

On the first question: you tally up Victory Points if (and only if) Kharn is killed during the Battle of Brindol. Kharn is the linchpin of the Horde, but if he dies and the Horde hasn't been dealt enough 'deaths by a thousand cuts' from the party's earlier victories, someone else will rise to take his place. If Kharn dies and you don't have a total of 40 VPs within the next 1d4 hours, the Horde regroups, appoints a new leader, and launches a second, more determined attack which smashes what's left of Brindol; remember that even if Kharn dies, Brindol has basically 'shot its bolt' defending the first assault and won't have the strength to hold back a second - the remainder of Brindol's forces withdraws to Dennovar.

On the second question: don't give them the full story. You can suggest that a certain event or events gave an extra X number of VP, but don't tell them the number they're trying to hit. Since the players can't win the campaign before the Battle of Brindol, it makes no pragmatic sense to give them a running total of the VP count ahead of that event, and it's destructive of suspension of disbelief. If you're playing with a seasoned group of D&D players you're already going to have to contend with an attitude of "Adventuing! See strange new places! Meet strange new people! Then kill them, take their stuff, and find out what you next have to do to acquire the Macguffin." Don't shoot yourself in the foot by telling the players what number they have to meet -- just give the impression that their actions count in some way they are not permitted to know.

Any particular gamebreakers to watch for?

Spoiler

Optimised parties are always going to be harder to challenge than unoptimised ones. Most DMs already know this. That's not what this article is about. Here we’re only looking at particular character options which cause serious headaches for RHOD itself - options which reliably turn a lot of fights into annoying timewasters because of what the option does, together with explanations for why the option sucks for RHOD in particular.

So, in no particular order, I give you the RHOD DM's list of headaches:

Mindsight from Lords of Madness. It’s potentially a gamebreaker in general, but moreso in RHOD because the virtually all the dungeons in the game are less than 100 feet across. A Mindsight-endowed character thus can give complete intel on virtually all monsters’ locations – particularly in the Ghostlord part of the campaign – just by standing near the entrance to a dungeon for a round or so. IMHO it also makes an underwater assault on Rhest very easy, makes ambushes on the party non-ambushes, and makes the sniper attack at Brindol almost a nonevent. I suppose if you were really pressed for it you could start dishing out Mind Blank scrolls to some enemies, but it’s easier just to disallow it altogether.
The monsters' Will saves could count as a gamebreaker -- many are very average. Conviction or Mass Conviction spells help with these issues. Halfway optimised beguilers tend to have perhaps inappropriate levels of godmode with RHOD, particularly when by the time you reach the Blackfens a beguiler can attain enough spells, Bluff and Disguise to fool Regiarix that he's a hobgoblin (personal experience on that.)
The spell Downdraft from the Spell Compendium is a potential headache for the first couple of dragons in the campaign. It's one of the few 'save or be screwed, save and potentially be screwed anyway' spells I've seen which actually works well against a dragon. (Well, it worked against Ozzy, anyway...)
Look very, very carefully at the Dread Necromancer class before allowing it. There's a few locations (Rhest in particular) where dead bodies can be accessed with impunity, not to mention that the Battle of Brindol is going to give a DN an ever-increasing supply of fresh corpses to play with. And that's before we even get to the DMly nightmare of having to figure out how to effectively rebuild encounters to take account of a party with a zombie green/black/red dragon in tow.

Improving the Horde forces generally across the entire campaign

Spoiler

Improving the dragons across the campaign:

Spoiler

We’ll talk more specifically about the various dragons as we go, but the overall consensus seems to be that Regiarix definitely needs an upgrade to the next size and age category, Ozyrrandion also does, Abithriax only does if the party’s optimized, and Tyrgarun does not.

For all dragons, Alertness, Weapon Focus, and Improved Critical should be swapped out. Dragons are most effective when they’re making strafing runs using their breath weapons because they can hit multiple targets in one strike, or when they're making full attacks; you should be using their standard actions (when they get them) either to breathe or cast, not for single attacks.

In their places: your choice of Awaken Spell Resistance, Power Attack, Multiattack, Improved Multiattack, Practiced Spellcaster, Flyby Attack, and/or Ability Focus (breath weapon), depending on whether you think the dragon's going to mostly be in the air or on the ground.

I personally like Metabreath Feats with Enlarge Breath and Shape Breath which substantially improves Regiarix’s range in particular (assuming the PCs are more or less stranded on the town hall at Rhest).

Also, remember their speed (150 feet = 300 feet at double move or better at run) and give them some credit for their own hides. Regiarix has encountered adventuring parties before, so if he's hit with a serious fusillade he should be heading for the hills ASAP. Ozyrrandion likewise, even if it requires folding his wings and dropping like a rock into the gorge to then level out and get lost as quick as he can. This at least preserves your dragons to fight another day.

In terms of magic choices: every dragon should know and be casting Mage Armorand Shield. Your players won't like it when you give the dragons Blood Wind and Scintillating Scales, but they'll be a lot more challenging as a result.

(Varanthian as the fifth ~~Beatle~~ “dragon” of the adventure is a bit of a poser. Her effectiveness depends entirely on the makeup of the party facing her. She's either awesomely terrifying or hilariously simply to take down. Many DMs I’ve seen have watched aghast as cocky parties lose one or even two partymembers to her in a fight, but in my 8 player campaign she went down in one round. See the spoilertag devoted to her for further discussion -- in summary, despite her breath weapon, spells, Spell Resistance, Rake, and Swallow Whole, she remains a big, solo monster seriously outgunned on the action economy, so you need to be aware of it.)

We caught a Wyrmlord, damn it ...

Spoiler

Obviously the subject of prisoners is a well-worn one for D&D parties, but odds are on you’re going to capture at least one Wyrmlord during the course of the adventure, so it pays to be ready for it. Ulwai’s level of knowledge in particular has a capacity to derail your ~~choo-choo~~ campaign, since on the RHOD text she knows exactly where the Fane is, how to get in, and that Azarr Kul is right there, giving players a nigh-irresistible chance to cut off the snake at its head. Dealing with the capture of each Wyrmlord, some suggestions…

Koth: ride him back to Drellin’s Ferry, put him in the Old Toll House. If he isn’t rescued (see further on) he goes with a detachment of Soranna’s soldiers to Brindol, though I personally reckon you then give him a 50/50 chance of escaping somewhere along the way. With adventurers escorting him, no chance. At Brindol I’d presume he says nothing more than he already knows, and is locked away in a nice quiet dungeon beneath Brindol Keep to await a summary trial and execution by Captain Ulverth.

Saarvith: if he’s captured, he could point out to the party that he’s nothing without Regiarix, and that Kharn isn’t going to be very happy with him upon reporting back – in fact he might rightly conclude his time with the Horde is over as soon as Regiarix bites the dust. Releasing him at Rhest is an option, though I reckon there’s a 25% chance the Tiri Kitor hunt him down and take him out themselves. If he’s taken back to Starsong Hill, it’s more direct: whilst they’re neutral good, there’s every chance he’d be subject to summary execution by the elves for the misery his razorfiends have inflicted upon them. If the party really wants to cart him all the way back to civilization, there’s I suppose a chance he can be persuaded to help the Horde, but again it’ll take a unique party and unique set of circumstances to do that.

Ulwai: Really callous parties could leave her to the Ghostlord’s tender mercies, but again, it’s probably back to Brindol with her, where I’d say her knack of diplomacy at least convinces Jarmaath to let her go after the Horde’s destroyed. She can’t talk her way out of a jail cell, though.

Saintheart · 10-09-2010, 09:30 AM

Fixing the fluff: adapting RHOD for various D&D settings.

This is not really the kind of adaptation we meant.

Running RHOD for the Forgotten Realms:

Spoiler

Running RHOD in Eberron
Courtesy of the ever-helpful and devastatingly handsome AslanCross!

Spoiler

The Red Hand of Doom is written for a fairly generic D&D setting (and as such, is easy enough to incorporate into "vanilla" settings like Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk, which primarily use default fluff). However, this excellent module also works very well in Eberron, but adapting it will take slightly more work .

On the Nature of Tiamat
Black candles burning/Announce her comeback
The reign is awaiting/The Queen of the Dead
--Queen of the Dark Horizons, by Rhapsody of Fire

Tiamat in Eberron is significantly different from her incarnation in other settings in that she is not a goddess. The gods in Eberron are distant and have never walked the surface of the Material Plane in the flesh as far as mortals know. Tiamat, however, has.

Tiamat is a demon Overlord, the daughter of Khyber himself. She was born of the Dragon Below and had has the power to corrupt and enslave all dragons, metallic or chromatic (though chromatics are especially vulnerable).

During the Age of Demons, the dragons who fought against the Overlords feared her the most, for she could turn them against each other. It took the power of the Couatls to imprison Tiamat in the Pit of Five Sorrows in Argonnessen, but even then they feared her return. By tracing her symbol in the skies, the dragons gave Tiamat her own apotheosis, hoping to forever banish her from Eberron.

Now, the Pit of Five Sorrows is the most heavily-guarded fortification in all of Eberron, considering that it is guarded by the entire Light of Siberys (the dragon army of Argonnessen). Even a horde of ten thousand hobgoblins and a few, relatively young dragons cannot do much to bring down the a single Glorious Flame of the Light of Siberys, who would likely be a Great Wyrm with Prestige Class levels, let alone an entire crusading army of them.

This does not mean that her cult is inactive. Tiamat's clerics: twisted dragons (some of them fiendish, blessed with fell energy), rakshasas (some of them draconic, blessed with the might of the dragon), and others have attempted to bring her back, and continue to do so.

As such, the Red Hand Cult should be primarily concerned with setting Tiamat free. How they do so depends on how she is kept imprisoned, and this depends on the DM. For my purposes, I had the PCs discover that the Fane of Tiamat was not actually a temple, but one of the dimensional foci of the great planar seal that powered the Pit of Five Sorrows. The planar seal, a continent-sized pentagram, was drawn using epic magic across the land and sea, and anchored on five fanes. The Elsir Fane, which is where Azarr Kul hides out, is the easiest to access. The others are much more difficult to access (they are either deep underwater or hidden in dense jungle).

Most chilling here is that if the dragons perceive a threat (and Tiamat is indeed the most significant threat they have faced since), they have a tendency to mobilize en masse and destroy whatever is in the way. If they catch wind of Azarr Kul's plan, they might probably invade Khorvaire and unleash destruction on the already war-torn continent.

The Wyrmlords and the Talons of Tiamat
It is certainly well within the realm of possibility that none of the Wyrmlords are actually goblinoids. Since the high cult of Tiamat is often made up of Rakshasas, it is not a stretch to make the Wyrmlords themselves Rakshasas in disguise (or not in disguise at all).

I. Azarr Kul: Half-blue dragon Ak'Chazar Rakshasa. On the really high end of the optimization scale, but you could give him gishy spell picks. As an outsider, he has racial proficiency with martial weapons and will do well as a superpowered gish.
II. Kharn: Half-red dragon Zakya Rakshasa (no ToB) or draconic (red) Naityan Rakshasa with Swordsage levels (with ToB). Or you could do both and make him a Zakya Rakshasa with Warblade or Crusader levels.
III. Ulwai: Bog-standard Rakshasa. Although relatively weak as a full caster enemy (CL 7th for a CR 10 enemy), you could give her martial weaponry and make her a gish instead.
IV. Saarvith: As an archer build, he doesn't work too well as a rakshasa. Keeping him as written is fine.
V. Koth: Keeping him the same is fine. Warlock or Hexblade could make him a challenging boss if you play it right.

You could also go the way I went, which is to add extra rakshasa bosses. I introduced a large-sized, half-bronze dragon Naityan Rakshasa with Swordsage levels as Azarr Kul's true right hand man.

Remember that half-dragons are considered abominations in Eberron, but Rakshasas easily get around this by participating in a ritual that, if successful, gives them draconic might in addition to their existing powers.

The Mighty Ones
We goblinoids are just like you humans, except our empire lasted eleven thousand years.
--Lhesh Haruuc (Races of Eberron)

Another interesting piece of lore: Eberron's goblinoids, unlike the relatively lowly and reviled mook creatures in other settings, actually once ruled all of Khorvaire in an empire that lasted ten thousand years. They slowly crumbled after a catastrophic war with the Daelkyr and their aberrant hordes. Numerous ruins still dot the landscape of Khorvaire, testament to the fallen glory of the Dhakaani Empire. The goblins call themselves Golin'Dar, or "The quick and shrewd ones" (in fact, "goblin" is a human corruption of the term), the hobgoblins call themselves the Ghaal'Dar (the mighty ones; specifically connoting battle prowess), and the bugbears are the Guul'Dar or "the strong ones" (connoting physical strength). Collectively, the goblinoids call themselves "the Dar" or "the People." Most of them are not happy with their current lot in life, treated as "savages" by the "more civilized" human-dominated Five Nations. There is a lot of inherent racial pride.

Furthermore, while hobgoblins have a sovereign nation (Darguun), Darguul mercenaries were hired by many sides during the Last War (mostly Breland, however), so it's easy to explain why a large group of thousands of goblinoids is operating independently of the Lhesh Haruuc in Darguun.

The Giants
In Eberron, giants are not native to Khorvaire. They mostly inhabit the fallen empire of Xen'Drik, another continent to the southwest of Khorvaire. Since setting RHOD makes most sense in Khorvaire, it makes very little sense for a DM to have Warklegnaw's tribe of Forest Giants in the area.

Here are some ideas:

I personally used Lycanthropes. Purged to near extinction by the Church of the Silver Flame in the past, isolated enclaves could still be discovered by the PCs. If the PCs are working for the Silver Flame, this might even be a chance to offer reconciliation. For irony, I made Amery Vraath a former Silver Flame paladin who got turned into a lycanthrope himself.
Trolls: While the main issue with trolls is that they're not intelligent, it might make a lot of sense for them to not want to let the Red Hand Horde pass. They also live in forests.
Ogres: Most ogres in Khorvaire are mercenaries from Droaam. In the Last War, many of them were conscripted for various nations, but after the war ended there could be any number of them hiding out in forests and other secluded areas.

The Elsir Vale
"If you want to escape the Last War, move to the Elsir Vale."
--Beggar Dane

RHOD describes the Elsir Vale as a very isolated and backwater area.

One major issue here is that in Eberron, long-range transportation is relatively easy to come by (the Lightning Rail and Airships contribute a lot to this). As such, it is more difficult to isolate the Elsir Vale. Thankfully, there are still large stretches of land that are not accessible by lightning rail, and airships are relatively expensive to charter at the PCs' level.

Another is that the highly-charged political climate left by the Last War makes large massed military movements very sensitive events; this actually helps the DM explain why neither the formidable armies of the rich, technologically-advanced Breland, nor the zealous paladins and crusaders of Thrane, nor the arcane knights of Aundair, nor the undead legions of Karrnath can be bothered to deal with the Red Hand threat. They might be aware of it, but moving large armies close to any borders (three out of the four suggested locations are very close to international borders) might spark the Last War all over again.

Eberron is a very large setting, and even on the densely-populated continent of Khorvaire, there are many isolated and deserted areas that the game can be set in. The map shows an area about 320 x 240 miles, which can be easily wedged into the following suggested locations:

The Western Eldeen Reaches
This is probably the most isolated part of the Eldeen Reaches, being wedged in between the Shadowcrags and the Byeshk mountains.
Pros:
-Pretty much the middle of nowhere.
-This is the best place to explain the elves.
Cons:
-Too far from any populated hobgoblin areas.
-Mostly dense forest, although some rolling plains are available. The geography of the adventure assumes a very open vale with mountainous areas.

Karrnathi-Talenta Plains Border
Another isolated area.
Pros:
-There is nothing much here; the Giantshield Mountains can fit neatly into the map as part of the Ironroot range.
-There is enough space to fit in Brindol without overwriting or deleting any town.
-Irontown can replace Dennovar.
Cons:
-The Wyvernwatch and Wyrmsmoke Mountains don't seem to fit in well with the Talenta Plains.

The New Cyre Periphery in Breland
This is where I personally inserted the Elsir Vale, as the area is mostly featureless. It's also very close to the Mournland, which could explain why it's so isolated.
Pros:
-Isolation, distance from capital ensures difficulty in calling for military support. Close to traditional goblinoid land (Darguun).
-Vathirond can replace Dennovar.
Cons:
-It takes some map rotation to fit properly. I ended up having the compass slightly tilted to the right on the main Elsir Vale map.

Southwestern Thrane
Personally, this might be either the easiest or most difficult area to adapt.
Pros:
-Thrane's strong militant Church of the Silver Flame could be a good employer for the PCs
-It is possible to do away with the RHOD map entirely and simply use the map of Thrane; while Thrane is the smallest of the Five Nations, it is not really the weakest, and in this case the Red Hand horde could possibly threaten even Flamekeep, the capital, directly.
Cons:
-Southwestern Thrane borders Breland and Aundair. Any massed military movements to fortresses on the border (such as Fort Light) might be difficult to explain away politics-wise, as Aundair is closest to Fort Light, and relations between Aundair and Thrane are not at all pleasant. Breland might be more tolerant, but it also has large fortifications on the border (such as Sword Keep), making this an unpleasant political situation. Perhaps if this were the case, it would be good to insert a political angle, adding to the pressure of solving the Red Hand problem before all three nations fall right back into another war.
-If you want to keep the RHOD map, it might have to be completely inverted. However, this presents its own difficulties:

Lake Rhestin is replaced by the much large Lake Brey; Lake Brey is on the border between Breland and Thrane.
There are no mountains in this area; the closest are the rather distant Blackcaps in Breland.
There is simply no space for the Thornwaste or the Wyvernwatch mountains.

As such, if you want a Thrane campaign, I propose the following:
-The PCs could be dispatched to a small border town (Fort Light) to halt the hobgoblins raiding out of the
-Azarr Kul's objective is Flamekeep itself! He could plan to free the demon lord imprisoned within the Silver Flame. With the power of a Rakshasa Rajah (feel free to fluff the Rajah as a minion of Tiamat, it would be much easier for A.K. to free Tiamat as he prepares an assault on Argonnessen).

Conversion suggestions:

Instead of the Wyrmsmokes, the Fane of Tiamat could instead be in Khyber deep under the Greenhaunt across the border in Breland. (The border troubles will also make for a lot of political intrigue as the PCs try to deal with Brelish and Aundairian diplomatic/military pressure.)
Because of this, the Red Hand's movement will be in a northeasterly direction instead of south, then east, as in the module.
Skull Creek could run across the border between Breland and Thrane, and the bridge crosses the road between Sword Keep and Fort Light.
Replace Drellin's Ferry with Fort Light. This could make it a great deal more fortified and defensible, but in this case you could have an overwhelmingly large force of hobgoblins coming. The primary difficulty the PCs might have in the module by RAW is persuading an indecisive Norro Wiston--in this case it could be dissuading an overzealous Norro Wiston from making a stand.
Replace the Witchwood with the Imstil Forest. You will have to spread the Imstil Forest some more to cover the highway that leads into Breland.
Replace Terrelton with Rellekor.
Replace Talar with Tellyn.
Replace Brindol with Sigilstar. Of course, the Cathedral of Pelor will be a Cathedral of the Silver Flame instead.
The ultimate destination for Azarr Kul will actually be Flamekeep in Northern Thrane, but since Sigilstar is in the dead center of the nation, it is a great position to start spreading out.

Recommendations Per Chapter
I. The Witchwood

a. NPCs:

i. Change all references to Pelor to Dol Arrah. As the goddess of the sun and war, Dol Arrah's clerics will be a bit tougher, although they will be fewer. Most of the priests will be experts.

ii. Soranna can be a Deneith Dragonmarked heir, giving her a great deal more importance to the people.

iii. I had Delora Zann as a House Vadalis excoriate.

iv. Kellin Shadowbanks, as a inn owner, could very likely be a House Ghallanda representative.

v. Avarthel could be a reclusive Orc Gatekeeper druid, or perhaps a civilization-friendly Warden of the Wood.

vi. Jarret Nurth: As a "red herring" NPC, she could easily be a cleric of the Mockery.

b. Setting:

i. If you use Lycanthropes in place of Forest Giants, you could have Vraath Keep littered with the skeletons of wereboars and werebears instead.

II. The Ruins of Rhest

a. Setting:

i. Rhest will most likely be an ancient Dhakaani ruin. It could be sunk in the marshes on the edge of Lake Brey (if you chose the Thrane option) or any other large body of water.

ii. The Tiri Kitor encampment: Since elves aren't tree-loving hippies in Eberron, making this group an encampment of shifters instead works well. I still kept them elves (Wardens of the Wood), but shifters thematically fit this perfectly. They will be fierce, independent, and possibly difficult to recruit.

b. NPCs:

i. Miha Serani: A changeling with sorcerer (or psion!) levels works well, and so does a rakshasa (though this makes her stronger and possibly an encounter for much later in the game)

ii. Killiar Arrowswift: Being a shifter will explain his rather gruff initial attitude. Also, I recommend that their names be changed. Honestly, I found their naming conventions very WoW-ish. Look up Night Elf NPCs in Warcraft and you'll see what I mean.

iii. Sellyria Starsinger: A shifter Moonspeaker druid might work well here. Also, she has a pet croc, right? If she's a shifter, you could make her a longtooth/beasthide shifter---descended from a werecrocodile.

iv. Trellara Nightshadow: Not sure what to do with her. You could keep her as a shifter bard with an unusually high charisma, or simply perhaps make her an emotionally unstable Wilder (see Races of Eberron's Shifter Wilder substitution levels).

v. Illian Snowmantle: Balinor works well as a substitute for Corellon.

c. Encounters:

i. Dirty Rotten Looters: If you played up the "border troubles" angle, these guys could be an actual Silver Flame Inquisitor/Dark Lanterns/Royal Eyes of Aundair/Cyran Avenger/Order of the Emerald Claw hit squad instead of a pathetic bunch of amoral goons.

ii. The Lizardfolk: Considering that the MM3 Lizardfolk (Poison dusks and blackscales) figure well in Eberron's canon, a group of these guys could have been brought in by Saarvith and Regiarix and bred for war.

III. The Ghostlord's Lair

a. NPCs.

i. The Ghostlord: The heart and soul of this chapter. I wrote him up as an ancient Dhakaani (hobgoblin) Gatekeeper druid who was driven insane by the Daelkyr invasion. He invented the bonedrinkers, inspired by the Daelkyr's often tentacled aberrations.

ii. Wyrmlord Ulwai: No real suggestions here, apart from [i]please use another depiction of her. I can't stand her "80s dominatrix catgirl" look in the book. She's supposed to be hot.

b. Setting.

i. I fluffed the entire Thornwaste as a barren and blasted land stripped of natural life by the Daelkyr invasion, and it's still like that. Most of the animals that live here are aberrant at best and half-farspawn horrors at worst.

IV. Enemy at the Gates

a. NPCs

i. Jarmaath will definitely be a war hero from the Last War, although not quite as strong as he used to be. He could be a lot less noble (perhaps desiring a vainglorious end as he makes a final stand against the Red Hand), however, presenting the PCs with a complex moral dilemma: Do they support the rightful lord of the land and sacrifice the people, or subvert him and side with Lady Kaal, whose methods are reprehensible, yet truly wants to save Brindol?

ii. Lady Kaal could be a potential primary villain here: She could actually be a foreign sleeper agent, planted to undermine local sovereignty by spreading crime, or to simply be a spy. As such, she might work best as a member of the Royal Eyes of Aundair, or perhaps a Brelish Dark Lantern. Alternatively, she could be secretly a member of House Tarkanan and possess a hidden aberrant dragonmark.

iii. Tredora Goldenbrow: Aasimar are very rare in Eberron, but she is most likely going to be a cleric of either Dol Arrah or the Silver Flame.

iv. Lars Ulverth: He could easily be Soranna Anitah's House Deneith superior, or a war hero, or both.

v. Immerstal the Red: Artificer would work as well as Wizard.

b. The Siege of Brindol:

i. Bombardment: I used homebrewed Warforged Titan variants, since giants, as mentioned above, aren't native to Khorvaire. Skullcrusher ogres work well, though. Alternatively, traditional siege engines could work.

ii. Kharn's Retinue: Again, scrap the giants. Skullcrusher ogres with class levels work well, as do Spawn of Tiamat (Redspawn Berserkers [Dragon Magic], or Whitespawn Berserkers [MMIV] could work well).

V. The Fane of Tiamat

a. Setting:

i. The Wyrmsmokes: I went ahead and just plopped down the Wyrmsmokes in the middle of Eastern Breland, but this could be more difficult in more constrained areas (namely Southwestern Thrane). Regardless, as a volcanic area, it is quite likely that it could be a Fernia manifest zone and as such have a lot of diabolic interlopers.

ii. Khyber: The alternative is to bury the Fane deep underground. It could be rather eerie for the PCs to travel for days in pitch-dark tunnels, only to see an immense, yawning abyss beneath them, and the vast, dimly-lit Tiamat sculpture stretching from deep below.

iii. What the Fane of Tiamat Really Is: This is up to you, but I had the PCs discover that the Fane is actually a part of Tiamat's vast prison (or at least its support system). Since Tiamat isn't trapped in the Nine Hells (which don't exist in Eberron), she has no strong ties to devils and extraplanar enemies. Instead, I had Azarr Kul attempting to manipulate the Planes to slow or stop them, causing Tiamat's prison in Argonnessen to catastrophically fail.

iv. To this end, Azarr Kul was using a large eldritch engine---a planar orrery---to stop the planar orbits.

b. Encounters:

i. Tyrgarun: If he's fought in Khyber, this encounter is going to be a lot more interesting. He can see much farther than any of the PCs, and can potentially fight in complete darkness (thanks to Blindsight).

ii. Laryssa: If you're like me and absolutely hated the "lol Azarr Kul has a cannibalistic night hag cook" encounter, feel free to swap her out with another Rakshasa encounter. In this case I threw a Naztharune Rakshasa with one Swordsage level at them.

iii. The Fane is Ancient Dragontech: To play up this angle, I had some traps that were part of the original structure. Azarr Kul's forces have found fighting them not worth the trouble, and so have left them in place as barely-controllable guard systems. As such, I had the original dragon constructors leaving a dragon-like iron golem in the main corridor, as well as a Spell Turret.

iv. Devils: Devils have no true strong relationship with Tiamat, so I fluffed them as fiends who got through the portal as Azarr Kul weakened the planar boundaries.

v. The Barracks: Instead of having just one dragon, I had several young dragons hanging dismembered and disemboweled here. They were the children of the original guardian of the Fane, a great wyrm bronze dragon tasked to maintain the Inner Sanctum's power systems. The dragon has since died, and it was unable to pass on the true nature of the Fane to its children. The children were overwhelmed by Tyrgarun and thrown to the devil army as food.

vi. Azarr Kul: There are many suggestions to fix this encounter, but I think that if AK manages to get his buff spells up, the PCs have a full-power Clericzilla on their hands. Whatever the case, when AK dies, I made it so that he uses the last of his strength to shift the planar orrery to directly breach Tiamat's prison, with just enough energy for her to project an Aspect through.

vii. Aspect of Tiamat: If you really want the aspect to be tough, give her cleric casting equal to her HD.

c. Conclusion:

i. If the Aspect of Tiamat breaks free and the PCs don't kill it, she could prove to be a very devastating "optional boss" monster, ravaging the countryside.

ii. If the border troubles escalate into full-blown diplomatic hostility, you could easily have a reignited Last War.

iii. If Azarr Kul completes his objective, congratulations. You now have an Elder Evil campaign. The Dragons of Argonnessen mobilize to attack Azarr Kul, likely razing all of Khorvaire to the ground in the process. Thrane Paladins mounted on wyverns will dogfight with dragons in the skies over Flamekeep as the Fiend in the Flame awakens. Flights of great wyrm dragons will airdrop Seren Barbarians onto Sharn. The Fiend in the Flame strides across the ocean to Argonnessen, swatting aside Light of Siberys crusader dragons as he marches. When he reaches the Pit of Five Sorrows, the Current Age will end, and a new Age of Demons will begin.

Running RHOD under the Legend Homebrew System

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Running RHOD under Pathfinder

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Running RHOD in Equestria (yes. Yes you can. And it is glorious.)

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Full credit to MandibleBones on this one. Taking his notes verbatim from the thread...)

On Setting Adaptation:
1. Where is the Elsir Vale? I put it at the westernmost edge of Equestria, fiat-ed the plains of Zebrica to replace the Endless Plains, made everyting west of the Old North Road and south of The Endless Plains Zebrica “Dragon Lands” (including the Thornwaste), and made a note that the Wyvernwatch Mountains are home to the southern griffon tribes. The city of Brindle becomes Bridle, the city of Dennovar becomes Stalliongrad, and the rest of the towns keep their names.

2. The ponies of the vale are used to dragons existing, but they never seem to come down from the Wyrmsmokes (until the events of Red Hand of Doom). These “hobgoblins” are totally new to them, however: creatures out of myth and legend from pre-Discordian times.

3. My party was starting out from Bridle (Brindol), so they were a little more familiar with it to start with. Some of them lived in the city prior to the events of the Red Hand, so they know the basics of the citizenry. I use a wiki to keep track of things; it helps my players as well.

On Statistics
1. Initially made the mistake of taking the cover at face value; all my PCs start at 6, and there are 6 of them. Adaptation is obviously required.

2. I wanted to see how the PCs handled combat together before tweaking too much. Uth-Larr got boosted to be a Spellscourge (MMV), and the cleric remained a cleric, though I gave Zarr level 6 and the Law and Trickery. I took the advice from this thread, made the hell hounds draconic, and swapped out some feat to make them Napalm Hounds. The regulars got to be Fighter 1s instead of Warrior 2s; I gave them max HP. Two of them got Point-Blank Shot and Precise Shot and did some fairly decent damage with their longbow (one of them critted); the other four got Power Attack and Weapon Focus: Longsword.
- The melee hobs got killed / knocked out pretty quickly; the archers were further back and managed to retreat behind Uth-Larr once he came out. Napalm Hounds got to deal some damage before getting cut to ribbons by the barbarian. Zarr managed to hit the NG Magical Girl and the CG Barbarian with a scroll-based Word of Law from under Invisibility, which wasn't terribly fun for them.
- Turns out my party is also fairly optimized, and while it was a good fight, the party won it pretty handily despite it being EL8.
- Because the party has a Magical Girl, they took one of the regulars and Uth-Larr alive. I've been having a great deal of fun running Kerak (the name I gave the regular) and fanatic Uth-Larr as Shining Hope tries to make friends with them. It's not going so well, but at least they're locked up in Drellin's Ferry now.

3. On the Witchwood: I'ma give that hydra more heads. Hydras love heads. Action-economy being what it is, I figure aiming for a higher CR is better than a lower one, so an 8-10-headed cryohydra is headed the party's way. I actually think this is going to be a ridiculous challenge. Edit: Actually, a cryohydra would kill them outright. A 24d6 (reflex half) breath weapon as a CR9? Really? But an 8-headed hydra is... underwhelming without the scary breath weapon, even with Fast Healing and regenerating heads. A ten-headed is an attack for everybody and two for four of them, so this should go well.

For further details, watch the thread. Bones also notes that Equestria does materially change stuff because suddenly a good portion of your ~~party~~ ponies will be flying combatants from the get-go.

Running RHOD under E6

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Running RHOD in other settings
...Taking suggestions, people!

Saintheart · 10-09-2010, 09:31 AM

Part One: Drellin's Ferry to Skull Gorge Bridge

The Bridges of Madison County. Of Death.

How to play Jorr Natherson

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Restatting Koth

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The Chimaera, the Raid, and PbP campaigns

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Restatting Red Hand operatives:

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Karkilan: At Vraath Keep, consider giving Karkilan (the minotaur, Koth’s ‘general’) a single level in Boar Totem Barbarian – which drops his speed by 10 feet (it’s fairly close quarters in Vraath Keep, remember) but gives him Diehard as feat. Add Extend Rage, Great Fortitude, et cetera, et cetera as the King of Siam says. Being a single melee type outgunned on action economy with large parties, the focus needs to be on him doing some major damage in the one or two rounds he'll probably live. Combined with Haste and maybe a potion of Bull’s Strength or Resist Energy this makes him dangerous to a fifth level party: a minotaur that goes on rage, charges, and then starts wailing into people with one massive axe and just won’t go down even as he hits 0 hitpoints.

Runestar and ka_bna respectively built and then tested an effective alternative: Wolf Totem Barbarian 2, armed with a guisarme, and taking Improved Trip. This gives him three AoOs. Rather than wailing in with a greataxe, he concentrates on simple trip tactics.

Everyone else: Otherwise, the manticore is fine; the hydra’s fine; the hobgoblin troops can be improved as per the general advice above; and the two worg riders are just sucky and aren't likely to get a hell of a lot better at their levels of competence.

For large (8 player) parties, there's been good reports that a couple of redspawn arcaniss added to Koth's entourage makes for a seriously challenging fight.

Skull Gorge troops: The troops can be restatted according to the general guides at the top of the thread, but I’d also consider adding in a low level hobgoblin bard into the mix who plays his music on a set of war drums inside one of the tents on the far side of the Gorge. The gorge itself allows an echo effect which gives the rest of the hobgoblins the capacity to draw off the morale-boosting effect, but it also forces the party to make Listen checks at substantial negatives to figure out where the “music” is coming from.

One thing that I did to make things interesting was to assume that because of the summer heat, the woods out of which the party has to come to reach the bridge are like dry tinder. First thing the hobgoblin archers on the towers did was to light up their arrows and then set the forest on fire behind the party. No retreat for you! I also gave each of the hobgoblin archers a potion of Feather Fall so they could jump off the towers and get to the bottom of the bridge a lot faster.

Ozyrrandion: Ozzie is the youngest and the least powerful of the dragons in RHOD, but he still has the capacity to be deadly, particularly if he’s beefed up using the general suggestions at the front of the thread. It all depends on the level of optimization of your party: accounts of the Skull Gorge battle range from one-round takedowns of Ozzie to multiple PC deaths at his talons. Using him effectively involves using the terrain: the RHOD book says the Skull Gorge battle really favours archers, but what it actually does favour is Ozzy – he doesn’t have to ascend to get to a good striking altitude, and the terrain favours strafing runs followed by quick flights back to the far side of the gorge to let his breath recharge.

I personally tended towards the metabreath feats Lingering Breath and Clinging Breath as battlefield control against my players, and Ozzie certainly lasted longer than Reggie did later on. :)

Moving the party on from Part One to Part Two

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Rejigging treasures

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Saintheart · 10-09-2010, 09:32 AM

Part Two: The Blackfens and Rhest

"That one burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp!"

The Roadblocks

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The Razorfiend Encounter

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For my PbP campaign I actually upgraded this to two razorfiends and then upgunned the monsters themselves. I also had the encounter actually happen in the ruined manor where the small group of treasures is found. Bear in mind I was running my campaign for 8 people rather than 4 and with some house rules that favoured the PCs, but doing so also upped the horror aspect of the encounter by having the PCs stay in the ruined manor to camp for the night, and allowed them to discover the encounter’s treasures ahead of the actual fight. Night attacks, of course, adding illumination issues to everything else.

It worked in that I managed to get the drop on the PCs, but my upgraded razorfiends were very dangerous: critical hits meant I killed one PC outright and sent the other within 1 hitpoint of death. On the upside, one of the players said it was the first post in a while that made her go “AUGH WHAT” but in a good way. I might add that even with those advantages, the ugly little buggers didn’t last more than two rounds; Glitterdust appears to be their weak spot, unfortunately.

Even so: greenspawn razorfiends out of the box against unoptimised or weakly optimised parties are dangerous at least until the party gets its bearings and organises a defence. Having said that, the threat they pose should then drive it home to the party (or you can): if one greenspawn razorfiend can maul a party of level 6 adventurers, how much damage is a full platoon of the little buggers going to do to the city of Brindol?

For the laughs, here’s the upgunned razorfiend (the feat count, hitpoints and stats will be off because of our house rules on how those things behaved):

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Rainbow Six approaches to Rhest

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Restatting Saarvith

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Saarvith in his original Ranger 7 form is rather unexciting, like most ranged attackers, especially given he’s presumably going to be fighting from dragonback.

So, a couple of suggested builds--

Scout 6/Ranger 2. Nicknamed the "Swift Hunter" build by most people. This build adds one level to Saarvith and basically abandons the route of Saarvith being mounted on a dragon, making him an independently-fighting ranged attacker. To make this work, apply the feats Swift Hunter, Shot on the Run, Improved Skirmish, and Expeditious Dodge (you’ll probably need a flaw or trait to make this work, obviously, though you get Rapid Shot for free from the second level of Ranger.) In terms of equipment, give him a couple of potions of Fly and a Ring of Entropic Deflection. Saarvith under this build starts off on dragonback, but then jumps off and starts standard skirmishing tactics from the air, diving in, shooting, and then retreating so melee types can’t hit him and ranged types have immense difficulty doing so. Dispel Magic is obviously the Achilles Heel here, which is why he’s got more than one Fly potion on him. This build focuses on damage on one attack per round more than spamming attacks as such. Just to give you a sense of what his AC and damage will be like--

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Ranger 6/Fighter 2. This build focuses on the mounted-on-a-dragon aspect of Saarvith’s character, and assumes Regiarix can actually get into the air for strafing runs. (i.e. if the party gets complete surprise on Saarvith on the ground, he’s screwed.) The basic mechanic is to make full attacks as Regiarix does the moving for him. By eighth level Saarvith has Mounted Combat, Mounted Archery, and Improved Mounted Archery from character feats, Rapid Shot and Manyshot from the ranger’s Combat Style, and Point Blank Shot via trading off his (nonexistent) spellcasting ability through the ACF Champion of the Wild from Complete Champion. His two fighter bonus feats should be spent on any two of the following three feats: Underfoot Combat, Woodland Archer, or Improved Rapid Shot.

Underfoot Combat is made useful via low-fat cheese: Saarvith is Small, and while riding Regiarix is “occupying the same space” as a “creature” two size categories larger than him (assuming, of course, you take the general advice and upgrade Reggie from Medium to Large). Therefore by RAW Saarvith gets the bonus of soft cover which is an untyped +4 to AC – unlike Confound the Big Folk, Underfoot Combat does not on RAW require you to move into an opponent’s space first. If that doesn’t appeal, Expeditious Dodge gives you +2 AC while Regiarix is still moving. Of Improved Rapid Shot and Woodland Archer I tend to prefer the former since it basically gives you more attacks for no penalty, which given you’ll be full attacking is strictly superior to a feat that only improves your chances of hitting following a miss against an opponent.

Lastly, max out your Ride skill and trade off Saarvith’s entirely silly eagle companion for the ACF Distracting Shot, which allows your allies to treat the struck opponent as flanked – an indirect buff for the ogres on the ground, and gold given how tight the quarters are around the town hall’s perimeter. This is the reverse to the ‘Swift Hunter’ build above: it spams attacks in the hope of multiple hits via full attacks.

Other builds and suggestions:

Give Saarvith his own mount, so he's not being a liability to the dragon.
Make Saarvith a Druid, mainly so his animal companion can be a mount.
Houserule Ranger to give a full Druid animal companion, same reason.
Have Saarvith take Wild Cohort, same reason.
Open up Dragon magazines and options, which tend to make archers better in D&D than core and the splatbooks put together.

Restatting Red Hand operatives

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Restatting Regiarix

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Reggie presents a poser since it’s not really clear exactly what his role in battle is meant to be. He’s not fantastic on the ground, but his breath attack isn’t great either. He’s a fairly weak specimen of a dragon, as most people have noted; something as mundane as a Tanglefoot Bag is enough to bring him down even at Large size. If you’re facing a party with any experience, optimisation, or more than four players, you should have no hesitation in upgrading him by one age category so he is then a Large creature.

Alertness, Weapon Focus, and Improved Critical need to go, as with all dragons. As for what they get replaced with, though, some consideration of the tactics is warranted.

Reggie's only really got a fighting chance if he's out in the open sky. His underwater lair provides some interesting tactical challenges for the players -- and a swimming dragon might well be fun if the party isn't pimped up with Freedom of Movement -- but the town hall itself is a killing jar and invites the melee types in the party to wail away with a series of charges and full attacks. Your approach with him is going to depend on whether he's on the ground or in the air when the fight happens (and if he's on the ground, he shouldn't be there.)

For an air-based fight, Shape Breath and Enlarge Breath are useful in that they vastly improve his range. A 90 foot line when the party's out on the walkways is a nice asset to have. Like Ozyrrandion he's vulnerable to Downdraft, so Awaken Spell Resistance at least gives him a chance against getting pancaked into the water. Regiarix is also a good candidate for Blood Wind, albeit he'll have to get close in to make the full attack that the spell is most effective with.

If you need a close-in combat option at least, there’s also Shock Wave from the same book which, at Reggie’s +8 bullrush bonus, has a decent chance of knocking down half the party, does damage to the town hall itself, and gives Reggie the breathing space of a move action at least to get into the air.

The Reactory Phylactery*

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Saintheart · 10-09-2010, 09:33 AM

Part Three: The Thornwaste and the Ghostlord's Lair

First one to say "Thundercats Ho" gets a critical hit to the face.

Overall map and terrain fixes

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On mapping, I recommend working with the Ghostlord's Lair map from RHOD on a different scale to that presented. Basically, rather than every square representing a 5 x 5 foot area, rejig it so each square represents a 10 x 10 area (4 squares to every one drawn on the map.) If you're working with MapTools or any other virtual mapper that allows you to change the size of your grids, this is a piece of cake.

There are two reasons for doing this:
1. Detail. Varanthian can't actually fit through her own doorways into her own lair; she's a Huge combatant and takes up a 3x3 space, when the doorway into her den is only 10 feet across. Maybe she needs to stop eating all those Cheerios and watching Oprah.

2. Tactics, especially for large parties. A group of players 6+ in size will look faintly hilarious trying to squeeze into the small-sized rooms. More space also mitigates some of the Ghostlord's close-quarters problems if it comes to a fight. It also allows you to be a real swine if you're inclined to and have Varanthian come to Ulwai's rescue up the secret passageway when the party thinks it's got Ulwai's fight won.

I also recommend recasting the stone lion from being a statue on a ridge to being masterfully carved from the ridge. Doing so makes it more plausibly able to be the location of an evil node (see the spoiler'd section on rebuilding the Ghostlord to be truly effective for more details on this.)

It's notable that the stone lion is subject to the 15-minute adventuring day like almost no other lair in the adventure. A retreat from Vraath Keep might draw a hobgoblin patrol. A retreat from Rhest will draw a visit from Regiarix. But here, the characters can comfortably retreat to their camp a good half mile away from the statue without consequence. There are no defined patrols from the Ghostlord, and not enough Hand troops to plausibly send out patrols. There's only the wandering monster chance.

The lair's structure also allows the party to control the flow of opponents. At Rhest the players at least have to figure out how to cast Water Breathing and Silence to avoid taking on the whole place at once. Here, the designers stick Varanthian in a killing jar with no meaningful support, and set up Ulwai and the other hobgoblins to passively defend their positions. As designed, Varanthian's purpose is to basically be a burglar alarm, which is faintly ridiculous given she's meant to be the "fifth dragon" of the adventure.

Bear in mind even at the "scaled up" version of the stone lion with every square on the map representing a 10 x 10 area, a Haste-affected party going with a "kick in the door" approach can easily sprint from the guardroom in the lion's mouth down to Ulwai's area without sufficient time for the hobgoblins to prepare for them coming. There's not a trap in the place. In hindsight, I'd either make reconnaissance a lot harder (Hide from Undead is cleric 1; it has a decent chance of succeeding against the ghost dire lions) or I'd drop caltrops at least just inside the first door into the lion's mouth (the hobgoblin monks' purpose being to tell legit visitors that they're there.)

With a well-optimised party, consider sending Varanthian and Ulwai's forces at the party at once, albeit delaying one group or the other by a round or two. This will either mean having the fight outside the stone lion, or bringing Varanthian up the secret passage to support Ulwai inside.

Rescuing the Ghostlord from Orcus On His Throne (and having to fight at all)

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Running the Ghostlord "as-is"

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Pretty well everything in this section assumes you've got a party of players who aren't very experienced or have at least one caster who's very experienced at dealing with, well, other casters.

Blighters are a crap prestige class, appropriately described as being to druids what blackguards are to paladins (i.e. nowhere near strong enough to justify taking the PrC even for the evulz.) The PrC takes some of the druid's best battle strategies (chiefly, wading into melee as a frickin' dinosaur with a dinosaur buddy as you spam Greenbound dinosaurs) and gives you nothing back in return (seriously, an undead-themed druid who can't even control undead until he can cast 6th level spells? What the hell?)

To top it off, James and Rich in their wisdom then impose the lich template on this crappy PrC and thereby render it seriously vulnerable to clerics or indeed anyone with the Use Magic Device skill.

Let's repeat the optimal solution: your best way of resolving the Ghostlord encounter, as with Bruce Lee, is to win widdout fighting. Play mind games and build Ghostie up as a lot bigger than he actually is to scare the characters out of attacking him.

Even so, prudence demands you assume the worst. A party comprised of halfway optimised characters (or halfway experienced players) is likely to trash the hell out of the "book" Ghostlord by force of the action economy and the closed quarters of the lair. Indeed on a straw poll of campaigns I've seen here or read, most parties seem to wind up fighting the Ghostlord. So. How to fight?

The most obvious solution is to rebuild the Ghostlord so he’s a thoroughly optimized (and therefore deadly) opponent. See the next spoiler'd section on that. On the other hand, if you replace his levels or add levels to him, there's an argument that he wouldn’t be the Ghostlord, and his monastic existence requires even more suspension of disbelief.

So let's look at our obstacles. He’s outnumbered; he's at close quarters; he’ll be facing a buffed party; and he's vulnerable to positive energy. We need some options to mitigate those weaknesses.

Very important note: The most crucial thing to remember about the Ghostlord is that the authors of RHOD (unwittingly?) hand the party on a silver platter the one weapon that can just about kill him. Full credit to Malevolence for pointing this out, since before then as far as I can tell nobody's ever picked this up. In short: the Staff of Life.

Oh, yes it can. It casts Heal, remember? And the Ghostlord is undead. Go and read your SRD again if you don't get this. If you're going in with a "minimal changes" approach to this battle, you have to find a way to remove the Staff from the equation. Either you do this via removing its Heal functions when giving it to the party, having an NPC hold onto it, putting the Ghostlord in a situation where he can't be touched with it, or just crossing your fingers and praying nobody in the party remembers positive energy damages undead.

Prepare the ground. One option is an Unhallow spell, keyed to a Dispel Magic effect targeting any nonevil characters. This allows the Horde agents to still be hanging around inside the stone lion. The spell covers all the rooms of the Ghostlord’s quarters if cast at the foot of the undead lion statue in the central hall (though if you change the scale of the dungeon, the spell's area of effect will be halved, too). Blighters have access to this spell at the Ghostlord’s "book" level. It even gives the Ghostlord a couple of mild buffs since it counts as a Protection from Good, too. Players can’t dispel the Unhallow effect, and probably won't have their own Hallow spell to neutralize it, either.

On the other hand, an Unhallow'ed Dispel Magic only affects a character once when they enter the Unhallow field, and once again when they leave and re-enter. Thus it'll hopefully take one buff off per character, but that's it. A solution is to have adjacent Unhallow fields all over the complex -- i.e. the characters leave one Unhallow field and then hit another, triggering another Dispel Magic effect.

A more brutal tactic is to layer the Ghostlord's intended battleground -- or indeed his entire complex -- with Forbiddance spells (this is a Blighter 5 spell). Odds are on the party's going to have a different alignment to him, which means a minimum of 3d6 damage on entry to the spell's area. You can't have overlapping Forbiddance effects, but that doesn't stop you casting new Forbiddance effects five feet forward of the previous one, since the new Forbiddance effect stops at the boundary of the old one. You thereby stand back behind three or four Forbiddance fields and watch as the party's melee'ers get 12-36d6 of untyped damage blasted off them as they charge in to engage. Oh, and since Forbiddance prevents teleportation effects, scry-and-die and some Batman mage tactics like abrupt jaunt are prevented as well.
As to getting overwhelmed by melee'ers: for all their suckitude, blighters get Antilife Shell as a 5th level spell. This does mean giving Ghostie his daily 5th level spell rather than RHOD’s text which deems it already cast, but there are simple enough reasons to do that (i.e. the Ghostlord's been screwed over by the Red Hand once already and will take a round to cast before finding out who's messing with his lair again). Cast this spell before the Ghostlord contacts the PCs and their melee fighters can’t touch him. More importantly, cast this and the Staff of Life can't touch him, either.
Choose the best battleground. Don't fight the party in the chamber expressed as the Ghostlord's last redoubt. A 15 x 15 room with no features, no cover and no allies is a killing jar. In this case, it's also a bit anticlimactic. Fight the party in the main central chamber -- the one that contains the six bonedrinkers. These little buggers get Pounce, remember, even if they're most likely to be one-shot kills. And they're undead, so they're not affected by the Ghostlord's Antilife Shell.
Don't fight alone. Put one or more ghost dire lions in the same room as the Ghostlord. He's a sort-of-wacky druid, he deserves an animal companion by his side. And this animal companion, if you read the text, reappears at its "old haunt" after it's been destroyed on a successful level check. That "old haunt", for a freshly-created ghost dire lion, would be right above the yellow pool in that chamber.
Next, substitute three of his feats: Dodge, Mobility, and Natural Spell. (Mobility in particular is a necessary fix, since it requires Dex 13 and the Ghostlord as written only has Dex 12.) You lose 1 AC with Dodge, but given he’ll be fighting under Antilife Shell (fingers crossed) it’s a minimal loss. Natural Spell is replaced even though it's 90% of a druid's tricks because, well, if the Ghostlord has to go to Undead Wild Shape he's screwed anyway. We're changing the Ghostlord's focus from melee to blasting.

Replace them with Fell Drain, Spell Focus (Evocation), and Metamagic School Focus (Evocation). Three of your prepared evocation spells -- Produce Flame in particular, but also Flame Strike if you get a second 5th level spell slot by pumping the WIS score -- now can drain levels off your opponents at half the metamagic cost. Fell Drain turns save-or-lose-more-hitpoints into save-and-suck-anyway. Your party's going to be around level 9 or so; a negative level here has proportionately more impact at lower levels than higher up. And they can be done at range, which means the Ghostlord does not have to go to melee and break the Antilife Shell. And, to top it all off, it's thematically appropriate given all the fluff on how the Ghostlord makes undead.

Important note: You may want to seriously consider the Node Magic options contained in the next spoiler'd section, even on a minimal rebuild of the Ghostlord. These will change the feat selections above to Fell Drain, Node Spellcasting, and Metanode Spell.
The first step in combat, and the only unknown element, will be neutralising anyone who’s got Dispel Magic memorized. The rest of the fight becomes a beating down by your undead allies, followed by touch, paralyse, rinse, repeat when the Antilife Shell finally collapses. (Of course, if someone in the party’s got Iron Heart Surge from Tome of Battle, you could have some problems, but then, that’s another issue entirely.)
Blighters also have access to Stinking Cloud as a spell, which is your primary denial-of-service on spellcasters. These are very effective in close quarters like the Ghostlord's lair and tend to hobble spellcasters and melee types alike with equal effectiveness. They also don't work on undead, which means your bonedrinkers and ghost lion can still get busy.

Rebuilding the Ghostlord to be truly effective

Spoiler

Restatting Ulwai

Spoiler

The quick and dirty way to make Ulwai better is to give her another level in bard, change a couple of her spells, and don't use her unique bardic abilities. Why in the name of Gygax is any bard wandering around the landscape without Glitterdust, for crying out loud? (For that matter, how the hell is an effective 9th level bard still putting out only a +1 to Inspire Courage?) Even if you're not inclined to go with party pwnage by that route, that single level of bard and picking Confusion makes her a dangerous spellcaster.

Fixing her properly requires turning her back into a straight class bard and optimising with Dragonfire Inspiration or Inspire Courage in mind. The Stormsinger thing is flavourful, but it comes down to a very modest caster level boost and a single-target Lightning Bolt, neither of which are terribly inspiring to a level 9 party.

Discussing the module, James and Rich mentioned they built Ulwai like that for the coolness factor of "Wow, I didn't know a bard could do that" ... which is admirable, but if you're playing with a seasoned party, probably won't impress quite as much in combat. Fair enough, this "fix" will attract the argument that "she's not Ulwai anymore" -- but the Stormsinger PrC still alllows you to optimise IC and have the Thunderstrike. Alternatively, you could preserve the lightning theme by taking the right feats to make her Dragonfire Inspiration electricity themed, which would still be more effective than Thunderstrike.

If you're determined to preserve the Stormsinger flavour and you're against an optimised, seasoned, or large party, I recommend shoehorning in the Doomspeak feat from Champions of Ruin, fiated as a swift action (the action required is generally presumed as a standard action since it consumes a bardic music use, but the feat is silent on it by RAW.) Ulwai thereby becomes a lot more effective at least against melee types who try to punch her in the face because Doomspeak reduces their ability to hit her and resist her spells.

Oh, and you know that whole "Ulwai is a masterful liar, especially with Glibness cast" thing on the RHOD text? Well, considering she doesn't actually have any ranks in Bluff, you can presume this as another fine example of a WOTC statblock that matches neither the fluff nor the rules. Trade out Knowledge (Nature) for this skill.

Lastly, if you go with Node Magic as set out regarding the Ghostlord above, don't forget that Ulwai, as an evil spellcaster within the radius of the outermost layer of the node, can access higher caster levels for her spells as per the rules set out in Champions of Ruin. (i.e. she has to make an INT check.)

Restatting Varanthian

Spoiler

Speaking from my single experience running Varanthian (with some anecdotal evidence from other DMs) she has the same drawback that all big solo D&D monsters do: a crippling deficit in the action economy. Opinions do vary wildly: many campaigns I've seen have Varanthian responsible for at least one PC death or serious injury, but in my own PbP she got one grapple in and then got royally clowned in a fusillade of melee. So this is one that does depend heavily on the experience of your players, and the size of your party.

Varanthian's spellcasting is weak, as is her breath attack: 7d6 line is a maximum of 42, assuming you've got one schmuck who stands right behind another one within 20 feet of her face. More likely it's a maximum of 21 or zip against the Evasive types in the party. Not very threatening. Her spellcasting comes down to a few random cleric debuffs, but again nothing that affects more than one target at a time. Her flight speed is also a joke at 20 feet per round.

I suppose you could add spellcasting classes to her, but it's a waste of time unless you're going to add in Practiced Spellcaster as well -- which, it has to be said, probably renders her a lot more dangerous given her 10 HD. But even then you have to contend with having to avoid combat not to attract AoOs. It's trying to put an airfoil on a bulldozer.

Varanthian's best attack combination looks to be designed as "bite, grapple, swallow whole, cleave to bite and grapple again". To be fair, it's not a bad idea: at levels 8-9 people generally aren't optimising towards ubergrappler builds (or if they are you can see them coming) and few characters will have built up a grapple modifier to beat her +27 check. By design, most of the time if she hits, she'll get a grapple going.

The crippling fault with this combination is that it takes more than one round to get through. Varanthian can't start a grapple and then swallow or rake in the same round. And while she's grappling, she doesn't threaten squares and therefore can't make AoOs. This means her ten-foot reach becomes functionally useless as the rest of the party's melee types run into strike range (or even charge) while she sits there with her face stuffed full of hot dog (so to speak). Because she's Huge size, most people will metagame that she's got a ten foot reach, too, so you're unlikely to snag a caster this way.

And that's before you consider magic use and the fact that while chomping on the party's cleric she has no DEX bonus to AC and therefore is open to sneak attack damage.

Some changes are therefore required for her not to be entirely hilarious:

Improved Spell Resistance
Improved Natural Attack (bite)
Increases to her natural armor via item, spell or feat.
Get her Freedom of Movement somehow. Slowing her even makes her single best attack combination functionally useless.
Give her Quicken Breath from the Draconomicon -- it makes breathing a free action, which might have some potential even in spite of the fact she only breathes once every 10 rounds and with the feat applied would breath once in every 14. This gives you a fear-inducing round of strike, grapple, and breathe lightning on the grappled target, since the breath weapon is coming from her mouth and either doesn't get a Reflex save or has a seriously nerfed one. This way at least you might imperil at least one character and force some respect from the party.
Houserule that she can rake a couple of times on the same round as she grapples - stock standard lions from the SRD can do this, so it's ludicrous that she can't.

Restatting Red Hand operatives

Spoiler

Saintheart · 10-09-2010, 09:34 AM

Part Four: The Battle of Brindol, sidequests, and other Elsir Vale encounters

...No, we don't know why the giant's throwing rocks at the wall and not at the gate, either.

The Mercenary Gold and/or Marked for Death missions

Spoiler

Training the garrison ahead of the battle

Spoiler

The Audience with the Lords

Spoiler

This is the meet-and-greet you do with Brindol's lords ahead of the battle, when you're deciding strategy. In passing: this is probably the big roleplaying opportunity of the adventure. You should be pulling your hardest to make the party care about your NPCs in this meeting.

Mechanically it's insignificant. It comes down to a series of Diplomacy rolls and the party gets a maximum of 8 VP if they choose right. If your party has skipped big sections of the adventure to this point, that will make a difference, but it's entirely possible to pass the "victory" line in terms of VP before the party sets foot in the Great Hall.

Note also the Lords' strategy doesn't make any difference whether you have the given encounters in the Battle of Brindol or not. Kharn will still try to step on a church in your town whether you staged the clerics there or not. But this is also fertile ground for players to come up with any number of wild plans for better defending a city, which you are well-advised to acknowledge in some way during the battle if they take the time and investment in your world to come up with them.

Also, some of the tactical "decisions" to be made are so blindingly obvious you'd have to be a Blathering Idiot 20 to not cotton onto the fact they're misconceived. I'm talking here in particular about (a) whether or not to station Brindol's entire army outside the walls and engage the Red Hand in the field, and (b) whether the lords have any sort of plan for the wall being breached at all. By this stage the lords will know they're heavily outnumbered and that the Red Hand is fielding dragons. Jarmaath is an ex-adventurer and fought Regiarix himself once, so he would be aware of the destructive capacity a dragon can bring to a battle.

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

Without giving it a lot of thought, it seems to me there's three possible approaches one could take to these issues:

(1) Make the consequences of the Audience more strategically significant. You could commit that the course of the battle, including where and how the encounters take place, hinges upon the decisions the lords make in this meeting. For example, no clerics holed up in the Cathedral means Kharn doesn't push for the Cathedral, but instead pushes for Brindol Keep, which is where the final battle takes place. Not recommended unless you've got a lot of spare time, but the five encounters can be window-dressed to take place in different locations without a lot of fuss.

(2) Make the consequences of the Audience more personally significant to the party.At Brindol you've got several NPCs that hopefully the characters have come to know. You can set up choices for the players where they have to weigh up putting NPCs they've gotten to know at risk, so the players then have to balance the risk to those NPCs against the risks to themselves. The key is to give the players a choice that has an impact.

For example, the cleric decision: if you station all the clerics at the Cathedral, then they can heal people better (+2 VP), and Tredora Goldenbrow survives because she's not exposed to enemy fire. But the healing potions available to the party in battle may be cut or entirely lost. The reverse applies if you station out the clerics: the party has more healing potions available, but Tredora Goldenbrow's going to die. (-2 VP)

(3) Make some cosmetic changes to the Audience so the more obvious dumb decisions aren't quite so, well, bleeding obvious. For example, the decision whether to fight a field battle against the Red Hand becomes a decision whether or not to send the cavalry out to get a quick punch in against the army before retiring to the city gates. Still gets a -2 to VP if chosen, but it's nowhere near as asinine as putting Brindol's entire army out in front of the walls.

Streamlining the battle

Spoiler

Glyphstone came up with a novel approach to avoiding having to go through every melee encounter in the Battle and also to bring back home to the party the sense that their decisions count. You can find the full discussion here, but adapting it in a more general sense...

This assumes your players have 'done the right thing', by breaking the blockades near Rhest, recruiting the Tiri Kitor, and made sure the Dwarven Mercenaries were recruited.

There are four 'crisis points' during the narration of the Red Hand's initial attack - key attempts to breach the city or cause havoc amongst the defenders. At each point, the party could assign one of the four groups of allies they'd collected to deal with the problem, if they didn't want to go by themselves. Every ally was effective against two of the problems, and ineffective against two - if they picked the wrong matchup, the Streets of Blood encounter becomes a bit harder.

For this, there's an assumption that the Red Hand first tries to wear down the defenders by assaulting the walls of Brindol with ladders and a big dose of cannon fodder, simply to beat Brindol's troops by attrition.

The dwarven mercenaries would be effective against ground-based targets, and useless against airborne enemies.
The northern reinforcements (light cavalry) would be best-used against big targets, since they had a limited supply of javelins.
The elves would be most useful against large numbers of smaller enemies, coordination and formation making up for the smaller damage of their projectiles.
Immerstal the Red would be best-used where his ability to fly and use magic would have the most effect.

	Dwarven Mercenaries	Northern Reinforcements	Tiri Kitor Elves	Immerstal the Red	Loss Effect on Streets of Blood
Initial wall assault	Win	Loss	Win	Loss	Extra wave of Cannon Fodder
Hill Giant Battery	Win	Win	Loss	Loss	Random boulders falling on defenders
Manticores	Loss	Loss	Win	Win	Fewer friendly mooks
Abithriax	Loss	Win	Loss	Win	No barricade

Saving (or not) the Walls

Spoiler

Abithriax's Rampage

Spoiler

The Streets of Blood encounter

Spoiler

By this point in the adventure you should have a decent handle on your party's strengths and tactics, so modifications made to this encounter are going to vary substantially depending on party numbers, optimisation, and collective battle nous of your players. Remember that it doesn't necessarily require vastly upgrading monsters; as written this encounter is meant to contain a decent crop of NPC allies including elves, owls, and Lions of Brindol, so one way -- particularly in the case of parties 8+ in size -- is to just cut NPCs and thereby focus the monsters' firepower on a fewer number of targets.

Bear in mind, though, that this encounter, like most of the others prior to the final confrontation with Kharn, is intended at wearing down the party's resources, not an attempt at TPK. Depending on how effective the party's been, they should be facing between three and five waves of troops, though assuming a party that doesn't metagame or go researching stuff on the Internet you could just throw five waves at the party even if they've foiled the Horde's efforts in Rhest and with the Ghostlord.

If your party's gotten used to battlefield-controlling magic, now's probably the time to start adding the Spellwarped template to a few notable monsters to shake 'em up a bit.

A lot of DMs seem to instinctively realise that the third wave (or the last wave in any event) should reach some sort of crescendo with a pretty decent opponent thrown at the party. AslanCross in Eberron went for a Warforged Titan; another popular suggestion is to replace the Bluespawn Thunderlizards with a straight out Bluespawn Godslayer. This same popular suggestion is also a bit controversial, since whilst a godslayer's certainly thematically appropriate, it's also a pretty powerful option -- perhaps even anticlimactic. Personally, I'd reserve the Godslayer for the Fane of Tiamat, where it has a more dramatic impact. But there are surely other options out there for distinctive and imposing single monsters that you might care to throw at the party.

One might also note that another way to enhance the difficulty here is to simply swarm. Raise the number of monsters who are just running to get to the far end of the street rather than engage the party. Remember the party also loses if 20-odd monsters get to the far end of the street, and if they have to move more than five feet, full attacks at least disappear.

The Sniper Attack

Spoiler

Fixing the Kulkor Zhul War Adepts:

Spoiler

Fixing Skather:

Spoiler

As written, Skather is just plain old underwhelming. He's a cut and paste Blackspawn Exterminator from the MM IV, with an alleged CR 10 and a suck value of A+ since he relies on 6 levels in ninja for most of his combat skills. (He also gets one more attack than seems possible by the rules, but hey, that's WOTC for ya.) He can poison, but again, it's underwhelming. Unoptimised, poisoning has pretty much run its course by these levels -- at level 9-10, parties' saves are usually too high or too buffable for sassone leaf residue poison with a DC 16 to make an impact, much less the optimised or buffed-up-to-the-nines party.

The solution to this problem is drawn from the Poisoner's Handbook.

Basically, take a stock blackspawn raider from RHOD and add one of the following builds:

Rogue 2/Assassin 5. Feat selections (using 1 flaw): Weapon Finesse, Master of Poisons, Poison Expert, Poison Master, Venomous Strike, Staggering Strike, Terrifying Strike - swap out Power Attack, Track, and Improved Initiative. Replace his poisons with Black Lotus Extract, and an Assassination short sword (along with other refinements the Poisoner Handbook suggests to his weapon).

You now have a character who can reliably apply poisons to his weapons as a swift action. With the spell Increased Virulence, Poison Expert, Venomous Strike, and the Assassination properties of the weapon, those poisons now have roughly +8 or so to their DC, on top of an indirect -4 to saves that Terrifying Strike and Staggering Strike impose. Even sassone leaf residue is looking a bit more impressive at DC 24 rather than DC 16. As it is Black Lotus starts at DC 20, does 3d6 Con damage primary which affects Fort saves...before the Assassin's Death Attack kicks in.

Bear in mind Death Attack is going to be tricky to arrange unless you can keep Skather hidden from the party for 3 rounds while they're in the same room as him. This can be fixed by giving a mostly-spent Wand of Deathsight (Complete Mage 102). You've still got +4d6 sneak attack damage to play with and spellcasting which includes True Strike and Obscuring Mist.) In terms of HD, this Skather has only 1 more HD than his RHOD book counterpart does, and a whole lot of extra toys: Evasion, Improved Uncanny Dodge, and all the rest.
Duskblade 7. This build is much more "tank and spank" with a poisonous flavour. Feat selections (again, using 1 flaw): Master of Poisons, Improved Initiative, Power Attack, Draconic Aura (energy: acid) traded for Track, Poison Spell, Smiting Spell, Knowledge Devotion, and Combat Expertise.

Keep him two-handed with his falchion, but make it a whirling weapon. And give him a few doses of Black Lotus or Darklight Brew. He can still poison his weapon as a swift action, but he can channel stuff like Chill Touch with Poison Spell metamagic'd into it, resulting in multiple poisonings from the one pass -- one from the weapon, and one from the spell. And then Smiting Spell, which gives you one more poisonous touch spell a round. And he also has a 7d4 breath weapon at DC 19 if you really needed it.

Did I also mention that Dimension Hop can be channelled and that Skather is operating on the second floor of a building? Or that he has Knowledge Devotion, and Duskblades get Knowledge skills as class skills, and that Knowledge (Local) covers pretty well every PC in existence since most are humanoids? Or that a falchion's a two-handed weapon and thus it synergises well with Power Attack?

For a large party, it might actually be worth taking both the above builds: the Duskblade "Skather" engages the party while an "assassin" Skather hides and waits for his moment with the Death Attack.

Bear in mind also that built like this, Skather makes a very rich, in WBL terms, opponent. Poisons are expensive, as are custom magic items, so you might want to either just give these as bonuses or restrain yourself on equipment elsewhere.

Don't go an archer build. There's no point (and no pun intended, either.) If you really must, consider stretching a lot to the Dragon supplements and other exotic options that make ranged combat work - or at least, work a lot better than they otherwise would.

Restatting Wyrmlord Kharn

Spoiler

Saintheart · 10-09-2010, 09:35 AM

Part Five: the Fane of Tiamat (and beyond)

Ya think they got her best side?

Rebuilding the Fane of Tiamat

Spoiler

Restatting Tyrgarun

Spoiler

And The Adventure Continues

Spoiler

As something of a postscript, what are some thoughts for where characters can go after having killed Azarr Khul and/or the Aspect of Tiamat?

Some suggestions people have made based on a 10th to 11th level party by the end of the adventure:

Scales of War, being a 4e adventure path that follows on from RHOD, although obviously it would require back-conversion.
Expedition to Castle Ravenloft. Roughly level-appropriate, and if you wanted to pull some kind of "the planes themselves are put out of alignment as the Aspect dies and the portal to Avernus closes, and with a sudden darkness, you find yourself ... somewhere..." Ravenloft is a lovely place to wind up. :)
Someone with clearly a very sick sense of humour suggested the Tomb of Horrors.
Expedition to the Demonweb Pits. Jair Barik had some good thoughts on the transition to this: go with an ending of "the players jump into a portal and end up in Sigil", which allows you to segue into EttDP with the motive of getting home rather than just being out to get evil -- or alternatively, just give the players some downtime after RHoD and let their climactic battles there fade back a bit, since EttDP just starts off with fairly deadly opposition to begin with. There are some nice thematic concordances with the two campaigns - notably, more Aspects, and the players dealing with Demons rather than Devils from the RHoD Fane and consequently some plot intrigue stemming out of the Blood War.
Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil.

Other plot hooks you could draw from:

Clean up. While Azarr Kul and Hravek Kharn may be dead, the Horde is far from gone: while scattered, hobgoblins and other monsters are still rampaging across the Elsir Vale, causing a great deal of havoc. If any Wyrmlords survived, they might reorganize the troops and prepare another assault; even if none did, a powerful Red Hand warpriest might seize control and begin their own invasion (or they might find a way to resurrect a fallen Wyrmlord).
The fifth ~~Beatle~~ dragon. Why were only four dragons present in the invasion? Simple. Azarr Kul had, in fact, made an alliance with a powerful white dragon from the frosty mountain peaks north of the Endless Plains, but he simply didn't have time to delay the invasion long enough for the dragon to arrive. Instead, the plan was that the white dragon would help him solidify his rule across the Elsir Vale, crushing any remaining resistance. So now, unaware that the Red Hand horde is in fact routed, this dragon arrives on its own...followed, of course, by a retinue of enslaved soldiers and monsters - and finds, while not perhaps the easy victory he had expected, a decimated land ripe for the picking.
The Fane of Tiamat. Azarr Kul didn't quite manage to complete his infernal gate, but his work and the arrival of the Aspect of Tiamat significantly injured the fabric of the Material Plane within the inner sanctum. If they can, remaining Red Hand warpriests might try to complete the ritual - or the hordes of Baator might break through themselves. Either way, Elsir Vale now finds itself under a new threat: ravening armies of Hell swarming out of the Wyrmsmokes, bent on destruction.
Vraath Keep. The PCs are heroes of the Elsir Vale, and as such Lord Jarmaath might see fit to grant them lordship over Vraath Keep and Drellin's Ferry. If they accept, the PCs will not only have to cope with rebuilding and repopulating the town and castle, but also clearing the shadow-filled eaves of the western Witchwood and driving back raids by remaining Red Hand warriors. To be sure, it will become a game that's quite different from the standard campaign, but nonetheless an interesting one. If you're prepared to do some work, it could even be a nice opportunity to segue into Pathfinder's Kingmaker adventure path, since the themes of "own a piece of the rock" are the same.
Lady Kaal and/or Rillor Paln, being the shifty powers in Elsir Vale. There's a wonderful account in this thread of one DM who teased out these two into causing a further major threat to the Vale themselves.

Saintheart · 10-09-2010, 09:37 AM

Other Resources, Campaign Journals, etc.

Very much under construction.

Campaign Journals hosted here on GITP:
AslanCross's RHOD campaign journal, set in Eberron.
Saph's RHOD campaign journal, set in the Forgotten Realms.
kjones' RHOD campaign journal, set in a generic (?) campaign world.

The author's own RHOD campaign, played in PbP format:
http://boards.theforce.net/non_star_...08372/p1/?5200
The current player roster and other resource material for the author's campaign: http://boards.theforce.net/role_play...0918874/p1/?18

Alternate builds for various NPCs or opponents in RHOD:
From Inkeyes, using Tome of Battle, in an Eberron setting - hobgoblin rank and file

Spoiler

From Inkeyes, again in Eberron - dragons and Wyrmlords

Spoiler

From Endarire, a, shall we say, more challenging Aspect of Tiamat

Download It Here.

Couple of links I did manage to salvage from the WOTC Archive and which still work:

All maps in RHOD with secret doors removed: http://www.flickr.com/photos/36844791@N00/
A fanbuilt map of the bell tower at Rhest: http://dundjinni.com/forums/forum_po...d+hand+of+doom
Dundjinni map of the Rhest town hall: Here.
Nice image of the Cathedral of Pelor in Brindol: Here.

...And that's all, take it away guys!

Coidzor · 10-09-2010, 09:40 AM

This should be interesting.

Particularly the sentiments on adaptation.

That reminds me though, I need to find those three journals so I can finish them...x.x

ShriekingDrake · 10-09-2010, 10:03 AM

Thanks so much for doing this. I am so disappointed that s much of the good RHoD work was lost on the WoTC site. I wish I'd preserved that stuff when I had the chance, because the material there made the adventure so much better. With luck, we can see the same kind of interest her and rekindle the lost fires that supported this work.

Have a cookie.

Saintheart · 10-09-2010, 10:32 AM

Damn, you've discovered my Kryptonite... *munches down on the cookie*

IthilanorStPete · 10-09-2010, 02:50 PM

I've played through RHoD once, talked about it extensively with my DM, and I was going to run a PbP game of it before it fell through due to unrelated stuff. My notes:
-The Wyrmlords, as stated, need reworking. Koth was incredibly underwhelming in our campaign, and our DM rebuilt Kharn as a Warblade, which made the fight very cool. My idea was to rework them into a sequence going from pure martial to pure caster - I had Koth statted out as a Barbarian 3/Frenzied Berserker 3, use Saarvith in a ranged build like the Swift Hunter build in the guide, Ulwai is decent as is, use Kharn as an arcanist specializing in summoning (probably Malconvoker), and Azarr Kul as a divine caster.
-One of the biggest issues is motivating the PCs near the end of Chapter 1 and getting them into Chapter 2; it can be difficult to motivate them to see the horde at Cinder Hill, then it can be hard to get them to Rhest. We used the blockades as our hook, and just kind of wandered up to Rhest, but there's got to be a better way.
-The dragons mainly need better feat selection, and can use a better spell selection based on how powerful/optimized you want them. Awaken Spell Resistance, as noted, is nice. If you want to make them very very strong, give them access to Blood Wind and Scintillating Scales from Spell Compendium.
-The Battle of Brindol was a fantastic session for us. A couple of changes our DM made - using Skullcrusher Ogres instead of the giants, (which he had used in several places previously) using 2 Bluespawn Godslayers as the third wave in Streets of Blood as much more dangerous and impressive opponents then the Razorfiends, and Kharn's bodyguard was 4 Wilders, who tanked up with Vigor and potions of Barkskin, then hammered us with some blasting powers and ego whip.
-After Brindol, the Fane of Tiamat was incredibly anticlimactic. It's a somewhat boring dungeoncrawl. The Aspect was...very powerful, and killed the other two members of our party (a Knight and a healbot Cleric) very quickly, but I was a Warlock and just kited it with Flyby Attack.
-One idea I had, to make Brindol the full climax of the adventure and to address issues we had of feeling like Azarr Kul was Orcus on His Throne, was to switch around the Fane and the Battle. The idea was to have the horde besiege Brindol, then wait for reinforcements from the interplanar portal. Azarr Kul would lead the horde himself, while Kharn would be in charge of opening the portal. (tying in with the Malconvoker-ness) The PCs would learn about the issues at the Fane from divinations by, say, Immerstal - teleport or travel by Owl there, take care of Kharn, (with no Aspect) then head back to Brindol for the climactic battle. Azarr Kul would summon the Aspect with some kind of contingency and/or desperate prayer.

CockroachTeaParty · 10-09-2010, 03:38 PM

Here's a link to the RHoD game I'm currently running on these boards.

When I originally played through it in RL as a PC, my DM changed several things (which was good, since we were a powerful party of 4). He bumped up the dragon's age categories, reworked Kharn and Azarr Kul, doubled the razorfiends, and did various other things to up the ante. We were able to overcome all the challenges and emerge victorious.

In the game I'm currently running, I'm mostly running it 'out of the box,' just to see what happens. So far, the party has been routinely stomping the encounters, although the beguiler was killed by Ozyrrandion at Skull Gorge (they brought him back to life with the Staff of Life).

The only thing I've changed so far is that I've replaced all Hobgoblin Badebearers with warblade levels, and made the Hobgoblin Sergeants level 3 crusaders. I've also made the Doomfist Monks sword sages, but they've yet to encounter any of them.

These are pretty minor elite NPCs, though, and they've not even really had the chance yet to shine. The party's fighter/barbarian has been particularly devastating, especially when combined with the bard (who is currently AWOL, but his absence hasn't stopped the party's ability to own).

I've noticed that in general the enemies have poor Will saves, and spells like Glitterdust have been winning tickets.

Also, the outdoor, wide-open nature of several of the fights has proven to be somewhat detrimental to the party's dragonfire adept; the limit on their breath weapon's range is really hard on more open-area combats. Now that he can fly, he's coming a bit more into his own, though.

Also, despite their many successes, they've been unable to take down any of the Red Hand's leaders. Koth and Ozyrrandion managed to escape; I played them slightly more conservatively then the book suggests. Ozy's escape in particular will cost them victory points when the Battle of Brindol comes to a close, as they won't see him again until the Fane.

I'm intrigued to see how they'll handle the ruins of Rhest. When I played through it, it turned into a gigantic clusterf**k, and we barely managed to scrape by with our lives.

Gavinfoxx · 10-09-2010, 03:42 PM

If anyone has the original link to the old guidebook, I SHOULD be able to find it on web achive... I'm surprisingly good at that i I have the original link!

Coidzor · 10-09-2010, 05:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gavinfoxx

If anyone has the original link to the old guidebook, I SHOULD be able to find it on web achive... I'm surprisingly good at that i I have the original link!

You mean this? http://community.wizards.com/go/thre...Resource_Links

That is to say, I found the old index of such threads, but when I went to look again I got that.

The links within that thread are in the old style, so could be checked in the web archive?

cZak · 10-09-2010, 08:24 PM

Qualifier: DM'd RHoD

Always bothered me; why would the party not just destroy the Ghostlords phylactery?

I mean, they have an evil, undead item holding the life force of a min 11th level caster. What party, that should be working against the Evil Horde, would want to converse with such a creature?

Even made of adamantium, players are creative enough to find some way to accomplish it.

Trapping the thing just slows the party down, even if it resets. At most you kill the person who hits it, then the wiz stands back throwing orbs o' Force at it.

CockroachTeaParty · 10-09-2010, 08:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cZak

Qualifier: DM'd RHoD

Always bothered me; why would the party not just destroy the Ghostlords phylactery?

I mean, they have an evil, undead item holding the life force of a min 11th level caster. What party, that should be working against the Evil Horde, would want to converse with such a creature?

Even made of adamantium, players are creative enough to find some way to accomplish it.

Trapping the thing just slows the party down, even if it resets. At most you kill the person who hits it, then the wiz stands back throwing orbs o' Force at it.

You could destroy it, certainly. The key point the PCs need to realize, however, is that the Ghostlord might not realize it. Even if his phylactery is destroyed, if he believes it is still being held hostage by the Red Hand, he'll commit his ghost troops to the assault on Brindol. The objective is to prevent the horde from getting undead reinforcements.

In order to make sure the Ghostlord doesn't commit, he needs to know one of two things: either that the Red Hand no longer possess his phylactery, or that it has been destroyed. Either way will result in him withdrawing his troops. However, should he learn his precious phylactery has been destroyed, he's likely to fly into a rage, and probably shoot the messenger.

When we played through the Ghostlord chapter in RL, we brought his phylactery to him, but tried to draw out a negotiation, to which he simply responded by attacking us, even though we still possessed his phylactery. Eventually we managed to trap him, and then decided to destroy his trinket right then and there. In the end, he did not support the Red Hand, and we left him trapped and screwed. Later on, he attempted to kill us out of revenge, until we eventually destroyed him once and for all, but that was after the events of RHoD were over.

AslanCross · 10-10-2010, 12:22 AM

You might want to add a section on dealing with Victory Points: For some DMs it isn't really clear with them whether the PCs should be aware of their running total, or even if the PCs should know about the VPs at all.

There's also the misconception about their effect on the campaign overall:

Spoiler

Saintheart · 10-10-2010, 02:38 AM

I will. In case anyone's wondering, I will be watching the thread even if I don't answer queries straight away. Most likely I'll post indicating what, if any, updates have been made to the front of the thread. The VP points inclusion is a good suggestion, and I'll put that in. Likewise the phylactery discussion, though there's one tangent I wanted to run off that:

Quote:

Originally Posted by CockroachTeaParty

When we played through the Ghostlord chapter in RL, we brought his phylactery to him, but tried to draw out a negotiation, to which he simply responded by attacking us, even though we still possessed his phylactery. Eventually we managed to trap him, and then decided to destroy his trinket right then and there. In the end, he did not support the Red Hand, and we left him trapped and screwed. Later on, he attempted to kill us out of revenge, until we eventually destroyed him once and for all, but that was after the events of RHoD were over.

On this one (again, it's a topic that could use a note above somewhere I guess) I've seen a couple of campaigns mentioned where the Ghostlord tends to really attack if not at the drop of a hat, then as if he's got a hair-trigger temper. Although it's armchair quarterbacking, I actually think this isn't the right way to go about playing him.

Reason being that he's not supposed to be a combat encounter, even on the RHOD text. The stats are there in case the party gets a bit silly, but I think the level of provocation it should take before the Ghostlord wades into combat should be considerably higher than it's perceived to be.

I mean, on RHOD:

He doesn't know where his phylactery is.
He's therefore extremely vulnerable.
He doesn't know what connection the party has to the Horde.
It's Ulwai he has cause to kill since she stole his phylactery - not the party.
If the party mentions his phylactery, then from the Ghostlord's point of view they have him by the undead proverbials.

That combination of factors, I would have thought, should keep him from attacking the party at all unless the provocation is extreme. The Ghostlord doesn't really care about material possessions anymore: that much is clear on the description of his 'treasure house'. What he does care about is his continued existence and his continuing ability to create undead.

Just because you're evil doesn't mean you've necessarily got a hair-trigger temper; quite the opposite, the most enduring villains know very well how to hold their anger in reserve until the right moment. And the Ghostlord isn't a paladin of evil -- he has no obligation to go out combating good wherever he finds it; insofar as he might consider the question, it's probably just as acceptable a victory over the forces of good to continue his survival and watch clerics of good deities go slinking away at his behest as it is to wade into battle and hand their rears to them.

I think also that while the possibility of the Ghostlord turning around and killing the party once he's got his phylactery back should be constant, the reality of his character should be much different. I've seen instances where the Ghostlord has turned and tried to kill the party immediately on return of the phylactery. I never really understood why: he's not chaotic evil. He's neutral evil, which means out for himself - not out to Destroy Good, and not out to Destroy Everything, either. The party might be scared of him, but he doesn't know the strengths of the party either, and he wouldn't have got to roughly 600 years of age without having some idea of discretion being the better part of survival unless you know exactly what you're dealing with.

Played as a more detached, reclusive villian who only cares about himself and his ghosts, I think most of these problems disappear.

ka_bna · 10-10-2010, 04:15 AM

Great work! I'm running RHoD now (playing once a month), but this guide will be extremely helpful! (and it's nicely written too

)

Runestar · 10-10-2010, 05:25 AM

If you have MM4 or MM5, I think Koth (act 1) can be replaced with either a redspawn arcaniss (MM4, cr6) or if you think your party is up to the challenge, a hobgoblin warsoul (mm5, cr8!).

As for the bladebearers, warblade1/fighter2/warblade+1 could work as well. There aren't that many of them, so they shouldn't complicate combat too much.

Duskblade is very tempting, but I can't think of a suitable npc to replace.

I thought of remaking Sarvith as a swift hunter as well, and going one step further by letting him mount the black dragon and engage in an aerial assault against the PCs, but my grasp of air combat wasn't very good, so I decided against it at the last moment.

AslanCross · 10-10-2010, 09:01 AM

I added in Hobgoblin Duskblades as shock troops. I called them "Kulkor Zhul Arcknights." They work great with the Greater Barghests in ambushes.

Btw, IMO the most dangerous monsters in the early part of the game are the Greater Barghests. Their (Sp)s are incredibly powerful buffs, and they're probably the primary reason why the Marked for Death encounter is so dangerous out of the box.

Saintheart · 10-10-2010, 09:59 AM

Some matters added in, including VPs, a brief word on ToB replacements, and other minor changes.

EDIT: Also, as a general thought, I'm considering turning all the subheader sections of each of the posts into spoiler blocks for ease on the eye. Any problems, gang? For? Against?

CockroachTeaParty · 10-10-2010, 10:11 AM

@Saintheart:

Oh, I agree that the Ghostlord should be a role playing encounter. I was not DMing that campaign, and it was his decision to have the Ghostlord attack us; I think he knew we were skilled enough to handle him. It was a close fight, and actually one of the more memorable ones for a variety of reasons. The only reason we won was the fact that the Ghostlord did not have Stone Shape prepared, and we trapped him in the stone of his own lair with no way to escape for at least 24 hours. That was when we broke his phylactery and left him to rot.

Still, it's difficult to convince players, especially in a campaign were almost everything fights you, to not fight something. Red Hand of Doom is pretty much a series of battles stringed together, and some groups may have trouble getting out of the battle mindset.

Saph · 10-10-2010, 10:52 AM

Let's see, a few of the things I learned:

The Blackfens

Put Regiarix up an age category to Young Adult, making him Large. He's far too weak otherwise.

Adding a couple of Warrior levels to the Ogres and giving them the Brutal Throw feat makes them much more effective, but they're still mooks and they'll die pretty fast if the PCs know what they're doing.

Advanced razorfiends with Improved Critical are highly entertaining.

The Wyrmlords

Koth is actually quite dangerous on his own, due to the nonassociated class levels giving him the spells of an equivalent-level Sorcerer along with twice as many HP as a pure Sorcerer would have. If you want to be really cruel, give him Practiced Spellcaster, but 10d6 area-attack spells will probably toast even an optimised 5th-level party.

Saarvith is kind of a wuss, but pairing him up with Regiarix makes him a lot more dangerous. I found that the most effective thing he contributes is probably Mounted Combat.

I put Ulwai up a level to level 10 and gave her confusion as a spell known. Makes her pretty dangerous, and her thunderstrikes hurt too.

The Ghostlord

My solution for toughening the Ghostlord was to put him up a level (giving him access to 6th-level spells), giving him a couple of ghost dire lion bodyguards, and redoing his spell selection, most notably loading him up with a bunch of stinking clouds. The fight (if there is one) will take place in cramped conditions, so the Ghostlord can quite easily fill the entire combat area with stinking cloud. The Ghostlord doesn't care, the ghost lions don't care, but the PCs will care a lot; one failed Fort save and they're out of the combat, while the ghost dire lions Strength-drain them.

For roleplaying him, I went for a combination of Emperor Palpatine and Gollum.

Ancient, very powerful, psychotically obsessed with his phylactery, and insane (but note that insane doesn't mean stupid). I had him talk a lot, but he'd only respond to the PCs when they said something that matched up with his skewed worldview - otherwise he'd just ramble to himself about revenge and torture and killing, before snapping suddenly back into focus and demanding why the PCs were there.

I also told the PCs at the beginning of the encounter with him that everything they said would be assumed to be in character unless specified otherwise. The idea is to keep it short and tense. Don't have the Ghostlord stick around and chat while the players talk OOC: it ruins the mood. The PCs should feel that they need to make a deal fast before the Ghostlord decides to kill first and ask questions later.

General advice for running dragons

• Dragons are most effective when doing strafing runs with their breath weapon, or on the ground doing full attacks. There's little reason for them to take the attack action.
• All dragons should have mage armour as a spell known. There's just no reason not to. Shield as well if you want to really make them hard to hit.
• Good dragon feats: Power Attack, Multiattack, Improved Multiattack, Practiced Spellcaster, Flyby Attack, Ability Focus (breath weapon). Useless feats which should be swapped out: Alertness, Weapon Focus, Improved Critical.
• All the dragons in RHoD have a fly speed of 150 feet. That means 300 feet on a double move/withdraw, or 600 feet on a run. Take advantage of this. There's really no reason for a supposedly intelligent dragon to stand and fight to the death if it's obvious that it's not going to win, unless the encounter requires it. In my campaign, Ozyrrandion and Regiarix both survived 3-4 encounters with the PCs simply by fleeing whenever they needed to.

nihilism · 10-10-2010, 11:34 AM

i actually don't think the encounters need that much upgrading if played right.

i have just started the adventure and i intend to slow advancement a bit and maybe cut the treasure down but other than that i think its all about tactics. the only thing i intend to change is the save dcs

Dralnu · 10-10-2010, 01:35 PM

If people already have revamped NPC stats on their computers, could they post them here? I'd love to see them. Making NPCs is always the most time-consuming thing for me, especially making ToB characters.

To contribute (sorta) to the thread, I'm following PId6's RHOD PbP over here on the forums. I'm not fully caught up yet, but I've noticed that he's revamped Koth's spell selection at least -- Wings of Cover greatly helps with survivability when you're outmatched in action economy.

Tyndmyr · 10-10-2010, 02:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nihilism

i actually don't think the encounters need that much upgrading if played right.

i have just started the adventure and i intend to slow advancement a bit and maybe cut the treasure down but other than that i think its all about tactics. the only thing i intend to change is the save dcs

That entirely depends on optimization level. My party referred to Ozy as "hellen keller", due to in a single round inflicting a hexblade curse, blindness, deafness, and destroying the wings. So yeah, no retreat there. Some of the fights are pretty good, all in all. I liked the Koth fight.

However, you've got a few fights that end up being pretty much fodder if your party optimizes at all, including some that clearly aren't meant to be. It's ok for a random scout patrol to die horribly in a single round, but when you have significant encounters dying the same way, it's time to beef things up.

cZak · 10-10-2010, 04:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Saph

Let's see, a few of the things I learned:

The Ghostlord

My solution for toughening the Ghostlord was to put him up a level (giving him access to 6th-level spells), giving him a couple of ghost dire lion bodyguards, and redoing his spell selection, most notably loading him up with a bunch of stinking clouds. The fight (if there is one) will take place in cramped conditions, so the Ghostlord can quite easily fill the entire combat area with stinking cloud. The Ghostlord doesn't care, the ghost lions don't care, but the PCs will care a lot; one failed Fort save and they're out of the combat, while the ghost dire lions Strength-drain them.

My party got gobsmaked by the ghost lions with Strength drain and no cleric of high enough level for restoration; bloody multi-class dip'n...
As such, I limited the ghost lions as guardians of the ramp entry.

It was REALLY hard, and ultimately failed, to convince the PC's they did not 'need' to kill the GhostLord.

Blighter is like a -2LA. I gave him the Evolved Undead & Swarm shifter (Libris Mortis) templates as a means of survivability. And they fit the background for him.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Saph

For roleplaying him, I went for a combination of Emperor Palpatine and Gollum.

Ancient, very powerful, psychotically obsessed with his phylactery, and insane (but note that insane doesn't mean stupid). I had him talk a lot, but he'd only respond to the PCs when they said something that matched up with his skewed worldview - otherwise he'd just ramble to himself about revenge and torture and killing, before snapping suddenly back into focus and demanding why the PCs were there.

I also told the PCs at the beginning of the encounter with him that everything they said would be assumed to be in character unless specified otherwise. The idea is to keep it short and tense. Don't have the Ghostlord stick around and chat while the players talk OOC: it ruins the mood. The PCs should feel that they need to make a deal fast before the Ghostlord decides to kill first and ask questions later.

This seems a very good mechanic for the scenario.