4e Fan Creations and House RulesWorking on variant powers? Statting up a PC race or your version of a monster? Creating or converting an adventure? Put it here!
Any word on the artwork yet? I've got the document ready to be converted into a single PDF again, but I heard that there might be some illustrations to add.
I'd mentioned to Olgar I'd love to help - though it's likely easiest now if you just put the PDF together, and I could perhaps do something nice for the cover page once everything is finalized.
Tovokas
__________________ "We take our horrible mutilations seriously in these parts."
First off, thanks Olgar and everyone else who worked on this, it is really REALLY awesome. I am going to run this module as a 4e demo at my Role-Playing club soon. I'm really excited to give 4e a good trial, and this adventure is EXCELLENT! Thanks so much.
One thing I was wondering, is Nightscale really suppossed to have 280hp??? That seems incredibly high for a lvl 4, even if it is a solo. Was this a typo of some type perhaps? I don't see how the D&D XP characters could ever deal that much damage against such a high AC/FORT/REF/WILL.
Again, thanks so much for all the effort everyone put in to this, I'll try and let you all know how it goes when I run it.
First off, thanks Olgar and everyone else who worked on this, it is really REALLY awesome. I am going to run this module as a 4e demo at my Role-Playing club soon. I'm really excited to give 4e a good trial, and this adventure is EXCELLENT! Thanks so much.
One thing I was wondering, is Nightscale really suppossed to have 280hp??? That seems incredibly high for a lvl 4, even if it is a solo. Was this a typo of some type perhaps? I don't see how the D&D XP characters could ever deal that much damage against such a high AC/FORT/REF/WILL.
Again, thanks so much for all the effort everyone put in to this, I'll try and let you all know how it goes when I run it.
Well, Mike Mearls has mentioned that the defenses might be 2 points too high on the fan-Nightscale. (I'm not sure if Olgar adjusted it or not.) But also bear in mind--Nightscale is supposed to stomp them. It allows them to experience the Death & Dying rules. She probably won't just destroy them, but expect her to win the encounter. You might be surprised though--I had a group get her down to 18 HP before the managed to flee! A lot of it depends on good tactics (and some lucky rolls don't hurt) and maybe some praying.
With action points and daily powers, the group that nearly killed her did like 85 damage or something obscene like that in the *first round*.
Yep, NS has 280 hp (I haven't adjusted the defenses down two points in the current version, though I considered it -- DMs might consider that to soften her up). NS is supposed to stomp the party if they stand and fight and aren't particularly smart about it. I don't recommend pulling any of her punches.
On the other hand, if they fight well, they only have to bloody her to get her to flee, so it isn't quite as bad as it looks. If she flees and the party survives, you have a recurring villain for later. As long as the party defeats the hobgoblins and kobolds, they've thwarted NS's plans, so it isn't strictly necessary to defeat her directly, either.
@ CleverNickName & tovakas -- guys, please do assemble a pdf. Thanks for the help!
__________________ "The Soul of D&D?It's rolling a natural 20 when you're down to 3 hit points and the cleric's on the floor and you're staring that sunnavabitch bugbear right in his bloodshot eye and holding the line just long enough to let the wizard unleash a fireball at the guards who are on their way, because they're all that stands between you, the Foozle and Glory." - WizarDru
Yep, NS has 280 hp (I haven't adjusted the defenses down two points in the current version, though I considered it -- DMs might consider that to soften her up). NS is supposed to stomp the party if they stand and fight and aren't particularly smart about it. I don't recommend pulling any of her punches.
On the other hand, if they fight well, they only have to bloody her to get her to flee, so it isn't quite as bad as it looks. If she flees and the party survives, you have a recurring villain for later. As long as the party defeats the hobgoblins and kobolds, they've thwarted NS's plans, so it isn't strictly necessary to defeat her directly, either.
@ CleverNickName & tovakas -- guys, please do assemble a pdf. Thanks for the help!
Ok, sounds good. I understand that her purpose is to trounce the PCs, especially if people are running the adventure as a 4e preview, since I doubt the players will be attached to their pregen characters. I just wanted to make sure, because compared to some of the D&D Minis stat cards I've seen 280 HP looks way too high. Like the Stats for the level 7 (IIRC) Red Dragon has less than 200 HP. But Blacks may just have really high HPs, as I know they are trying to make the dragons feel much different from each other.
I'm ready to run this for a demo for my RPG club, so it should be loads of fun. Thanks so much for providing it for us!
Sorry about the delay. I have created two .PDF files of the Raiders of Oakhurst adventure. The first one is the text document only, without any maps or images. The second one is just the maps, without any formatting or text whatsoever.
I tried to format the images smoothly into the document, but something is wrong with my configuration (or the software I am using; MS Publisher. ) because either the filesize is enormous (>50MB) or the images are too grainy to read the text.
I hope that someone out there with a better rig can work with these images...or at least clean the maps up and add the text to them so I can stuff them into the document properly.
I think the formatting in Klaus's PDF version of the original adventure is just lovely - it would be fantastic if it could be mirrored in the body of the expanded adventure, but I realize 38 pages is a bit heavier load than 7!
t
__________________ "We take our horrible mutilations seriously in these parts."
We may need to include some of the original map files, as some of the maps (the Lost Tomb and Crag Keep specifically) aren't keyed.
__________________ "The Soul of D&D?It's rolling a natural 20 when you're down to 3 hit points and the cleric's on the floor and you're staring that sunnavabitch bugbear right in his bloodshot eye and holding the line just long enough to let the wizard unleash a fireball at the guards who are on their way, because they're all that stands between you, the Foozle and Glory." - WizarDru
I think the formatting in Klaus's PDF version of the original adventure is just lovely - it would be fantastic if it could be mirrored in the body of the expanded adventure, but I realize 38 pages is a bit heavier load than 7!
t
The cover is nicely done, tovokas. Skills, you have them.
I was having issues with the original formatting of the document, and Word wasn't letting me remove the columns or certain breaks...so I ended up stripping ALL formatting in the document and rebuilding it from the ground up. Now it has tables, section breaks, a functional table of contents, tables...
The new Word document can be found here (300 KB .doc). It is primed and ready for artwork. (Hint, hint...)
Once that was done, it was a rather small task to convert the document into an Adobe Acrobat file, which can be downloaded here (3.7MB .pdf). Unlike my previous one, it actually has good-looking maps in it. All it needs is a front and back cover (hint, hint), and it's money.
Let me know if there is anything else I can do.
__________________ - CleverSignature
Last edited by CleverNickName; 17th April 2008 at 03:03 AM..
I've added a front and back cover to the CleverNickName's latest PDF, done some minor formatting updates, and pasted in a few images to give it a little color. This is all on the quick so I hope things aren't completely mangled...
Now that's looking good! Hope no one minds the use of their artwork ...
Need to put numbers on the Crag Keep and Lost Tomb maps, though, to key them to the text.
__________________ "The Soul of D&D?It's rolling a natural 20 when you're down to 3 hit points and the cleric's on the floor and you're staring that sunnavabitch bugbear right in his bloodshot eye and holding the line just long enough to let the wizard unleash a fireball at the guards who are on their way, because they're all that stands between you, the Foozle and Glory." - WizarDru
So ... should we submit to the Ennies in the free product category?
__________________ "The Soul of D&D?It's rolling a natural 20 when you're down to 3 hit points and the cleric's on the floor and you're staring that sunnavabitch bugbear right in his bloodshot eye and holding the line just long enough to let the wizard unleash a fireball at the guards who are on their way, because they're all that stands between you, the Foozle and Glory." - WizarDru
To everyone who contributed to this project: thank you! I was planning on showing the awesomeness of 4e to a group of gamers, and I was looking for the best way, and this happens to be it! I just need to draw the maps on my own (since color cartridges are pricey), and that's that, everything else is already set up and ready to go
Sorry that it took me so long to get to this, but it has been one crazy week at work. I have added most of the keys to the maps as best I could; they look rather sloppy but they should be playable now. You can download it here (2.9MB .PDF file). The revised pages are #31 thru #34.
It would be awesome if someone with better skills/software could add the locations of all of the monsters, and maybe clean up the fonts, lettering, and symbols I used. The only image editor the campus computers have is MS Paint. :\
Alright, time for "Raiders of Oakhurst: Reloaded" redux. I got another group of gamers together and tried to get this one played out. The group decided to do the whole adventure, not just kobold lair. It surprised me that they actually wanted to roleplay. They did that for a bit, finding out about the town and other various things. One thing I noticed was that I felt the DCs for the information were too high - if I do this playtest again, I'm going to shift them down by 5.
The players chose the cleric, fighter, wizard, and rogue. The player of the cleric also played the ranger. The encounters were the kobolds at the farm, the skeletons in the tomb, and then Crag Keep.
The first "real" encounter was the skeletons (the kobolds at the farm was pretty easy). Before the fight, they found the trap and I let the wizard use mage hand to open the door. I liked the actual fight as well - the fighter and cleric each took one skeletal warrior, while the rogue, wizard, and ranger worked on another. Some bad rolls on the part of the ranger and wizard made them less effective. The rogue and cleric almost dropped, but a healing word by the cleric brought him up a bit, and he cast Turn Undead to great effect. Eventually the group beat them down.
The next encounter was at the Keep Crag. They dispatched the kobolds at the guard tower and tried to ambush the kobolds inside the inner building. The battle with the kobolds was a little rough (the rogue got flanked and jabbed in the back by a skirmisher). After the party killed all but one of the kobolds, the hobgoblins came down, and now the tough fight began. The hobgoblins managed the drop the rogue, knock the cleric prone, and drop the fighter. But Team Evil eventually got beat down.
I really liked how the game has played so far, as did the cleric's/ranger's player. He felt the game was pretty smooth. The wizard's player seemed unsatisfied by his power selection - he felt he was too "same-y." I guess this is similar to what others have said about "limited" choices. With multiple ways to Channel Divinity, the cleric did have more options than the other classes. But I guess it's not such a big deal to me. The rogue's player was *really* annoyed by 1-square diagonal movement. In fact, he kept making diagonal cracks all session long, saying he would never walk north, south, east or west, but would walk north-east, south-east, and so on . He also said he had "power fatigue" by flipping his character sheet over to see what he could do. The fighter's player is a little slow, and he never really used his powers. But he said he had a good time anyways.
We'll complete the adventure next week. I printed out Xorn's Stone Table map on cardstock for the occasion (I've been wanting to pick up Skeleton Key's eVenture Tiles, and this was good practice).
Sounds like you had a good time. That's good feedback on the information DCs. Do you think they are too high in general, or particularly for the playtest PCs, who weren't really built with roleplay challenges in mind.
I intended some of the information to be difficult to gather, but I intended for the basic information about the threat to be fairly straightforward to gather. Perhaps the information gathering could be rebuilt into a "skill challenge" format to make it easier to get to the bottom of some of the other mysteries in town.
__________________ "The Soul of D&D?It's rolling a natural 20 when you're down to 3 hit points and the cleric's on the floor and you're staring that sunnavabitch bugbear right in his bloodshot eye and holding the line just long enough to let the wizard unleash a fireball at the guards who are on their way, because they're all that stands between you, the Foozle and Glory." - WizarDru
LinkBack to this Thread: http://www.enworld.org/forum/4e-fan-creations-house-rules/222233-raiders-oakhurst-reloaded-free-d-d-4th-edition-adventure-ennie-nominated.html
) because either the filesize is enormous (>50MB) or the images are too grainy to read the text.
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