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General RPG DiscussionDiscussion of all RPGs and non-system-specific topics. DM/GM/player issues, settings, etc. Rules discussion belongs in one the forums below.
King of the Trollhaunt Warrens is a D&D adventure for levels 11-13. It takes place in Moonstair, a border town with a semi-active portal to the feywild. Moonstair borders the Trollhaunt, a vast wilderness of marsh, moor, thicket and hill inhabited by many a dangerous monster, and the remnants of a troll kingdom.
Quoting the back of the adventure, "Armed with ancient Formorian magic, the troll-chief Skalmad has sworn to destroy the small border town of Moonstair."
The adventure deals with a troll warlord trying to bring his regenerating army to bare against Moonstair and the surrounding areas. It involves directly protecting the town! And delving into the Feywild, into Formorian country!
It does seem fairly dungeoncrawly, yes.
The single fold-out map is pretty. One side is what looks like Moonstair - a typical cobblestone town, with buildings and stuff. The other side is a cavern Complex/Throne Room of the Great Warren.
__________________ Seeking players in Chattanooga, TN 4e game.
Last edited by Rechan; 15th October 2008 at 11:48 PM..
Blightborn are fey that are "twisted by the darkest aspects of nature, which subtly or dramatically changes them into something evil and unnatural." I dislike "Unnatural" and "Fey" being together, but all right. I do like the Demonthorn creature, although I see an error in its statblock (it's called a mandrake).
The Fomorian solo controllers are dark fey magic users. The masters often create the Displacer Beast Nightmare (a two headed displacer beast) to aid them. These are how controllers should be; two immediate reaction powers (one at will, one encounter), and several options.
Spoiler:
Ghost trolls are very cool. They are created by rituals, and while insubstantial, they lose their insubstantial status if they take acid, fire or radiant damage. I like the Devourer - it basically bites someone and holds them in its teeth/stomach, restraining them until they save.
New hag, yay!
New Magical Items:
Eladrin Ring of Passage Lvl 14 (coulda sworn I've seen this somewhere)
Life Force Amulet - Lvl 17+ - Nice.
Mordant Weapon - Lvl 8+ - Does poison/acid damage. The daily is a close blast 3, however. Nice.
Torc of Fortune - Lvl 14+ - The daily power isn't worth writing home about, but the Property! Shift 2 when you make a saving throw on your turn.
Sunwrath - Lvl 12 - +3 Longsword, gives a minor encounter power that lets you do fire and radiant damage until the end of your current turn.
Spoiler:
There's also a nice Eye, can be used as an orb impliment, but is meant for a large spellcaster to put in their eye socket. There's a ritual that you can use with it, that teleports your body to a specified site when you die.
Then there's the Stone Cauldron - a site which acts as a trap until you overcome it, and can use it to return someone as a ghost with the troll's 'you're insubstantial until you take acid/fire/radiant'. The book spells out 'we assume your players won't do this. If they do, institute your own penalties.'
__________________ Seeking players in Chattanooga, TN 4e game.
Last edited by Rechan; 16th October 2008 at 01:47 AM..
Shopping lists for the minis a DM will need is always appreciated!
All right. I tried to combine as many as I could (you can substitute a troll for a troll shaman, etc), but there are quite a few unique ones. I only differentiated when there were minions involved, in case you wanted a different look.
While I was skimming it to get the monster mini count, I noticed several things.
1) A few skill challenges. (Locating the Great Warren, activating two portals, one of which is to the Feywild, etc).
2) There are a lot of encounters here. There are a few I'd personally swap out for others.
3)
Spoiler:
Skalmad, the big bad troll, is fought three times. He has a special magical item in his eye; when he dies, it returns his body to a specific site, and he gets brought back from the dead, bigger and badder. The PCs are expected to kill him, run back to Moonstair, fight (and possibly kill him), then go into the feywild and fight him at the end a third time when he is reincarnated as the King of All Trolls.
4) Barely any traps. Although one of the additional encounters that's in the DM booklet has a cool reflavoring:
Spoiler:
Some shambling mounds and stormrage shambling mounds are hunkered beneath some lightning-enhanced trees. The trees are laced with veins of mythical metal, and are treated as a Fire Jet trap that does lightning damage. Also the trees are mildly magnetic, treated as daggerthorn briar (DMG 89, 300xp) that only effect heavy-armor wearing characters.
I would like to see more of this reskinning to give a fantastic appearance more often.
__________________ Seeking players in Chattanooga, TN 4e game.
Last edited by Rechan; 16th October 2008 at 01:44 AM..
Are there really Formians (ant-like outsiders) or did you just misspell Formorian?
__________________ Formerly known as Mourn...
Spoiler:
This sounds like a Fantasy Heartbreaker, slouching towards Bethlehem, waiting to be still-born. - Particle Man
Spoiler:
Every edition moves us closer to a better game, in my view. And guess what, 4E will screw some stuff up, just like 3E made monster design a horrific, creativity squashing nightmare (ok, I'm overstating it, yes, you could still make real cool monsters, but it became more of a rules lawyer-y cookie cutter solution which I don't favor). 4E will do things wrong. Maybe it will be that 1st level characters will be too powerful. I don't know. But experimenting is the way to do it--and, as it so happens, it is the TRADITION of D&D. Gary, god rest his soul, didn't stop with the white box. He did Greyhawk. Blackmoor. He added new classes. Psionics. New monsters. Eldritch Wizardry. Then he tried to unify it all with AD&D. If D&D has a tradition, its change, growth and expansion. If it didn't, we'd all just have STR INT and WIS. - Orcus
The way they're spelled in here, it looks like 'Fomorian'.
Fomorian is correct. The term is from Irish mythology - one of their most famous members was Balor of the Evil Eye.
Michael Moorcock uses "Fhoi Myore" in the second chronicles of Corum.
Cheers!
__________________ Merric Blackman
Hmm... Murdered by pirates, heart ripped out and eaten, or meet Victoria... Don't know which sounds more fun... - Yvaine, Stardust Merric's Livejournal - a blog about gaming
Eh. The only campaign I'm in that isn't home-brewing is 1/4 of the way through H2, and the other one I'm dm-ing is at level 5 right now. I'll be curious about P1 in a couple months, but not yet.
__________________ Rick Reroll -- Deadly Rickster Utility 26 Daily
Choose one: you reroll one die roll you just made and keep the higher result; or the DM rerolls one die roll he just made and keeps the lower result.
Are there any opportunities for role-playing encounters? One of the best parts about H3 was the sections devoted to roleplaying with the various factions.
__________________ Veronica: Where's your brother?
Dick: I think he took Ghost World up to his room. They're probably up there making love. Or playing Dungeons and Dragons. Or both, at the same time. They're both, like, 12th-level dorks. I'm just sayin'
Are there any opportunities for role-playing encounters? One of the best parts about H3 was the sections devoted to roleplaying with the various factions.
There is the town, and there are some captives in one of the monster's lairs. There's some to talk about though, so click on the spoiler block.
At the top of the second page is "Roleplaying the Oni Mage". One of the options is the Oni disguising himself as the dead courier and, if he fools the PCs, lead them into a dangerous situation and escape.
That is the RP encounters; monsters that pretend to be people and sucker-punch the party. With ONE exception (see below).
In the Warren (the big first area), there's a scene with two briar hags, and hanging from cages in the ceiling are giant boneshard skeletons. The hag in the room poses as a crone mending mushrooms, and waits for the PCs to get close, before dropping the whammy. (There's a sidenote that if the PCs fall at any time in the Warren, they end up in the cages).
In one of the Additional encounters in the DM booklet, in the Feywild, it has one with a Lamia posing as an eladrin scholar who offers up a treasure map. The treasure map is warded to blind whoever looks at it for a round, while she and her hook horror allies pounce on the party.
THE EXCEPTION:
In the warren is an adult black dragon. There is actually a skill challenge allowing the PCs to negotiate with the dragon for safe passage. If the PCs succeed with no failures, the dragon even gives a +3 Mordant longsword to fight the trolls.
__________________ Seeking players in Chattanooga, TN 4e game.
Last edited by Rechan; 16th October 2008 at 08:10 AM..
Here's a question - the previews point out that Moonstair is 'south of the Nentir Vale'... are there new regional maps expanding the POL setting or building on the Nentir Vale map? Just curious if more of the POL setting is starting to take shape.
The other thing - how about hooks to P2? What do we know about the upcoming Drow adventure?
are there new regional maps expanding the POL setting
Not a damn one.
Quote:
The other thing - how about hooks to P2? What do we know about the upcoming Drow adventure?
A sidebar mentions "The next adventure", offering suggestions for what to do after P1. Two has some hints.
Spoiler:
1) The backstory of the adventure involves a hero named Etheran of Therund who wielded Sunwrath. He was fighting a dark cult in a far off land, and on the way back, paused in Moonstair to battle Skalmad. Skalmad pwned him.
The sword has to be returned to the Baron of Therund, Etheran's father. If the Pcs return the sword, they find out that the death cult has keyed up their operations with news of Etheran's death. He asks the PCs to fight the cult.
Quoting the book, "If the cult worships Orcus, this side adventure provides a possible connection to P2.")
2) There are two drow in negotiations with Skalmad the second time the Pcs bust in to fight him. If Skalmad escapes or dies, the drow flee.
Quoting the book, "The drow who were negotiating with Skalmad show up again in P2. This adventure throws the PCs into the middle of a power struggle between drow loyal to Lolth and those who serve Orcus."
__________________ Seeking players in Chattanooga, TN 4e game.
Last edited by Rechan; 16th October 2008 at 07:39 AM..
How much of the adventurer takes place in the Feywild? Just the final combat?
Spoiler:
There are three real adventure areas.
The Great Warren (13 Encounters)
Raid on Moonstair (5 Encounters)
Feywild/Fortress of Mross Kagg (6 Encounters).
Skalmad's throne is both in the Material and Feywild; in the Feywild it's in an area secluded by steep cliffs, blocked off by a magic portal (skill challenge). There's then a pass through the outcropping and into some vegetation, an outpost, a waterfall flooded road, and then the guardhouse to Mross Kagg, the Fomorian fortress.
__________________ Seeking players in Chattanooga, TN 4e game.
Last edited by Rechan; 16th October 2008 at 07:38 AM..
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