My game "session" notes (Dark Sun, Eberron, Gamma World and PoL)

I figure some of the various shenanigans, monsters and other things I make in my games might be of use to other DMs here. I currently run two games, a Dark Sun game called The Builder's Cry and an Eberron game called Dark Prophecy. For many years now at the end of each session I've usually wrote down things about how the game and general thoughts. Seeing some other campaign description threads around here inspired me to put these up for the general benefit/use of others. Both of these games are maptools/Ventrilo.


Here are my session notes from Saturday's Dark Sun game, The Builder's Cry. For those playing in my game, these are not really spoilers and can be safely read:

The game started pretty well after most of it was taken up with glorious token making, with everyone tied up to a large stone column in the center of the arena with a horrible monster (an id fiend) consuming some unfortunate prisoners on the other side. A group of templars of Kalak overlooking the arena and the ferocious crowd raring for blood (anyone's) set the scene (Noting my game begins shortly before and then during the period that Kalak is killed). The PCs could escape in billions of different ways and this wasn't intended to be a particularly difficult part of the game. Especially as the manacles were designed really for poor, malnourished slaves and have suffered huge damage from various monsters attentions. They all escaped and picked up weapons from other fallen competitors that littered the arena.

I was very curious how the id fiend would go. For one thing, a level 1 solo is a bit of an odd concept to me and not something I would ever actually run normally. For another, it actually felt like quite an appropriate start to have the PCs fighting for their lives against a large hungry lizard like beast. Although a pretty intelligent abomination overall, I felt the "fear effect" they produced in their opponents and intelligence made it quite suitable as an exotic "arena beast". Plus the emotional manipulation the creature performs on the crowd would make it a fan favourite/hated beastie. In any event, Mr. Id (as I called him) ran in to spread terror and eat the PCs!

The party composition is:
Hadithi (Dragonborn Shaman, plus his lightning elemental Miliki)
Othagal (Tiefling Pyromancer)
Eshara (Human Battlemind)
Zephan (Human Thief)
Ka'Cha (Thri-kreen monk).

Othagal was quite obsessed with attacking the templars in the stands. It was probably poorly conveyed, but there were a good chunk (5 templars) up in the stands and numerous general soldiers to Kalak around the arena. Doing so would have provoked quite the flurry of spells and general arrows of doom towards the party - which I suggested to the player. Although I did feel a bit fascist, there is more than enough murdering various Templar in this game to satisfy the player once they escape from the arena when all hell is breaking loose when Kalak bites it (and he will). Once focus was on the immediate threat of the giant angry lizard trying to kill them, combat began.

Initiative started with the id fiend, with its mighty +0 initiative bonus rolling surprisingly well and going second with 17. Only the Ka'Cha was able to go before the beast and moved into an advantageous position, absorbing an OA. This unfortunately produced a brutal critical hit from the id fiend straight up, giving it an overall bonus of +1 attack on its next round due to the crowd getting riled up behind it (yes, even monsters can appreciate a good bloodthirsty crowd). The 11 damage wasn't completely devastating, but enough to drop the monk almost to bloodied immediately. The attack then wafted against the creature, so overall making for a generally poor PC start.

The id fiend then decided he had enough of this, whacked the monk again to bloody him and then moved into the center of the arena (unconcerned with provoking an OA). Here he could plan to use his manifest fear power and catch quite a few PCs later on. I choose to leave the action points for melee attacks, so didn't use the power immediately - might have been interesting to have done so though. The remaining PCs then scrambled to damage the id fiend and stay some distance from it. The battlemind had a particularly poor first round, as the monster was able to use its interrupt to knock her on her rear end. Prevented from getting adjacent to the creature it would have more or less free reign over the battlefield for the time being.

The next turn was somewhat more productive for the PCs. They were able to bloody the id fiend, causing it to attack the PCs with its bloodied " Manifest Fear" reaction. This oddly caused it to fall prone and be immobilized (due to thiefs ambush trick), so Mr Id wasn't going to be chewing on delicious squishy leader/controller adventurers like I planned. To compensate, on the Id Fiends turn I chose to eat Ka'Cha and Eshara instead. After some thought, for dramatic purposes I used the creatures action point to drop Eshara into bloodied territory and knock Ka'Cha unconscious. It then tried to hit the thief with its attack penalty power, as he had been the most reliable attacker in the game thus far but failed. After that turn the PCs hammered their advantage and Hadithi got Ka'Cha back into the fight.

The id fiend had 11 HP remaining with Eshara's and Ka'Cha's turns to go before the id fiend went again. With 1 action point remaining, it looked like the id fiend was going to have someone for lunch 1st session if one of those two didn't kill it on their turn. Eshara took the conservative approach and chose to second wind, hoping the HP and defense bonus would be enough to stop her from being eaten. Ka'Cha was not so enthused with just waiting for that, using both his second wind and the first action point of the campaign to finally strike the id fiend down. The crowd celebrated and the templars frowned in annoyance as the prisoners they really wanted dead banded together under a common cause: Not being horribly eaten.

Overall I was pleased with the id fiend: It was a solid first encounter and the monster is actually pretty well designed. It lasted just around 3 rounds as well, which is long enough for a good fight but not long enough to be a big problem (this is including some terribad accuracy on the PCs part). Curiously, I continue my general trend of rolling absurd amounts of critical hits in heroic tier, I got 3 total in the session. While that was the last encounter of the day as well, just due to time spend making tokens I very much enjoyed the game (I haven't played DnD for around 3 months due to various IRL shenanigans). I was disappointed I didn't get to the next encounter, but I did decide to have some kind souls in the crowd throw the PCs some healing fruits for their performance. This should also allow the monk, who gains a whopping 5 HP per surge to get a bit more efficiency out of his healing.

Generally pleased overall, need to put more emphasis on the amount of templars and general arena guards there are (probably bringing in a named character templar the PCs know is general trouble might reinforce this concept better). Need to tweak some of the later encounters though, but looks like the party composition should work well.


So in the tradition of the Dark Sun game, I had my second weekend game (two games on a weekend seems to be the optimal amount of DnD these days for me actually). Dark Prophecy is set in Eberron and I wanted it to have a different feel and theme to Builder's Cry, which is about non-stop brutality and how the world conspires against the PCs.

One thing I constantly think about in Dungeons and Dragons - probably even more than various tentacled monstrosities - is how to begin a campaign. I've always felt that a good tavern brawl or something that involved combat was a good start: A reason to bind the PCs together under a common cause. This campaign though I wanted to try something inherently different and almost promote a "board game" like start where the PCs didn't have to work together at all. The natural fit was Dungeon Magazine 176, Cross City Race.

Cross city race has a fascinating premise in many ways. For one, it is a really unorthodox way of beginning a campaign because combat is secondary and it is effectively 4 "encounters" of skill challenges. So it takes a good session to get through - especially if you're running it as "every man for himself". I made the prizes as follows:

1st Place: 300 GP, a magical item (uncommon) and a healing potion.
2nd Place: 150 GP and a magical item (common)
3rd Place: 70 GP and a jolly good pat on the head.

So this was purely mercenary, but I figured there would be a secondary goal to the race anyway - with the PCs generally trying to conspire against the 5 NPC runners. After all, they are the *last* people they want to win. But before I describe anything, here is what I think I should have changed/thought about more and in fact what I got right too about this.

Firstly, the adventure is set up with the PCs starting in a neutral area (the city gates) and needing to go through five separate routes with their own hazards and obstacles to get to the end of the race (a large tower). Each region is broken up into 3 different skill challenges and then the final rush up the tower. Unfortunately, there were a few flaws with this set up that I didn't think through enough. The first flaw was while I was pretty lenient on checks in general, I should have reduced some of the DC a bit to compensate characters who had less physical stats that others. You can imagine that acrobatics and athletics are *the* two skills for such a task (I want to emphasize this is no less of an entire adventure than delving into a crypt to murder things). Additionally, if I had thought about it more beforehand I would have changed some areas more to allow for backstreet bribery and more social skill interaction to allow "cheating". This would have balanced out the skills a lot better and evened out the advantage from high acrobatics/athletics characters. While the skill challenge doesn't allow repeated rolling on one stat - a good thing at that - it does limit checks considerably.

Secondly, this adventure type (Skill challenge heavy) on maptools without having a working mic was a poor situation. A mic would have let me react quicker to players questions and ideas very rapidly. An example of this was when Walker (the Warforged Assassin) wanted to use perception to find a more stable route around the crumbling walls of the old city gate. I was unable to describe quickly enough before the player made a harder check - without the considerable bonus to another check (Athletics) I was giving him. I allowed him to switch the check of course, but if I had my microphone working it wouldn't have been such an issue. This also limited me a bit because I couldn't describe things on the fly as quickly and easily - typing often gets lost and isn't responsive. This also slowed the game up a *lot* as players were frequently waiting for me to type responses: In a long skill challenge based adventure as this it can make life much more difficult.

Additionally, there were two important aspects that I believe I firmly failed to properly explain: The first was switching from one route to another. This is actually a pretty strong idea if you're struggling with a particular routes skills and challenges. It can be possible to go to one of the combat maps, risking dogs or a particularly unscrupulous thief in the process for example instead of getting rather stuck elsewhere on a challenge that seems out of reach. The second mechanic was sabotaging. There are two general was of harassing other racers, if they are on the same "track" of the skill challenge (represented by boxes with the successes) you can directly attack them with powers to force them back. If you were ahead of them, you could destroy obstacles or similar to make some checks harder than others for those behind you in the skill challenge. Again, not having a mic really hampers the communication and having to type to respond to questions, tell people what is going on and adjudicate decisions means subtle rules differences can get lost. Also I am pretty certain between turns players in maptools tend to look at other things unless there is something pressing happening to them, so text typing can be missed while voice chat is picked up more consistently.

On the other hand, where I got things right was definitely in the competitive aspect of the race. Effectively the PCs opponents were really one another (most of the other NPCs got eliminated except one). Additionally I identified and solved a problem that can really break this particular race. Some maps are "Combat encounters" and not directly skill challenges. The flaw with these maps is that unlike the normal skill challenge encounters, they don't limit action economy anywhere near as much. For example in a skill challenge you can make a check and sabotage an opponent behind you. You could "attack" someone adjacent with you to try and pull them back. Or you could change route and attempt a check there to get around a more annoying area that isn't suiting your skills. But these maps posed a problem: They are frequently able to be crossed easily by blowing an action point and effectively triple running. With a move of 6 you can get 24 squares in one round. This easily allows you to avoid the creatures in these, who are typically minions (one isn't, but he'll ignore you unless you go out of your way to beat him up).

This naturally put a huge disadvantage on anyone who was trying to do the series of 4 checks (taking 4 rounds) vs. someone who blew through one of those combat encounters. So I had to modify the adventure to limit the actions players could take in the combat maps as well. Effectively, everyone could take 1 move action (Noting that standing up was fine) or make 1 check (Athletics, thievery, bluff, diplomacy) and a move. Or make 1 check and a standard action and similar. Basically, players couldn't use the "normal" action economy to just power move their way through an area trivially. Action points were entirely eliminated as giving an extra action: Instead they gave an immediate +5 bonus to the next check (and had to be used with a degree of pre-planning). Each "segment" of the race counted as an encounter, but I moved the additional action point to right before the tower (the end of the race) for dramatic purposes. Due to the nerfing of an action points effects, there is also no limit to how many the PCs could use in the challenge. So someone who gets to the tower with 2 APs and near to the other players would have a good advantage!

These maps were still good though, because they don't require special movement checks and can be more directly combative: Giving struggling PCs an easier way through. They don't effectively allow a "1 round" jump to avoid other PCs needing almost 4 rounds to advance the same distance. So became quite nicely balanced overall with the other skill challenge based areas. Had I not done this, it would have resulted in PCs "lucking out" and being able to rapidly get further ahead of others without much opposition. The actual session itself went pretty well, despite the fact my lack of voice communication and combined with the five other NPCs in the race. Checks were made and various shenanigans ensued as the players attempted to get across. I ended the game for the day after the turn a player reached the tower (which was Walker in this case, oddly the hobbling Warforged was the first. Ironic!)

The PCs in the race are:

Walker (Warforged Assassin) - Reached the tower just before Ryske did.
Ryske (Drow Rogue) - Is behind Walker.
Marhu (Hobgoblin Paladin) - Is currently going to be beating up a thief: Presumably for his money.
Squinter (Gnome Wizard) - Is getting lost within the massive market crowds and might need to change route (or do something dramatic).
Tybalt (Human Artificer) - Got stuck in a fenced off area with a lot of vicious dogs. Is currently on 2 HP and needing a desperate "Vault over the wall" escape or might be puppy chow. At least 2 of the dogs were distracted with delicious meat.

Highlights included Squinter using his summoning power to first disperse and then distract the crowd of people impeding him at the start (dancing zombies are dancing). This gave him a good start, but the crowds and people started to get a bit much, slowing him down considerably over the bridge and the market has proved a pure killer. The Assassin and Rogue pursuing one another over the halfling quarters dirty chimneys and incredibly narrow side streets. Marhu commandeering a ship after failing several relatively easy DC athletics checks to jump in frustration. Finally, Tybalt managing to get himself in deep dog as fifi, bobo and butch look to turn him into dinner.

The NPCs managed to spectacularly fail in this race, with only one persisting so far and will he make it to the end?

Lynda Lightfoot (Elven Ranger) - Fell afoul of the terrible pigeons who staged a coup on her, eliminating her from the race (just couldn't get past those damn pigeons). She fell and dislocated her arm. Oops.
Two Teef (Half-Orc Barbarian) - Ended up having his money nicked by ally thieves and ran off to retrieve it.
Garth Cooper (Human Fighter) - Member of the watch, he's a bit unscrupulous and has a few tricks up his sleeve.
Gazunda (Gnome Rogue) - Got lost in the crowds of humans and didn't feel like going for a swim anywhere else. So she gave up.
Tom Burgher (Human Rogue) - He almost had a good run and then fell into the river. Originally I described him as "Drowning" but chose to retract this. I didn't want to "grimdark" up something that was not serious (albeit Tybalt being generally mauled by dogs is probably qualifying - but they don't kill intruders, merely disable them for their batshit insane owner to come and deal with). So he got swept to the old wall where he could recover and get out.

Overall it leaves an interesting situation. Can Walker push his advantage to get over the line before the other PCs can catch up? Will Garth ever get to throw out his secret weapon? Will Marhu beat the thief to death presumably to steal his stuff? We shall have to see. While it wasn't quite as well thought out and planned as I would have liked, it's certainly been a unique start to the campaign. It's a bit different and more novel than "You meet in a bar, someone throws a chair and zOMG roll for initiative!". Not that there is anything wrong with that.

So I have had time to ponder my Dark Sun game today after some dinner and couldn't wait any more to start writing it up. The entire arena start has paid dividends quite nicely overall and has set the general tone for the entire campaign as planned.

The PCs resumed where they were last week, with a crowd raring for blood and hostile templars of Kalak overlooking them: including the master of the arena himself Judriath - who has come to oversee the PCs execution personally (as they have committed various degrees of crimes against Tyr and Kalak). With the PCs first victory, he unleashed a strangely dressed champion calling himself "The Great Pung!" into the arena. Pung was a simple elite with a slight catch: He had eight minion "Slaves" who he could raise back from the dead with "Rise Fool!". This was inspired by happening across the guy while reading the monster builder at one point. Using this, he could increase the minions resilience and give them extra rounds to mostly be annoying.

Pung himself could toss PCs to the floor with his spear and then attack them with his daggers. The interesting part of the fight was if the PCs could slay Pung without killing all the slaves. If they did so Pung's slaves would not know what to do and just decide to follow the PC who did so out of a lack of better ideas. The PCs though had other ideas and quickly got on top of most of the minions and then unceremoniously finished off Pung himself. The one minion who was left quickly saw what way the wind was blowing and swore his allegiance to the thief Zephan (who got the killing blow).

The next encounter was as much for the general comedy as anything else. Three silt sharks (Dark Sun Creature Catalog) lowered in level to 3 or so were the order of the day. Relatively straight forward for a EL1 encounter though and while the sharks did good damage, they were dispatched without much issue. Surprisingly the minion slave was able to live through this encounter, but he didn't get to live much longer as the next encounter came swiftly: with Judriath getting increasingly infuriated with the PCs resilience. Overall this encounter and the last one proved non-taxing and straight forward.

The fourth encounter (fifth overall) I had some high hopes for: Two arena beast themed gnolls with powers taken from that part of the DS:CC. Unfortunately, the ranged artillery got too close to the PCs (even if it was to use a very solid encounter power) and got picked off easily. This left the melee one, which was on the other side of the arena isolated and immobilized due to a power - so lost out on using its feature and triggered encounter power. He did manage to get a sweeping blow off, but sadly was on 1 HP and bloodying three PCs was little consolation for dying without having spent his action point that round (a true shame of any monster).

At this point I felt the PCs were going to get through the arena with little actual complications. A bit of a disappointment given the settings reputation for lethality and being a bit more "hardcore" than normal. Then came the Builders and oh boy did they change things.

The first thing about the Builders is they are excellent creations from Rodney Thompson, published a few issues ago in Dungeon Magazine. Their basic feature is that they scatter like bugs from burst and area attacks if an ally within the burst is hit, shifting their speed and making haste out of such effects. As this is an immediate interrupt, they can almost entirely ignore area and close effects in many situations. It also means they are a group of monsters that can safely group up together with little fear of PC controllers or anyone else for that matter. One power I did change was the Cultists "mark" like ability. Basically if he hits you for every other ally of his you target you take damage equal to his attack value. This can be ridiculous when you consider a Wizard hitting 4 of the cultists allies immediately taking 4*attack damage straight away. I hadn't changed the text in game, but I clearly wrote in my notes for the game "Treat this like a mark".

Bear in mind these are level 2 creatures. Their features and general power level is so good actually, that I can easily see these level 2 monsters simply scaling into paragon tier with absolutely no changes except to damage. By RAW, a single cultist can shut down an AoE controller with a single blow, or the AoE controller will risk massive automatic damage for using any area or close attack. Making this work like a mark is far better and more fair: Otherwise it is dreadfully simple for a PC to basically kill themselves. I can see hilarious paragon shenanigans involving dominate though - much like how PCs can use dominate to make monsters provoke a fighters mark.

The encounter was set up with the builders arrayed in a tight formation on one end (bear in mind, they don't care if they are targeted by area attacks due to scatter) with their leader - a defiler called Karras in the middle. The PCs arranged themselves along the middle and opposite side of the arena. The initial monsters were:

2 Builder Cultists
1 Builder Defiler
1 Builder Recruiter

The Thri-Kreen monk got the first turn and hit the recruiter and one of the cultists in the face first up. The builders soon retaliated and managed to take a good chunk out of the monk in return. The recruiter died before he ever got to do very much aside from an initial OA and I was starting to be concerned this would be a breeze (this was soon to be an unfounded worry). The defiler went next and used thunder fist to punch the parties wizard in the face. She then moved to the protection of the other cultist. The parties defender moved up and tried to engage Karras, but found the dessicated old wizard a bit too much to bother with (I indicate monsters that are unique in an encounter with their level as ???? in the summary window in maptools).

Karras then got his first turn, where he made a strange and oddly prophetic threat before disappearing into the sands of the arena (prompting many of the templars guarding the arena to leave, off searching for where the wizard had gone). In his place he left three deadly silt elementals - unfortunately I made a gaff here that would later have hilarious repercussions. Silt Elementals are another of Rodney Thompson's creations and like the builders above, have a few incredibly amusing quirks. The first is they can shift 3 squares as an at-will move action (If you're wondering, scatter is at-will) dealing 5 damage and slowing the target. Additionally they function somewhat like a swarm, in that they take 1/2 damage from ranged/melee attacks, but are vulnerable to force. This made them quite tricky opponents.

Due to the damage they did, 1d4+7 and +2d6 against a slowed target I made two versions. The first was a weaker "Summoned" elemental, that did 1d4+5 damage and 1d6 against slowed targets. Unfortunately, I hadn't accounted for this and accidentally used the full elementals, so they did a bit better than they should have in the encounter. Overall though their worst effect was the silt shift auto-damage and slow, which they used to solid effect to keep up with vulnerable characters and to keep generating extra damage reliably (even if it was somewhat higher).

As the combat continued the damage of the builders and elementals built up considerably: The monk went down and almost died from ongoing damage until he was literally saved at the last second (after failing a death save no less). The silt elementals pursued the wizard and shaman, while the Wizard got locked down into only attacking the stronger defenses cultists after being whacked by one. Eventually at one point both the defender (Eshara, Battlemind) and the healer (Hadithi, Shamam) were in a heap bleeding to death. Appealing to the crowd for some extra assistance, the thief got some of the more rowdy members to throw in a few healing fruits (one landing unfortunately next to the defiler). This got the defender and healer back into the fight, though only temporarily as the defender copped it again from a silt elemental.

Two dramatic moments capped off the encounter nicely, though one was more when I realized I'd used the wrong Silt Elemental. The first was when a Silt Elemental punched the Shaman in the face and got a critical hit, which would have killed him! Only for me to notice the damage was 9+12 - that was a bit high. I had actually not remembered to replace the bonus damage taken from another monster that suited the original "Silt Elemental" with the lower damage of the "Summoned Silt Elemental". The difference in damage was just enough to ensure that the Shaman didn't die once I realized (and corrected) my mistake. This left the party without an active defender (on -2), an active shaman (-9) and the monk was down again as well (-4). All three characters also had a failed death save to their name: So things were getting desperate!

The PCs were able to get some of their comrades back up about round 4 with liberal use of healing fruits and with just about every PC bloodied or badly damaged, Othagal used his daily power (flaming sphere) to cook the defiler. Unfortunately he missed on his main attack, giving the caster another round to potentially deal even more pain to the badly wounded party! But then I reminded him of the defiling rules. Now regardless of what you've read from people that nobody would ever defile, when the crap hits the fan and you either need to go deeper or get out of it: Rerolling a daily power into a hit is invaluable. In this case he made the decision to defile quickly, rolling a much better to hit roll and cooking the defiler firmly into HP territory that the sphere could finish off with automatic damage on her turn (essentially killing her before she could act again, given she had her encounter left - this was a good idea). The flaming sphere then finished the job and also burned one of the remaining elementals down to few HP.

With two elementals left, one spent its second to last turn downing the battlemind again and then the monk for the millionth time on its final turn next round (Magic Missile, which does force damage that silt elementals are vulnerable to has never been so useful, especially when it auto-hits!). The final elemental was destroyed when one of the other PCs got the Monk back to his feet and on his turn, he charged it dealing a critical hit to explode it into a shower of inanimate sand. This ended a pretty exciting an epic combat, having gone through all of the defenders surges, brutally beat most of the other party members to a pulp and nearly everyone bloodied/failed death saves. My only regret was missing the damage of the silt elementals being wrong until the crit (where it became pretty clear something was wrong), but it was a fantastic opening to the campaigns primary antagonists.

The PCs have some calm to look forward to as a reward next session. Some skill challenges, poking around the arena and the major events that are to shake Athas firmly just about to happen (you might be able to guess due to my mentioning of Kalak being alive ).

Next session, delicious rewards for the PCs efforts in the arena as well.

So I had my second session of my Eberron campaign Dark Prophecy and the race ended with a pretty decent contest in the end! The Warforged Assassin (Walker) reached the tower at the end first, followed shortly by the Drow Rogue (Ryske), then the Human Artificer (Tybalt) who was able to avoid being eaten by dogs. The NPC, Garth was fast on their heels with the Hobgoblin Paladin (Marhu) and Gnome Wizard (Squinter) shortly behind. The race up the tower had some failures and tribulations, but ultimately Walkers advantage in getting to the tower first was sufficient to put him over the line! Ryske followed shortly after and Garth ended up falling off the tower for the millionth time. Marhu made a surprising run, scrambling up the tower quickly to pip a wounded Tybalt to the top of the tower. Squinter came in before the NPC Garth, who managed to scramble up once he could take his time.

Final Result:

1st: Walker (Warforged Assassin)
2nd: Ryske (Drow Rogue)
3rd: Marhu (Hobgoblin Paladin)
4th: Tybalt (Human Artificer)
5th: Squinter (Gnome Wizard)
6th: Garth (Human Soldier)

Ultimately good times were had and oddly it almost finished in a "board game" like manner in some ways. Where you introduce a new player to the game (The guy playing Walker is new to the game) and they invariably win.

The party celebrated their victory at not being humiliated by the NPCs in any manner and went to the Warden's daughters wedding, where good food and other things ensured a full extended rest. Tybalt, the artificer got to introduce his players personal nemesis (from his character background) into the story and I got to tie him in with one of the NPCs that the party will be interacting with over the game - Javalanoss (who is loosely inspired by the character of the same name, but has very different goals and motivations - I just liked the name). She'll be more important later, but during the wedding certain "guests" turned up and all havok broke out.

I have had this planned for some time now, but the concept that there was this serene peaceful wedding and suddenly "GIANT SPIDERS" has amused me for months. It's always been the opening of the campaign in some ways and I was very pleased with how it all went. The spiders gave their approach away when one attempted to climb up the tent containing the wedding cake. The tent - not designed to handle a spider the size of a large dog - collapsed and there was cake, spider and limbs everywhere! An unfortunate NPC who went to investigate discovered the spider, which was completely covered in wedding cake and most upset first. After a classic horror movie scream, the other spiders that had crept up to the wedding took the opportunity to launch into a surprise attack!

Three deathjump spiders from the dungeon masters book (stat block is quite nice) and three young phase spiders (shattered springs adventure) either jumped or teleported into the fray. Knocking down numerous NPCs and generally causing considerable panic. Ms. Milton was promptly envenomated by the cake covered deathjump spider and combat began properly! Many of the spiders easily won initiative, deciding to promptly eat more NPCs and took chunks out of the PCs. The Assassin poked one spider and then the Rogue viciously killed a spider straight up with a critical hit, dealing a considerable amount of damage combined with Sneak Attack. Most of the other spiders spent their time bounding around the combat, charging into PCs and generally biting whoever they could.

As the PCs became firmly entrenched and badly wounded fighting the other spiders, a huge white spider called a "White Widow" [inspired by Dark Sun, yes] with an almost crystalline like shape appeared. After stabbing the priest to death violently, the huge spider went ahead with its actual agenda and promptly abducted... the groom! Although of a noble family, he wasn't a particularly significant player and the spiders disinterest in him compared to the extremely valuable bride was unknown. Possibly it just likes eating men? My players are going to have to find that out for themselves. Either way the rapid attack and spinning up of the groom - who was taken alive - was unable to be prevented as the PCs were neck deep in spiders.

Eventually control of the situation was regained and while several players ended up bloodied/injured they ultimately made it out fairly unscathed. Most of the NPCs were fairly mauled and the white widow was more than long gone. The next thing that the PCs then contended with was the children at the wedding, who had been playing in a hedged off grotto when the spiders attacked. One of the other NPCs saw some of the spiders go inside there and feared for their safety. The party marched off to squish more spiders, navigating some web traps and being ambushed from dark corners - but had no real troubles from this encounter. After all their racing, spider squishing and other heroics the party earned themselves level 2!

Then they learned that the town had been invaded by giant insects, spiders and other creepy crawlies. Just what they needed to hear to cap off their evening of giant spider based wedding crashing.

The third session of this game now had the mauled PCs escape from the arena in dramatic style. About to have their loyalty to Kalak tested - with most of the PCs being rather unhappy about any swearing of an allegiance to king Kalak - there was a sudden deafening sound emerging from the Sorcerer Kings tower. This was followed by an even more ominous sound and then gigantic blocks of burning obsidian masonry smashed into the arena, the crowd (pasting numerous individuals) and the sand itself. The complete chaos destroyed the gate to the arena's underground (where the gladiators and monsters are held!), allowing the PCs a convenient escape. Their templar tormentor Judriath fleeing through the stands among the chaos and further burning chunks incoming, they rushed through into the underground.

At this point, I had two goals for the session:

1) The PCs were hammered, the defender had 8 HP and no surges remaining* for example, so fighting was not an option.

2) I wanted a really "slow" session. The purpose here was to give the PCs some time to just get their bearings and otherwise just roleplay. Set some personality and get to know these other weirdos (bear in mind they know the others only incidentally from being executed together).

3) Build tension due directly to a certain monster.

Now, if I have a flaw as a DM it's sometimes I get stuck in a mode where I get very excited about encounters. I love the tactical combat a lot in DnD and I also like to keep my games at a good clip. So there are horrible insects attacking or the tower is falling down around you or whatever else I come up with at the time. The core problem here is that I'm not giving the PCs a breather and so no real time to really just roleplay or do whatever they feel like. Part of this is a holdover of my 3.5 dming, where giving PCs time ensured they came back armed to the teeth with billions of magic items. They probably collapsed the local economy making all of this stuff as well at the same time.

In 4E this really isn't much of a problem, but I still have the DMing style where I dislike having downtime in the game and try to have events cluster together too fast. This stifles roleplaying a lot, because players don't feel they can get time out to just do stuff that isn't hitting things. It also adds a degree of implausibility to my plots, where everything just sort of happens really fast together and it can be really odd. I mean first there is a plague, then an army of gnolls turns up and we're stuck in the shadowfell - oh and there is an army of undead in this keep you're in. That's a rough summary of the heroic tier of Sorrow of Heaven. You can tell the sheer pace of how all this occurs never gives enough time for my players to really relax and just do things.

So conscious of this, I wanted to reduce the "string of tactical combats every session" feeling of my games. So I presented no combat encounters for the whole session, instead a corridor, a new antagonist and a puzzle. The players could take their time here and I was careful to emphasize that, because while some parts of the arena's dungeon had collapsed it was pretty intact. I didn't draw a combat map, but did roughly explain the layout. Sadly not having a mic makes this harder to do than intended (finally fixing this next week).

Ultimately after a discussion, the players discovered one of their first reoccurring antagonists in the game: A battle hardened and wounded tembo called "Three-Fang". Three-Fang will be explained more to them as the PCs explore the arena, but suffice to say he's a bit more powerful than a regular tembo and they are already bad news as it is. For those unfamiliar with Dark Sun, a tembo is basically a monster created during the cleansing wars and is now essentially the Athasian equivalent of the boogeyman. With razor sharp claws and teeth.

With the party absolutely hammered a direct fight was impossible. So they needed to get around it. Thankfully Three-Fang had just busily dismembered every single one of the regular arena guards who watch the various monsters (I didn't add this at the time, but he also dismembered the other monsters too). Distracted with basically mutilating his fallen enemies corpses, the PCs had the option of making a break for the other entrance past the tembo, taking on a suicidal fight (hopefully not though) or sneaking past. They chose to sneak past.

Being careful, moving slowly plus keeping to the overturned cages and tables, they actually pretty easily snuck down towards the passage. Even an inquisitive singular Z'tal couldn't ruin the PCs sneakiness by almost knocking over a pot. Distracting Three-Fang with a ghost sound, they made the remaining distance through the door and into another fairly long corridor. The corridor had an especially weak ceiling and was barred at the other end with a massive stone door. Investigating the door, they noticed that it had a lever next to it. Thinking back, there were two levers in the other room with the tembo.

Part of the arena is to separate monsters from the general population quickly if they somehow escape. The levers controlled a system of counterweights that if pushed/pulled correctly opened this door. Due to the way the mechanism worked it "funnels" monsters into the open arena if they want to escape. Inside the arena due to it's open nature, the fortifications and high walls easily allow reinforcing militia or guards to slaughter the creature safely. Unfortunately for the PCs, it now left them completely stuck with Three-Fang, who had figured out the ghost sound wasn't real.

Inconveniently for them, Three-Fang found them shortly after and the race was on. Thinking quickly, the PCs dropped the ceiling down upon the advancing tembo, only to find it rapidly started digging through the obstruction. With only a large piece of fallen masonry left between them and doom a pushing match was on! The PCs fired whatever ranged weapons they could at the tembo, while others got on the other side of the masonry and tried to keep it from being pushed in. The struggle lasted only three rounds, but ultimately enough bolts and magic missiles to the face makes one consider other options: So three-fang withdrew.

This left them in a precarious position and one I love immensely: Where is the monster? Did it just leave? Is it waiting for us? Having ran Call of Cthulhu games for numerous years, the tension of never knowing where the horrible beastie that could kill you is essential. This is where the very simple puzzle came into play. The knew they couldn't open the stone door without going onto the other side of the fallen ceiling. The other complication they soon learned was that all three levers had to be pulled at the same time: After a round they then "reset" causing the stone door to slam shut (you can guess how this all fits together at this point).

All the while they are debating this, Three-Fang is looking for a way around and digging about. They just don't know where. Eventually they decided to leave the defender (who was most wounded) holding the lever next to the door. The first attempt was met with failure, as they saw the door shut and all the levers clicked back into place. During this, I described noises (some just incidental, a few were actually Three-Fang) and then the increasing dread as they knew something was approaching. Thinking quickly, they jammed the other two levers and then Three-Fang caught up with them. The race was now all, with both the Wizard and Monk getting caught out by the rampaging creature.

Just before crawling through the opening leading to the door both characters suffered a nasty bite - one that won't go away any time soon - but kicked off the creature before escaping. The bite is actually a story aspect, because I want to turn Three-Fang into a reoccurring obstacle/antagonist for the players in the campaign. Three-Fang is infamous for one particular thing: Anyone he has ever bitten the beast has followed to the ends of Athas to murder. A little like a four legged terminator.

Both of the bitten PCs, Othagal the Wizard and Ka'Cha the Thri-Kreen Monk picked up this "legacy" feat.


A legacy feat is free and is always story related. They denote special things that happen, exceptional achievements that the character performed and other aspects. They also reward players who stick with a character over 30 levels. I liken their function to reading through your characters stats or quest journal in a CRPG like Dragon Age: It's a way of recording a characters accomplishments.

Effectively, the overall concept behind this feat is that it lets the characters determine that three-fang might be nearby. The pain of the wound giving them a constant reminder of the creatures continual hunting of them...

The characters narrow escape was where we ended the session, but they will get far more background on Three-Fang as they explore and even though they have now achieved level 2 (such a dramatic escape warrants, nay demands a level). As I have a houserule that a level up counts as an immediate extended rest (without actually taking eight hours), this means I can keep the pace of the adventure up. Even so, I have spread out encounters and given my players plenty more time to establish their characters during the chaos. I'm keen to see how they'll react to a few situations and what they think of the alternative to magic item rewards I've made!

*Sometimes I feel PCs of defenders get dejected when they see their characters hammered mercilessly in hard encounters. But I feel they should always remember that they have the HP and surges to deal with this. A hammered defender in a victorious combat has done an excellent job: Not a poor one. Because they've taken the brunt of the attacks and damage.

Someone asked me about the list of "Restricted" monsters in Dark Prophecy, I felt this was reasonable to post given it doesn't give my PCs any significant ideas as to what might come up (except for what probably won't). Restricted means that I won't use any of these monsters except in exceptional circumstances - when the story absolutely justifies their position in an encounter. Even so, they are only allowed 3/30 encounters total (each "module" I write assumes a maximum of 10 encounters each level) and cannot appear very often. The odd exception is permissible though, but has to be even better justified by the story I've wrote for that module than one used in an encounter. The purpose of this was to force me to think about different monsters and encounter design, instead of relying on familiar tricks and set-ups.

Restricted creatures:
Aberrations (Beholders, Mind Flayers, Aboleths are basically the only things I can say I will never use in the campaign, deliberately)
Constructs (Primarily catches things that are undead or demons, yet lack those keywords).
Demons (All demons are restricted)
Devils (All devils are restricted)
Dragons (This is a special restriction because I am for fluff/flavor reasons relating to Eberron not using Dragons in the heroic tier - but after that????!)
Humanoid Monsters (Most Kobolds, Goblins, Orcs, Hobgoblins and similar humanoid creatures are restricted - Thankfully I decided not to set my campaign near Darguun)
Undead (All undead are restricted, regardless of what they are and can only exist in the context of another monster)

My players will undoubtedly note that Chuuls are still permissible. They will always be.

After sorting out some internet drama, which I was pretty sure was going to cost me the game we got away to the PCs updating their tokens a little bit. I decided it was going to be a nice return to hitting some things this session after last sessions very slow paced horror. The first order of business was dealing with a tiefling Ianto, who had built himself a "fort" out of some of the tables in the room to hold off the escaped beasts. Once it was decided that he wasn't trying to kill them, they discovered he was responsible for the general patching up of arena beasts and gladiators that were wounded in the arena.

Here they learned some important in character details about three-fang and other arena beats he had worked on. In particular, their characters learned that whoever Three-Fang bites tends to die horrifically due to the creature hunting them down. The wound was more than just an injury, whenever it flares up it means the horrific beast is someone nearby. He also mentioned that he could permanently patch up and shore up wounds on a PC with his remaining reagents. This gave the PCs their access to the first "magical" item in the game.

Now I thought about magical items and Dark Sun a lot. For one thing, I've restricted items so much in this PCs cannot even create or easily purchase (though it is possible) basic common items. Given this is an inherent bonuses campaign I don't feel this is too bad. What I wanted to do with the limited items I needed to give out each item was try to make them all really special. Not just throw a +1 something or another at the party, but really make every magical item something unique and exciting if possible. Not everything will be like this for practical reasons, but I wanted to make as many items as possible something truly special. Either in the games narrative or just cool.

Hence this rare item, the Scars of Bloodsand.

Scars of Bloodsand
Deep stitches in the most severe of your injuries, covered up with strange embalming fluid like substances and enchanted tattoos covers your body. Aside from making you tougher both physically and mentally, when bloodied the pain of these old wounds flares causing you to fight even harder.
Level 5 Rare Item
Wondrous Item: Tattoo
Property: You gain a +5 bonus to your HP total
Property: When you are bloodied you gain a +2 bonus to damage rolls.
Daily Power: When you are bloodied you may make an at-will melee attack against an enemy within reach as a free action.

This item can be improved using rituals or just through the storyline to a level 15 and 25 version, each tier adding an additional +5 HP and +2 bonus damage (so +15 HP and +6 damage while bloodied at epic). Balance wise, I wanted to make sure when I gave my players a rare item it felt like big deal and was something they wanted. If they said "Meh, who cares who gets it" then that is by far the worst thing - well unless it is clearly for a specific PC in mind. When I did make this, I did have the Battlemind or Monk, who have been taking a grade A beating in this game in mind. The extra HP were basically to help with survivability - especially early on as many DS monsters are frankly insane for damage (Silt Runners are 4d6+6 at level 1!).

Ultimately Eshara made the sacrifice to have the enchanted stitching, fluids and god knows what else Ianto did to her. Upon the immense pain and suffering ending after 30 minutes of rather cruel work, she was the new recipient of the enchanted tattoo and all the tougher for it. Good for her as well because she was soon going to need it!

At this point, I offered the PCs a fairly clear choice on how to proceed. They could try a rather heroic storming of the front of the arena, beating their way through whatever gladiators, escaped monsters and templars were in the way. Alternatively, with some coercion they learned that Ianto had been helping individuals sneak in and out of the arena. Some of the tiles in an abandoned barracks - now used for caging the odd prison or random animal - were very lose. These led to a network of tunnels further under the arena again and where the PCs could sneak out silently.

Although it seems a very simple choice (either A or B) it actually has a pretty high ramification on the rest of the campaign. Of course we shall see how this pans out with the PCs over the next few sessions! But none the less they took the option to get out silently, avoiding a direct conflict with the templars rallying their defense to the strong archways and stone of the arena. Allowing Ianto to go with them, due to his handy years of stitch-work and ability to prevent even the strongest wound debilitating a warrior (albeit, he is the *worst* for sterility...) the party set off for the barracks.

The first order of business was that someone else had already tried sneaking through the under-tunnels of the arena. Unfortunately they ran into a group of very angry and particularly savage ssurrans and their Jhakar warbeasts. Now once more, the PCs had the option of saving the mysterious elven stranger or perhaps to let the ssurrans have their way, picking off whoever was left. It turns out the PCs decision to engage was suitable, for the elven arcanist Elana lasted barely a round against the ssurran minion hunters - who tore her down easily with their crude picks.

This actually led to a bit of controversy for the session, which I think was mostly my inability to explain these were arena bred and trained monsters. Upon striking the final blow on Elana and dropping her unconscious, the minions used this shifting power to immediately disseminate out: Moving towards the PCs position. This apparently caused some issues as the PCs felt this was very meta. They felt that I had done it to deliberately avoid the wizards area scorching burst, when I actually just wanted to get room away from the NPC (in case they healed her) so they could charge a fresh PC on their next turn. The avoidance of scorching burst had actually been a secondary consideration.

As an aside, such tactical thinking is probably because to make minions effective at epic tier I basically never grouped them up. In fact, I especially like a good controller vs. minion contest. It's one of the most interesting battles that you can set up in 4E, because the minions want to stay apart while still mobbing enemies to deal damage effectively - all the while trying to avoid the controller.

At the time it was mostly just my strategy for getting the minions up into the battle with the PCs faster: Especially as they dropped Elana without her getting a single turn. As well as this, it was just something I felt was logical especially as these are not just random monsters - they are the survivors of many brutal arena battles for the entertainment of the masses. Under the command of the smarter shamans - who are a pretty neat monster that has golden runes literally emblazoned on its scales that give it power - they are hardly stupid combatants. I am consistently reminded that it's important to reinforce these concepts more and really sell them. It probably doesn't help I never felt the need to use the arena monster powers I gave many of the creatures.

Of course the PCs do know that there are delightful salt zombies in the under-tunnels that have infiltrated the place. They can expect some rollicking encounters there and zombies definitely don't have any smarts - so they will get a clear difference between monsters trained for an arena battle specifically and braindead zombies.

Of course Elana decided to ruin all my plans by rolling a natural 20 on her death saving throw and getting back up off the floor. This forced the minions back and bought the PCs an additional round free of their attentions while they sought to finish the job properly. The shaman managed to dominate Ka'Cha, but this was a short lived thing and they mostly focused on dazing PCs to make life awkward. Elana killed a minion that got overly ambitious in trying to move away from her (from prone), but its colleagues got upset and sent her back into lala land. Team monster scored a moral victory by beating up the monk and managing to whack the Battlemind a lot. The hunters harassed the wizard (though one promptly exploded from infernal wrath for the insult) and the others got a couple of strikes into the thief.

It's worth noting that Eshara has picked up toughness, combined with Scars of Bloodsand that's an additional +10 HP. At 2nd level she has 49HP and a surge value of 12HP. That's exceptional for 2nd level. In fact she was never under any major fear of falling all combat: A sign that bodes very well for the whole party. Especially in the deadly under-tunnels to come. Towards the end of the combat the controller got his moment to shine: Othagal caught 4 of the creatures with a burning hands spell (Close blast 5) and then promptly finished off the last wounded ssurran shaman and minion with arc lightning (killing 4 of the last 5 creatures in one round).

One the final creature fell, Ianto saw to the elf almost immediately - establishing that Ianto did have an idea who she was - before seeing to any of the PCs injuries. If you're wondering, Ianto acts a bit like a free "healing surge" extender, because each combat they can effectively get 2 surgeless heals out of him. Well as long as he isn't in a terrible amount of bits anyway - he is after all a sadistic crazy infernal fixer upper and not a warrior. While the PCs spoke to Elana, they learned from Ianto - who btw is terrible at keeping his mouth shut - that she is a member of the veiled alliance. I decided to drop a little hint to the party she might be suspicious of them, despite saving her life when she stared at Othagal quite intently before continuing with showing them into the tunnels.

So now I have Ianto, who is a useful fellow who isn't particularly good under immense stress as he has "trained" some of the beasts. The same beasts that are now quite happily loose in the arena. Given his surgical techniques can border on torture, it is without saying some of the more intelligent arena monsters might have it in for him. Elana is now also with the party and her motivations are not exactly completely known. Should she know of Othagals defiling in the arena... there could be major trouble. Major trouble.

Interesting times are ahead.

So we began with our heroes awaiting their trip into the under arena of Tyr, attempting to escape out through the dangerous tunnels without any issue. Of course this didn't happen that way, as the PCs soon found out that the whole commotion upstairs had rattled up the inhabitants downstairs as well. With an unnatural creature snuffing out their light, plunging them into darkness near a crossroads - incidentally they haven't seen the last of this unknown creature - they lit the place back up to discover zombies.

Now if there is something I like in Dungeons and Dragons now and again, it's a good honest to god encounter with monsters that don't do a lot special. The zombies do grab PCs, but overall they are stupid and they find the nearest character to tear them limb from limb. This I felt was a suitable "contrast" in intelligence to the Ssurrans and other arena monsters the PCs have been facing up to this point. It was also an encounter that the controller Othagal would appreciate: None of the minions (16 in total in fact) had any tricks or similar (neither did the zombies). So bursts and blasts would be perfectly effective.

Of course there were four entrances into the cistern area so the zombies were spread out by that, but they were tightly clustered at the start. The only notable terrain was salty, almost quagmire like water with a deadly fog over it. This is the product of a powerful defiler who slew an unnamed beast down here. His magic poisoned the water and the well had to be cut off from the rest of Tyrs water supply (lest it all become contaminated). This means the water is obscenely dangerous to drink, with anyone who does so losing a healing surge. Worse, the deadly fog that surrounds the water also drains the life of anyone in it - reducing the benefits of a healing surge by half. This is important information to bear in mind, as this effect becomes really significant in a later battle.

One little trick to this encounter and it's something I love to do, is to "hold" monsters back. They are either invisible, they arrive later in the combat or something else. It's not something I do all the time, but it can be a nasty and unexpected surprise for the PCs. In this case, there was some loose masonry and one of the walls hadn't been patched up well. A group of zombies were waiting within the wall ready to pounce!


Conveniently on the first round, the thief just happened to move right next to it on his turn. This was incredibly fortuitous as the zombies wouldn't need to go far for a snack whatsoever.


Zephan is the parties thief and he's the unfortunate fellow right next to the wall with zombies behind it. The players reaction was rather priceless when they burst out. Unfortunately for the zombies, Othagal was well on top of things and very much enjoying himself, blasting all the zombies into pieces. He did however manage to get a nasty bite from one of the salt zombies, contracting salt madness. If you remember about the deadly water you might wonder "Why bother ever drinking it?" Well, this is where this disease that a PC could pick up comes in:

Salt Madness
Dry crystals of salt seem to stick to your skin, draining you of fluids and making you thirst for water - any water - no matter where it is...
Level 1 Disease
Stage 0: The target recovers from the disease.
Stage 1: The target must resist a level + 3 vs. Will attack whenever it starts its turn within 2 squares of a source of water. Should it fail, the target moves towards the water source (if possible) and drinks as much as possible. The target can take no actions except drink until the attack fails.
Stage 2: The target takes a -2 penalty to fortitude.
Stage 3: The target dies and raises as a salt zombie within 24 hours.
Endurance DC 7 or less = The stage of the disease advances by 1
Endurance DC 8-11 = No change
Endurance DC 12+ = The stage of the disease decreases by 1.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on if you are Othagal) the disease did not take hold and the PCs handled the encounter fairly easily. Albeit thoughts soon turned to the rampant silk wyrm they heard had escaped into the tunnels. Perhaps it could be hiding somewhere in the tunnels too? Surely not... Surely not...

The second encounter was also a considerable contrast to the first. Once again, there were more zombies in the underground near a fetid lake of poisonous defiled water. This time hidden deep within the fog was a nasty surprise: Two cistern wraiths! Now in this encounter I wanted to have a different kind of set up, with monsters of very different 'intelligence' for the PCs to fight. The zombies were as stupid as ever, clustering up and attacking whoever managed to get close enough to them. The wraiths however had a full "awareness" of their surroundings. Unlike the zombies they would attack vulnerable characters, set ambushes and use their insubstantial quality plus ability to hide to their advantage.

Like the first encounter, I also made the decision to hold the wraiths back a turn and let the PCs get 'bogged down' in the zombies before bringing in the wraiths straight into the vulnerable backline. The wraiths were also a test of the monster vault, because I was curious how they would go. It's worth noting I had deleveled the wraiths to 3 and adjusted their invisibility bonus damage down. This was because 4d6+14 felt a bit much for a level 2 party. Albeit the wraiths could still do a not insubstantial 27 points of damage with this attack if they crit with the damage I did give them - 2d8+9.

The zombies were dispatched pretty easily but the wraiths were soon causing trouble, teleporting around and generally being a pain. To further infuriate the PCs, the Wraiths were canny enough to ready attacks; waiting until a PC that was adjacent to them moved to make an attack. This meant that even if the PC they wanted to hurt wasn't around, they could use their attack on another character rather than potentially waste their readied action. This was because when a wraith turns invisible they are unable to attack until the end of their next turn. So readying an action was a viable way of getting their attack in before their next round. Again, this showed a clear difference in intelligence and tactics between the mindless zombies and the spiteful but cunning wraiths.

One such effect of this was one of the wraiths critically hitting and pummeling the shaman down right into negative HPs in a single mighty blow


That was a cold dead grip right to the heart! Fortunately it is worth noting that the MV wraiths are brilliant for numerous reasons. For one, most of the party and their NPC ally Elana had force damage. This meant they could get through the insubstantial and inflict some damage on the wraiths on a reliable basis. Secondly, wraiths no longer weaken on an attack - honestly combining weakening with insubstantial was just mean spirited. Lastly, the wraiths needed time to set up their attacks, either with readied actions or needing to become invisible - so the PCs had time to react to their high damage. Overall the wraiths were finished off and the PCs victorious, if badly injured.

This left onto the last run out past the former glorious Pillared Hall of Kalak in the under-arena and then freedom at last! Unfortunately for the PCs, there was one last obstacle in their way: The dreaded silk wyrm. Gorged on easy prey and safe from the zombies where it could hide in the ceilings numerous cracks and crevices, the silk wyrm had expanded in size quite considerably. But like most of these encounters, he hid back in the ceiling waiting until the PCs got drawn out of position a bit by three final salt zombies (who were in fact recent victims of the Wyrm). This was again a general theme for the session - holding back elements of the encounter in one way or another.

Either way, the Silk Wyrm was back into action and greedily moved to assault the PCs. The thief moved out of the way and maneuvered behind a pillar - while the remaining PCs attacked it. Here came the event that shook the entire combat: Othagal stepped into the water and used burning hands, failing to account for the single square of movement the Wyrm gets on its reaction silk strands attack. This meant he got restrained within the life draining fog and then failed his saving throw against it. I was commanding the parties Shaman, who hadn't been able to come that session and then decided to throw him a healing spirit. After some debate, Othagal refused this healing due to the fogs effect and I gave it to the Battlemind instead.

The Wyrm them got his next turn and it proved to be a doozy. He shifted into the water using his movement power and then used his minor action burst. This power overachieved like crazy, hitting nearly all the party except for the Thief. He punted the battlemind away and downed Othagal with this attack, while heavily damaging the remaining characters. This chaos proved to be quite a game changer as now the Silk Wyrm had 3 PCs (all slowed, with -2 penalty to all defenses), the NPC and himself in the middle of the difficult terrain water with the healing surge penalty effect.

The next turn saw the Battlemind come back into the battle in the deadly fog. Remember, it penalizes healing surges by 1/2, so it's not an idea place to fight and the water is difficult terrain so squishy characters couldn't exit without drawing an OA. Before continuing this is where terrain is so important to a solo: Here the solo could dictate terms to the party and was able to swing the combat into an exciting tactical fight, instead of a static beatdown or "grind".

I must concede that here I hold some responsibility for what was to happen next, because I made a tactical mistake on the Shaman's turn. I started the turn by foolishly moving the spirit adjacent to the silk wyrm and then flailing at it with an AP to use twin panthers (unsuccessfully I might add, reflex attacks were cursed for the entire session). Taking the offensive option, I used the minor action to dragonbreath the silk wyrm to try to inflict some extra damage (this was a terrible idea). I then used the Shaman's daily, Spirit of the Healing Flood to try to give some healing. Unfortunately it's more a single target damage attack with a neat regen effect, but regeneration doesn't work on downed characters. I was going to use healing spirit, but ironically the player of the wizard Othagal corrected me - I had indeed used all my actions (moving the spirit).

The next wyrm turn was exceptionally dramatic. He started off recharging his burst power and I immediately used it. This hit nearly all of the party this time, although the thief was missed by a narrow margin so avoided getting pulled towards the beast. On counting the hits I noticed something immediately: The wyrm critically hit the downed wizard. This inflicted enough damage to drop him to negative bloodied! I had just killed my first PC in this campaign. In addition to this, Hadithi ended up in the drink as well and so the shaman was down, the Thri-Kreen monk Ka'Cha was mauled and the wizard Othagal was now dead. I actually don't think it totally registered to him that he was dead for a short while either.

On the final turn of the combat the encounter looked a little like this and was precariously balanced:


Zephan is in the corner there (away from everything), Eshara is near the top right of the wyrm and Ka'Cha is right next to her (just look for the Thri-Kreen ). The silk wyrm was in the middle of the deadly pool of water and liking his chances for 6 new meals :O. Elana is the NPC with the party they met in the previous session, who is just below the wyrm and *almost dead*. Hadithi is unconscious and nearly dead just next to her and Othagal was adjacent to Hadithi (that's where he bit it). The power of a burst five power!

The best move before this turn was the battlemind, who made a brilliant decision in giving the entire party 14 temp HP using one of his powers (forget what it is called). Although temp HP does not get characters back up from dead, it is still a buffer to your HP even on negative hit points - making it considerably more difficult to kill you. It's worth noting this act saved the shaman's life, because he would have also died if it wasn't for this decision. Additionally the Battlemind also struck the wyrm with a power that meant it would do 4 damage to itself each time it hit one of his allies.

Predictably on the next turn, the wyrm again recharged his burst and went for it: Unfortunately this time the temp HP absorbed all the damage, plus the conductive defenses 4 damage slew the wyrm outright! The party earned their third magical item - a suit of scorpion scale armor, which prevents a creature with tremorsense from seeing you unless it has line of sight - quite useful for things coming up :O. At this point of course there was a debate on what to do with Othagal. The player didn't want to die and had invested a lot into his background, plus at this point with their escape the games "prologue" was now over.

I decided that allies of Othagal - who I was going to have meet them outside the arena anyway - took him away and managed to find a way of bringing him back from the dead. This would explain a change in certain aspects of the character - including theme to elemental priest. At this point as well I have given the PCs an entire year to wander around before the resumption of the campaign. This helps to explain changes in character, themes, abilities and whatever else they may want before the first real module of the campaign. A few of the players are taking the opportunity to change some things around and the thief might even be an executioner by the time I write my next report! It was quite handy to have the death when it occurred, because there is ample time to logically write in new characters, changes or even how someone might come back from the dead.

Before finishing it's worth discussing something that I think changed that combats dynamic quite a lot. It seemed like a relatively innocuous change at the time, but altering the silk wyrm from medium to large size had a big impact on the battle. For one thing, the wyrm was able to get a much bigger coverage of its recharge power and hold all the PCs adjacent to it once it succeeded much more easily.


You can see here that the large size makes a small - but significant impact on the number of overall squares the creature effects. This makes it harder to stay out of the burst in the tight tunnel environment. Albeit while most of the characters would have been in range either way, it does make for a somewhat interesting difference on the overall way the combat played out.

Either way I am very much looking forward to the next module and where the story really will start to pick up. A classic caravan guard duty that goes wrong - it may be an old classic Dark Sun chestnut, but it's one certainly worth exploring.

Today's session was filled with farm related shenanigans, with the PCs being rather ambivalent overall about investigating the farm or going directly to Woodheart. This is mostly because the actual characters have no particular investment right now, except for the towns sheriff Tybalt. Content to follow his lead, they headed off to the Reginald's farm to investigate this "eight legged cow" business. Before leaving though, I handed out another rare item in my two games to Tybalt - an enchanted augment for his unique rifle like weapon.

The Chaos Engine
This device seems to have unusual warding and binding, almost seeming to jump out of your hand at a moments notice. Whatever is bound in there, it is of considerable power and unique manufacturing. It can be placed within a weapon capable of using it as a firing mechanism, to devastating effect when used on any elemental magic.
Weapon Augment; Rare Item; Level 9
Special: Can only be used on Tybalts weapon
Enhancement: +2 attack and damage rolls
Critical: 2d10 damage of the same type it reduces the resistance of.
Property: Choose a damage type from acid, cold, fire, lightning, or thunder. When you hit and damage an enemy with any power you reduce that enemies resistance to that damage type by 5 until the end of your next turn. You may change the damage type affected once per short rest.
Power (Encounter): Free Action: Choose a single power, that power gains one of the acid, cold, fire, lightning, or thunder damage keywords and all damage dealt is of that elemental type until the end of your next turn.
Power (Daily): When you hit or miss with an at-will or encounter power with the acid, cold, fire, lightning, or thunder keyword you can repeat the attack against another target within range as a free action.

Effectively this is actually a piece of an ancient looking eldritch machine, which will become more important as the games plot continues. It's reaction with elemental magic is especially powerful and how Javalanoss - the NPC who gave this to Tybalt - acquired it will be an interesting question to resolve when the time comes. Unfortunately due to time and that it was given to him technically at the end of the last session, meant that I didn't have the opportunity to fully roleplay this out at the time. I will make sure to return to it at a later point though.

In any event, the PCs arrived at the Reginalds farm to find it overrun by gigantic hungry ants. Aside from butchering the livestock, the ants had also dug holes everywhere and were currently busy digging up the cabbage patch. A most grievous sin! The creatures were soon upon the PCs and the battle for the farm began! Ants charged into combat and using their free action shifts, quickly got into melee combat with the PCs. The minions were split by the gnome wizard squinter, generally ensuring they didn't explode on PCs. Eventually though one of the workers exploded on the rogue Ryske, dosing her in acid and then a warrior pounded her with its bite. As she had ongoing acid damage, she took a further 1d10. Curiously, the ant got very lucky and rolled max damage on both the bite and the bonus acid, dealing 22 points of damage, dropping her! This left the following precarious scenario:


Being surrounded by hungry ants is not a good situation to be in! The gnome wizard soon came to the rescue and was able to blow many of the ants to pieces in any event. Although bruised, the rogue got back up and the ants were finally defeated. At somewhat of a brutal cost though as the beasts had taken a solid chunk out of the party.

At this point the characters investigated the farmhouse, to find the occupant accusing them of being sentient speaking spiders trying to trick their way in. After convincing him they weren't actually sentient spiders trying to trick him, the man opened the door and peered out. What greeted them was Jeb Reginald, naked except for his underwear and his "goat" that he had been hiding in the house with him. Firmly disturbed, the PCs queried him on what he had seen. Jeb told them that he had seen a woman matching Arianne's description "talking" with various large giant spiders and other insects.

The important information here that the PCs got was she appeared to have some kind of glowing "tattoo" on her shoulder. She also was most closely associated with giant spiders, although Jeb did confirm she commanded more than just spiders in her army as well. Although somewhat clearly disturbed, Jeb did reward the PCs for clearing his farm of the ants and informed him that a giant spider "stole" his brother. If they could get him back Jeb would see to giving them another "thing" if they did him this good service. He missed his brother quite a lot you see.

Of course, as the PCs turned to leave I had an additional surprise for them: A pair of deadly ankhegs had burrowed their way towards the farm with some reinforcements! Digging massive holes into the earth, the ankhegs erupted up into farm and following them several more giant insects! The PCs would need to defend the farm again!

Once again, like the encounters from my previous Dark Sun game I again staggered out the monsters. Although the initial insect reinforcements consisting of a few more ants and some centipedes came up immediately, I held both of the ankhegs back for the first round of combat. On the second round of combat, one ankheg came up from the ground: Popping up in an inconvenient spot. On the third round of combat the other ankheg popped up. Unbelievably, both rolled ridiculously high on initiative and ended up going first before the PCs. This meant they got the most out of their ambushing positions.

This strategy resulted in one ankheg getting a particularly good spray over several PCs and one of the ants. Unfortunately, he rolled miserably and only hit his ally! OUCH! Realizing this was a pretty mean encounter, the wizard summoned his zombie into battle and whacked one of the ankhegs around the face a bit. Tybalt stayed well away, backing himself to the door of Jeb's house to get some room. Once again, the rogue, paladin and assassin took the brunt of the ankhegs assaults, while the wizard was endlessly harassed by a hungry centipede.

The battle took a turn for the dramatic when one of the ankhegs sprayed on his allied ant but didn't kill him. This turned out to be important when the paladin was dropped by a brutal hit from the other ankhegs mandibles! With the combat advantage giving him that little extra to hit the paladins 21 AC, the bonus damage from the acid made all the difference.


Walker successfully finished off the other ankheg though before he could get up to any particular shenanigans. The remaining ankheg though had murder on his mind and used his acid spray to disintegrate squinters zombie once and for all, while also dropping ryske with a deadly acid bath.


Sadly, he did not get another chance to cause havok as concentrated fire from the three remaining PCs ensured the vile creature couldn't act again. Pretty hammered as they were, the PCs picked themselves up and continued to Woodheart, to put an end to this once and for all. Unfortunately, when they arrived they found Woodheart was covered from top to bottom in webs - with hundreds of giant spiders seemingly having made this obscene nest. All the PCs could hear when they tried to listen inside for remaining survivors was a voice crying out:

"ARANEAE ASSAULTUS STOPPUS!!!"

Among other similarly odd sounding chants. This did not stop squinter from gleefully suggesting to burn down the entire web - with the town at the same time of course. The session ended there for the holidays, but when we resume I will be most interested in the PCs approach to the giant spider web...

Edit: Ankhegs are level 3 elites.