Questions about Mad King's Banquet

MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD, of course.

My Friday night game is nearing the end of the Mad King's Banquet (the Battle of Otharil Vale will be next session), and I had some questions for anyone who has run or played in this adventure. Opinions are welcome!

1. The Battle of Otharil Vale. It's written in the adventure as a pair of skill challenges, with the option to have some combat encounters instead. How have others run this? Any suggestions on how to make it exciting? I think my party would probably prefer the combat encounter version, but I want to spice things up. They're a little tired of fighting soldier after soldier. The Sphinxes are somewhat interesting (the battle with Nashara and Kelkin was pretty good, though I completely revamped Kelkin and upped Nashara's damage), but Brakken the Blitzer doesn't do anything for me. Even the trolls seem a little dull.

2. The Joust. It's a very minor question, but what's the prize for winning the main joust? A bunch of money? I'm guessing it's something cooler than that.

3. Trilliths. This one isn't specific to Mad King's Banquet, but when did your party first hear the word "trillith"? I haven't read ahead yet so I don't know exactly what the future interactions with trilliths will be like, but through four adventures the party has encountered three trilliths (Indomitability and Deception in adventure two and Madness in adventure four). However, they don't understand what any of them are, nor that they're connected. It sounds like the "Get Malkan!" encounter would give a lot more information about Madness's nature if the PCs run it... but my PCs have done a good job with the lead-up to the battle, so they won't be running that encounter. They'll see Madness's true form in "The King's Madness" encounter, but they still won't know what the heck she is. I have no idea how the PCs would be expected to think of the Song of Forms here. Any insight?

3: I'm playing the 3.5 version, but I remember the seela knowing that Indomitability was called a trillith. Or maybe Indomitability told the party he was a trillith? Either way the PCs learned a little about Indomitability as a creature in that mod, so I think the players have a vague idea of what a trillith is by the time it's over.

OnlineDM said:

2. The Joust. It's a very minor question, but what's the prize for winning the main joust? A bunch of money? I'm guessing it's something cooler than that.

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I gave them a Dasseni Warhorse (it's detailed in the free supplement Paragons of the Burning Sky).

Just a bump on this thread to see if anyone has input for question #1 - how to make the Battle of Otharil Vale fun and exciting. I'm running it Friday night and thinking about it now.

One last plea: Has anyone out there run the Battle of Otharil Vale? Can you offer me any tips to help make it awesome?

I haven't used the 4e version. In 3e is was a slog, and while that was the point I don't think it's an ideal way to handle the scene.

It's a bit last minute, but here, maybe this could provide some ideas. Abstract the main bulk of fighting, and then come up with one fight you think is particularly interesting to work as a capstone. I don't have a clear sense of what 4e PCs will have fought by then, so I don't know what would be novel.

Maybe, I dunno, have a military unit come charging in, and the PCs recognize that the banner is of a unit/family that owes allegiance to Duke Gallo, but they're fighting on behalf of the king in fear of appearing as traitors. There's some royal liaison in the fight whom the PCs would need to take on -- some sort of dwarf invoker maybe, or earth mage with loyal earth elementals made from the soil of this unit's homeland.

The party would have a really hard time fighting him face-to-face, but they might be able to persuade the unit to obey their oath to Gallo. And likewise magic-users could try to gain control of the 'homeland'-based magic giving the dwarf control of the elementals.

This is way too late to help you but...

OnlineDM said:

1. The Battle of Otharil Vale.

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My group isn't that fond of skill challenges (it's more an old school 70's style kick-the-door-down-kill-everything kind of group), so I ran it as combats. I set it up as them being part of the army assigned to protect against flanking maneuvers, and they had been given basically the same response as entire units, i.e draw a line in the snow on the piece of terrain they were tasked to guard and not let anyone past.

This helped them feel a bit special (as paragon characters should be amongst the army rank & file). When I ran the combats I ran them as the monsters trying to break through the party rather than actually engage them, and it worked fairly well for my group.

OnlineDM said:

2. The Joust. It's a very minor question, but what's the prize for winning the main joust? A bunch of money? I'm guessing it's something cooler than that.

Click to expand...

I used Morrus' alternate joust rules which were posted in a thread in this forum. In those the prize is specified as an L10 Elite warhorse. I also ran archery and spellduel tournies. Amazingly PC's won all 3 of them. The joust is very hard to win; my group has house rules where you can spend an action point to take 10 or reroll a d20, a couple of AP is what gave the PC the joust win, but w/o that beating the NPC is largely luck.

In the archery competition that I ran I rolled poorly for the final NPC. (I used variable AC's for the rings of the target what AC you hit dictated what part of the target you hit, and allowed called shots to split arrows which was worth extra points but was very hard to hit.) I gave the player the effects of crossbow expertise (ignore cover/concealment) as a wondrous magic item.

The spellduel was very, very close. PC was L13 sorcerer going against a L14 Elite wizard at the end. Sorcerers do way more damage, but wizard had 3x the HP and range. Sorc made good use of slow, slide, and teleport (taking the damage) effects to keep the wizard adjacent which kept the wizard worried about OA's (sorc do get a basic attack and that would be a lot damage if the PC had it). Came down to die rolls right at the end, sorcerer won with 6 HP left and an ongoing 5 damage effect on him. Gave him familiar as a bonus feat (tied to a magic item) with a familiar that had a few extra abilities (basically 1.75 familiars rolled up into 1).

Everyone had fun with the tourneys and it ate up a fair amount of action points, consumables, and dailies; which the party was then without for the final fights.

OnlineDM said:

3. Trilliths. This one isn't specific to Mad King's Banquet, but when did your party first hear the word "trillith"?

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This has been one of my peeve's of the series; the series reads as if the party knows far more about trillith's than they actually do. My party after finishing the first 5 modules has yet to hear the word. I've dropped a few hints but the whole thing is very subtle, w/o getting it more in front of their faces I don't think they will figure out what is going on.


Unrelated to these questions, this module has two fights that are far too dangerous IMO. The harpies at the cliff and the tragedy monsters in the frozen zombie pit. The harpies get a green pull power which turns the entire encounter into "make multiple saves or die" as they try to pull the PC's off the cliff. I had to basically have them not use that ability/fudge some dice to avoid a TPK yet every player knew the harpies could do this as a green. The tragedies are were even worse with a recharging area unconscious power. I didn't catch this until I ran the encounter, and w/o me removing the recharge I don't see how it couldn't be a TPK. As it was every player was unconcious for the first 2 rounds, and 3 players were unconcious for 3, and that was with them making every save.

The final fight, by contrast was pretty anti-climatic. Too many actors in the room (GM hell), and aside from possession (admittedly a pretty nasty power) Madness can't do much. She went insubstantial and promptly rolled a 1 for her first attack, guaranteeing she couldn't possess in round 1. A PC promptly started singing the song of forms and she spent the rest of the fight trying to shut that PC up so she could possess someone. But the PC's did a good job with dazed effects and kept her actions to a minimum.

rangda said:

This is way too late to help you but...

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Note really; I've had some delays in running my game. I've run the Battle of Otharil Vale, but the party hasn't gone back to Bresk yet (that will happen this Friday). So your timing is good!

rangda said:

My group isn't that fond of skill challenges (it's more an old school 70's style kick-the-door-down-kill-everything kind of group), so I ran it as combats. I set it up as them being part of the army assigned to protect against flanking maneuvers, and they had been given basically the same response as entire units, i.e draw a line in the snow on the piece of terrain they were tasked to guard and not let anyone past.

This helped them feel a bit special (as paragon characters should be amongst the army rank & file). When I ran the combats I ran them as the monsters trying to break through the party rather than actually engage them, and it worked fairly well for my group.

Click to expand...

I did something similar, making it into combat encounters which I actually wrote up to share with others. You can find that post here.

rangda said:

I used Morrus' alternate joust rules which were posted in a thread in this forum. In those the prize is specified as an L10 Elite warhorse. I also ran archery and spellduel tournies. Amazingly PC's won all 3 of them. The joust is very hard to win; my group has house rules where you can spend an action point to take 10 or reroll a d20, a couple of AP is what gave the PC the joust win, but w/o that beating the NPC is largely luck.

In the archery competition that I ran I rolled poorly for the final NPC. (I used variable AC's for the rings of the target what AC you hit dictated what part of the target you hit, and allowed called shots to split arrows which was worth extra points but was very hard to hit.) I gave the player the effects of crossbow expertise (ignore cover/concealment) as a wondrous magic item.

The spellduel was very, very close. PC was L13 sorcerer going against a L14 Elite wizard at the end. Sorcerers do way more damage, but wizard had 3x the HP and range. Sorc made good use of slow, slide, and teleport (taking the damage) effects to keep the wizard adjacent which kept the wizard worried about OA's (sorc do get a basic attack and that would be a lot damage if the PC had it). Came down to die rolls right at the end, sorcerer won with 6 HP left and an ongoing 5 damage effect on him. Gave him familiar as a bonus feat (tied to a magic item) with a familiar that had a few extra abilities (basically 1.75 familiars rolled up into 1).

Everyone had fun with the tourneys and it ate up a fair amount of action points, consumables, and dailies; which the party was then without for the final fights.

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Sounds like fun! I wasn't planning on putting much energy into setting these sorts of things up; I think I will now.

rangda said:

This has been one of my peeve's of the series; the series reads as if the party knows far more about trillith's than they actually do. My party after finishing the first 5 modules has yet to hear the word. I've dropped a few hints but the whole thing is very subtle, w/o getting it more in front of their faces I don't think they will figure out what is going on.

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I'm glad it's not just me. You mention later that the PCs started singing the Song of Forms during the battle with Madness... how in the world did they think to do that if they didn't know anything about trilliths?

rangda said:

Unrelated to these questions, this module has two fights that are far too dangerous IMO. The harpies at the cliff and the tragedy monsters in the frozen zombie pit. The harpies get a green pull power which turns the entire encounter into "make multiple saves or die" as they try to pull the PC's off the cliff. I had to basically have them not use that ability/fudge some dice to avoid a TPK yet every player knew the harpies could do this as a green.

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My party managed to completely avoid the harpies by getting flying horses via an awesome Arcana check on the Phantom Steed ritual.

rangda said:

The tragedies are were even worse with a recharging area unconscious power. I didn't catch this until I ran the encounter, and w/o me removing the recharge I don't see how it couldn't be a TPK. As it was every player was unconcious for the first 2 rounds, and 3 players were unconcious for 3, and that was with them making every save.

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Good to know, as this is the next battle I'll be running. I tend to customize the monsters, but it's been a couple of weeks since I put the Tragedies together, so I can't recall exactly how I might have tweaked them. I'll be careful to make sure they can't just knock everyone out so easily.

rangda said:

The final fight, by contrast was pretty anti-climatic. Too many actors in the room (GM hell), and aside from possession (admittedly a pretty nasty power) Madness can't do much. She went insubstantial and promptly rolled a 1 for her first attack, guaranteeing she couldn't possess in round 1. A PC promptly started singing the song of forms and she spent the rest of the fight trying to shut that PC up so she could possess someone. But the PC's did a good job with dazed effects and kept her actions to a minimum.

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Yeah, I was worried about the number of combatants here, too. I think I might try to abstract things away to focus mainly on Madness, Steppengard, the three named nobles and the king's two bodyguards. The other bodyguards and nobles will just fade into the background.

I do want to keep the threat of the king killing the nobles, with his bodyguards protecting him. And of course Madness is the big threat. The rest can probably be hand-waved.

I know that I completely rebuilt Madness from the ground up. I'll have to post her re-made stat block. She will get a lot more opportunity to dominate people the way I've written her.

I worry that this will be unfun for my party, but there are seven PCs in the group; they can manage even if they're frequently getting dazed and sometimes dominated.

Thanks so much for your advice!

OnlineDM said:

You mention later that the PCs started singing the Song of Forms during the battle with Madness... how in the world did they think to do that if they didn't know anything about trilliths?

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Ignoring all the posession stuff, Song of Forms makes insubstantial things substantial. Doesn't matter if they are a Trillith or not. So the instant they saw a huge (most likely either Elite or Solo which means tons of HP) critter go insubstantial they countered with Song of Forms. Even if it's not a Trillith you stop it from doubling its HP pool, and for Elite/Solos that's a lot of HP.

I could have been more deviant here and had her wait a bit before going insubstantial, but honestly if she starts possessing people the fight will very quickly become not fun for the PC's (it's already not fun for the PC's). Ignoring the moral implications of killing the room as Madness jumps from body to body it's just an exercise in tedium.

OnlineDM said:

Yeah, I was worried about the number of combatants here, too. I think I might try to abstract things away to focus mainly on Madness, Steppengard, the three named nobles and the king's two bodyguards. The other bodyguards and nobles will just fade into the background.

I do want to keep the threat of the king killing the nobles, with his bodyguards protecting him. And of course Madness is the big threat. The rest can probably be hand-waved.

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Even with this the fight is a huge PITA for the DM to run but abstracting a lot away at least makes it a bit better for the PC's.

OnlineDM said:

I worry that this will be unfun for my party, but there are seven PCs in the group; they can manage even if they're frequently getting dazed and sometimes dominated.

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The problem with dominated, stunned, unconscious is that players lose actions, and just sitting at the table not being able to participate is not fun for the player. I've long ranted that WotC got states backwards and the players should be doing most of the dazing, stunning, dominating, etc. not the monsters. It's fine for the GM to not control models, hell it makes it easier, but it's not fun for a player if he gets no action every other turn. She wasn't bad for dominate as it was random and not so often but IMO you do have to be careful inflicting those effects on players too much.