WotBS MrPereira's WOTBS D&D 3.5 Campaign (SPOILERS IN THE POSTS)

Disclaimer: There will be spoilers in the text – and please forgive my grammatical errors, English is not my native language.

I am the DM of a WOTBS campaign and have been toying with the idea for a while to post about it in these forums.

If you end up reading and following this thread, feel free to comment and leave tips for the upcoming chapters. Anyone going to DM the campaign in the future is also more than welcome to contact me for my input.

We started playing chapter 1 in January 2015, so the first many posts will be a retelling based on memory and notes, and will be posted over time. This takes a lot longer than I thought .

Background information about the game:

Our group consists of four persons, meaning that we are only 3 players and a DM. We try to balance this by giving the PCs heroic stats – they are supposed to be heroes anyway. This means that all PCs start with the following stat-array: 18, 17, 16, 15, 14, 13.

Sometimes the group also gets an NPC of lower level and/or inferior class like warrior. For this campaign I decided not to give them an NPC like this, as the first many chapters have a lot of NPCs involved in the story. I did however decide to give each player a good friend that I would kill off in the first session, just to get their blood up and give them more incentive to hate the Ragesian invaders, but more about this later.

Usually we have been playing a rather conservative game regarding the use of source books. We have most of them, except for some of the psionic books and we have none of the dragon magazines. Usually we have been limiting ourselves to the following rules:

Player’s handbook (PHB) races and spells only – at least for the first many levels, later on one spell per caster level would be open from other sources as a kind of research. The enemy would likewise be limited – usually this would be a rather given issue as most premade adventures have a limited selection of spells outside PHB. Classes, Feats and prestige classes would however be pretty open. We just haven’t really been experimenting with them or alternative class features.

For this campaign, where we would go from level 1-20, I thought it would be a good a time as any to open up for everything and test whether or not it would be balances and fun for us. So I did, though with one restriction. Based on the types of races in the story, I only allowed PHB races, but allowed using any kind of variation of these that the players wanted to try out. Only one of the three did end up doing that.

For some reason, I was the only one ever reading about the Divine persist spell priests, so this is the first time we have a character in the group with this approach. Previously the priests have been mostly inclined to use quicken divine metamagic. However, since we were testing things, I told the guy who ended up being the priest about this, and he loved it… who would have guessed, eh? I am not sure, however, if we ever will allow it again, it is pretty powerful after all.

I gave my players the PC handbook beforehand and asked them to read it through and then give me a call when they had and had thought about which kind of character they would like to play. I told them that the one common element they all had to implement in their background stories was that they all lived in the same town, Gate Pass, and felt a strong connection to the town. To reduce the amount of names thrown around, I will refer to the players by their in-game names even in this section.

The Party:
Galion – Elf ranger
Shaith – Fire elf fire domain wizard
Killian – Human priest of Heironious
MrPereira - DM


Background stories for the party members:

Galion
First up was Galion. He wanted to play an elven ranger with a strong focus on archery. His basic idea was that he was a loner by nature. He didn’t have many friends and loved the wood and outdoor life, but saw Gate Pass as his home and would die for it, if threatened. That gave me the idea that he could actually be Taranesti originally, which would add a lot to the flavor later on in the story.

His background ended up being that he and his parents had hailed from a now conquered area in what is now Shahalesti. His father was on the royal guard and had to surrender and bend his knee to the conquerors to safe his family. This happened some 80 years ago when he was just a wee little elf. Shortly after they ran away from Shahalesti and settled down in Gate Pass. When the Ragesians attacked about 50 years ago his father was a part of the resistance. He told his son, that the last time he had given up to save his family, but had sacrificed his soul doing it. This time he would fight to the bitter end to ensure a safe future for his family. He died defending Gate Pass. As the Ragesian army is getting closer to Gate Pass, Galion has entered the Resistance, for a large part because of his father.

Based on his background Galion has very little regard for either Ragesians or Shahalesti.

Shaith
Second up was Shaith. He wanted to play a wizard, and spent quite a while looking at a lot of different races and prestige classes, but not really being happy with them. At some point he read about the domain wizards in Unearthed Arcana, and decided that this was what he wanted. So he settled for a fire Domain wizard and decided to go all in on fire, becoming a fire elf.

I told him that there was a forest not far from Gate Pass that had been burning for 50 years without end. I asked him if it would be fine for him to come from that place, and that they had originally been normal elves, but due to magical burning forest they had changed into fire elves. He loved the idea.

It is hard to be unsatisfied when your players more or less write themselves into the background story of the world This means, that in my campaign all surviving Innenotdar elves are fire elves.

In his background story his parents are loving and caring people, but sad because of the loss of their homeland. They seldom fight about anything, but the one thing they do disagree on is who to blame for the loss of their home. His father blames the Ragesians for torching the place, while his mother blames the Shahalesti for not stopping them – one can’t blame an orc for being an orc after all. Shaith also decided to be a student at Gabal’s School of War in Gate Pass.

Based on his background Shaith is not a big fan of the Shahalesti, but he does not hate them. He does not like the Ragesians at all. The scourge does not help either.

Killian
The last player, Killian, didn’t really have many preferences, but didn’t want to play a character that was a clone of one he had played recently. He ended up becoming a priest with focus on persist spell, aiming to become an ordained champion. Originally he too wanted to be an elf, but I asked him if he wouldn’t mind not being on – I felt that to keep a good in-game balance it would be more fun to have them come from different races. He agreed to that.

His background is the weakest since he didn’t have time to come up with much until we started playing. He is a native from Gate Pass and has inherited a very rational and logical approach to things from his father. He knows that Gate Pass’ neutrality comes more from being a buffer between to strong nations, than from being strong and independent. His mother is the complete opposite; she is very emotional and has strong feelings about loyalty and independence, which he also has inherited. This gives him a quite fun approach to things since he will want to be rational and get all the information he can, but in the end he does what his heart tells him, even if it is not the optimal thing.

Based on his background Killian does not really like either Ragesians or Shahalesti as they threaten his hometown, but currently Ragesians are the bigger villains as they are there with an army.

Setting up the campaign
I took a lot of time making sure that everyone had a good understanding of Gate Pass and the commonly known history, to give the feel of a place they knew, and not saw for the first time. I also spent some time setting the stage for the campaign.

I spent a lot of time of time structuring the information about Gate Pass and the world into knowledge everyone would have and knowledge who could be acquired with the right knowledge-related skills, so the players with these skills would have a broader understanding of the world and the area than those without them.

This campaign has a lot of information, so I gave each player a task during the campaign. One player is to record all the NPCs they meet and hear about. To give them a better chance of keeping track of the many names and persons. The second player is to keep track of the movements in the world, who is at war and who is allied, as well as keeping track of places, missions and things they hear about. The third player is tasked with keeping a journal – in as many/few details as he wants to - to make sure that important details are not lost to the pcs because of long breaks between sessions. At first they were a little critical about this, but after the first two sessions they both accepted and appreciated it. They would have lost track of a lot of things otherwise.

A final thing I took some time discussing with the players before we started was the concept of good and evil in the campaign. One of the best things for me with the campaign is that the classic good and evil concepts are secondary as all parties in the campaign have their own justification for doing what they do. I made sure that the players knew about this and that the story more often is a question of friend/foe – ally/enemy than a question of good or evil in the classical sense.

Session 1

Before starting the first session I gave them a brief introduction from the periode leading up to the beginning of the chapter:

In the period leading up to chapter one
The weeks leading up to New Year’s Eve were full of rumors and panic spreading slowly throughout the town of Gate Pass. The players decided to join the Resistance to be part of the defense of a free Gate Pass. They were joined in this by their best friends (NPC’s that would prove to be short-lived).

DM note: I put in these extra NPC’s for two reasons, and both worked well for me. The first was to take some of the hits from the enemy, so the players didn’t get overwhelmed by the enemies many attacks. 1st level characters don’t have that many HP after all. The second reason was to give them an even better reason to hate the invaders than just being from Gate Pass. They did kill their best friends after all. A bonus was that it gave the entire session a much grittier tone, which helped making the session more intense.

As luck would have it, these six green recruits were put into the same Resistance cell. They had met a few times before today, but did not know each other well (Shaith and Gallion decided that since they both lived in the elven ghetto, they knew of the other person. They were not friends or knew each other well).

At first it was mostly rumors, but they got more and more substantial leading up to the confirmation of the death of the Emperor and the declaration of the Scourge.

As the days neared the Festival of dreams, so did Ragesian army. And today the army was spotted close to the city walls. As a result most people in the resistance were asked to report to their contact. For the first time they were given a real task, they were to assist another operative by the name of Torrent. She would have more details for them at the rendezvous point.

And so the story begins…

Chapter one – act one
December 31
The group met up with Torrent, pretty much straight forward as the book proposed. They were not overly cautious, exhibiting more of an excitement to finally get a real mission.

She gave them their orders and told them that the plan was to retrieve the plans from her the contact and then help Torrent get out of town, now that it was on a lockdown. The bells tolled and they celebrated New Year’s Eve and the coming of a new year by making plans in a closed down in.

January 1
Suddenly they heard the sounds of loud explosives, louder than the pyrotechnics should have sounded. In short lull between the explosions they detected some sounds from the top floor of the inn. As the PCs got up and readied for action all hell broke loose around them. Some darkclad characters came down from the first floor while the door to the alley was kicked in. In the split second it took to realise this a bomb fell on the inn blasting everyone from their feet and setting the inn on fire.

The players managed to fight their way out of the inn, but not before losing all three of their friends. One was killed inside the inn by the mercenaries. The second was killed by a falling flaming beam in the inn. The third sacrificed himself to get the others out of the burning inn, by charging the mercenaries at the door, a valiant death.

DM note: I hadn’t planned on how exactly to kill the NPC’s off, but I had decided that none of them would leave Gate Pass.

Just as the fight was starting to get ugly the enemies were called off by a mysterious rider on a horse. They never did follow this lead or find out more about Kathor Danava.
DM note: The fire elf, fire domain wizard naturally had taken Ignan as one of his languages, so he got to know what the armbands said. I am sure he had expected something else

I played out the trek through the burning city as storytelling with the option of acting on what they heard. They experienced the flight of the dragon, which gave them quite a scare. They were very relieved that they did not have to fight that one.

They decided to help the wounded family, but passed the burning building without helping out. They had the distinct feeling that they were on the clock, and that every minute counted. It was a nice dilemma they put themselves in. They did not like the feeling of letting helpless people die, but decided that their mission held top priority.

DM note: I decided to be the evil DM and have the wealthy merchant be annoying and insisting wasting valuable time in their eyes.

Chapter one – act two
January 1 continued
On the way to the depository tower I threw in the fallen angel encounter, again to make them feel the time pressure.

They arrived at the depository tower and got inside without any hassle. Here they met Rivereye, who was acting quite strange. They caught on pretty fast and realized that it was not a gnome, but an elf in disguise. The elf ran off and tried to escape the tower, while getting help from an ally that surprised the players – the Lantern archon.

It was clear that they were surprised to be good guys fighting an angel. It didn’t stop them from trying to kill it though. In the end their attempt failed and the Archon got away. Larions escape attempt was also in vain, and his death turned out a bit gruesome. He was leaping from the tower when Galion’s arrow killed him resulting in him not being able to pass the fence, but instead ending up skewered on the spikes.

The PCs had a minor controversy with the guards of the tower after their fight. They did not take it well, that they suddenly were accused of being in the wrong. They also felt a need to follow the archon, who of course got away clean this way. The controversy ended with a Shaith trying to stare down the half-orc sergeant. Shaith won the stare-off, but ended on the floor with a bloody nose for his pride.

The guards finally manged to find the real Rivereye and the players were cleared of charges with no apologies from the guards, much the annoyance of the PCs, especially Shaith. Luckily Rivereye had overheard the elves and the Archons speaking and knew they had a contact that Gabal’s school.

They decided that whoever was there would be warned by the archon, so they would not be able to surprise anyone, and since they had spent their resources, Torrent led them to a Safe House. Shaith being a bit riled up already did not take it well when the bard played her dark and depressing tunes, resulting in the PCs leaving a bad impression on Buron Watcher. They did at least manage to save the Half-orc woman from a beating.

After a short rest they travelled to Gabal’s school. The streets were oddly calm and quiet after bombardment the previous evening, giving them a somewhat eerie feeling. They were pretty impressed by how Diogenes managed to turn the mood of the crowd with his smoothtalking

DM note: I was actually pretty impressed with how well this went. I had not expected them to wait for the following day, so I hadn’t really prepared anything. The good thing was that the scene gave Diogenes a lot of personality and will be a NPC they will remember.

Diogenes recognized Shaith as being from the school and let the group in. He asked them what their business was, since he only knew Shaith. They told him that they were looking for Shealis and that she was a potential spy. Diogenes offered his help without further ado. He took them to the kitchen and got them some food and wine while they planned on how to confront her – all for no reason as they found out when putting the plan into motion, she had left last night.

The only lead they had left was the other elves that Rivereye had mentioned. This meant spending some money and gathering information in the elven Ghetto. It did not hurt them that two of the PCs were residents in the area.

After some time they managed to localize the hideout of the elves. While casing out the place and realizing that there were no doors, they were suddenly approached by a voice from an invisible source, who offered a deal with the players. The voice would help them get inside and retrieve the case, IF it was given the case afterwards. The players declined of course. But the voice was insistent: “I didn’t say anything about the items inside the case. If you can get them out of there, you can keep them. I just want the case…”. After a moments discussion they accepted the deal. A minute later a little girl went past them speaking to some sort of guiding spirit. The spirit – the Imp – of course had the girl trigger the trap.

DM-Note: Watching the faces of the players as they felt that their deal just cost an elven girl equivalent of a 7-year old girl her life was a highlight of the evening. Shaith did check on her before going in, and was a bit relived to find she wasn’t dead. Later I must admit I am regretting that I didn’t change the poison and let her be dead, so the consequences of making blind deals were felt. Oh well – she got to live

The Imp revealed itself as they were getting ready to go in. Rejoicing over its masterful plan and how it handled getting inside the house without getting any of them in danger.

DM-Note: I had the Imp acting very polite and courteous towards the group at all times, which really riled them. And, of course, I had the Imp virtually jumping on the sore spots for the players for the rest of the encounter, by making lots of triumphant remarks on how wonderful a deal this was. He emphasized a lot how well they complemented each other, and his triumphant comments on getting to kill and angel on top of it all, really made it tough for the players. It was evil, I know – but hey, so was the Imp .

The party entered the house and fought the badgers, the archon and the Shahalesti soldiers. At the end of the fight Shealis came down the stairs to investigate the commotion. She saw the players and cast her fireball. Galion retaliated by hurting her badly with a well-placed arrow, almost killing her in one blow. She panicked and fled upstairs and out through the chimney, only later realizing that she had placed the case on a table in the house.

DM Note: I decided to take a little chance here, by letting Shealis being in the house. In most cases she would be able to kill off the party easily. I decided that she would try to kill them with her fireball, but also that she would run is she got hurt. She was a spy after all with important intelligence. The reason I dared let her use a fireball was that the doors would give them a big bonus to the saves, and that both the imp and Shaith had fire resistance. It turned out well, the dice rolled pretty low, so they hardly got any damage from it. I plan on letting her reappear in the story at some later point as part of the Shahalesti contingent.

It took some time, but they managed to crack open the case and retrieve the documents. The Imp was grateful and thanked them for a very good deal and teamwork, and then went off on his own.

DM Note: It was actually quite a fun discussion in the group afterwards. They were reflecting about making a deal with a devil and realizing that at no point did it cheat them, betray them or backstab them. It was actually completely honest and made them a very good deal. What made it worse for them was that they had considered cheating, betraying and backstabbing the Imp at several points throughout the encounter. Ultimately what stayed their hands was that they doubted if they could win. It was fun watching them realize that the devil was more trustworthy than they were

Having finally gotten their hands on the plans it was time to leave the town, but how? In the end they decided to put their faith in Councilman Menash.

DM note: On the road there I had them play out the encounter with the mercenaries and Rantle. I did tweak it a bit, so they actually just attacked them in an alley instead of trying to lure them down an alley. They were very skeptical about Rantle at first, but then decided to believe him and never opened the scroll for Katrina.

At Councilman Menash’ house they had to wait a little while as he was at a council meeting. They had time to look over his motley collection of items, not really feeling sure what to think. When the councilman returned he was more than happy to help, and offered to show off his items to them. They decided to decline, they told him that time was of the essence. He was of course very disappointed.

He gave the party a letter of introduction for Captain Herreman and we concluded the session at this point and the party leveled up.

DM note: At the end of the session Killian remarked the following: They had fought an angel, made a deal with a devil, survived a big red dragon and had a fireball cast on them quite an eventful day for a party of first level characters.

Chapter one – act 3
January 1 late afternoon/early evening

Together with Torrent the group went down to the Barracks and played out the scene as written in the book with one difference. Councilman Menash wanted to send his own liaison to Seaquen, so the group was joined by a young officer by the name of Ciano.

DM note: I decided that it probably wouldn’t hurt for them to have another sword on the road, and if things turned out being easy, another death on the road to Seaquen. Also I felt it added to the credibility of why the councilman would help the players, as they were helping him in turn.

As the players leave the city chimes and bells start ringing all over town. In the Resistance it is the signal for enemy detected in town. In other words it can only mean that the city council have agreed to the Ragesian demands and have let the inquisitors enter town. Luckily for the players they are close to the exit at the other end of town and get out clean. The only tense moment for them was when the city guards started questioning the troop about the strange time to leave the town. It was both evening and snowing after all. In the end the signed orders from the councilman got them out; orders are orders after all.

After a short while the group of soldiers and players reach a tower ruin and spend the night inside.

Chapter one – act 4
January 2

The next morning the group said goodbye to the soldiers and headed out towards the burning forest, which should allow them to get away clean from pursuit .After three hours they arrive at a point where the sides at the road seemed a little steeper. Their spot checks were successful and most of the party spotted the first two Black Horse mercenaries, spoiling a big part of the ambush.
The two scouts tried to get the ambush going by spooking the horses with thunderstones, but it never really went their way. Killian was the only one in a little trouble caused by his spooked horse. Ciano managed to get the killing blow on Renard, who didn’t put up much of a fight.

DM note: DMs in our group roll our dice openly – and Renard just had one of those days where they did not roll his way.

As Renard fell, Kathor Danava rode up on his horse calling the rest of the mercenaries off. This time the players did talk a bit with him and got his name. They did take note of his name being the same as that of one of the generals

DM note: This was one of the instances where the assignments paid off. I had filled out the names of a lot of people they knew of before starting the game, essentially making sure that the information from the handbook and commonly known knowledge was listed. It made keeping it updated much easier for the players.

They reached an agreement with Kathor, and the group rode off without further incident. It also meant that they never got to search the bodies or the camp site of the mercenaries.

Chapter one act 5:
January 2 - continued

The party rides on, and meets Crystin half a mile outside the burning forest. Her weird behavior put them on the edge to begin with. They didn’t really trust her, but decided to see how it would play out and went with her,

Before going inside she tells them about her visions and that she would like them to convince her father to go with them to safety. Once inside they were witness to Crystin getting shouted at by her father, and he took his temper out on the bandits (the players) too.

DM Note: Before this act I was actually a bit worried about how it would play out. I feared that the players would feel that Haddin/Crystin would be an annoyance and the whole scene a bit awkward and poor.

I was wrong! Haddin has turned out to be such a wonderful fun character for me – and the group, but oh how they hate him. I am pretty sure that they would take a detour on the way to saving the world, just to get him down.

I had prepared a few sentences based on what I was pretty sure the players would bring up, meaning his reactions to their questions/comments were extremely rude, loud and snappy. For instance, as they enter the house he gives a long speech, finishing off with telling them to behave themselves and keep quiet. I was sure someone would try to be polite and introduce themselves, which resulted in him responding in an aggressive tone: “I did NOT ask for your name, I TOLD you to behave yourselv and keep QUIET. Can’t you see that I am reading, or is that a concept that is too complex for you to understand?”

They ended up feeling pretty sad for Crystin, but gave up on helping her dad; he obviously didn’t want to be helped. They spent the night there, in a pretty funny and awkward situation.

DM Note: At one point, Galion crossed the line. He kept talking to Haddin, and when he could get away with it Haddin dominated Galion. I made the domination quite loose, and just told him to behave and speak nicely! Galion turned this into a quite fun domination. He decided that the character felt that the others obviously misunderstood the nice Mister Ja Laffa, and treated him with such an air of respect and good manners, that I decided that Haddin actually liked him. Haddin managed to keep his domination all the way until they reached Seaquen. The party decided that they really had no grounds to think that Galion was acting out of character, they didn’t really know him after all (they were strangers at the beginning of the chapter after all).

During the evening, after Haddin and Crystin have gone to bed, Shaith tell the other players about the tragic story of Haddin Ja Laffa. This actually gave them a feeling of sympathy for him, for a while at least.

DM note: Shaith has high knowledge skills and also has his background from Gabal’s school, so I let him roll for knowledge to see if he knew of him. With all the good background information in the campaign, I have decided to allow the players to know most of it, if they make successful knowledge checks (DC will be varying of course).

January 3

During a breakfast that is spent mostly in silence, they suddenly hear someone call for Haddin. They realise that Crystin’s vision about the Ragesian coming here has come true. Haddin of course blame them for bringing the Ragesians to his door.

The fight had a casualty. Ciano opened the backdoor and sneaked out, planning to circle the enemies with along with Galion and Shaith. However, he did not get far, as he was hit and killed by the human bane arrow fired by one of the goblins.

DM Note: I had the players taking control of Ciano and Torrent during the fights, so his death was not scripted. In general I have the players controlling most of the npcs in the party. A few years ago we made some basic rules for how party NPCs would be controlled. They never take the initiative in a conversation or start actions like combat. They rarely move further ahead than where the foremost PC is standing. They roll spot, listen, hide and move silently so their result always matches the poorest result of the party (or what is considered a 1 on the d20 if they can’t get that low). Also we agree on how they would act in general, so most combats etc. go smoothly. If the player controlling the NPC is in doubt of what he/she would do we talk it over and decide what makes most sense, with the DM allowed to veto if something seems wrong to him. In this case it did make sense to let Ciano(who was a fighter) take point, as he was leading a wizard and an archer out of the house.

During the fight Haddin uses his domination on a goblin, which both makes the party see him as way above their level and also gives some credit to the story of his brother. Afterwards they were actually talking about the story of his brother. They were unsure about what caused the death of Haddin’s brother. Did he order his brother to defend him?

During the fight the Ragesians threw torches at the house which caught on fire and burned down, meaning that Haddin and Crystin no longer had any choice, but had to leave. The players tried to argue that the Ragesians had come for Haddin, just as Crystin had said, and that he ought to be grateful, as they had helped save them.

Haddin did not agree. He told them that if one should be grateful to those who led an enemy to your door and that enemy also burned down your house… then yes, he was VERY grateful. Otherwise, he would just blame them for the loss of his home and his safety.

After this the party and the NPCs gather what they can, and head off towards the fiery forest.

DM note: They levelled up on the half mile walk to the forest. Day three – and leveling up day three, a reasonable progression as they called it The session didn’t end here, but I will break off the post here and start a new for chapter two at some point, soon I hope.

End of Chapter musings:
The chapter went very well from my perspective. The backstory was so detailed that it was easy for the players to just jump into the action and still feeling at home in Gate Pass and the world setting. In my game the scene with the imp was a real highlight. It was well written and it was a perfect way to teach the players that in this campaign setting it is more a matter of friend or foe, rather than good or evil.

One thing that I would say did not work very well was the Black Horse mercenaries. In act one, they meet Kathan, but with the city burning down around them they have no incentive to find him, unless he asks them too – and he did not. I liked his backstory and I hope it will be possible to get it woven in when he reappears in the story. In act three were they are ambushed, the whole ambush set up seemed odd to me, and I changed it to a more straightforward ambush. A final thing, and this is in general so far in the story, the inquisitor really isn’t very well protected, especially considering that he is priest and has all the time in the world to prepare for the fight. Given the size of the chapter, I would say that these were really small issues, and easily remedied.

All in all I was pretty pleased with the chapter and how it all played out.

Other GMs have recently commented that the inquisitors are often underpowered. That's mostly because I was going by 3.5 guidelines that a level 4 cleric is a CR 4 challenge, but those guidelines are wildly inaccurate. You could probably buff and level up the inquisitors (and various other NPC 'bosses') to make them a more appropriate challenge.

Thanks for posting these. I especially like reading your musings on how things worked and why you changed what you did.

I do think that the challenges will always be tough to get spot on for all parties - in general I feel that most premade adventures I have played have been on critisised for being on the easy side. Probably because they are made from the same guidelines. We played Red Hand of Doom before starting this campaign, and that adventure needed quite a lot of tweaking, a lot more than WOTBS has so far.

From a stroy point of view it makes sense that the big players don't pay much attention to some unknowns like the players and thus underestimate them, as long as it wont be too easy all the way through. Also, at lower levels I don't mind if the survivability chance is a little higher, I want them to play the story after all, and grow attached to their characters. I haven't played through chapters 5 or 6 yet, but they do seem to be more challenging, and I have been tweaking the opposition a bit too, making them tougher.

Thank you reading the posts and commenting on them. It is nice to know someone is reading them and I appreciate that you like the musings, they are the most interesting part in my eyes as well. Most if not all people reading the thread will know the story, so retelling it would be a bit overkiill to me. My thoughts and ideas are another thing, it might be good input for others who want to play the campaign at some point, regardless of system. At least that is my hope.

Glad you started this. I skipped almost all of Chapter 1 so i could keep my promise of starting the party at level 3. So it's interesting to see how things worked out in your game. I just summarized for the party what happened, making assumptions on what they'd have done, and beginning with Menash speaking to them and then their escape from the city.

And yes, I love to point out when the party's being hypocrites or tease them that they're the real bad guy. Being a DM means having to take a loss pretty much every combat, you take what little morale victories you can get.

RangerWickett said:

Other GMs have recently commented that the inquisitors are often underpowered. That's mostly because I was going by 3.5 guidelines that a level 4 cleric is a CR 4 challenge, but those guidelines are wildly inaccurate. You could probably buff and level up the inquisitors (and various other NPC 'bosses') to make them a more appropriate challenge.

Thanks for posting these. I especially like reading your musings on how things worked and why you changed what you did.

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I've never agreed that class level = CR is a valid metric, that seems not nearly true. I have generally been having the CR set to X -1 for NPC's w/ PC class or Adept levels and X -2 for other NPC class levels, where X is their level. However, for primary casters, it's not that far off, and i usually still go with CR = X for them.
The issue with the inquisitors isn't that cleric 4 is not worthy of CR 4. The issue is more that they tend to have horrible AC and in general get shafted on equipment. I get they're supposed to be "feral" and justh ave hide armor and some weak claw weapons, but....the game is very gear-dependent, and if you're not giving classed humanoids the equipment and magic items expected of them, they are much weaker. I find when I don't want to give the NPCs appropriate magic items (either out of laziness of looking them up, or because I don't want the party getting ever more loot), it's best to just add a level or (sometimes, for non-casters) two, to make up for it. I did also make an extensive re-write of vow of poverty for any alignment to alleviate such issues, too.
The stats are also written with mostly core rules only, and using elite array. Few DMs place such restrictions on the PCs, and while it may be stating the obvious...you need to optimize the NPCs to the level the PCs are allowed to be. Which is daunting when you have to do it for hundreds of characters, so DMs probably are just running the inquisitors as-is and getting the predictable result.
Of course, being the most vile, evil characters in the setting also makes them giant targets for the party's wrath. I optimize my inquisitors and they still drop fast, simply because as soon as the party gets to fight one, they will always go 100% full force, focused-fire on him/her, even (in my experience, at least) taking AoOs and risks to do so, because they hate them just that much. That probably exacerbates the problem and is why inquisitors in particular are mentioned as being too weak (the various caster / non-caster multiclass characters are far weaker and more pathetic for their listed CRs...apparently "nonassociated class levels" was never taken into account).

StreamOfTheSky said:

Glad you started this. I skipped almost all of Chapter 1 so i could keep my promise of starting the party at level 3. So it's interesting to see how things worked out in your game. I just summarized for the party what happened, making assumptions on what they'd have done, and beginning with Menash speaking to them and then their escape from the city.

And yes, I love to point out when the party's being hypocrites or tease them that they're the real bad guy. Being a DM means having to take a loss pretty much every combat, you take what little morale victories you can get.

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Thanks, it is nice to know that people are reading it It takes quite a long while to write these posts, so it is a good encouragement to know that they are being read and appreciated. I really loved the scene with the Imp, and it meant that they really considered making a deal with Kazyk, as you can read in my next post.

Chapter two – act one

The party:
Galion – Elf ranger lvl. 3
Shaith – Fire elf fire domain wizard lvl. 3
Killian – Human priest of Heironious lvl. 3

NPCs
Haddin
Crystin
Torrent

January – continued

The group got to the edge of the forest feeling the heat waves blowing at them. They quickly realized that the potions Torrent had were a pretty limited supply, especially with two more people in the group. Killian of course had the spell on his spell list but did not really like the idea of using all his second level spells on that.

The closer they have gotten to the forest the more the others noted Shaith acting differently. He was clearly not behaving as he had the first few days that they knew him. Of course the others did not know at this point, that this was the first time since he fled 50 years ago that he was back at his homeland.

DM Note: At this point I need to tell a little about how we have moved on from paper & pencil to laptops, dropbox and google chat. Some years ago we came to the conclusion that it was a lot easier to keep track of the characters running modifiers in a spreadsheet, and it also made things a lot easier to edit when people levelled up. We have built our own spreadsheet that we all use, and the DM has a special spreadsheet, that links the skills and saves of all the players, so making secret checks is a lot easier.

We roll those secret checks beforehand, actually. Before starting a campaign all players roll 40 or so D20 and the DM records these. Whenever the DM later needs a secret roll from one of the players he takes the topmost unused of these rolls. Whenever a player is getting close to having used all his rolls, the player rolls some new ones that are added to his list. This way the players still roll all of their own checks and saves, they just don’t know when the different rolls will be used.

All our sheets are saved in shared Dropbox folders, meaning that we always have access to the characters and notes, and the DM can access these in between sessions if need be, for example it is a big help to be able to read up on their journal, so I can see if/what they have missed.

We use google chat whenever a player needs to ask something of the DM in secret, or the DM wants to give private information to a player. This was a big help in this chapter as Shaith was at home in the fire forest and knew a lot of things on the fly, things I was sending him on the chat. This gave a very smooth gameplay and his very extensive knowledge really had the others on the edge until they reached his birth village and he told them his story.

Now that we are on the subject of how we play, we made one very good decision some time ago. The table we use to play at is a standard dinner table, which can be extended to seat 10 people. We used to have a battlemap, but as most people know these are rather limited in size. What we did get was a wax tablecloth with squares of the same size as the battlemaps. It is not hexagons, which would be optimal, but on the other hand, we have a potential battlemap of 120 feet by 550 feet – which came in rather handy in chapter 4. I can recommend this solution to anyone with the same issues of battlemaps being too small.

Soon after entering the forest they came upon three burning corpses, and got a bit of a scare when one of them called Shaith by his name and begged to be killed. The burning man turns out to be a classmate of Shaith’s. They ran off from Gate Pass before the gates were barred and he tells a gruesome story. He has been lying here for two days burning, without dying. He tells that the other two were his mother and sister and that he killed them, but simply didn’t have it in him to kill himself. Shiath puts him out of his misery, but the group feels a bit uncomfortable as they realize that the fire in the forest doesn’t necessarily kill you, but it might burn you for eternity.

DM Note: I used an old trick here to put them on edge. I was telling about the burned bodies and how they lay in the middle of the road. I was standing by the side of the table, drawing the road and where the bodies were lying. I leaned over towards Shaith as if I wanted to look at something at his sheet/laptop screen – and then I suddenly grabbed his arm and called his name “Shaiiiithss, pleeeeeease kill me”. They all but jumped from their chairs

They went through the forest with a lot of mistrust building amongst the others towards Shaith. Every time they came to a fork in the road he stopped and mumbled a little to himself, ignored their questions and then just moved on.

They encountered the Mephit as per the encounter in the book, which tought them another lesson of the burning forest, the enemies might need to be killed twice. The Mephit was not of much help to them at all and just flew off.

At some point soon after this encounter, Shaith move passed Galion, who was at point, and turned down one of the lesser trails forking off the mainroad. The others looked at each other but decided that they better follow. Some 15 minuttes later, after ignoring all questions, he stops at a clearing with big burning trees. He pointed at one of the trees and asked the others if they could see the burning house amongst the trees. They of course confirmed that they could, and then he told them in a low soft voice: “I was born there, and I haven’t seen it in 50 years, not since it started burning”.

DM note: It was a really powerful moment, and big credit has to go to Shaith for delivering such an emotionally strong performance. The other two were seriously sitting speechless looking like they wanted to give him a comforting hug.
He told them the story of how the forest was torched by Coaltoungue’s soldiers and how the fire didn’t’ stop. He also told how the fires somehow turned the Innenotdar elves into fire elfs. The others suddenly understood why he had been acting strangely and this experience helped binding the players into a tighter group. I was quite pleased with having given him that link to his backstory and how he really made it his own

Back on the main road they run into the series of encounters orchestrated by Kazyk who in the end asks for the military papers. The players of course say no, and he disappears for now. At this point they notice that his teleports create a fiery blossom, but have no way of connecting this to the bigger picture yet.

As they come close to the city at the center of the woods the party are confronted by Indomitability’s creatures, which are defeated. Following the confrontation, a voice manifests telling them that they shall set it free. It tells them that it is the fire in the forest and if they don’t set it free, then they too will be caught in the forest, forever burning. They accept to free the owner of the voice and get his boon as a reward.

DM Note: I must admit, I did not see them accepting another offer blindly like with the Imp, but they did. It also gave the rest of the chapter something I had not anticipated. They started reflecting about how powerful an entity this was, if it could bestow such a boon on them. And if it was that powerful, did they dare cross it? It gave the entire chapter a twist and depth I had not expected.

Act 2
January 3 continued

After the battle they go to the tower on top of the bridge. It is evening and they need a place to sleep. They decide that the tower looks like a good place, easily defended. They searched the tower, and found the journal and the dream seeds. They decided not to test the dream seeds, either despite of or because of Crystin’s premonition. They decided to go to sleep and study the journal in the morning

DM Note: And since they have forgotten about these. They mentioned them at some point later on and forgot about them again, so they never encountered the dream elemental.

January 4

They started the morning reading the journal, and from it they deduced that the stag that Anyariel staked at the bottom of the lake was the creature they had talked to. They also read about Anyariels shrine in the town.

DM Note: At this point they were thinking that the Stag was a good guy, but it didn’t really fit in well with Anyariel being a good guy too, based on Shaith’s knowledge of the Innenotdar. It made them wonder about how it all made sense.

They cross the bridge and head into the village, where a fiery blossom appears with Kazyk holding a white flag. He offers them a deal, they give him the papers, and he will help them put out the fire in the forest.

They ask him if he would mind if they copy the papers first, he would not, as long as it could be done within a day. They talked among themselves about their spells and if they could be used. Any way they looked at it, they would need a blank book. Kazyk offered to get one for them, no problems. They looked like they needed to talk a bit more anyway.
While he was gone they found that their spells could only copy the text, and not the pictures. The party was at a split decision at this point; Killian was willing to give the papers, as he felt that the text would be more and better Intel than none, while Gallion was against it as he believed that the pictures must be there for a reason, and not just to explain the obvious to the reader. Shaith was not taking sides at this point.

Kazyk returned at this point with a book, which seemed to have some red-brownish blotches on the cover. Shaith asks if they can wait with the decision until a later point, to which Kazyk answers that at that point they will have to decide to give him the papers, as the copying offer expires when he leaves now. The players agree to the terms and tell him that they will meet him by the lake. Kazyk smiles and nods, and then looks casually at the bloodstained book in his hands: “Oh well, it was just an old shopkeeper and his little girl after all”. He then tosses the book into the flame and disappears again.

DM Note: It was a pleasure watching their faces as the realization hit them, their little deal; or rather consideration of a deal had cost some innocent lives. And all for nothing as the book he killed them for was cast into the flames.

They search the village and find the shrine under the tree. Here they are suitably awed by the guardian but are allowed entrance to the shrine. In the shrine they find a shattered glass display and two bodies, one a corpse and one seeming like he is sleeping. The guardian cannot tell what happened, as it arrived just after everything had happened.

The party spent quite a while trying to understand what had happened and what the priest had hidden and how it could bring justice.

DM Note: It was very late in the night at this point, and that could have been what influenced the discussion. They did not really understand the significance of a frozen Shahalesti elf in the shrine and how that could be what was hidden. We called it a night after a period of time where they had discussed the room, and searched in repeatedly for what was hidden. In the end I told them that they had found all they would find in the room, and they had already found what was hidden according to the priest.

It took some time, but in the end they figured that he hidden item would have to be the Shahalesti elf. But what could that mean regarding to justice? Why would the priest have him hidden in here?

DM Note: Again, it was around 3 am, and we were drop dead tired all of us. I decided to tell them that it could only mean one of two things, and the answer would have to be up to their interpretation: It could either mean that it was not the Ragesians who had burned the forest, but the Shahalesti elves, or it could mean that the Ragesians had used elves disguised in Shahalesti uniforms to do the dirty deed. If the first was true, why had Coaltongue never denied being his responsibility, and if the second was true, why had the Shahalest not reacted more aggressively to being framed?

I ended the session with these questions filling their minds. They have since spent a lot of time thinking it over. It is my belief that Shaith believes the Shahalesti did it and he has an equal dislike for both Ragesians and Shahalesti. Gallion is convinced it was the Shahalesti, and he basically sees them as being viler than the vile Ragesians. Killian is still on the fence, he is not sure what is the truth, he also has less feelings invested in elven conflicts, so he does not jump to the same hasty conclusions on this topic.

End of session 2.

I am going out of town this next week, so it will be a little while before the rest of chapter two will be posted, just to let you know.

Ch 1: I will say, Haddin was pure joy for me to roleplay, and I missed him dearly when he left the group. Torrent ended up becoming very snarky and a bit cynical starting around the point he left, because I just needed that "fix." I also gave them background info on Haddin w/ a knowledge check, though it didn't cause much sympathy. The campaign does have an awful habit of giving lots of cool background lore without any way for the players to learn about it. A lot of times, I toss in a freaking journal for them to learn at least some of it... (like the ghasts in Ch. 2 that were druids and ate their own children out of desperation).
As for the chase sequence...yeah, it just doesn't work. Unless the force chasing the party is clearly overwhelmingly more powerful, it makes no sense to flee from them (if they even think they can get away by fleeing, which is very much not clear) into what may well be an ambush or just more troops/danger in general, and it's better to stand your ground. Heck, doing that means the enemies are the ones at a disadvantage, having divided and conquered themselves for nothing as you destroy one half of their forces, then the other. I wanted it to work, but my players are too smart.

Ch 2: This is the chapter that drew me to run this campaign. It's extremely grimdark, but offers such a satisfying resolution at the end if the party chooses the good (and difficult) path. Going from the depths of despair and bleakness to a ray of hope. I did also implement some significant additions here, too...

Good idea with the blood-stained book, that was brilliant. That's interesting they took Indomitability's offer, I was wondering if my party would (they didn't). It kind of puts a lot of the chapter on "easy mode" and makes Kazyk notably easier to defeat. Of course, they'll hopefully change their mind later.

The campaign does a poor job of preparing the DM for questions about what the military intel papers involve, exactly. I had to read ahead to Ch. 3 to learn more about them, and it's still fairly vague. With Kazyk asking for it and the whole ordeal of traversing Innenotdar for Seaquen revolving around them, the party's inevitably going to want to read them and learn what they're for.

I agree with you, there is so much information that would be such a shame not to allow the players to get. And if you let them have it they will sit with the feeling of an overwhelmingly wellthought out adventure, which you really want them to feel. So I spend a lot of time making Knowledge tables, and let them roll on them whenever something comes up, so they have a realistic chance of knowing things adding a lot of flavor to the game.

Oh yeah, my players were really curious about the papers too And as for changing their minds, I wont reveal anything yet before writing up the rest of chapter two