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

[666Sinner666]

Having read all of your summaries I can easily say I love this thread as much as I love reading PCat's thread. If not equally.

I especially like how gritty and deadly your sessions are while having not real intention of killing PC's but just making them shake in their boots a bit.

+rep for you sir!

 

[Aegeri]

Most of the time I just want encounters to be challenging or to be somewhat interesting. I can say that 90% of the time when PCs have died in my games it has just been poor luck. The most common death is still an enemies burst attack that includes an unconscious player, which kills them due to a crit or just a lucky high damage roll. The remaining times was because the character wasn't played by a PC anymore (someone left the game) and I killed it off to make room for the new character (if I couldn't make an excuse for them leaving/disappearing). Other than that, only a really poor tactical choice or just not listening to the other players have got someone killed.

A good example of that was the Barbarian in my IRL game a while back. He had been hit by a chaos shards power that deals 3d6+6 damage when you don't move X squares. The cycle of events basically went that the other players gave him advice that would certainly keep him alive, but he didn't really listen. He moved away from a creature provoking an OA, but was critically hit by it and dropped unconscious (by about -2 or similar). The shards power triggered at the end of his turn and even before a death save was ever rolled he was dead. That one I didn't feel bad about because it was honestly such an incredibly risky decision, where he would have been 100% safe doing things a certain way and never risked dying at all.

 

[Aegeri]

Dark Sun: The Builder's Cry​

Saturday's game began with the party freshly leveled up to 4 and deciding what to do with their unconscious Jhakar. After some debate, one of the players had a great idea and decided to use the Jhakar to find where the Ssurran's were camped out. At this point this was nowhere in the "script" and I had intended to leave the stuff with the ssurrans - why they are chasing the PCs so vigorously and in such numbers - to much later in this module (towards the end). But this idea made me rethink that and in a risky move, I dropped a lot of my previous work to run with the PCs new idea.

This always has its consequences - particularly in preparation but it is important to remember that you should go with your PCs ideas as much as possible (especially if they make sense). I also liked it because it lets me put the ssurran's out of the way and move to other monsters later on. The main problem of course was the PCs needed a logical way to deal with the Jhakar's uncanny senses. This ability basically means the Jhakar ignores concealment, which makes it a bit hard to hide from the beastie as he's running back home (this is a desert).

After some rather appropriate for the setting - if morbid - discussion about wearing ssurran skins as a kind of impromptu disguise, the party chose to just use scent glands and clothing to mask their scent. Effectively they couldn't hide from creatures visually, but they could hide from the Jhakar's sense of smell. Mechanically I decided to represent this with a global effect, none of the Jhakar's with the uncanny sense trait would gain any benefit from it. So this meant the PCs could more easily use stealth to move past the Jhakar's without being noticed.

This plan was pretty sound to me, because I had described quite a host of Ssurran's descending upon the caravan. As the caravan guards were winning the fight clearly and the Ssurrans were not yet fully routed or fleeing there was no threat to the caravan. This gave the party an ideal opportunity to get back to the far less defended ssurran camp (or whatever hidey hole they were in) to kill the one they knew was leading them (the skull covered shaman from a few sessions ago).

The players initiated their plans and started to follow the Jhakar as it tracked toward the east and then south. It was following a subtle and safe route towards a mountainous region nearby to the caravan's path. After some checks for stealth, the party managed to avoid notice from a group of scouting ssurrans and moved into a very hilly region of dunes. These dunes were quite dangerous as numerous highly silty regions - dangerous to any creature unfamiliar with the terrain - littered the more solid sandy path. After the Jhakar disappeared over a large dune in the distance, the PCs found a very silty depression between two large dunes.

Upon entering a ssurran dune stalker came over the ridge and encountered the PCs. The ssurran rapidly realized not all was right in the world and signaled a group of hidden Jhakar's and Kanks - placed within the silt in an ambush position. It's worth noting fluff wise - though during the game this wasn't clear to the PCs - that they had already passed several of these ambush positions. The scent from the dead ssurrans they smothered on themselves, ensured that the previous Jhakar's didn't even notice them pass as anything out of the ordinary.

Unfortunately now they had been signaled by the ssurran sentry this wasn't going to be the case. Several Jhakar's - including the somewhat more vicious Jhakar trapjaw - plus a handful of kanks rose from within the silt to attack!

The players first priority was eliminating the sentry before he could run off and raise the alarm. Hence the rapid movement of Ka'Cha and Eshara to intercept him.​

The PCs started immediately getting into combat with the sentry as a priority, leaving the other characters - plus bob the crodlu of course - to deal with the remaining Jhakar and Kanks. The sentry of course was rapidly screwed in this combat, as Eshara used lodestone lure to hold him adjacent while the monk pelted the crap out of him as well. Any chance of the PCs giving themselves away was removed easily on the first turn - reducing the drama of the combat a bit I felt. The assassin quickly dispatched a Jhakar in a single gory blow, which just goes to show how handy death attack is (otherwise the monster would have got a turn on 2 hp or so!).

Once again though I can't help but comment on just how paranoid the Jhakar's seem to make PCs with their opportunistic chomp. Although only level 1 beasties, their numbers and the damage they can do with a solid chomp makes PCs very paranoid of ending their turn around them. Squishy characters especially have a lot to fear from the deadly jaws of the Jhakar. With CA a solid chomp can deal 20+ points of damage. The net effect is usually changing what the PC will do, where initiate in particular choose a more defensive action over pure blasting.

Overall though the combat was handled well, but I actually did have a specific goal in mind as well in this encounter. Other than the potential drama of being discovered, I wanted to wear down the parties extra "member" bob a bit. Now bob has 3 surges and 55 hp (I gave him some extra surges so he could be useful in the odd combat). I count him - technically - as party equipment and while he has his own actions, I tend to ignore him when determining the XP value of an encounter. This is a whole crapload of HP though for the party and his pounce power is quite useful. This lets him move eight squares and attack twice is more than handy.

Here my goal was actually to deliberately attack him and wear down his HP. This would make committing bob for the extra attacking power to future encounters a more difficult decision. Unfortunately for bob acid REALLY loves him and the spitting kanks reliably pelted him with it. Bob did get some beaky revenge a bit later on, but by the end of the combat bob ended on 0 surges and around 49 HP remaining. That's a bit for an emergency, but ultimately means he'll probably have to hang back (or risk terrible terrible death).

Kanks and acid seemed to disagree with poor bob quite firmly. The crodlu was most unimpressed with his repeated acid dosing this encounter - losing most of his surges.​

The encounter was handled very easily in the end - though I did get a good chunk out of the new leader. At the same time important lessons were learned in how to present information. As I mentioned earlier on, the PCs didn't really notice the effect of their scent masking due to it being unclear what was happening while following. The ambushing creatures above seemed to be a bit deus ex machina like in mechanics (coming out of nowhere effectively). This made me think about how to present this sort of challenge to the PCs using a map, so it was more clear what exactly was happening as they travel. I mean athas is basically sand dunes, silt and rocks - a pretty miserable place. So conveying what the PCs actions have done to avoid encounters was something I didn't really do that well. I think the players felt that they had been a bit forced into an encounter (in some ways yes though - but I wanted to make things a bit dramatic!), when in reality they had actually entirely avoided one with their scent gland trick.

For the next section of the campaign, I'll address this by using a map and breaking down encounters some more. So when the PCs get to certain places, they can more easily tell what is going on and what they are trying to avoid (or how what they're doing might avoid it). This will give some tangible visual feedback to the descriptions and help clarify what is happening. I am eager to see how this is received next week, because I have some pretty solid ideas how to make this fun and interesting. The side benefit is that it will make travel feel a bit more tangible as well by just having a local map.

 

[Aegeri]

Eberron: Dark Prophecy​

After the party had ventured through towns filled with murderous arachnids, to farms, to forests and now through this spider infested cave they had finally reached their goal: Arianne and the last of her spidery guardians awaited the party ahead. There was little time to mourn the loss of the other characters from the party, but they did drag Marhu from out of the water first. After salvaging whatever equipment they could, the party marched forth through the narrow cavern towards the ominous sounds of wedding music.

After breaching a waterfall, the PCs were greeted with a horrifying mockery of a "wedding". Numerous townspeople had been cocooned in place, only their eyes exposed to look upon the ceremony at the "altar" - crudely made out of webs. There was even a webbed up gazebo like structure in the room as well. Of course there were a great amount of smaller spiders, two phase spiders and two deathjump spiders at the altar. Most horrifying of all, Arianne had tried to put the two hideous spiders into a fancy shirt and a dress! They looked horrible with their eight legs poking through holes in the respective clothing - a crime against nature AND fashion.

Leonan, the man of her obsessions who she had abducted was also at the altar - drooling uncontrollably and probably not in command of all his mental faculties. Urik, the brother of Arden as well as Job who is Jebs identical twin brother were also "observing" the hideous wedding display as well.

Arianne wasn't happy to see the party crashing her wedding and oh boy, if you've watched bridezilla before those women have nothing on this.​

You'll notice that this encounter starts with a "sea" of spiders between the party and Arianne, with a lot of innocent webbed up townspeople in the middle. This is to spread out the minions and make it difficult to get to the altar in a single turn. It also prevents the party from easily using AoE powers to exterminate the minions, because in their weakened state none of the townspeople will survive any hit that damages them.

Arianne herself is a very strong leader, but has immensely poor attacks. Her basic attack for example gives herself a relatively clumsy slash with her own dagger - but she really needs her arachnid friends to fight effectively. She packs a aura 2, which grants a +1 bonus to attacks to all arachnids within the radius. Additionally, she can make arachnids take an extra attack as a minor action and cause them to frenzy. Frenzy damages the spider in question, but it allows it to attack every enemy adjacent to it in exchange. You should bear this power in mind, it becomes rather important later.

The parties Wizard began combat by thwarting my carefully plotted tactics and blowing all the minions up on the first turn - albeit at the cost of a single townsperson. This shows the utility of a power that can rearrange enemies - hypnotic pattern in this case and then dumping an AoE on them.

One villager for eight spiders, is that truly a fair price? IS IT TRULY?​

This ensured the minions had no significant impact on the combat, but the phase spiders and deathjump "groomsman and bridesmaid" were having none of that. Leaping or teleporting into combat, followed quickly by Arianne. Ryske rapidly dispatched one spider in almost a single blow, but then started to have an off day with her accuracy for the next few rounds. The spiders kept maneuvering around and under Ariannes direction, chipped away at the parties HP. A frenzied deathjump spider flailed around ineffectually before dying - an unfortunate sacrifice for Arianne's glorious day.

After some time it looked like the combat would soon be over, especially as the parties new battlemind defender had a handy power that stopped the spiders slowing poison from affecting the party. This ensured nobody would get stunned by failed saves to phase spider venom! A very handy choice. However, with Squinter having summoned his zombie (Dretch) but leaving it to its own intrinsic action this caused a bit of a problem. Whenever you take a standard/move after not commanding the zombie he takes 1d6 damage, which was enough to drop him to chronically low HP. Upon the remaining phase spiders turn, it took the opportunity to bite him down into negative HP! Arianne soon moved in to take advantage of the situation, with the zombie starting his rampage taking out another townsperson. Here is where the combat got pretty interesting pretty quickly.

Squinter goes down to the phase spiders deadly bite!​

The battlemind whacked the spider, bloodying the foul beast but not actually outright killing it. Tybalt had expended his healing reserves earlier in the combat, so could not heal squinter from his position. He took a shot at the deadly phase spider though and *almost* killed the foul beast - reducing it to a single HP! The drow rogue then went and I thought the battle was over at this point. Unfortunately, she rolled a 2 on the attack roll and the spider was spared - only just - :O

Arianne's next turn was now an interesting decision. The spider was doomed most likely on his next turn, but surrounded by 3 PCs. The obvious thing to do here was throw a frenzy attack on the spider - which was marked by the Battlemind - to deal as much damage as possible. The interesting thing with this is that the spider was adjacent to three PCs - including Squinter (who is on negative HP and dying!). This made an interesting scenario:

The set up for a dramatic set of attacks!​

In the first case, the initial attack would always be against the battlemind - this is because the spider is marked and this is at least one attack guaranteed. The rogue would be next on the agenda - I always attack conscious PCs first if possible. If the rogue was hit, the spider would suffer mind spikes effect and die before attacking squinter. On the other hand, if the spider missed the rogue he could then attack squinter - more than likely killing him :O

Given that squinter is unconscious, the +5 bonus to attacks and +2 from CA, combined with Ariannes +1 bonus to attacks essentially meant the spider missed only on a roll of 1 or 2. He did need to roll relatively well for damage, but if he did at least 9 points of damage that would be a third character death - in only two sessions!

Now this wasn't an easy decision, but ultimately roleplaying this out dictated that Arianne would sacrifice the weakened spider for any opportunity she could to win. So frenzy it was and the attacks went like this:

The battlemind was missed as the frenzied spider reared up and struck out with its fangs ineffectually! Unable to find a soft kink within his scale armor. It then swung around and slashed at the rogue and just missed by the barest of hairs. Ironically, the -2 penalty from the mark was the telling difference in this attack failing. Had the spider hit it would have dropped Ryske who was on a mere 4 HP, but it would have seen to the creatures death before attacking Squinter. Squinter was the final target and only a miracle - rolling a 1 or 2 or a poor damage roll - would save him. As it turns out the spider reared up over the fallen gnome and slammed its chelicerae right in - its final injection of poison just finishing the wizard off in death. Effectively they died together, even with the battlemind using mind spike there was no hope.

At this point it's interesting to point out this situation came about due to a core difference between how different defenders work. The battlemind's mind spike is an immediate reaction, which means it needs to wait for the creatures attack to resolve before it works. This is different to the paladin, where the spider would have exploded regardless of what he did and a fighter - who would have got an immediate interrupt attack. Although I've often thought about this happening in theory, to actually see it happen in practice was quite interesting.

Though it did make for a very exciting turn, I was actually a bit disappointed that another PC died. Especially as it was literally a last minute shot. Then again if you re-read the notes from the last game, it's worth noting that Marhu also died to a 1 HP monster that just managed to do enough to kill him. Maybe 1 HP monsters just want it more?

In any event, without spiders to assist Arianne was extremely ineffectual and the PCs soon took their bloody - if costly - revenge against her. With her bloody death and the aberrant mark releasing bloody spider like creatures, she was literally consumed from the inside out. Nothing more than a bloody sac of skin was left and the control over the insects/arachnids she commanded ended - the horde scattering itself to the winds.

At the end of that battle the PCs got a level to 4, but I was left in a somewhat awkward position. With half the original PCs now dead, I had to readjust a fair amount of treasure and now introduce another two characters! Thankfully I decided to introduce the other new character next session, which provide an opening to introduce the wizard players new character at the same time. I decided to leave the clean up and aftermath of this module to next session, where the PCs will have a month to do things to themselves and enjoy New Cyre's thanks for their heroic acts.

Unfortunately, this was only the beginning of the true threat to Eberron...

 

[Aegeri]

Dark Sun: The Builder's Cry​

Before starting, it's worth noting that the party has changed a bit since the original 5.

Alek - Human Noble Adept Ardent (Leader)
Eshara - Human Gladiator Battlemind (Defender)
Initiate - Tiefling Elemental Priest Mage|Pyromancer (Controller)
Ka'Cha - Thri-Kreen Wasteland Nomad Monk (Striker)
Zephan - Human Athasian Minstrel Executioner|Assassin (Striker)

Continuing on from last session, I had to make most of this unplanned to fit with my PCs plan. So presenting some of the information as to what was going on was more difficult than I had anticipated. Particularly in making it clear to the PCs what their skills and other checks were actually accomplishing. To make things more clear, I presented an overall "map" of the local area where the ssurrans were hiding out.

This map shows the relative positions of the ssurrans and the PCs. Essentially showing the PCs where they were and what encounters they were avoiding. In this case, stealth successfully avoided the first ssurran patrol encounter entirely and got them an entire surprise round on the second group. This wasn't a bad deal at all and made things pretty clear what their checks/ideas were doing mechanically.​

After passing by a patrol unnoticed and with some murder to go with it, the PCs came across a deep pit in the sand where the ssurrans had unceremoniously thrown the bodies of those they killed. The creatures numerous beasts were then let loose to feed as they wish upon the corpses. Here they noticed that one man was still alive - albeit crippled - and the ssurrans were having their Jhakar run the man down like sport.

This didn't sit with the parties pyromancer, Initiate in particular and the PCs having successfully infiltrated without being seen, jumped the ssurrans at the pit with a surprise round. This did have the effect of making the subsequent defenders at the cave entrance aware of intruders - but the PCs could gain valuable information about what they were heading into from the man (a decent choice).

The start of the encounter saw the PCs face off against a new enemy - a ssurran beastmaster. This canny ssurran directs his beasts making them far more deadly - giving them all +5 damage and allowing them to easily escape area/burst attacks. Makes him a prime target to kill as quickly as possible!​

The PCs started the combat by getting mixed up with the Jhakar and other creatures, with again everything turning into another "rugby scrum". The ability of the monsters to scatter, due to the beastmasters interrupt avoiding the more damaging burst powers of the pyromancer. This also made them somewhat more mobile and protected the level 1 Jhakar particularly well.

Eventually the overwhelming presence of the beastmaster's damage aura, sniping by the kanks on the rocks and the sheer number of Jhakar attacks dropped both Alek and Initiate! A smart use of one of the parties healing fruits saw Alek up on his feet and then he rapidly restored the situation.

Alek and Initiate were both dropped by the sheer weight of the Jhakar's attacks. Particularly because Jhakar can do extremely heavy damage if they happen to get CA against a target.​

I really have to say that in a difficult encounter the deep healing resources the ardent has with a power like energizing strike really counts for a lot. Especially as the surge healing is a mere 2 PP, if kept around it can be quite effective even into higher levels. A solid advantage for the ardent.

In any event while the PCs were clearing out the rest of the ssurrans and finally killed the beastmaster - initiate was downed by a final suicidal kank charge (mostly so the PCs wouldn't have a hard time killing it). Here came one of the funniest incidents I've ever seen in 4E - caused somewhat by a quirk in how I like to run encounters. Essentially initiate was down with ongoing damage remaining on him and requiring to make death saves. Even with no monsters remaining, I don't end the combat and require the PCs to stabilize/heal the dying character. There was considerable debate among the players as to using a healing fruit on initiate or going with heal checks.

Now the heal check DC is *not* intimidating by any means, yet on the first round of this the remaining two PCs couldn't make either check: Rolling an 8 and a 9 respectively (DC 10 to have initiate use his second wind). The fallen pyromancer managed to fail his death save and the second round saw further hilarious heal check related failures. Two further rolls of 8 and 9 - so close but not quite - saw one player ready an action to force feed a healing fruit to him just in case. Thankfully Alek finally remembered something about anatomy and stopped the bleeding - getting initiate to spend his second wind just before his next turn.

The hilarity of the sheer fail in this situation is not to be underestimated.

Initiate actually failed a death save and was about to get require a second death save as the PCs used heal checks - though one readied an action to use a healing fruit immediately before his turn just in case.​

With the man saved, he told the PCs what he knew about the ssurrans and what they had been doing. Most importantly, he alluded that the ssurrans had something to do with making the sun shine even hotter than normal and they were performing some kind of ritual. Worse, this ritual uses powerful defiling magic and required copious numbers of living sacrifices. The ssurrans follow their leader, the shaman who the PCs saw adorning himself with the skulls of the dead apparently is behind the ritual. Additionally, he gives the PCs whatever ceramic he took from the corpses of the dead. Plus a vial of liquid that can be coated on the body to make a protective tattoo giving some fire resistance.

The final encounter of the day saw the PCs assault the last guardians before their actual targets at the cavern entrance. Here two large pits of flame were before the entrance itself. Unlike most terrain features, this was actually considerably more useful to the PCs than the ssurrans. This is because both initiate and the recently tattoo'ed Zephan had a degree of fire resistance - allowing them to hide within to avoid the melee attacks of the ssurrans. This was particularly good for initiate, who was rather drained of surges by this point.

Additionally this encounter introduced the first of a recurring creature in the game - Sunwarped monsters. Sunwarped monsters can have a wonderful array of mutations and abilities, so I built a simple 'skeleton' for these creatures and then added powers/abilites as I felt like. This means the PCs never quite know what an individual sunwarped monster will do until they engage it - making them especially dangerous.

The opening of the encounter, with the two pits of fire and the sunwarped abominations being unleashed from their shackles to assault the PCs.​

This encounters most notable feature is that I rolled terribly for the majority of it, ensuring the relatively low level monsters had literally as difficult a time as possible. At the same time, the PCs rapidly honed in and beat the snot out of the beastmaster, ensuring his effect on the encounter was minimal. Overall despite having been wounded in the previous battle considerably, the PCs passed this one losing a relatively small amount of HP.

Zephan and Initiate hide in the flames for protection, though one of the sunwarped monsters similarly didn't fear fire that much. Overall this helped preserve the most 'soft' members of the parties surges considerably.​

Of course, once again low level monsters with hardly any HP decided right at the end to overachieve. Right before the final blows of the combat, both of the remaining Jhakar decided to have a good chunk of the Battlemind - who hasn't had a good dirt nap in a while (since getting the Scars of Bloodsand and Toughness). One Jhakar slammed into her with considerable effort on its bite, rolling near max damage and with CA doing 20 points! OUCH! The other Jhakar then came to the party with a brutal critical hit, dragging Eshara down into the sand and knocking her unconscious.

Of course neither Jhakar lasted much longer than that, but the sheer hilarity of these monsters not hitting anything almost all encounter and then brutally downing the defender on their respective final turns was comedic.

That's some effort there chums, except it was about 3 turns too late. Sometimes monsters are just slackers. Clearly the beatings are not improving morale sufficiently.​

With the remaining defenders dead, all that stood between the PCs and their quarry was whatever lurked within the cave... waiting for them.

 

[Aegeri]

Eberron: Dark Prophecy​

As with my Dark Sun game, I'll begin by pointing out the new party as the personnel has shuffled around a bit since the game started.

Andraos Zakarash - Kalashtar Battlemind - (Defender)
Dain - Human Sentinel - (Leader)
Hajan - Cindersoul Genasi Barbarian - (Striker)
Ryske - Drow Rogue - (Striker)
Dr. Tybalt Ximil - Human Artificer (Leader)

Joining the party this session - fresh from their stint with giant spiders everywhere - is Dain the human sentinel and Hajan the cindersoul genasi barbarian. Two very good choices, as the sentinel is quite a flexible fellow who does a bit of being a controller and can function as a secondary backup healer. The barbarian is just a hard hitting character, good mobility and again much more resilience than the assassin - which performed consistently poorly over the entire time of the game.

The worst thing about having to introduce new characters to a game is justifying how they find the party. Sometimes it is optimal just to have a PC "appear" in a convenient - if somewhat verisimilitude breaking - manner like how Andraos lucked out with the other characters breaking him from his crystalline "lunch-pouch" before he became, well... lunch. In this case, I deliberately decided to have Dain and Hajan introduced after the events with the giant spiders was resolved. This allowed me to turn something that is normally a considerable weakness into a strength - with one of the new characters already being familiar with an upcoming antagonist.

Tying in the new characters origin and goals with something already happening in the game, means it isn't so verisimilitude breaking when they join up with the original party. Additionally it helps get the PCs whose characters died back into the game more seamlessly and gives them some immediate direction. In this case a druid belonging to an extremist and violent sect from the Eldeen reaches called a Child of Winter. Lyrea was directly responsible for the death of numerous members of Dain's family, destroying his farm and almost killing him as well. Ample motivation to trek a good distance from his home - also in the Eldeen reaches - to find her apparent new hiding place in Breland.

Of course before any meeting of characters took place, I had to resolve the situation after the parties victory over Arianne. Firstly, the PCs got a rich reward of gold and essentially their next month of life completely arachnid free. It is important to give the characters some time to themselves before anything else happened. The first is to ensure the game doesn't feel like an endless serious of disastrous events. The second was to let them use their gold to enchant some items, potions or whatever else without any particular pressure on them. Basically to ensure that the players can do a bit of character development and roleplaying without any particular immediate pressure.

Of course such breaks aren't going to last in the life of an adventurer. It was soon time that they were called back to Warden Gyraxian's home. The PCs met another NPC called Helga - a woman from a nearby town called Stonehelm - who had an unusual problem. She needed to find a skilled artificer who could brew potions of cold resistance, due to her town and much of the surrounding area becoming suddenly caught within a massive blizzard. Now bear in mind if you're reading this not too familiar with Eberron that:

1) Breland is basically a huge 'food basket' and has really reasonable temperate weather.

2) It's currently in the middle of summer timeline wise.

So a sudden unexpected blizzard is a more than strange event. Particularly when the PCs heard Helga's various ideas as to what may be behind it.

1) A man with a strange "dragonmark" was reportedly seen in town before the blizzard began. He was reported to be ranting about being 'experimented' on, but unfortunately nobody has verified if the man is even alive or that he exists.

2) Rumor has it that a white dragon lives up in the nearby mountains - though nobody has seen it in some time and it doesn't bother the town much.

3) She also mentioned that Eustace Isaacs - Tybalts arch nemesis - and a strange woman came into town recently since the blizzard started.

Digesting the disturbing news and working on their own theories, the party did their remaining things in town and moved off towards Stonehelm. On the road they ran into two strange individuals, a human man and a rather stranger fellow seemingly made of fire. The new PCs got acquainted with the "original" party (which is still probably getting used to their defender!). Here yet another possibility for the current weather was bought up, with Dain and Hajan having supposed tracked Lyrea (Child of Winter) to this region. It wasn't long after this revelation that they noticed a strange owl watching. It soon became clear that was no ordinary owl and a quick blast from Tybalts gun saw it explode into magical essence. Nothing more than a conjuration!

At this point all hell broke loose! Huge white furred humanoids appeared from the falling snow and attacked! These horrible creatures were yeti and they were interested in one thing, murder. Unfortunately, maptools dice roller had other ideas and the yeti weren't filled with murder: but rolling comically low on most attacks! None the less, this was the first test of the new characters and they did pretty damn well. Dain added a solid secondary leader support role to Tybalt and Hajan smashed into one yeti, almost obliterating the creature in a single brutal critical hit. Overall I think the PCs were relieved to not be fighting giant spiders anymore.

Of course as is always the case, right at the end of a combat when it's practically over some monster decided to overachieve. In this case it was the Yeti hurler, with his ability to throw large splintering rocks at characters. Standing well back for most of the fight he had been rather ignored - but right at the end with a couple of PCs knocked prone in the snow he managed to pick off Dains spirit companion and bloody Hajan.

Here in a single throw the Yeti hurler took out Dain's animal companion and brutally critted the fallen Barbarian - bloodying him. The hurler didn't get a lot of time to enjoy his victory, as he was promptly splattered by the PCs shortly after.​

So the first combat ended up being pretty straight forward and the PCs didn't take a significant amount of damage. Interestingly though there is almost a certain paranoia about damage creeping in - undoubtedly due to how tough some of the previous combats had been. This is always good to see, as it seems the party is taking some precautions by buying some healing potions and other items. Hopefully this will continue into them buying some cold resistance potions of their own...

In any event the PCs ran into an old friend of theirs on the road, Rudolf (or that guy with the overlong and annoying name). From their last encounter on the road featuring a cart stuck in a farm surrounded by bugs, they found his cart stuck in a nasty drift of snow and ice. Naturally they stopped for a chat and learned some more about the town they were going to - further opening up the possibilities.

5) The town's warden Giovan recently hired a group of "mercenaries" to hunt down and kill a creature called a wendigo - which the party vaguely remembered as some kind of demon.

6) A tribe of local barbarians in the mountains - who sometimes trade with members of the town - have recently cut off all contact. Nobody knows what has happened to them.

After thanking him for the information and freeing his cart - thankfully before some loose alchemist fire vials caused unnecessary harm to his lucky grandfather clock - the party marched onwards into Stonehelm to find out more about what was going on....

 

[Aegeri]

Dark Sun: The Builder's Cry​

With the PCs having trekked across the desert for some time, they came to the cavern where the leader of the ssurran horde was busy casting powerful defiling ritual magic. Burning light filtered through great open wounds in the ceiling of the cave, illuminating certain regions and burning those foolish enough to stay there. With a snarl at the foolish intruders invading his domain, the shaman instructed his fellows to attack!

Start of the encounter, with the two larger creatures being hideous sunwarped otyughs - buried deep within the soft sand and hidden from the PCs view at the start of the combat.​

This combat was quite challenging to make and involves several elements. The first was to make sure the PCs understood that "Light is Bad", because the lighter sandy areas were affected by burning light. This light burns enemies that end their turn there and can potentially even confer sun sickness :O Combined with Valkoori (the Shaman) granting vulnerability to fire in an aura, it meant that PCs who get stuck in the light by being grabbed might be in some trouble. To make the effect less brutal, I decided that the light effect would need an attack vs. fortitude to actually damage PCs.

So effectively the otyughs were creatures that could pull enemies and grab them in the light - holding them there for the sunlight to damage them. Valkoori was a pretty solid elite, with a slight mechanical twist that I wanted to try, inspired by Gamma-World:

Gamma World elites simply gain an extra standard action at the beginning of each of their turns. This means they have considerable choices as to what to do in combat - because a standard action is extremely flexible (obviously). What I found translating this mechanic to DnD was it had some unforeseen consequences. The best strategy always ended up being to spam any area/burst attacks the elite had - to maximize damage. As sunburst was originally at-will, it meant in the right circumstances he could potentially attack the entire party three times with it. This seemed somewhat excessive, especially on a party drained of surges and general healing.

Instead what I did was to make the at-wills somewhat better, but make any burst/blast attack that he did recharge. So when he could use a burst/blast attack, it couldn't just be used over and over. This balanced out the power of gaining an entire standard action very nicely, without losing the general concept that an elite was supposed to attack multiple times per round. Overall although things conspired against me - see below - this was an interesting and worthwhile experiment. I will definitely be building future elites - and perhaps even solos - in this manner as well.

Returning to the game though, the party started combat by getting surprised by one of the otyughs, as it burst forth from the sands to try to grab the dexterous monk Ka'Cha. Fortunately for Ka'Cha the beast was too slow and he got away before it could really affect him. The first turn saw some characters being bitten and chewed up, with Valkori striding into combat to attack the PCs as well.

Everything getting mixed up.​

Unfortunately the minions had a rubbish time, even with some of them getting a +3 bonus to attack (CA+Charging) not a single one could hit the broad side of a barn! It was about this time that maptools decided that was the way things should be and sure enough, everyone was rolling terribly not long after. Although hilarious, poor luck from everyone caused the combat to go really long and basically reduced the excitement considerably. I couldn't hit, the PCs couldn't hit and so it was rather like flailing at one another entirely ineffectively.

Even so, this didn't stop Alek from essentially finishing off the majority of the actual monsters in the encounter. A brutal critical hit with an augmented withered technique being particularly notable for finishing off one of the last otyughs.

The otyugh went down in a big heap when poked very firmly with Alek's gouge in a sensitive place.​

Although it did end up being fun, the chronic missing meant that the light never played a huge part of the encounter - albeit it did change the PCs tactics in avoiding it. This meant the encounter was soon left to Valkori to more or less do by himself, but a brutal critical hit from the executioner left him reeling considerably. Alek then - true to form - finished him off with a suitable charge and that was the end of the ssurran's pursuit of the caravan. With their leader dead, the rest of the ssurrans will scatter to the desert and the PCs had won an important victory. Not to mention giving me my other challenge: Suitable loot!

Valkori fell to the PCs at last, ending his tyranny and ensuring the caravan's safety... from the ssurrans at least.​

If there is one problem I have with 4E, it's that the new design rules have poorly supported the common/uncommon/rare items. When I started this game, I envisaged a few months where I would have to do it myself and then Mordenkainen's Magical Emporium (or other books/articles) would fill the void. Unfortunately this hasn't really happened and because I don't want to hand out many "common" items - I want what magic items I hand out to be unique/pretty decent - there aren't many options.

So making them will have to do.

The first item I made was a variation on the - currently terrible - gauntlet's of ogre power. Unfortunately as I don't have much of a baseline to go on for many rares, I figured a single use daily power, boost to two skills and permanent increase to damage was probably just worth above uncommon. I have not ruled out revisiting the item somewhat to make it feel a bit more hard hitting.

Bracers of Furious Fire; Level 7 Rare
Property: Your melee attacks deal an additional +2 fire damage.
Property: You gain a +2 bonus to strength and athletics checks.
Power (Daily): When you hit an enemy with a melee attack you may add 1d10 fire damage as a free action.

The other item I made was an uncommon, but one that I think fit a bit better than the original +1 to will item I based it on, which really should be common (it merely has the first property and nothing else. That's an uncommon? Really?).

Skull of the Sun Shaman; Level 4 Uncommon
Property: You gain a +1 bonus to will defense vs. charm effects
Power (Daily): If you begin your turn dazed, dominated or stunned you may end the effect and continue your turn as normal.

A nice power with a reasonably middling property seemed fair enough to me on this point for uncommon.

After getting their new stuff - with quite the fire theme you might notice - the PCs noticed a crudely painted mural over the stone altar in the cave. There they saw a sea of obsidian buildings reaching up into a blazing sky. In the center of this was an image of Athas' already extremely cruel sun - glowing even brighter than usual. At the foot of the crumbling obsidian city were various humanoids cowering in fear, being burned alive or simply turned into warped mutated monsters. A quick history check revealed to the PCs, the ominous thought that this mural may be related to the mysterious risen city the caravan is now traveling towards...

 

[Aegeri]

Eberron: Dark Prophecy​

Before describing what my players have begun doing in this adventure, it's worth noting what I've done very differently to my "regular" design of a 4E campaign. Due to how difficult it was pre-MM3 to challenge players in paragon/epic tier, I got into a habit of carefully engineering each "Days" adventures. This meant out of say, five total encounters, the PCs would get drawn into doing certain things due to specific challenges/difficulties. For example one encounter would be very artillery based, with difficult or blocking terrain preventing easily getting near them and similar.

This meant that I designed each adventure very linearly but in a very balanced manner. For example I would know that X encounters would drain my PCs Y resources, but then provide ample opportunity for them to rest. This was absolutely not the way I wanted to do things though, but due to the fact it was pretty much required to metagame every encounter specifically to challenge PCs. Once MM3 came out this suddenly no longer became required. Monsters were threatening enough and had interesting powers, so even if you didn't build a 100% optimal group an EL/EL+1 or EL+2 encounter was really challenging.

The disadvantages of the way I designed things are obvious: It felt very on rails and didn't sell epic as anything more than a dungeon crawl. Albeit a very high powered dungeon crawl with extremely high stakes for failing. At the same time while I did manage to often fake "choice" and making sure every part of my paragon/epic games felt logical - the engineering required to make them challenging meant they weren't obviously like that. With MM3 creatures being so challenging however, I wanted to take this opportunity with this 'open' module in Dark Prophecy to design 4E like I would want to: Giving the PCs a goal and letting them figure out how to get there - not nudge or force them down scripted encounters.

To accomplish this as I mentioned in the last post, I gave the PCs numerous hints and ideas as to what was going on. Plus some initial locations suggested by talking to people in town. Then that was it, the PCs were left to their own devices and could go or do whatever they wanted to do. Their initial instinct was to go to the Blind Bear Tribe in the hills - then pay a visit to the ominous sounding white dragon that lived up in the mountains. At the same time, they could equally have gone investigating the missing hunters in the forest or they could have gone looking for Eustace Isaac's and his accomplices suspected laboratory.

All of these lead to different encounters - but to make the PCs choices matter there have to be consequences. Their actions have to logically do something and clearly do something or there isn't really any choice. At the same time, I'm one human being and while I have a lot of DnD experience I don't have infinite time. So I need to be able to build solid - fun - encounters and make the most of anything I do build.

So I've got a rough system on how to accomplish this and it's the way I now design all my 4E games.

1) The first is to give the PCs a general direction and make sure it's interesting to them. The secret of DMing in any game is not to give the PCs infinite choices, but rather lead them down a story track that is compatible with their characters and work with them. A good example is that the player of Hajan named the Blind Bear Tribe and developed some history with them spontaneously.

Instead of saying "No", I immediately integrated all of his ideas - including the name - into the game. By doing this I allow him to feel like he's able to direct some of the story and it helps tie the PCs into the story more. By having these relations, it inserts interesting roleplaying opportunities and gives me some ideas as well. In a similar manner, I've wrote Eustace Isaacs - one of the other PCs personal antagonists - into each adventure to bring along an overall story arc across each adventure - trying them together.

2) Workload is a massive issue as any DM and when you make an open module like this you need to consider what you can handle. The first thing to do was to consider encounters that would change over time and those that didn't. If an encounter doesn't change, those can be safely made and then ignored until the PCs encounter them. For example a trapped monster that only pops out when released - even so it might technically starve to death if the PCs take enough time. Encounters that changed - due to the PCs actions - needed to consider several different "states". Basically to reduce work the encounters change the monsters - not the actual area or similar.

One example that I'll describe below was the difference in going to the Blind Bear tribe first or after a day. On the first day the PCs arrive, if they go there immediately they discover the immediate aftermath of the horrific massacre that occurred there. Besieged for a considerable amount of time, the Blind Bear Tribe has been exterminated except for one badly wounded individual - whose firmly insane cannibalistic clanmates haven't realized he's still alive. This allows the PCs to pick up a potential ally and find out what is going on. Now if they go later the encounter is entirely different and the wounded man is firmly dead.

In order not to punish PCs unfairly or turn the game into a puzzle guessing game, each area changes over time - so regardless of the PCs first decisions they can get critical information. The difference is what kind of information they get and how that directs the adventure. In other words they can play this adventure multiple times - theoretically - getting entirely different story progression inevitably. While everything eventually will lead to similar points, their overall solution to the unnatural blizzard doesn't have to be the same and nor will the path to that solution be the same.

To make this process easier, I made all the monsters used in the module first and then said "What do I need them to for and why?". In encounters where monsters "upgrade" or "change", I simply replace monsters with roughly equivalent XP - meaning I needed most creatures to be around the same level for this to work easily. Of course this gave me two challenges in particular: Because nothing in this module is linear just about - except a couple of roadside encounters - the PCs might face enemies in any order theoretically. This means that the ELs might be quite low to high - they start at 4th level. The highest EL is around 8 - but occur near the end of the adventure with some rare exceptions. At the same time, some of the lowest ELs are around 3 - which if the PCs encounter especially later on at level 6 (near the end of the adventure) won't be a problem at all.

The challenge here is obvious: What if the PCs run into harder encounters early on? For example I'll describe the initial encounter with the now murderously cannibalistic remnants of the Blind Bear Tribe below, but that was one of the upper EL encounters. At the same time, it's a higher EL because the reward for doing it first was more direct than if the PCs go to another area first. At the same time, I wanted to make it clear that sometimes you just have to run away - the next encounter immediately after the initial battle in the village was an example of this. In fact emphasizing the concept that flight was important, was not just essential for fights that might be quite difficult....

The overall effect is that I build the same amount of encounters, then simply replace the monsters within them. This means I use most of what I work on easily, while not giving myself an unreasonable amount of work to get the more "sandbox" effect I want. By keeping everything around the same level, I also keep things relatively balanced without grossly overwhelming the PCs. This also ensures even as the PCs level up, the encounters that are somewhat lower in EL aren't entirely pointless and will still be a reasonable challenge.

3) Time. The PCs need to journey to regions far away from the town, but most importantly these journeys take considerable time and effort. To make a round trip from Dragon's Peak to the town is 36 hours - a day and a half almost. This means the PCs need to carefully plan their journey. Time is their enemy - while some areas don't change much over time some certainly do. The intense blizzard on the mountain gets stronger with every day and thus do their opponents become more bold. After a certain amount of time, even their safe haven may not be so safe anymore.

Another thing I wanted to put a spin on was where to take an extended rest. Within the 'source' of the cold blizzard, PCs who take an extended rest suffer a -1 cumulative penalty to total surges per day. This penalty disappears if they rest within the town itself. Like many things though, I don't like just blind penalties without a way of getting an advantage, so if the PCs rest in the town (and have no current penalty) they get a +1 bonus to their total surge value - making it much more desirable than resting in the wilderness (which also brings the risk of an attack).

These factors combine to give a sense of urgency and importance to the decisions the PCs make. At the same time I was also careful to provide ample time to do things and make some mistakes - so to ensure the PCs cannot become unfairly stuck (or feel like they weren't given enough of a chance to prevent or influence certain key events).

The game itself!​

The PCs started off in town, with various NPCs giving them information and then moving off into the wilderness. The initial destination the PCs picked was the Blind Bear Tribe - especially as Hajan was concerned as to what happened to them. If the tough mountainfolk had disappeared to whatever caused the unnatural blizzard, that could be of grave concern.

The local map of Stonehelm, showing various NPCs the PCs could interact with to gain information. Despite the unnatural weather, the town is surprisingly chipper and nobody gets over fussed about the problems they face. Mostly because they have no idea just how much danger they are in ​

The PCs started by investigating a farm just up the road, discovering that it had been inundated with ferocious - but starving - wolves from the mountains!

Vicious wolf minions and several dire wolves rampaged over the farm, killing Archibald's remaining chickens. Saving chickens was the stuff heroes were born to do.​

This encounter was handled easily enough, with the minion wolves being suitably annoying - but mostly screening the dire wolves attacks. Given that wolves deal more damage to prone targets, getting PCs off their feat to make use of this was the key tactic. For the most part the wolves did fairly reliable damage - assisted by their pack harrier ability to gain CA with two allies adjacent to a target. Inevitably, the PCs cleaned up the wolves but not before a terrible cost - in chicken - had been paid.

Numerous chickens lay dead and so too did Ying Ling, Dain's animal companion. The wolves took a terrible toll, but at least Mrs. Archibald survived as well as three chickens.​

The remaining wolf was critically shot through the head by Tybalts gun and the PCs soon sent Mrs. Archibald back to stonehelm - where it was safer. Curiously to Dain and Hajan, they found more strange tracks of a deer-like creature that walked upright. Unfortunately due to the obscurity of such a monster, nature knowledge checks were unsuccessful at identifying it - a most worrying thing.

Moving onwards the PCs came across the second of the two bridges out of stonehelm, some distance away and were immediately accosted by further Yeti!

Some bridges have trolls, but in Stonehelm the bridges have yeti. I'd take the trolls personally.​

This battle was very different to the first encounter with Yeti. For one thing, the PCs immediately discovered that if yeti get you in a bunch you're in trouble. Although their physical melee attacks are poor - they make up for it with copious options for burst and blast attacks. This ensured they gave the party a considerable hammering early on and once again, Ying Ling the animal companion soon found himself dead - before he could even use combined attack more than once. This is a trend that will continue into the next encounter as well.

In any event, things looked a bit dire for the PCs at this point with Yeti basically everywhere!

Sick and tired of these bloody yeti all over this bloody bridge!​

The PCs fought hard, defending the bridge area largely and a good use of the Kalashtar's racial encounter prevented some solid damage (and the rogue going down). With the death of the leader yeti, with the big blue aura, the combat got substantially easier and the rest of the yeti began to fall soon after.

That's a lot of yeti blood.​

Killing the remaining yeti, the PCs rested up and decided how to progress - heading towards the Blind Bear Tribe first. Due to the extremely cold weather, that was becoming noticeable now the PCs decided to make some cloaks out of the yeti-fur. After some thought, I decided this process could easily be done during an extended rest in town: Providing a blanket +3 bonus to endurance skill checks against the cold.

Carrying on, the PCs found the blizzard becoming stronger and stronger - inevitably requiring an endurance check to hold off the biting cold. In addition, the closer they got to the blind bear tribes encampment the more a terrible wailing noise was heard over the howling wind of the blizzard. Something terrible awaited them and as they reached the village, their fears were soon realized.

A terrible massacre lay before them, with several crazed looking individuals - clearly the remaining members of the tribe - feasting upon the flesh of their fellows. A wounded man lay in one of the nearby huts, but little else had been left and the barbarians and their pack wolves soon turned on the party.

The PCs entered the village to a scene of horror and weren't warmly welcomed at all. If you're wondering about the weird deer things there - those are lesser wendigo minions. A surprise for later in the fight.​

As I mentioned above in my summary of the adventure, these creatures were somewhat higher level than the party - as well as the EL. This encounter was a high risk, but had a solid reward - the knowledge that the wounded barbarian could impart (assuming they could get him back alive). Of course this involved removing the current crazy occupants, who began by hurling themselves into the party, brutally slamming their weapons down. Like many cases beforehand, Ying-Ling did not survive beyond the first round and even the normally stoic Battlemind defender was crunched down numerous times. A desperate use of arc lightning knocked down a whole bunch of people and the battle looked to be won...

The lurking lesser wendigo - foul beasts created from the dead - rose up and attacked the party!​

When suddenly several of the corpses warped, screamed and then twisted into hideous deer and human like abominations. These creatures - wendigo as the PCs would later discover - charged into combat and wreaked further havoc (even though they were mere "minions" at that). Tybalt quickly got up on the fortified walls and keep his distance - "sniping" out the remaining beasts with his strange rifle like weapon.

Fighting hard, the PCs killed the remaining wendigo - but took a massive hammering in the process.​

By the end of the combat the PCs had little left and soon found that the horror hadn't ended yet - further corpses twisted and began to form into more lesser wendigo. A large horde - some 30-40 strong began to turn to the badly wounded characters, their eyes blazing with murder and hunger for flesh. At this point the PCs did the one thing they could, strap on the wounded barbarian to Ying Ling (handily resummoned by Dain) and then run the hell away. This resulted in a dramatic pursuit down the mountain, where the PCs needed to use their skills and cunning to flee from the rapidly closing in wendigo.

Tired and exhausted, the PCs made it over the second of the bridges into town to see the wendigo do something curious: The vile beasts stopped dead and continued no further. Whatever the reason for that, the PCs were safe and now needed to find further information. It seemed these legendary "Wendigo" were not so legendary after all....
​

 

[Derulbaskul]

Tremendous.

I have been meaning to sit down and read this thread for months now and I finally did so tonight. I am very glad I did. I've really enjoyed reading about your two campaigns. (Interestingly, it seems we have very similar DMing styles so I appreciated your self-criticism at a few points because it reinforces some changes I need to make in the way I run games.)

I hope you post more soon.

BTW, reading your Dark Sun campaign notes really makes me want to run a game in that setting, something I have never done. I think I would need the right group of players, though; I'm not sure my normal group would cope with the harshness of the place.

 

[Aegeri]

After a short break from the thread, time for the last two Dark Sun sessions back to back. But first:

BTW, reading your Dark Sun campaign notes really makes me want to run a game in that setting, something I have never done. I think I would need the right group of players, though; I'm not sure my normal group would cope with the harshness of the place.

The degree of harshness and general difficulty is something you can entirely control as the DM. Dark Sun does lend itself by reputation to a more difficult and gritty campaign, but you don't have to be slaughtering players left and right to get that feeling. I personally like to be slightly on the upper end of the difficulty scale, but you can enforce a gritty feeling just by being stingy on things like metal weapons and the harshness of Athas. I think one important thing with Dark Sun is to really hammer home that Athas is a terrible dying place and that there aren't a lot of places worse than it. If you succeed at that, Dark Sun will naturally have a very gritty feeling to it because it will feel like the environment is just as spiteful as any monsters. This means you don't have to be more lethal than a normal campaign, because the feeling will be very different from your standard PoL/FR/Eberron setting.

In any event:

Dark Sun: The Builder's Cry​

So this description following is actually two sessions back to back. The PCs after their victory over the ssurran shaman and his horde of merry lizards, were confronted by a new faction in the giant mess that is the caravan's adventure across Athas. The PCs run into Cha-Rik, a thri-kreen warrior who claims to be leading a group of his fellow clutch-mates against a group of "defilers" who seek a powerful artifact. After some persuasion, the thri-kreen reluctantly revealed to the party they were defending the "Risen City" from defilers and a group of elves in particular. He identified their group as the "Defenders of the Tree" (a rough translation from his Thri-Kreen clicks anyway). The same group of elves that had already requested the PCs help in raiding a certain inix some time ago.


Cha-Rik told the party the elves were merciless and murdered anyone in the wastes who got in their way, particularly to steal whatever magic they could. He claimed the elves were using this magic to try and break into a tomb hidden beneath the city of rising sand to the south (the place the caravan is going, incidentally). Within this tomb he claimed that a powerful artifact lay hidden: A seed of a primordial tree of life. This tree is capable of fueling magical spells and its seeds could one day make Athas green again. Cha-Rik told the party he feared Variya (the elven leader) had awful plans for this seed should she... or other defilers in particular, manage to obtain the artifact.

The party discussed this amongst themselves for a while, inevitably deciding to aid the thri-kreen. Particularly because the PCs thought the elves were total assess to them the first time around. The plan became a decision to basically backstab the elves by luring them out capturing the inix, then having the thri-kreen ambush the elves and help the PCs exterminate them.

So at this point I shall make a diversion to give some deeper explanation as to what is happening story and game wise. The first thing was after wandering around in the desert I wanted to remind the PCs what the whole mess was about anyway: This whole "Risen city" thing. Killing the ssurran leader revealed a mural of the city, foreshadowing what terrible events might occur on Athas should the PCs fail (dun dun dunnn) but also to tie everything into what is happening. It's important to remember as a DM over a long time - months in this case of many campaigns - it can become difficult to keep track of a games plot.

By tying in various factions and reminding the players what the actual goal is, you can bring back concepts into the game and make disparate elements feel more coherent. With the risen city being related to the thri-kreen, the elves also having something to do with it and the ssurrans clearly knowing more than they let on - it makes the encounters feel less like random stuff just for the sake of encounters but a coherent part of the plot of the game. It also helps tie in the events that have happened to the mysterious city. Plus it helps to emphasize just how damn nasty this place actually is (as the PCs shall soon discover) and how important it is.

This also gives the PCs some really important choices, even if this section of the adventure was very linear (and boy is this about to change). They can choose if they want to raid the inix in the first place, they can raid it and give it to the elves (as promised). They can raid it, use the thri-kreen to slaughter the elves and then take it for themselves. Or they could give it to the elves, warn them about the thri-kreen and then backstab the thri-kreen. Or they could just let the two factions fight it out, then backstab everyone for maximum spoils! It's worth emphasizing that this is a really important choice and will have a major impact on the next adventure as well (as you shall see).

None the less the PCs made plans to steal the inix the next night, causing a ruckus in camp to grab some uniforms of a rival city state to Nibenay - Gulg. They disguised themselves as Gulgian soldiers just in case they were recognized leaving the caravan (and potentially cause some strife between the two rivals). Following the creature into the desert and tracking down the soldiers from Nibenay. They were talking to a man the party instantly recognized from the arena in Tyr! Karras! The old broken builder rapidly recognized the party and disappeared into the sands, commanding his followers to attack! Not before the PCs heard critical information about his plans. Most notably that a sorcerer-king named "Draglu" wasn't cooperating with handing him something from the ruined city (again, tying these elements together...).

Incidentally before continuing for the benefit of my players, yes that is a retcon as I found a much better name/title. So I've changed that from within the session. Sorry about that! I won't do that too much, I promise!

So the fight began and oh what a doozy this one was. The combat started with the PCs rolling a bit poorly on initiative and the creatures wading into combat swinging straight up. One of the Mul gladiator slaves bounded into Zephan and gave him a solid whack - before being critically hit in return and almost killed in one brutal counter attack!

The inix there is a big sack of level 9 hit points, but he didn't have to be killed in this combat (only the others killed and the inix bloodied at minimum). He does present quite a threat with his tail slap and an impressive bite. The woman on the left is set, a broken builder defiler built like an elite. Unlike a standard elite, she had no guaranteed double attack standard action, instead having an AP generating system. This worked better than expected, to say the least​

A broken builder cultist got stuck into the party as well, dealing a fair chunk of damage to the battlemind and sending her bloodied (the HP state bar there is a bit wonky, just look for all the red). This is actually still the first round of the combat and we've got blood everywhere!​

The next round reminded Initiate as to why you should fear and loathe broken builders: Their ability to run out from burst and blast attacks. Noting that the Muls lacked this protection, so only the two cultists and Set could actually do this. Changes in positioning and the critically hit Mul finally being brutally dispatched by one of the Ka-Cha's burst powers saw even more blood everywhere. The battlemind and ardent got a bit too close to one another, letting the inix pound them into the dirt with a brutal tail slam attack (sending the battlemind careering back).

Shortly after Set saw to downing the ardent and now both the defender and leader were down!

This is quite a mess now​

With Alek down, desperate measures were taken and Zephan needed to use his turn (somewhat reluctantly actually) to get the ardent up. A small mistake saw that the battlemind couldn't use inspiring fortitude (spend second wind and all allies within 5 gain temp HP = surge value. Unfortunately, the way Alek healed everyone used the battleminds second wind, whoops). This had the unfortunate consequence of seeing to Alek going down again pretty quickly and effectively spending most of this combat unconscious. All the while set was racing about sending lightning bolts just about everywhere - and defiling like mad while she was at it as well. I actually think Ardent may have only been conscious a single turn this combat - it was literally that brutal!

Invariably the mess we get left with is best summed up with this:

Yeah at this point everything on the table is almost dead and the combat is balanced on a knife edge!​

Ka-Cha obviously decided to have enough of this fight, as did the dice roller and he critically hit Set breaking her windpipe and sending her into oblivion. He then ran over and finished off the final cultist, leaving the inix alone and bloodied. The confused animal - it's masters now dead and broken around it stood back and took a defensive posture. The party realized the combat was over and a very brutal fight was over!

A very hard fought victory, but the PCs the worthy survivors. Just!​

Now while I thought that went pretty much as I imagined it, my PCs weren't actually that happy for a few reasons. The first was it was a bit of an ambush EL wise: This was an EL 8 encounter (My party is level 5, so it's EL+3). The other thing was the dice roller was obscene as well. If you recall back a couple of sessions I had the three hour "missamarathon" as I am calling it now, where nobody hit. Well this was the combat that just about *everything* hit. Unfortunately, it also meant that Set - the elite artillery defiler - rolled obscene recharge rolls.

So Set was an interesting experiment that nearly backfired. I basically took a broken builder defiler, leveled it up to 5 and made it an elite. I upgraded the damage slightly, but let's face it with an at-will defiling re-roll (which she exploited like mad). I did give her a couple of other powers, but the main feature was an ability that reduced defenses and allowed her to regain an AP if that creature fell. It was a little like a mark of doom in some ways. Due to how much everything hit and how lethal the combat was, she got good use out of this feature. Combined with recharging her dual lightning attack most rounds, she was a lot more effective than planned. Minding once the other creatures were taken out, Set rapidly was overwhelmed and killed.

Overall, I think I got a reminder why swingy features like that AP regenerating mechanic to achieve an elites "double attack" are not significantly good ideas.

The PCs then picked over the corpses and the Inix to discover... metal weapons! An exciting moment in the game this, because metal weapons are very rare and they have a significant advantage. When re-rolling for reckless breakage (albeit this hasn't been employed yet) the weapon only breaks if the re-roll is a 1-5 (as opposed to always breaking). Quite a handy thing to have around... especially when the elves arrived to take the stuff (as they thought the PCs had promised).

Of course bear in mind that the PCs were going to backstab said elves and take the stuff for themselves. During the transaction though, the PCs found out that Variya had a little secret of her own. One of the elves helping her let slip that the metal weapons were essential for defeating the "guardians" and therefore the PCs couldn't have them. Variya - most unimpressed decided that there was little point in trying to hide the point now (as the PCs would be suspicious).

Variya explained that the metal weapons were the only thing they knew of that could harm psionically augmented golems called guardians (spoiler: They are really dangerous!). A group of crazy thri-kreen insisting they are the "Guardians of the Seed" (probably Variya's own translation of the thri-kreens various clicks and such) ambushed them and took several of them: Including Variya's son. She is more than well aware and I hope you are as well, that thri-kreen in Dark Sun regard elven flesh as quite a delicacy. So you can imagine what fate awaits many of those captured.

Incidentally as some general background, the elves were ambushed exploring the ruins after finding a strange map on a defiler and his two half mad caravan guards in the desert. To recoup their losses and try to get some funds to launch a rescue mission on their (deliciously tasty) comrades - they sold the map on to some traveling merchants heading to Tyr. In effect the whole mess with the caravan being there is actually Variya's fault in the first place.

In any event this threw a total spanner in the works for the PCs.

1) The elves didn't seem to be so reprehensibly evil in the first place.

2) The magic that the elves had, including the tome she promised the party (more on that in a subsequent post...) were raided from the city in question. Due to the sheer power of the tome and that Variya clearly didn't fully understand what she had, the concept they were powerful defilers wasn't coherent (the player who would have probably asked that question wasn't at this session, so I've sort of put this down as a passive conclusion of that character anyway - he was allowed to have a read of it...).

3) What on earth were these "guardians" and why did they need metal weapons to destroy?

4) Were the thri-kreen up to something more sinister?

5) She mocked and was very dismissive of the idea of the primordial seed of life (calling it a fairy tale).

Debate raged for quite a while here, so I just let the PCs roleplay it out and come to their own conclusions. Inevitably they decided to double cross the thri-kreen, allowing the elves to take half the metal weapons and the inix (I was looking forward to seeing what they would call him. Bob II the Inix?). This of course really riled up the thri-kreen. Cha-Rik and his buddies came out of their ambush positions and demanded the PCs explain why they let the elves leave.

The PCs decided to try and play both sides, but a very unsuccessful bluff check combined with almost the entire party dramatically failing at an aid-another check resulted in a second brutal battle.

Thri-kreen to the right, to the left and right in front! Quite the scrap here!​

Like before this encounter features creatures that were quite a bit higher level, Cha-Rik and his buddies are level 8. One thing to note here is that when I designed this encounter and monsters, I anticipated some kind of three way fight to take the heat off the PCs when they wanted it. Like many things in DnD, things never go to plan and so this ended up a curious 1 on 1 battle.

A brutal one.

Have you noticed a trend yet? Red clearly is the new black.​

The thri-kreen started by brutally munching on the battlemind, dropping her HP astoundingly quickly with their standard action multiple attack. Bear in mind, that's a recharge power AND is a regular thing they have as a standard monster. Pretty brutal! Cha-Rik got involved early with a brutal hit of his own and quickly turned the tables on the battlemind with a mark of his own.

Alek got downed straight away again, the extremely mobile thri-kreen with their jumping and bouncing all over the place got them in position fast. Plus you can observe a lovely example of CA "Tic-tac-toe there as well". That's where you have a chain of creatures that are all mutually granting CA to different allies along the chain. Always amuses me anyway when it happens, because I always think it must look like some kind of weird conga line of death.

In any event, Alek is bought back up and quickly gets to work ensuring the battlemind doesn't die. Eshara repays the favor by using inspiring fortitude, this time giving all the PCs a crucial HP buffer against being dead. Particularly Alek, who didn't get to spend a lot of time in the land of the "conscious" in this encounter thus far. At this point I needed to play "Bold DnD" and as the wizard player wasn't around this session, something crazy needed to be done to save the day. Obviously running into the dangerous terrain and making a near suicidal heal check on the downed ardent was the order of the day.

Amazingly enough this actually worked.

On Initiate's turn (the tiefling wizard above), I ran him down into the difficult terrain to make a heal check on Alek. A gamble that paid off extremely well​

Alek, with his second go at the whole "being conscious" thing tore into one of the thri-kreen with his gouge. Amazingly scoring yet another hit when it was absolutely needed with a 2 augment energizing strike (2[W] damage and an ally within 5 spends a healing surge). This rapidly got the battlemind back on track to not being knocked out and the PCs took the fight to the bugs - downing one of the brutes and almost killing Cha-Rik.

At this point, Cha-Rik realized he was going to die and needed to run. So whacking a PC out of the way, he used his leap encounter power and *almost* escaped off the map. He quickly nailed the pursuing monk, who was still able to put on some damage but then the PCs called in their wild card: Bob.

Now Bob the Crodlu you'll notice hasn't been in any of the pictures. This is because he's usually been left safe "off camera" (so to speak) to hold the parties supplies. Here the PCs called him in to help block Cha-Riks escape. Now you wouldn't think a level 3 monster (which is what he is) would do jack here - but you would oddly be wrong. Bob began immediately by tearing Cha-Rik to pieces. Not satisfied with his new found thri-kreen related bloodlust, his next turn tore apart one of the other bugs before it could escape.

The final thri-kreen that tried to escape was almost run down by bob again, but actually manged to survive (which you would expect normally, but was a miracle by bobs high overachieving standards this game). I think it was Initiate who finished him off with a magic missile (or possibly someone charging him in the face). Either way bobs failure to overachieve was met with surprise.

Let's face it, you're just doomed and you aren't going anywhere.​

The result of this combat was the PCs now had a convenient excuse for the bloody and missing caravan - with all those dead thri-kreen everywhere anyway. The elves were not aware of the PCs potential deception and neither are any of the other thri-kreen from the mysterious group aware the PCs have killed their clutchmates. In a roundabout way, this still gives the PCs of potentially backstabbing either side or using them for their own means.

Which is all going to become relevant very very soon. It's time to stop these wandering through the desert shenanigans and begin moving to the real meat of the heroic tier: The risen city itself...

Edit:

Yep, Zephan stabbed him in the face.​

Behold though the sheer amount of bloodied stuff at the end of this fight. Ironically only Alek managed to stand tall unbloodied at the end of it.