(Spoilers) My experience with Reavers of Harkenwold - Updated

[Nemesis Destiny]

Encounter B1, B2, and B3

Following the barrow mound, the group met with the elves again, securing their allegiance. Shortly after, they received the emissary of the rebel forces, as in the module.

Instead of using an NPC they'd never met or interacted with before, I used one of Reithann's acolytes, Theren. I had him show up in Wild Shaped form, then change into his human self to deliver the message before moving on to "warn the other loyal Harkenwolders."

He gave them the deadline and they decided to use their allotted time efficiently. They figured out that there was enough time to visit both Marl and Dardun to gather more allies and inspire the villagers to fight bravely in defence of their homeland.

The group also did another "storykill mode" battle in here against a column of retreating Iron Circle warriors, who were mostly on foot. The PCs used the speed their horses provided along with their captured Iron Circle disguises to ride in close and kill a few of the enemy and demoralizing the rest, before riding off over the next hill. It was pretty fun.

Anyway, because of that, they didn't see much point in taking part in B1 as laid out in the book, and considering the effort they went to, I think that what they did instead is a fair subsitute. I awarded them full experience and victory points for it.

When it came time to talk tactics, they had their own minds made up about what they wanted to do, and no amount of urging from an NPC would have changed their minds. I know my group well enough for that, and any attempt I had made would have felt cheap and railroady, so I just adapted to what they wanted to do.

Their big plan was to split the party - half the group, the strikers, wanted to be on the front line, while the other half, the leader, controller, and defender, wanted to alpha-strike on Nazin's entourage. This proved to be a surprising challenge to the group.

Given how easily the group had blown through most of the "stock" encounters in this module, I figured that even at half strength, they had a fair chance at creaming these encounters. I was so wrong.

The way I decided to do it, was have the striker group take on B2, and the others take on B3. I had the players not involved in a given fight playing the monsters. This was a fun change of pace, except that in the case of my group, the players playing the strikers were inexperienced and/or subpar tacticians, while the other three players were all veterans and decent tactically.

So as a result, B2 was very nearly a wipe. I ran the encounter completely stock. The last enemy (a minion) fled with the last PC standing at 1hp! That was close. And we all thought he was a goner. He had to pull out all the stops and go completely nova, and use his Do Something Cool power.

B3 was less close, but probably more annoying. It took a lot longer, and I spent a lot of time helping the players controllng the monsters make their moves and whatnot. And the poor guy controlling the Dark Adept; his charge was killed in the first round, so he sat most of the last half of the session doing nothing. For this fight, I replaced the Iron Circle Cutthroats with a concoction of my own that tied into campaign background, Silver Hand Assassins! The Silver Hand is a legendary assassins' guild that nobody is even sure exists, not even the DMs of the setting.

Mechanically, the change was pretty minor; they gained a bonus to Initiative, Perception, and the ability to do bonus damage with their crossbow attacks as well. They almost got away.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

Encounter B4 - Nazin who?

I saw the signs pretty early - the characters were not going to give a crap about this Redthorn fellow, and he was going to be a pushover like most of the others. The module tries to script him getting away. With my players more convinced than ever that "nobody gets away!" that was going to be a tall order to fill, even if he saved his action point for it.

Good thing the module is insightful enough to realize that Nazin getting killed in this fight is a very real possibility, or in my case, probability. So it offers some good advice on the matter. In a way, it was fortunate that I hadn't really built him up much for the players, because his being disposable was not much of an issue, and it allowed me room to introduce another, more memorable NPC in the K-series of encounters (a repurposed Tyranda Falkon).

Still, I wanted to make this fight as good as I could, and as satisfying a victory as possible under the circumstances. I made Nazin a bit tougher, and better able (theoretically) to deal with the annoying ability of the hunter in the group to strike at range with impunity and then skulk for cover to hide. To do this, I replaced his Tripping Flail with the warlord-like ability to grant attacks to his allies, specifically as an immediate reaction to getting hit by a ranged attack, so it would kick in before the cheeky hunter could shift for cover. I gave him a separate power similar in intent to Tripping Flail that was a free action to deal with melee opponents, though it did no damage. I made a few other tweaks as well that were designed to enhance his minions.

Sorry about the colossal stat block; I included some background information from the module booklet. I was using power2ool to run the game, so this allowed me to mostly ignore the booklet and just use my netbook as a DM screen.

I also toughened the minions, making them into what I call Elite minions, which typically take two hits to drop and are worth double XP. Redthorn's Infernal Flames also benefited these minions quite a bit. As noted in the original post, I renamed the Iron Circle, which is why these are called Red Legion Varangians. I also really liked the word 'varangian' and all it represented.

My concept for these guys is that they were some of the huscarls for the former jarl (Baron Stockmer to you), who had decided to side with the enemy and swear allegiance to him/them. Varangian loosely translates as 'oath-taker,' and does not necessarily mean that they must be the personal household guard of the Holy Roman Emperor, though that is its historical context.

I also decided to give Redthorn the baron's ancestral weapon, just to piss off the characters who cared about him. In the original post I mentioned that I was inspired in part by an article from Dragon 375 about the town and ruler of Graefmotte, a cursed citadel in the Shadowfell. I ganked, then modified this item from there. I use inherent bonuses with a twist, and this item reflects that. With my modification, it doesn't matter that it's a +3 weapon dropping during a level 5 or 6 encounter.

It didn't help him one bit.

The encounter started off with the PCs a little scared, but this quickly changed. They gained the advantage on round 2, once the sorcerer went nova. After the drubbing he got in the last fight, he figured out the whole 'nova' concept (with everyone else helping him), and used it to good effect in this fight.

To represent the fact that they were coming at him from both sides, I had them get him in a pincer attack, which actually served to make the first round scarier, since the PCs were relatively isolated, but once the Tar Devlis dropped, things stopped being scary in the slightest. My Varangians were pretty effective, but most of them were too far from Redthorn and so could not benefit from Infernal Flames. They also died too quickly, for the most part, to be of much help.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

The aftermath of the Battle of Albridge and Encounter K1

The group crushed every encounter and did all the sidequests, so they got full VPs, and ended up with a very decisive victory.

Without taking a breather, they moved straight on to the keep. They skipped K1, and questioned Old Kellar who pointed them to a plan for doing K2. Here is where I thought things were going to be tough for them.

They managed to get themselves over the wall without being detected (despite a close call), and once inside the courtyard, they managed to storm up to the main keep quickly enough that the defenders were not able to raise the drawbridge. Then things erupted into another multi-stage fight, but this time in very tight quarters. This battle took an entire session and was fairly tough for them. A couple of them had dropped, and the group's healing resources were completely spent, but they survived.

More on that tomorrow. Thanks for reading along!

 

[Vicar In A Tutu]

Great stuff! Keep it comming.

 

[wedgeski]

Yeah, really enjoying your insights here, keep it rolling please!

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

Can you guys see the monster stat blocks I've been posting? I just reloaded it and most of them are gone...

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

The plan of attack and K2, K4, K5, K6, and K7

Like I mentioned in yesterday's post, my group of players headed almost immediately from B4 to Harken to take on the rest of the occupiers. They had a plan - they rounded up what loyal and still combat-worthy warriors they could and made for Harken.

I forgot to mention - the fatalities. I rolled a saving throws for the named NPCs (modified by how important the NPC was) to determine if they'd survived the battle. Most of them did, but Reithann was killed in the fighting. This was significant, firstly, because I played up the fact that her acolytes were fairly green (no pun intended), and secondly, one of the PCs is a Sentinel, and so he was particularly affected. Though he made it clear that as a Sentinel of Winter (more homebrew), he was of a different sect than Reithann, but they had a mutual respect and it was pretty clear that the PC druid really looked up to Reithann as an elder and fellow druid, ideological differences aside.

So before leaving, they held a funeral for the fallen druidess. Mostly it involved the PC Sentinel holding a brief service in the grove, but he was unsure of what to do about her acolytes. He basically just said, "you'll have to figure out what to do now." But it was obvious that they were pretty lost without Reithann.

I should also point out that due to a curse, one of the characters has a vindictive streak a mile wide. She and one of her fellow warriors decided that rather than kill Nazin, they would make an example of him. They plucked out his eyes, cut out his tongue, cut off his hands, and shattered his ankles. Then, they paraded him around during the post-battle celebration. They weren't finished yet though.

The PCs and their forces, consisting of Dar Gremmath and a score of his finest warriors, Bran Torsson and a score of his men, and a score of Adalbar's rangers, led by his second-in-command, marched on Harken with their "meat log" Nazin in tow. Here they met with Old Kellar and formed a plan to scale the walls and storm the keep.

The first phase of the plan was for the PCs, backed by the rangers, to approach from the cover of the forest in the northeast. The party hunter and the rangers would skulk through the grass and up the hill, covering the distance with as much care as they could muster while Dar Gremmath, Bran Torsson, and their men came up to the main gate with Nazin. As a distraction, they blood eagled Nazin and jeered at the keep's defenders, waiting for the mayhem to begin.

Meanwhile, despite a near-fumble, the rangers and PC hunter managed to sneak up to the wall and take out all the sentries in the northeast section without being seen. They then scaled the wall and dropped ropes for the other PCs (rather than use the secret passage), while quietly taking out the other sentries on adjacent walls. One of the PCs used Do Something Cool to cause one of the slain sentires to fall over the battlement onto the other side and get snagged by his cloak on a crenellation. This was the signal for Dar and Bran to begin their attack.

At the same time, the PCs started for the main tower. They left the rangers on the middle wall to cover them and lend support to the group attacking the main gate (and it's a good thing they did). They opened the battle by having one of them double move into the keep, disguised as an Iron Circle warrior, followed by another who moved up and stood on the drawbridge, preventing the defenders from raising it. The encounter pretty much started here with K5.

I didn't alter this part of the fight much, other than to refluff the dragonborn soldiers as Firbolgs. This part of the fight was mostly roleplaying which eventually turned into the first PC inside the keep grappling the guards so they couldn't work the winches. They called for help, but all their sentries had already been killed. The group in K7 heard them though, and Nazin's replacement Tyranda (whom I replaced, again) ordered the hobgoblin mercs to go check it out. The group in K6 also heard it, but were reluctant to abandon their post.

Here is my replacement for Nazin's replacement:

I modelled her after the human Duelist in Monster Vault, but I gave her a smattering of other abilities and made various tweaks. She joined the fight shortly after.

A round or so later, the guards in the gaol, K6, decided to come up the stairs to join in. This hallway was getting mighty crowded! It was a very locked down fight, even after opening up the doors to the baron's dining hall. The guys in this encounter were mostly unaltered.

After some shrieking for Kaltis to come out and help, she did (or rather, my replacement for her - Reneiris, who was a tie in to my other campaign from years ago). She is much tougher than Kaltis, and was intended to again make a few attacks and disparaging remarks, then depart. Her abilities reflect that I wanted her to get away, and that she is a priestess of the goddess of magic, so she had access to some wizard powers. She was mostly based on the updated version of the human hexer.

She brought her demons with her, and this was her main role in the fight. She basically ordered the demons to attack, informed Morda/Tyranda that she was on her own, and promptly teleported out. After some amusing dialog, enter the rest of K4, which I ran unchanged.

There was literally no room to manoeuvre in this hallway. Even the Spined Devli had trouble moving into a good position to blast everyone with his Fiery Spines. The poor Iron Circle mage got off a lightning daggers and a thunder burst before he got crushed under the corpses of an enforcer and a tar devil.

This fight took literally an entire session. The PCs were pretty low on resources by the end of this one. Just to make things end a little sooner, I had the rangers helping the PCs from the rooftops taking shots at the demons from K4. Even though they were just minions, they managed to nearly bloody the Spined Devil before he even brought his powers to bear on the PCs. I had this cost the PCs a few of the rangers (something they actually do care about).

Tomorrow I will cover the aftermath. They still haven't done Encounter B5 though. Hopefully, that will happen on Saturday. It's another one I've made large adjustments to.

I've made fixes to the image links. Let me know if you can't see my creature stat blocks. I've posted blocks for all the custom creatures and ones I've significantly changed. There should also be one for an item.

Thanks for reading! More tomorrow.

 

[wedgeski]

Can you guys see the monster stat blocks I've been posting? I just reloaded it and most of them are gone...

Yes all present and correct.

 

[Motorskills]

Nemesis, thanks for some great posts in this thread.

I will definitely be using your map of the 'Bandit' cave, I agree - it's perfect.

Did you use miniatures/tokens? If so, how did you portray the different elevations?


I think you make a good point about Harken, I'm going to sell the idea that they need to "unite the tribes". Nazin is winning because the farmers, the elves, and the diehards don't trust each other. Classic RPG stuff, it'll work great.

 

[Nemesis Destiny]

My group uses a vinyl battle mat and markers most of the time, and I generally used the tokens for the baddies, or pennies if there were a lot of minions, while most of my players prefer to use dice for their player tokens.

The different elevations, I just had to do my best with my meagre drawing ability, and when that failed (as it often did), just tell them, "this is higher," or, "this stairway goes down x feet" and whatnot.

Thanks for your interest.

P.S. sorry, no update tonight - wine happened