Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
EN Publishing
Tales of the RHC Irregulars [Zeitgeist spoilers through Always on Time]
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Sbodd" data-source="post: 6108849" data-attributes="member: 6710971"><p>So, we had our third session on Friday, which was entirely spent around, and in, the lighthouse. </p><p> </p><p> In my planning, I’d settled on bumping the lighthouse encounter difficulty (to account for my large group of PCs - I had 7 this session; Luthor’s player couldn’t make it) by:</p><p> -Adding a 2[SUP]nd[/SUP] soldier inside the lighthouse, and another one on the boat</p><p> -Bumping the druid to 2[SUP]nd[/SUP] level</p><p> -Bumping the fighter to 2[SUP]nd[/SUP] level</p><p> -Adding a 1[SUP]st[/SUP]-level fighter to the group on the boat and the guards standing watch on the wall</p><p> </p><p> At the end of the previous session, they’d successfully snuck through the fort to the base of the seawall, but failed enough stealth checks that the fortress was almost on high alert. And then….</p><p> </p><p> My party decided to open up their assault by using two of their <em>pyrotechnics</em> scrolls (they had spares of the mission-critical items that had been given to the original infiltrators) to simulate an explosion on a boat right by their target. Which wasn't necessarily a bad plan, except for:</p><p>-The druid nailing his spellcraft check and knowing exactly what happened</p><p>-Every single guard made his or her saving throw to avoid blindness from <em>pyrotechnics</em></p><p>-The party rushed to "help" with the boat that was “on fire”, but the rogue rolled merely average on his bluff check - and the guard captain got a nat-20 on sense motive.</p><p>-The seeming explosion in the harbor naturally drew the attention of another squad of guards, who showed up 3 rounds into the fight. </p><p> </p><p> In hindsight, I probably should’ve let the party have more success with their “sow confusion” approach, especially given that I added the second wave of guards - I feel like I quashed the player’s attempt at creating a diversion a little too heavily.</p><p> </p><p>As it was, the encounter was very nearly a wipe - at multiple points, four of the 7 PCs in the session were down. It probably would have been a total wipe, had my dice been rolling a little better - twice I threw 3 natural 1s on a set of 4d20, and there were plenty of other bad rolls mixed in. I did fudge one crit roll that could’ve outright killed a PC. </p><p></p><p>The party was also helped because one of their number can get to AC 22, at first level - Vallax, the Kensai Magus, has something like +3 dex, +2 int (Canny Dodge), <em>Shield</em>, bracers of armor +1, and 2 points of natural armor from Tiefling alternate racial traits.</p><p></p><p>Hilarious moment of the evening goes to Pearce, the rogue. Mid-fight, he slips over the edge of the seawall they're fighting on and climbs to the tower unseen. He uses a scroll of <em>silence</em> on himself, sneaks over to the gate control and activates it. The noise of the gate (not the mechanism, but the gate itself - not affected by silence) draws the attention of the wizard guarding the tower, who moves to block the door and readies an action to cast <em>shocking grasp</em> (the wizard doesn't know about the <em>silence</em> spell). Pearce closes with the wizard, whose readied action obviously fails. The wizard turns and runs to the top of the lighthouse, then jumps over the side - ready to cast <em>feather fall</em> once he's out of reach. I was not expecting Pearce to jump after him - it was 90 feet to the water below. But he did, meaning the wizard was once again <em>silence</em>d and fell to his death. (Pearce, being catfolk, has a racial trait that reduces falling damage to the minimum amount possible - so he took 7 from the fall instead of 7d6, and survived - barely.)</p><p></p><p>The defend-the-lighthouse minigame went well - it took me a couple of tries to explain what was going on, but once they figured it out my players really took to it. Pearce used his other rusting antenna to take out the sea gate mechanism (unnecessarily, as it turns out), and Felix came up with the idea of dropping the lighthouse’s light on the attackers (though as the players described it, it was less “boiling oil” and more “dropping the entire light fixture and mount”). Pearce again came up with the best “effective tactic” for the “battle” action - his flavor for his attack was to climb to the top of the lighthouse, tie a rope around himself, move off to one side, and swing down towards the attacking soldiers, clawing at them from above before letting his momentum carry him around the tower. That one was good for taking out two hostiles. In the end, they held off the whole assault without too much difficulty; the second wave drove them back into the lighthouse, and the third wave had been reduced to 8 attackers before the cavalry sailed in at the end of round 10, but most of the damage the attackers inflicted was absorbed by temporary hitpoints from the aid potions. I do think they’re completely out of healing (and spells, bombs, and extracts) at this point though.</p><p> </p><p> Out of curiosity (not that it really matters now) - from the way I read the rules, “build a single point of barricade inside the lighthouse, and re-build it each turn” seems like it’d be an auto-win solution (my players did this each of the last three rounds - one of them barricaded, the rest attacked). All the PCs stay in the lighthouse, and if none of them attacked, they wouldn’t be vulnerable to attacks from outside; and as I read the module, a single point of barricade prevents any number of hostiles from advancing. Was that the intended reading, or was there something I missed that would let a group of (say) six hostiles start outside the lighthouse, three of them take down a barricade and the other three move inside (and possibly engage in melee) on the same turn?</p><p></p><p></p><p>I’m looking forward to the next session - lots of good stuff in Act 3. </p><p> </p><p> One thing that’s not clear to me is the timeline of Asrabey’s actions vs the PCs. As I read the module, the expected timeline is something like:</p><p> ~15 minutes after fleet enters - Risuri forces have taken the outer wall</p><p> ~20 minutes after fleet enters - Asrabey emerges from hiding, vaults the outer wall</p><p> 1 hour after fleet enters - Messenger arrives, PCs head to brig</p><p> ~75 minutes after fleet enters - Asrabey uses the immurement</p><p> ~76-85 minutes after fleet enters - PCs enter observatory</p><p> So - what is Asrabey doing during that hour between vaulting the outer wall and using the immurement? My best guess is “disabling the wards on the teleportation circle”.</p><p> </p><p> I’ll definitely be using the “Allied Soldier” abilities rather than giving the party actual minions - 16 PC minis would just be ridiculous. I’ve actually made up little ability cards with names for each soldier on them that I’ll be passing out - my first set were just printouts, but I may try and do something nicer (two-sided cardstock) since I have two more weeks. </p><p> </p><p> Trying to decide what to do with Gillie Dhu - my current thinking is that (if they do enter the tower via the hedge maze) I’ll give him a couple of wimpy minions that can harass the PCs, since I expect him to be spending most of his time dealing with fires. I figure a pair of level 1 warrior-equivalents, flavored as satyrs or animated shrubbery, with Gillie’s ‘knock you through the hedge’ ability should be enough to make it interesting without really threatening the players. Also considering what to do with Asrabey, in case the players do pick a fight - I think the most likely answer is to bump him to 3 HP (so one point of splash doesn’t take him out, but any actual blow will, and the tiefling’s deathwatch will still show how close he is) and give him one more attack in his full-attack sequence as if he had a weapon of speed (bringing his offensive power up a bit to compensate for the extra PCs.)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Sbodd, post: 6108849, member: 6710971"] So, we had our third session on Friday, which was entirely spent around, and in, the lighthouse. In my planning, I’d settled on bumping the lighthouse encounter difficulty (to account for my large group of PCs - I had 7 this session; Luthor’s player couldn’t make it) by: -Adding a 2[SUP]nd[/SUP] soldier inside the lighthouse, and another one on the boat -Bumping the druid to 2[SUP]nd[/SUP] level -Bumping the fighter to 2[SUP]nd[/SUP] level -Adding a 1[SUP]st[/SUP]-level fighter to the group on the boat and the guards standing watch on the wall At the end of the previous session, they’d successfully snuck through the fort to the base of the seawall, but failed enough stealth checks that the fortress was almost on high alert. And then…. My party decided to open up their assault by using two of their [I]pyrotechnics[/I] scrolls (they had spares of the mission-critical items that had been given to the original infiltrators) to simulate an explosion on a boat right by their target. Which wasn't necessarily a bad plan, except for: -The druid nailing his spellcraft check and knowing exactly what happened -Every single guard made his or her saving throw to avoid blindness from [I]pyrotechnics[/I] -The party rushed to "help" with the boat that was “on fire”, but the rogue rolled merely average on his bluff check - and the guard captain got a nat-20 on sense motive. -The seeming explosion in the harbor naturally drew the attention of another squad of guards, who showed up 3 rounds into the fight. In hindsight, I probably should’ve let the party have more success with their “sow confusion” approach, especially given that I added the second wave of guards - I feel like I quashed the player’s attempt at creating a diversion a little too heavily. As it was, the encounter was very nearly a wipe - at multiple points, four of the 7 PCs in the session were down. It probably would have been a total wipe, had my dice been rolling a little better - twice I threw 3 natural 1s on a set of 4d20, and there were plenty of other bad rolls mixed in. I did fudge one crit roll that could’ve outright killed a PC. The party was also helped because one of their number can get to AC 22, at first level - Vallax, the Kensai Magus, has something like +3 dex, +2 int (Canny Dodge), [I]Shield[/I], bracers of armor +1, and 2 points of natural armor from Tiefling alternate racial traits. Hilarious moment of the evening goes to Pearce, the rogue. Mid-fight, he slips over the edge of the seawall they're fighting on and climbs to the tower unseen. He uses a scroll of [I]silence[/I] on himself, sneaks over to the gate control and activates it. The noise of the gate (not the mechanism, but the gate itself - not affected by silence) draws the attention of the wizard guarding the tower, who moves to block the door and readies an action to cast [I]shocking grasp[/I] (the wizard doesn't know about the [I]silence[/I] spell). Pearce closes with the wizard, whose readied action obviously fails. The wizard turns and runs to the top of the lighthouse, then jumps over the side - ready to cast [I]feather fall[/I] once he's out of reach. I was not expecting Pearce to jump after him - it was 90 feet to the water below. But he did, meaning the wizard was once again [I]silence[/I]d and fell to his death. (Pearce, being catfolk, has a racial trait that reduces falling damage to the minimum amount possible - so he took 7 from the fall instead of 7d6, and survived - barely.) The defend-the-lighthouse minigame went well - it took me a couple of tries to explain what was going on, but once they figured it out my players really took to it. Pearce used his other rusting antenna to take out the sea gate mechanism (unnecessarily, as it turns out), and Felix came up with the idea of dropping the lighthouse’s light on the attackers (though as the players described it, it was less “boiling oil” and more “dropping the entire light fixture and mount”). Pearce again came up with the best “effective tactic” for the “battle” action - his flavor for his attack was to climb to the top of the lighthouse, tie a rope around himself, move off to one side, and swing down towards the attacking soldiers, clawing at them from above before letting his momentum carry him around the tower. That one was good for taking out two hostiles. In the end, they held off the whole assault without too much difficulty; the second wave drove them back into the lighthouse, and the third wave had been reduced to 8 attackers before the cavalry sailed in at the end of round 10, but most of the damage the attackers inflicted was absorbed by temporary hitpoints from the aid potions. I do think they’re completely out of healing (and spells, bombs, and extracts) at this point though. Out of curiosity (not that it really matters now) - from the way I read the rules, “build a single point of barricade inside the lighthouse, and re-build it each turn” seems like it’d be an auto-win solution (my players did this each of the last three rounds - one of them barricaded, the rest attacked). All the PCs stay in the lighthouse, and if none of them attacked, they wouldn’t be vulnerable to attacks from outside; and as I read the module, a single point of barricade prevents any number of hostiles from advancing. Was that the intended reading, or was there something I missed that would let a group of (say) six hostiles start outside the lighthouse, three of them take down a barricade and the other three move inside (and possibly engage in melee) on the same turn? I’m looking forward to the next session - lots of good stuff in Act 3. One thing that’s not clear to me is the timeline of Asrabey’s actions vs the PCs. As I read the module, the expected timeline is something like: ~15 minutes after fleet enters - Risuri forces have taken the outer wall ~20 minutes after fleet enters - Asrabey emerges from hiding, vaults the outer wall 1 hour after fleet enters - Messenger arrives, PCs head to brig ~75 minutes after fleet enters - Asrabey uses the immurement ~76-85 minutes after fleet enters - PCs enter observatory So - what is Asrabey doing during that hour between vaulting the outer wall and using the immurement? My best guess is “disabling the wards on the teleportation circle”. I’ll definitely be using the “Allied Soldier” abilities rather than giving the party actual minions - 16 PC minis would just be ridiculous. I’ve actually made up little ability cards with names for each soldier on them that I’ll be passing out - my first set were just printouts, but I may try and do something nicer (two-sided cardstock) since I have two more weeks. Trying to decide what to do with Gillie Dhu - my current thinking is that (if they do enter the tower via the hedge maze) I’ll give him a couple of wimpy minions that can harass the PCs, since I expect him to be spending most of his time dealing with fires. I figure a pair of level 1 warrior-equivalents, flavored as satyrs or animated shrubbery, with Gillie’s ‘knock you through the hedge’ ability should be enough to make it interesting without really threatening the players. Also considering what to do with Asrabey, in case the players do pick a fight - I think the most likely answer is to bump him to 3 HP (so one point of splash doesn’t take him out, but any actual blow will, and the tiefling’s deathwatch will still show how close he is) and give him one more attack in his full-attack sequence as if he had a weapon of speed (bringing his offensive power up a bit to compensate for the extra PCs.) [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
EN Publishing
Tales of the RHC Irregulars [Zeitgeist spoilers through Always on Time]
Top