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The Adventures of the Endhome 6+1. Rebirth of Barakus! (9-27-06, 19 and 20 back up)
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<blockquote data-quote="Scorch" data-source="post: 3075008" data-attributes="member: 1502"><p><strong>Adventure 9 Summary</strong></p><p></p><p>I guess I can comment for a bit about one minor complaint that came up around this session and the one that follows. Along with the XP slowdown that I need to do so the party can finish the module at a challenging level, there is also an income slowdown as well. This is especially noticeable in a game such as ours that has six players plus one NPC and the treasure splits appropriately. The front line fighters were beginning to save up their take of the loot so they could afford some +1 items they new they would need soon. It also didn’t help that the party had been steering around some of the better loot. That would change in these next two sessions.</p><p></p><p>Feeling a bit worn out after the encounter with the Mist Demon, the party decided to camp for the night in the cave. By barring the door they effectively had a safe area to hole up. I decided that random encounters would not take place in the room under those conditions. I doubt that monsters would wade through the stream. An investigation of the pool the stream ran through turned up some hidden treasure.</p><p></p><p>After an uneventful night the group head back down the stairs and investigated the door east of the room where they had encountered the goblins. There was only one door to the south (one of the ones I drew in with pencil on the map since it was missing according to the errata on these boards) and a rough hole in the middle of the floor. A quick search of the room turned up a secret door to the north but their investigations alerted the dire weasel living down the hole. It raced out of its lair and attacked Micca. </p><p></p><p>As soon as I announced the attack I went searching among the plastic minis and got out a dire rat mini. </p><p></p><p>“What are you doing with that?” asked Aislenn’s player “We just got a dire weasel mini in the new Abominations pack.”</p><p></p><p>I was pleased as punch that we had a mini exactly matching the encounter. </p><p></p><p>The weasel missed and did not get to latch on to the cleric (I really wanted to try those rules out). The players dog-piled on it and it went down in a round.</p><p></p><p>Absinthe had finished checking out the secret door for traps and then turned to Aislenn.</p><p></p><p>“You go ahead and open it!” the rogue stated.</p><p></p><p>The elf had decided she would only check for traps and unlock the door but her frail constitution prevented her from actually opening the door and facing whatever was inside first. Aislenn rolled her eyes and kicked in the door…</p><p></p><p>…and was promptly confronted by a lunging bear. It took a few seconds for the group to realize she was attacking a stuffed animal. The group filed in after the excitement was over and they started investigating the room. Ravenspur turned up a scroll hidden in the bear. During the search Absinthe thought she heard a faint voice coming through a door to the north.</p><p></p><p>They exited the room into a corridor and the raving voice became louder. The corridor ended in a T-intersection with the glimmer of torchlight coming from the west. Absinthe crept up to the corner and peaked around into a large room with a three-tiered pedestal set in the middle, each tier five feet high. Standing on top was a ragged man in badly maintained armor and a tattered tabard. He was alternately mumbling to himself and screaming at the ceiling above him. The elf rogue noted the deadly looking great sword he had on his back and the bow and arrows he waved around in his hands.</p><p></p><p>A spot check and knowledge religion by the cleric confirmed that he was wearing the symbols of Kord. The party all agreed that they had found Vladoff, one of the missing adventurers, but that he was not quite right in the head. Micca decided to see if he could talk some senses into him.</p><p></p><p>Micca’s player role-played this extremely well. He held out his holy symbol and spoke in a calm, even voice. Unfortunately the module is very specific about Vladoff’s actions and I was going to follow the encounter to the letter. Vladoff listened for a few seconds then whipped out his bow and started firing away. </p><p></p><p>That tore it the party boiled into the room while Micca kept yelling out “Don’t kill him!” They agreed to try and subdue him but first they had to reach him. Everyone but the monk was at a disadvantage when they reached the bottom of the tall pedestal. Adson just started leaping up level by level. There was some discussion what the monk could do with his very high jump and climb skills. Everyone else had to take a full turn action to get up one level. During all this Vladoff was filling them full of arrows as they climbed.</p><p></p><p>When Adson started climbing the pedestal the fallen paladin dropped his bow and drew his sword. He started making his way down the pedestal so he could escape the room through a passageway to the north. By then the party had him surrounded and tried to subdue him. Aislenn stepped up to engage him.</p><p></p><p>That was when the paladin opened up with his great sword. I rolled extremely well on damage and Aislenn was almost knocked down to zero. She yelled out that she could not take another blow like that but then decided she did not need to. She dropped her weapon and moved in to grapple, avoiding the AoO.</p><p></p><p>What then proceeded to happen was a painful slap-fest where-in Vladoff was pummeled into submission. Micca, who had been studying Vladoff very intently noticed the bracers and decided he need to wrestle them off. Since the player was very insistent that he believed the madness to be external in nature I had him make spot checks and he saw the insane runes scrawling across the bracers. He made the intuitive leap and decided they had to go.</p><p></p><p>With the bracers off they revived the poor paladin who remembered all that he had done while insane. He cried, moaned and beat his chest in grief and it was only Micca talking to him that got the whole story. </p><p></p><p>Vladoff, Fenton, and the rest of them had been exploring the first level when they encountered the black dragon (“Hello, DRAGON?!?” yelped the ranger). They had stumbled down onto the second level where they were fighting a running battle against a tribe of goblins when they acquired the bracers. Vladoff, in his pride, put them on and went insane. He attacked the others and drove them off but got lost himself. He ended up where our adventurers found him. During the year he spent down there he slew two other adventurers and has been keeping their bodies in a small alcove that he was running to before being subdued .</p><p></p><p>Realizing that they would need to return him to his temple back in Endhome, the group made preparations to leave. A quick search of the area turned up the dead adventurers’ corpses and their possessions as well as the possessions of Vladoff. </p><p></p><p>They made their way back up to the first level and decided to travel through the rat-men caves. I had rolled the restock chart and came up with some goblins which the group had no trouble trouncing. The only other encounter on note was with a xorn out in the hills surrounding the cave but they stayed far enough away from it so that it did not smell the precious metals they were hauling back.</p><p></p><p>The party dropped Vladoff off at the temple along with what they determined to be his possessions. An hour was spent book keeping. Always good since I can take a break, sip a cola, and answer the occasional yes or no questions while they haggle over loot distribution and bemoan the fact that they could not afford the magic items they wanted yet. They were a tip away from third level and I was adamant that they could not gain xp until the end of this night’s session. Micca spent some of his share on sprucing up his temple and he got to role play being a priest to some of the town guardsmen looking for someplace to worship. Ravenspur blew his entire share and then had to borrow some more from Keldin to pick up two wands from the Wizard’s Academy: a color spray wand and a magic missile wand. These turned out to be a very wise investment later on. </p><p></p><p>After all this was handled they decided they wanted to truck on back to Barakus as quickly as possible. Absinthe was becoming paranoid that other adventurers would find out about what they had found, especially Dagon Ziss and company. She even suggested that Curley Barnes should get some extra payment to impress upon him to not start bragging about town until after they had discovered the missing adventurers and figured out the mystery of the lost city. When they left the city, they took the west gate and then tracked through the wilderness while having Keldin hide their passage. It was well worth it since I had already planned on the evil adventurers to track them but they had no hope of matching the Halfling ranger’s skills in the wilderness.</p><p></p><p>Halfway there they had a nighttime encounter with an Owl Bear. They were able to spot it coming so the spread out and Aislenn made herself a target. It charged right at her while taking fire and she engaged while the others closed in to flank. It was a well-executed, short combat. Aislenn was a little wrecked up but Micca got her fixed up in a jiffy.</p><p></p><p>Upon returning to the caves above I rolled the restock table and came up with two ogres. The party was feeling confident so they decided to engage as soon as Absinthe scouted them up ahead. It nearly led to a TPK. The party was just not rolling well and the ogres were rolling a bit too well. Ravenspur attempt to get them both within range of a color spray attack but got his move invoked an AoO and he was down for the count. Two other players were pummeled into unconsciousness before the ogres fell. The party picked themselves up and dragged their sorry behinds back outside to rest for two days in the wilderness. During that time they spotted the red dragon flying off in the distance over the hills. They wisely doused the campfire and hid.</p><p></p><p>After getting back up to snuff they wandered back down to the second level where they decided to investigate the southern end of the hall of mirrors. There they came across a vast room filled with mausoleums. There, in the cramped quarters between the stone structures they encountered a ghast. The combat took longer than normal due to where the undead creature ambushed them but finally they took it down. A quick search of the rest of the room turned up its treasure.</p><p></p><p>We decided to call it a night. I calculated up the experience, taking into account the bonus for rescuing Vladoff rather than killing him and for having the bracers destroyed, and awarded it out. The entire group leveled to third and insisted that they camp the night in the mausoleum room so they could take full advantage of their new level for the next adventure.</p><p></p><p>Next Adventure: Zombies, Ghosts, and Squids</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Scorch, post: 3075008, member: 1502"] [b]Adventure 9 Summary[/b] I guess I can comment for a bit about one minor complaint that came up around this session and the one that follows. Along with the XP slowdown that I need to do so the party can finish the module at a challenging level, there is also an income slowdown as well. This is especially noticeable in a game such as ours that has six players plus one NPC and the treasure splits appropriately. The front line fighters were beginning to save up their take of the loot so they could afford some +1 items they new they would need soon. It also didn’t help that the party had been steering around some of the better loot. That would change in these next two sessions. Feeling a bit worn out after the encounter with the Mist Demon, the party decided to camp for the night in the cave. By barring the door they effectively had a safe area to hole up. I decided that random encounters would not take place in the room under those conditions. I doubt that monsters would wade through the stream. An investigation of the pool the stream ran through turned up some hidden treasure. After an uneventful night the group head back down the stairs and investigated the door east of the room where they had encountered the goblins. There was only one door to the south (one of the ones I drew in with pencil on the map since it was missing according to the errata on these boards) and a rough hole in the middle of the floor. A quick search of the room turned up a secret door to the north but their investigations alerted the dire weasel living down the hole. It raced out of its lair and attacked Micca. As soon as I announced the attack I went searching among the plastic minis and got out a dire rat mini. “What are you doing with that?” asked Aislenn’s player “We just got a dire weasel mini in the new Abominations pack.” I was pleased as punch that we had a mini exactly matching the encounter. The weasel missed and did not get to latch on to the cleric (I really wanted to try those rules out). The players dog-piled on it and it went down in a round. Absinthe had finished checking out the secret door for traps and then turned to Aislenn. “You go ahead and open it!” the rogue stated. The elf had decided she would only check for traps and unlock the door but her frail constitution prevented her from actually opening the door and facing whatever was inside first. Aislenn rolled her eyes and kicked in the door… …and was promptly confronted by a lunging bear. It took a few seconds for the group to realize she was attacking a stuffed animal. The group filed in after the excitement was over and they started investigating the room. Ravenspur turned up a scroll hidden in the bear. During the search Absinthe thought she heard a faint voice coming through a door to the north. They exited the room into a corridor and the raving voice became louder. The corridor ended in a T-intersection with the glimmer of torchlight coming from the west. Absinthe crept up to the corner and peaked around into a large room with a three-tiered pedestal set in the middle, each tier five feet high. Standing on top was a ragged man in badly maintained armor and a tattered tabard. He was alternately mumbling to himself and screaming at the ceiling above him. The elf rogue noted the deadly looking great sword he had on his back and the bow and arrows he waved around in his hands. A spot check and knowledge religion by the cleric confirmed that he was wearing the symbols of Kord. The party all agreed that they had found Vladoff, one of the missing adventurers, but that he was not quite right in the head. Micca decided to see if he could talk some senses into him. Micca’s player role-played this extremely well. He held out his holy symbol and spoke in a calm, even voice. Unfortunately the module is very specific about Vladoff’s actions and I was going to follow the encounter to the letter. Vladoff listened for a few seconds then whipped out his bow and started firing away. That tore it the party boiled into the room while Micca kept yelling out “Don’t kill him!” They agreed to try and subdue him but first they had to reach him. Everyone but the monk was at a disadvantage when they reached the bottom of the tall pedestal. Adson just started leaping up level by level. There was some discussion what the monk could do with his very high jump and climb skills. Everyone else had to take a full turn action to get up one level. During all this Vladoff was filling them full of arrows as they climbed. When Adson started climbing the pedestal the fallen paladin dropped his bow and drew his sword. He started making his way down the pedestal so he could escape the room through a passageway to the north. By then the party had him surrounded and tried to subdue him. Aislenn stepped up to engage him. That was when the paladin opened up with his great sword. I rolled extremely well on damage and Aislenn was almost knocked down to zero. She yelled out that she could not take another blow like that but then decided she did not need to. She dropped her weapon and moved in to grapple, avoiding the AoO. What then proceeded to happen was a painful slap-fest where-in Vladoff was pummeled into submission. Micca, who had been studying Vladoff very intently noticed the bracers and decided he need to wrestle them off. Since the player was very insistent that he believed the madness to be external in nature I had him make spot checks and he saw the insane runes scrawling across the bracers. He made the intuitive leap and decided they had to go. With the bracers off they revived the poor paladin who remembered all that he had done while insane. He cried, moaned and beat his chest in grief and it was only Micca talking to him that got the whole story. Vladoff, Fenton, and the rest of them had been exploring the first level when they encountered the black dragon (“Hello, DRAGON?!?” yelped the ranger). They had stumbled down onto the second level where they were fighting a running battle against a tribe of goblins when they acquired the bracers. Vladoff, in his pride, put them on and went insane. He attacked the others and drove them off but got lost himself. He ended up where our adventurers found him. During the year he spent down there he slew two other adventurers and has been keeping their bodies in a small alcove that he was running to before being subdued . Realizing that they would need to return him to his temple back in Endhome, the group made preparations to leave. A quick search of the area turned up the dead adventurers’ corpses and their possessions as well as the possessions of Vladoff. They made their way back up to the first level and decided to travel through the rat-men caves. I had rolled the restock chart and came up with some goblins which the group had no trouble trouncing. The only other encounter on note was with a xorn out in the hills surrounding the cave but they stayed far enough away from it so that it did not smell the precious metals they were hauling back. The party dropped Vladoff off at the temple along with what they determined to be his possessions. An hour was spent book keeping. Always good since I can take a break, sip a cola, and answer the occasional yes or no questions while they haggle over loot distribution and bemoan the fact that they could not afford the magic items they wanted yet. They were a tip away from third level and I was adamant that they could not gain xp until the end of this night’s session. Micca spent some of his share on sprucing up his temple and he got to role play being a priest to some of the town guardsmen looking for someplace to worship. Ravenspur blew his entire share and then had to borrow some more from Keldin to pick up two wands from the Wizard’s Academy: a color spray wand and a magic missile wand. These turned out to be a very wise investment later on. After all this was handled they decided they wanted to truck on back to Barakus as quickly as possible. Absinthe was becoming paranoid that other adventurers would find out about what they had found, especially Dagon Ziss and company. She even suggested that Curley Barnes should get some extra payment to impress upon him to not start bragging about town until after they had discovered the missing adventurers and figured out the mystery of the lost city. When they left the city, they took the west gate and then tracked through the wilderness while having Keldin hide their passage. It was well worth it since I had already planned on the evil adventurers to track them but they had no hope of matching the Halfling ranger’s skills in the wilderness. Halfway there they had a nighttime encounter with an Owl Bear. They were able to spot it coming so the spread out and Aislenn made herself a target. It charged right at her while taking fire and she engaged while the others closed in to flank. It was a well-executed, short combat. Aislenn was a little wrecked up but Micca got her fixed up in a jiffy. Upon returning to the caves above I rolled the restock table and came up with two ogres. The party was feeling confident so they decided to engage as soon as Absinthe scouted them up ahead. It nearly led to a TPK. The party was just not rolling well and the ogres were rolling a bit too well. Ravenspur attempt to get them both within range of a color spray attack but got his move invoked an AoO and he was down for the count. Two other players were pummeled into unconsciousness before the ogres fell. The party picked themselves up and dragged their sorry behinds back outside to rest for two days in the wilderness. During that time they spotted the red dragon flying off in the distance over the hills. They wisely doused the campfire and hid. After getting back up to snuff they wandered back down to the second level where they decided to investigate the southern end of the hall of mirrors. There they came across a vast room filled with mausoleums. There, in the cramped quarters between the stone structures they encountered a ghast. The combat took longer than normal due to where the undead creature ambushed them but finally they took it down. A quick search of the rest of the room turned up its treasure. We decided to call it a night. I calculated up the experience, taking into account the bonus for rescuing Vladoff rather than killing him and for having the bracers destroyed, and awarded it out. The entire group leveled to third and insisted that they camp the night in the mausoleum room so they could take full advantage of their new level for the next adventure. Next Adventure: Zombies, Ghosts, and Squids [/QUOTE]
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