Elanor in Trekholm

ediz · Jun 9, 2017

HI, I know I haven't posted in awhile mostly due to smooth sailing with my game and that I had moved to South America.

Anyway, my players want to bust out the elven girl from Elanor in Trekhom and sneak into her room at night and put her on the ship. I was wondering, how secure would her room be?

Could you give me some help setting up the encounter and how difficult should it be? We are playing PF.

I tried to steer them away from it, saying "you don't want to unnnecessarily compromise your cover or get thrown off the train, but oh well.

RangerWickett · Jun 9, 2017

Well, you have a couple options.

1. They sneak in, pull off the mission, and Elanor lives. She eventually figures out they did it and arranges for one of them (or someone they care about) to be nabbed and brought to the arena. Cue an arena fight.

2. Make things hard in the initial nabbing. I figure she'd have some bodyguards, some magic defenses, maybe even a contingency to summon in a monster if her investment was in danger.

Tizbiz · Jun 10, 2017

Its just my opinion but don't make your players feel they get punished for doing a good deed or something the adventure does not intend them to do. Spontaneous fools errands of the players keep the story interesting to run. I do like it, if my players have innovative ideas and try to encourage them to think up new solutions.

If they come up with something i am not prepared for, i tell them and ask them for some time to prepare that encounter.

ediz · Jun 10, 2017

If they are successful then they won't be punished but if it turns into a firefight in the hotel, it will pretty much break their cover. If they fail or make a huge ruckous then they will be forced to take their ship and not the train. There needs to be stakes for things.

Our half giant liquidated Boone in Orithiea because he saw him try to kill an innocent girl.

My scenario looks like this:

They have to defeat a hotel door lock DC 15, Magic ward/alarm placed on the door DC 25. Then they would have a 50/50 chance of her being awake anyway. If she is awake, she will summon a monster to attack them. I figure the girl maybe a bit Stockholmed and it could still go bad. About her having bodyguards, it would be strange for her to have a body guard now but not throughout the journey.

Tizbiz · Jun 10, 2017

*grin* sounds nice. As her "cargo" is very valuable, Elanor will be prepared to defend her.

I think my players might think of something similar when we reach that point. My party is now playing the third adventure but they have ridiculously high levels. Maybe Eleanor will have a domination type staff or some other nasty surprises prepared, when we reach that point?

I would be glad to hear how your party`s game develops.

ediz · Jun 10, 2017

Do you mind me asking but why are your characters so high in level? My players are at level 6.

I feel because the enslavement of High Elves are a norm on the northern continent, travelling incognito was her form of security. Elanor alone shouldn't really be a huge challenge for a whole party of level 6 constables, she is only level 4 anyway. The real danger is blowing their cover and with Ottavia getting the sending Bree and crew will be more aware of strange happenings, but they destroyed on their prep scene.

mdusty · Jun 10, 2017

My crew attempted to free Isobel in Trekhom as well. But they were smart and didn't do it themselves, because they did not want to blow their cover and they were still unsure who was part of the ob at that point. So one of the contingencies they put into place was to have some backup in Trekhom. They decided to pay the backup a higher fee and get them to do the rescuing. Obviously that failed, but one of them escaped and reported back to the PCs that the 'fat ugly woman' must've put some kind of enchantment on their group's wizard, who then proceeded to wipe out the rest of the rescuers. She had her room warded and had a dominate person scroll ready. I figured she'd been doing this long enough that she had the funds to buy powerful spells like that. When the PCs tried to go get Isobel themselves later that night, they found her room surrounded by Danoran enclave guards. So they decided to just wait it out until Nalaam. They did end up rescuing her at the arena. And killing Elanor. Well technically Andrei killed her, but the PCs softened her up for him.

Tizbiz · Jun 11, 2017

ediz said:
Do you mind me asking but why are your characters so high in level? My players are at level 6.

I feel because the enslavement of High Elves are a norm on the northern continent, travelling incognito was her form of security. Elanor alone shouldn't really be a huge challenge for a whole party of level 6 constables, she is only level 4 anyway. The real danger is blowing their cover and with Ottavia getting the sending Bree and crew will be more aware of strange happenings, but they destroyed on their prep scene.

My group consists of only two players and i give some additional Exp for legwork and roleplaying to give them the feeling that their time and roleplaying is rewarded and that they do not need to rush from fight to fight to get Exp. Until recently they had no sidekicks and were dividing all Exp by two.

They tend to talk their way around fights but that does not matter because the players are very experienced. They play a female Eladrin Swashbuckler and a male Deva Stalker and this high critical combination is absolutely deadly in a fight. I maximise the opponents HP and despite that most opponents go unconscious with one or two normal hits. I only upscale fights with the most memorable villains to lessen the Exp problem but they really outfight all opponents. Their new sidekicks largely act as decoration in the fights anyways.

They are still playing "Digging for Lies" and are Level 9 now. They may even be Level 10 when they finish this adventure.

ediz · Jun 11, 2017

Yeah, unless they have 5th level gear, it is going to get worse. The thoughtform monsters really gave my players a headache but that was fun. The oracle tank didn't even have a +1 sword yet, so he would always miss even with a crit.

We just lost our investigator. We have a tiefling Steamwright, human bard, Wood Elf Oracle, Half-Giant Machinesmith. It is fun because the elf normally runs around in Full PLate and is slow as death but now he is undercover so he doesn't have his armor on so he gets into fights quickly but takes some serious punishment. Our fights usually last 10 rounds. The fights are almost always memorable and we have had some PC deaths in the campaign. In the final boss fight of adventure 3, one of the players got his mind eaten by the alien and was too clever and got killed by friendly fire because he decided to vanish(to avoid attacking a comrade) and blew up in an explosion by grenade launcher.

Tizbiz · Jun 11, 2017

ediz said:
Yeah, unless they have 5th level gear, it is going to get worse. The thoughtform monsters really gave my players a headache but that was fun. The oracle tank didn't even have a +1 sword yet, so he would always miss even with a crit.

We just lost our investigator. We have a tiefling Steamwright, human bard, Wood Elf Oracle, Half-Giant Machinesmith. It is fun because the elf normally runs around in Full PLate and is slow as death but now he is undercover so he doesn't have his armor on so he gets into fights quickly but takes some serious punishment. Our fights usually last 10 rounds. The fights are almost always memorable and we have had some PC deaths in the campaign. In the final boss fight of adventure 3, one of the players got his mind eaten by the alien and was too clever and got killed by friendly fire because he decided to vanish(to avoid attacking a comrade) and blew up in an explosion by grenade launcher.

My players are fairly well equipped and as they are only two players they use the "gestalt character" rules and have two classes (does not really matter most of the times, because the did not take classes that contribute much to each other). The swashbuckler uses Dr. Recklinghausens Rapier and has placed better enchantments (+2) on it (she thought him being sweet and cherishes his gift arguing that as she did not got him she will keep his rapier) As i did not like the enchantment that was on that rapier and she really made clear that she will keep that rapier, i changed the enchantment to penetrating the damage reduction of oozes, undead and aberrations. The Stalker has two +2 kukris. Yet it would not really matter, if they had nonmagical weapons. They found the thought forms "annoying" and magically stunned more than half of the alien monsters while cutting down the rest. Then they slaughtered the stunned monsters.

I need to see a fight that takes more than a few rounds to resolve. My players have played 3.0+3.5 and PF and early adopted a strike first and strike hard strategy that decides fights very quickly. I can not use mind control or similar things often because i do only have two players and i risk a TPK.

Your Party seems nicely balanced. I imagine that your campaign feels different because you have two players with tech themes. The two characters in my campaign are very skeptical about the changes the new tech brought to risur and do fight the bad working conditions at the factories. The only time i saw some reaction was at the Arms Fair when the players fantasised about the B.E.A.R and a very heavy gun mounted on top. Just afterwards one of the players received a point blank shot from Kaja's summoned canon. *evil grin*