Sandboxing in the Nentir Vale (was: Emergent Features in KotS)

[LostSoul]

Okay, so here's how it went down.

The player of Wexley the Dauntless Fighter was missing from the game. We knew he'd be late so we started without him.

The PCs are in the Chamber of Bloodletting, surrounded by corpses. First things first - they grab the robes to use as disguises, then dump the bodies outside. They ask what rank these guys were, and I tell them that they're pretty low-rank - cults of Orcus must sacrifice to the Blood Lord, and when they don't have anyone better they use one of these guys.

I'm using wandering monsters here, rolling one per short rest or search (1 on a 1d6), and dumping the bodies triggered a roll. But no monsters.

They look at their map and see there are seven ways to go. So they cast Hand of Fate (which means another wandering monster check, but nothing) and ask it a few questions:

"Which way to the leader?" The ghostly hand of the Raven Queen points west.

"Which way to do the cult the most harm?" I think for a second and, since killing their leader will result in the cult disbanding, it points to the west.

"Which way to the most treasure?" The hand points to the east. This way leads into a temple of Orcus in the Shadowfell where some serious badness lies.

The PCs decide to head west. The passage soon turns north and at the bend there's a door. The Rogue picks it and they enter.

It's a bedroom for a Large-sized creature, and he appears to be gone. Lots of different clothing is hanging in a closet. The clothes are of all different sorts - male, female, rich merchant, lowly peasant, goblin, kobold, etc.

And there's a ruby on a desk that appears to be magical. What kind of magic? It's the focus for Eye of Alarm.

This freaks out the PCs, but then they realize it probably belonged to the Oni they killed and they don't have to worry about it too much. So they grab it and press on.

The corridor leads north to a door. Everyone disguised except the Halfling Rogue Bren the Bold, they enter the room with a plan to pass Bren off as a new sacrifice.

The room is full of goblins and kobolds being tortured, one held positioned in mid-air by a one-foot-long shaft. He's bleeding out onto a magic symbol of Orcus on the floor.

The Crimson Acolytes challenge the PCs: "What are you doing in here?" The Warlock uses his Beugiling Tongue to bluff them. The Acolytes cackle in glee: "We will enjoy tormenting a halfling - their blood is so much sweeter than these wretched goblins'!"

Then they get jumped by the PCs. 7 Crimson Acolytes vs. the PCs; the surprise round works wonders for the good guys.

Then one of the Acolytes dies on the symbol of Orcus and an Angel of Valor is summoned!

They take care not to kill the other Acolytes on the circle and take care of business, Bren using a curtain in the room to blind the Angel of Valor. Malchior the Warlord grabs the Immovable Shaft after the goblins and kobolds are put out of their misery, and they move on.

There are two new doors here, one going west and one north. The acolytes, when things were getting bad for them, cried about "Warning the master!" and tried to head north. So the PCs head north.

The door leads to a corridor. After about 60' there's a door, though the corridor extends further north. They listen at the door and hear chanting in Abyssal, as if someone is praying to Orcus. Only one voice. So this must be it!

They try the door - no good, it's Arcane Locked. But Bren picks it, beating the DC by 2.

In the room they see a "magic-using skeleton". Jace the Warlock identifies it as a Lich, but since it's a Paragon-level creature his roll isn't good enough to learn about its powers. So the PCs merrily rush in to kill it.

They don't ask about the tentacles on a workbench or the summoning circle before the altar. Too bad. As Wexley rushes in, the tentacles reach out and smack him! Ouch, but he's tough. He swings at the Lich and rolls a 26...

Which misses. And the PCs start to worry.

The fight starts and things are on the razor's edge. The Lich drops down his Frostburn and the PCs in it start taking 15 damage - 10 + his aura - each round. He's a hard one to hit, but Malchior thumps him with Lead the Attack, giving everyone a +5 bonus.

I ask the players if they want to know anything about the summoning circle or the tentacles, and tell them: The Lich can summon something from the Abyss with a minor action and a check; you can destroy it with a minor action, either an attack or an arcana/religion check. The tentacles can be controlled by you if you make a successful arcana check as a minor action.

Well, they don't try to do that. So the Lich ends up summoning an Angel of Valor from the Abyss. And at this point Bren and Armok the Wizard are bleeding out from all the damage they're taking each round. Malchior tries to keep them up but there's just not enough healing to go around.

Then the Lich, tired of standing in his own Frostburn, decides to bolt for it. He spends a second wind and runs, the +2 bonus to defenses saving him from the OAs.

Malchior grabs the Lich to keep him from running and Wexley smacks him. Bren gets lucky and rolls a 20 on his Death Save. The Lich slips out of Malchior's grab and keeps moving down the hallway, towards the Undead Barracks.

Yeah, not good. Maybe the PCs should have used their Nail of Sealing on the door. Oh well.

So Malchior runs after the Lich again, getting in front of him. Wexley prepares to charge but the Angel of Valor gets in his face, thinking that Bren is dead (Bren made a successful Bluff check to play dead).

Wexley uses his new Cingulum of Combat Rushing (taken from Kaldor the Knight) to bowl through the Angel and charge right into the Lich. He decides to tackle him, dropping them both Prone in the same space.

Meanwhile, Armok is making death saves and Bren is trying to feed him potions, but they're taking 10 damage per turn. Crap.

With Wexley wresting with the Lich on the ground, the Lich recharges his Frostburn and drops another one on both Malchior and Wexley (and himself, which basically just negates his regen). They're both very low on HP and healing. Jace is trying to blast the Lich but can't seem to roll higher than a 6.

Then Malchior comes up with a plan: slam the Immovable Shaft into the Lich's mouth to keep it from speaking. With Wexley pinning it, Malchior just barely beats its Fort defense and shoves the rod down its throat, keeping it from speaking its arcane words.

(I asked Malchior if he wanted to "mute" the Lich - no spells, no sustain - or keep him in place; he went with the mute option. Save ends.)

The Frostburn disappears as the Lich struggles upoking good. But the Angel of Valor - taking some hits - smacks Jace down. Both Bren and Armok are making death saves, but at least they aren't taking damage.

The Lich breaks Wexley's hold, ripping off his jaw bone in the process, which he picks up with a minor action. Then the angel of valor turns on Wexley and drops him.

Malchior smacks the Lich but in the next round the angel of valor ("angel of undeath") takes him out with its wicked scythe.

No one rolls a 20 on their death save, and that is that.


We decide to start with new level 1 characters in Winterhaven. Whatever legacy items the PCs had left in Winterhaven the new PCs can have access to; this means that they don't have to pay for arms or armour, and there is a Dire Boar. That's about it.

Thinking about the encounter, I probably should have left more hints about the danger of the Lich - more opportunities to discover what was in the dungeon. Live and learn. But it was a fair encounter, on the hard end, and if Jace had rolled better or Wexley's player had showed up - we forgot about his Boundless Endurance power - I think the PCs would have won, limping out of the dungeon to lick their wounds.

The new PCs are going to be dealing with what's happening in Winterhaven while the "Lord of Winterhaven and his men" (the PCs) are out in the Cairngorm Peaks. Eventually I think they might run into undead versions of their old PCs. That could be cool.

 

[Daern]

wow, sounds pretty fun -tackling a lich. I like that you're sticking with the campaign. Your posts make it sound like a great game.

 

[LostSoul]

First day of the new party

Played tonight, the first time with the new PCs.

We have:
Lendil the Shamed, a halfling sorcerer;
Apothis, a deva invoker;
Hrogar, a dwarf shaman; and
Hekubus, a teifling paladin/warlock multiclass.

Hekubus was rescued from Thunderspire Labyrinth by Armok the Wise.

We quickly decide on a reason for the group to form: the new PCs hear that strong arms are needed in Winterhaven and head out there to check it out. Hekubus interviewed them in Winterhaven and they formed a new elite group.

We pick up a day after the old PCs left for the Cairngorms. They hear that Cadon the Gentle had his farm raided recently; they go out to see who did this. (This is one of the quests I listed for them, a minor level 1 one.)

They check out his farmhouse. It's been burned and looted. Apothis searches around the outside, while Hekubus and Hrogar search inside. Apothis finds goblin and kobold tracks on the ground. (Quest reward!) Hekubus finds a goblin poking a spear at his ankles. (5 damage!)

The battle is joined; 3 goblin warriors, a blackblade, and a sharpshooter leap out of their hiding places. They are pretty easily put down, and the final warrior begs for mercy. He says he'll repent and lead a good life; of course he's lying.

They get some information out of him: he's part of the Guttersnipe tribe that was once led by a big bad goblin named Irontooth; once Irontooth left to serve Kalarel, the Guttersnipe tribe fell into chaos and were easy pickings for the White Fang kobold tribe. He was one of the few who fled, and they set up a camp nearby. They were picking over the scraps after the kobolds sacked the farm.

The PCs asked about the White Fangs: there's several hundred of them, they live in the Cairngorms, and they are led by a dragon named Tyranthraxus. They decide to leave them for now and get the goblin to take them to his lair. How many goblins are there?

"About 20."

I use the poster map that came with KotS - the Irontooth encounter - and drop down some minions. The PCs make a stealth check and they get their goblin to try and bring some of the guards to them. He starts creeping away, so he gets blasted.

The other minions run into the cave. Hekubus runs after them.

Inside the cave, minions and a warrior swarm Hekubus. From deep in the cave a goblin hexer blasts him hard and blinds him. Hekubus is wavering.

More goblins come out from the other side and they're blasted by Apothis and Lendil.

Hekubus goes down, and Hrogar rushes in to help him out. Apothis and Lendil enter the waterfall and get a clouding hex dropped on them.

The fight is tense - Lendil falls a couple of times, Hekubus flirts with 0 hp, but the PCs are able to pull through it with a timely daily from Hrogar the dwarven shaman. A few goblins flee, but on their own they'll die.

I roll randomly for a treasure packet of the encounter's level (5) and come up with a cloaked falchion. Hekubus takes it.

So they head back in town and celebrate their victory. While drinking, one villager gets drunk enough to spill a secret: Nolor the Cooper was seen heading into Watcher's Hill (an old ruined fort built on a hill nearby Winterhave). Strange, because it's haunted. But some of the bandits met with him, including Nolor's brother.

In the morning the PCs question Nolor. He spills his guts under threat of violence: his brother had his farm raised, times are tough, there's a recession on, so he joined up with the bandits. Nolor helps them out by telling them when a caravan is leaving and what it's carrying. (Quest reward!)

The PCs ask around, and it turns out Bairwin Wildarson is leaving for Fallcrest in the next couple of days. The PCs decide to leave with him, keeping an eye on Nolor until they do.

They head down the King's Road to Fallcrest, staying just ahead of Bairwin's wagons. They spot the bandits at a narrow pass in the road, two crossbowmen up on the bluffs and four other bandits appear in the woods.

A big hairy man steps out on the road: "Give us your goods or die."

"We'll take option three. You die."

The crossbowmen deal some good damage to Hrogar, dropping him, while Hekubus takes on the berserker leader and a couple of bandits. Hekubus is hurt after the berserker gets some heavy blows in.

Apothis takes cover behind their wagon and helps Hekubus out with some lighting. Lendil blasts another bandit to ash and takes cover behind a rock.

Crossbow bolts hit nothing but cover. Hrogar is helped back up and the tide begins to turn. The berserker dies and the bandits try to flee but have no place to go. The crossbowmen are able to move from their positions and escape the battle.

(Only one of the crossbowmen will make it back to camp; the other ended up in the Valley of Stone and got blasted by some Gorgons. The PCs might find his statue later on.)

We called it there.

This session went pretty well considering it was all basically ad-libbed because I forgot to bring my notes! I had done enough work (the quest to investigate the farm, the nearby goblin camp, Nolor giving information to his brother, a bandit) to just turn the players loose. Next time we'll run through a few possible random encounters on the road and then we'll turn the PCs loose in Fallcrest.

Some of the PCs have a history with Kelson and the River Rat gang in Fallcrest. Kelson has a tie to the cult of Orcus in the Cairngorms - his gang is taking corpses from the Tombwood and selling them to Orest Naerumar, who in turn is selling them to the cult. We'll see how that plays out.

Consequences of this session: The one crossbowman who escaped is going to tell his leaders that the PCs were ready for them. They are going to have some words with Nolor, and the PCs will probably next encounter him dead on a cross at the ambush point.

 

[Daern]

Sounds fun! All that prep on your other thread and you forgot your notes? Sometimes those are the best sessions.

 

[LostSoul]

We had our game last night.

We started off on the King's Road with the PCs having just cleared out the bandits. One of the players mentioned said "and NONE got away!" Of course everyone knew this wasn't true.

I told them that the bandits might find out that Nolor tipped them off; I went over who Nolor was again (brother of a bandit, was giving his brother information about merchants) and they shrugged off any consequence. The feeling I got was that they thought Nolor was a douche and whatever happened to him was his own fault. Cool.

Anyway, with the bandits dead, they don't have a strong direction. Apothis the Deva Invoker recalls a piece of lore about the people who lived at Fallcrest centuries ago - they bound up great defensive power in their staves. Apothis was interested in obtaining one of these, so they went along with Bairwin Wilderson to Fallcrest.

[Behind the hood - I let PCs make checks to locate a specific magic item. Apothis succeeded at his; later on, Lendil the Shamed, Halfling Sorcerer, tried to locate a Chaos Tooth but failed (meaning he needs to gain another level before the can try again).

Successful Aid checks meant that chaos teeth are the teeth of warped creatures, with too much exposure to the Elemental Chaos. I have the Chaos Tooth in one of my maps, since the players let me know they wanted to find it.]

They get into Fallcrest and pass over the brigde. Hekubus the Tielfing Paladin/Warlock of the Raven Queen is from Fallcrest and he wants to head to the Silver Unicorn, the place that would never have him before. It's empty; the owner tells him it's because all the people are going across the river to the new Nentir Inn. She says that the guy who built the Inn must have come across his fortune in a duplicitous manner. [Just dropping some gameworld info out there.]

Anyways, Hekubus and the gang have a nice evening, avoid Kelson and the River Rats (two of the PCs have a history with him), and head into the Tombwood in the morning.

The Tombwood is a scary place. Young men go in there as a rite of passage, a test of bravery; some never find their way back out. The PCs look around for trails and Hrogar the Dwarven Shaman finds one. That trail soon dies out, however, and before they can try to get their bearings, Wandering Monsters attack!

A pair of zombies bursts out of the ground and from the other side a Deathlock Wight and a Corruption Corpse start shooting at the party. The Corruption Corpse deals a fair amount of damage, but Apothis blows most of them away with his divine radiance. What a guy.

Lost in the Tombwood, the very trees possessed of malevolent intent, Apothis calls on a divine favour or his deva heritage or something like that and asks for guidance. A Hand of Fate appears (and no Wandering Monsters do) and helps guide him through the wood.

[I allow him to use Religion for navigation checks and give him a +5 bonus if he spends one of the questions. He spends the first one.]

The Hand of Fate leads them to the barrow mound, a large mound half-buried in the earth, built hundreds of years ago to hold the honoured dead. In they go.

Probing around the entrance, Apothis finds some coin stuffed into a crack in the wall. They don't think anything of this and use the Hand of Fate to direct them towards the Staff of Defence that Apothis is looking for.

They come to an empty chamber, obviously a tomb. There's a small depression on the ground (a grave) and some shards of pottery but not much else. Hrogar digs up the grave and reveals a wight, who attacks. He drains a healing surge from Hrogar but dies quickly; no XP is rewarded.

Apothis notices a secret door in the back of the room and they take it.

It leads to another secret door, on the other side of which they can hear someone screaming curses in goblin and a man wimpering in pain. They open the door and head into the room, a torture chamber; one goblin is torturing a human strapped to a stone coffin by spitting curses and hexes at him. Another goblin watches.

Hekubus takes the lead and strides boldly into the room, saying "The boss wants to know what you've learned." The goblin hexer doesn't know what he's talking about - they're just torturing the man for fun - but his goblin nature kicks in and he accepts Hekubus as his better. "Oh, yes, it's coming along great, just great."

Ral, the man on the coffin, sees Hekubus and calls out: "Hekubus you traitor! Why are you working with these goblins?"

Hekubus considers blasting Ral with an Eldtritch Blast but, before he has the chance, there is a shout from the darkness of the secret door: "Don't trust them! They are intruders!"

Apothis hears what sounds like three creatures in the dark but no-one has darkvision so they remain hidden.

We roll initiative, the PCs with a surprise round against the goblins.

Hrogar summons his spirit companion and orders it the hall towards the secret door to block off whatever's coming. The other PCs blast at the hexer and the blackblade, but not enough to kill either of them.

The blackblade waits for the hexer to flank with him, but the hexer (the quintessential goblin) flees towards the door.

Out of the darkness comes a rubbery, tentacled arm that grabs Hrogar and starts choking him. They have no idea how capable his spirit companion is [nor does the DM!] so the three of them suck up some OAs. The PCs toss their torch down the dark hall but the chokers just throw it back.

The hexer is able to flee and runs down the hall, out of sight.

The chokers are boxed in and can't do anything to the spirit companion, they get pushed and shoved around so they don't get the chance to choke anyone, and soon enough they are dead.

That's when the PCs hear growls - drakish growls - coming from the hall, and getting closer. They slam the door shut.

Hekubus lets Ral go and he sprints to the secret door. "I'm getting out of here!"

Moments later the door comes crashing down, revealing a guard drake and a pair of beady goblin eyes staring at them from around the corner. Hekubus challenges the drake, but the drake doesn't care - it just wants to guard its masters. It bites Hekubus hard and he falls.

Apothis calls an Angel to help him fight and it blocks the hallway. Some goblin cutters are slain by it, but a couple javelins and sword thrusts later send it back to the astral plane.

The hexer, still alive but badly hurt, drops a vexing cloud, providing concealment to the goblins. They laugh, assured of their eventual victory.

Hekubus gets back up and the PCs move down the hall, the Hexer their main target. He falls from an orb of acid launched by Lendil and the cloud disappears.

The goblins fight on, but things start to turn against them. One of them runs while the underboss says, "I'll hold them off." He does, but he pays a price for it - he is cut down as he is trying to flee.

About that time Ral comes sprinting back from the secret door. "Run! Drakes!" he shouts and sprints past them all. The PCs follow him out of the barrow mound, through a pair of rooms and finally out the main entrance.

The goblins do not follow and the PCs have a chance for a short rest.

They ask Ral if he knows how to get out of the Tombwood. He thinks it's just a simple matter of walking out.

Hekubus asks Ral what he was up to. He tells him: "Kelson's got a good thing going - we take the bodies of the dead up to the catacombs in the falls and sell them for a tidy profit. You want to get in on this action?"

Nope. They attack him and Ral turns to run. The Tombwood, mysteriously, seems to open up for him, but he doesn't get far - Lendil blasts him with an orb of acid and he falls, another dead man in the Tombwood.

[We rolled Init checks and the PCs won; that was enough to resolve the conflict.]

I made another wandering monster check and nothing showed up so we called the night there. The PCs gained enough XP to level up already! but they can't do it until they take an extended rest.

I believe they are planning to head into the barrow mound again. That could be interesting - there are still a number of goblins there.

 

[ilmoin]

Sounds fun! I'm sorry I'm not there anymore.

How's the new party working tactically? I noticed that they have three ranged combatants and one melee. Are the paladin and the spirit companion enough to keep enemies off the rest of the party? Do the combats feel different?

 

[LostSoul]

I'm still getting used to their new tactics, but the combats do feel different.

The spirit companion really helps out - in the last battle, he jammed up the 10' wide corridors and there wasn't anything the goblins/chokers could do about it! The Invoker's movement powers really help out. It seriously messed up the chokers, and gave the zombies some problems.

One thing that seems to be happening is that the Paladin is the only guy on the front ranks, so he gets smacked a lot and his Divine Challenge doesn't matter so much. It might be better if he swapped out his +2 cloaked falchion for a shield, maxing out AC, though the sword is pretty awesome.

I think the best monster mix vs. this party would be something like:

2 skirmishers
1 lurker
1 soldier/brute (can be swapped out for another artillery if terrain is good)
1 artillery/controller

 

[ilmoin]

One thing that seems to be happening is that the Paladin is the only guy on the front ranks, so he gets smacked a lot and his Divine Challenge doesn't matter so much. It might be better if he swapped out his +2 cloaked falchion for a shield, maxing out AC, though the sword is pretty awesome.

It's a disadvantage if the attackers are ganging up on Heckubus, but maybe not if they are trying to get past him and beat up on the other characters. Even if he had Melee Training, he wouldn't be able to prevent monsters getting past him easily. Try it and see what happens.

I like the mix of monsters--it is especially good if you can use the soldier to tie up the Paladin and beat up on everyone else.

What else is working well?

 

[LostSoul]

I'm really liking the player-driven stuff. Last game was about Apothis looking for a Staff of Defense; I like that a lot more than "GM dispenses plot hook and we grab it".

The secret door in the barrow mound also worked well. I put it in there to reward players who took the time to search (each search calls for a wandering monster check) - I'm not using Passive Perception for stuff like this.

Using the secret door enabled the PCs to head around behind the goblin's defenses; if they had just wandered into one of the main areas they would have ended up fighting the chokers, the hexer & blackblade, the underboss and his guys, and another group of goblins with some drakes. 3 encounters in all!

It seems to me to be a lot more dynamic than the modules we ran. More player choices with meaningful consequences = good stuff.

I realized during the game that the encounter with the wight in the burial chamber should have been a curse instead. That would have been cooler. I have examples of other curses in my thread in Plots & Places; here's the thread.

 

[LostSoul]

Last night's game. Started off okay, but over time I got frustrated; I was in a bad mood, I guess. We all have our off days.

The PCs were outside the entrance of the burial mound after retreating from the goblins within. They just killed Ral, one of the River Rats (a gang run by Kelson out of his tavern), who was captured in the Tombwood while graverobbing - digging up corpses to sell. They decided that they'd rest up in town and take it easy. The Tombwood attempted to block their path, but Hrogar's spirit companion sniffed out a trail.

DM's Notes: I'm treating the Tombwood as a "creature" in itself, with malign intent. It's pretty handy for forcing choices.

The Tombwood also hates the goblins, but I missed a chance to use this to cool effect later on in the game. Just bad DMing on my part.​

The PCs head back to the Silver Unicorn Inn and rest up for the day, gaining a level. Hekubus decides to send an anonymous letter via stupid, illiterate halfling messenger boy to Kelson during the day; I forget exactly what it said, but it was something about "We killed Ral, now stay out of the Tombwood or we'll come for you too".

That night, Apothis wakes up hearing some commotion outside his room. A bunch of thugs are pressuring the halfing innkeeper into telling them where Hekubus is!

DM's notes: I had Kelson make a Streetwise check to see if he could figure out where the note came from and by whom. It was against Hekubus' passive Streetwise score. He won; I told the players that Kelson smacked the messenger around a bit and he got a telling description. If Hekubus made a Streetwise check to hide his location, that would have been the DC.

Hekubus knows the River Rats, having grown up in Fallcrest.​

The bad guys are: Grug the half-orc bartender, wielding a torch and a flask of strong liquor; Fargarson Vilebrew, the cook, a dwarf exiled from Hammerfall for making a bad batch of ale, wielding a filthy cleaver and a pot of stew; a human bandit, an elf archer, and a halfling slinger.

Grug goes first and he tells Apothis: "Tell us where Hekubus is or else." He readies an action to charge Apothis if he does anything hostile; I know this is not by the rules, but it made sense.

Apothis shouts as a free action which wakes everyone but Lendil, who sleeps the peaceful sleep of the Shamed. But Apothis opens up a door and shouts again, and Lendil wakes. Apothis drops a blast of grasping shards which nails the bad guys and slows them down.

Grug charges at this point and punches Apothis. The other bandits hold off, readying actions against the first guy who comes out of his room; this turns out to be Hrogar's spirit companion, who triggers all their attacks and is not (cannot be) hurt.

Vilebrew dips his ladle into his hot stew and throws it at Lendil, scalding him.

Hekubus wakes, the only guy on the second floor, and challenges Grug, sending an Eldritch Blast at him.

More fighting; here are some highlights:

-Hekubus swings over the railing and crashes into Grug, knocking them both prone in the same square (and Hek takes some falling damage)
-Grug takes a swig of booze and lighting it on fire, breathing a blast of flame on Apothis and Lendil, hurting them badly
-Vilebrew takes a bite of raw meat and makes a mad charge against Hekubus, but he can't seem to hit anything
-The elf archer doing some nice skirmishing from the rear ranks
-The human bandit performing to expectations and doing nothing of value
-Apothis triggers an OA from Grug and the half-orc wraps his meaty hands around the deva's neck; on the next round, Grug chokes Apothis and drops him unconcious

In the end, the PCs were victorious, though it was pretty close. The elf archer took off and Vilebrew tried to drag Grug out, but he was taken down.

Hekubus convinced the others to let them live, though they stripped them naked and painted humiliating graffiti on them. A clear message!

DM's notes: I like designing monsters.​

The innkeeper complains about the damage the fight caused. "Look at all the mess you caused!" The PCs threaten her, and she keeps her mouth shut from then on.

The PCs take the rest of the night off and head out for the Tombwood in the morning. The innkeeper is nice and she's obviously spent all night cleaning up the mess; when the PCs leave, she slams the door behind them and says, "Don't come back!"

Too bad for her, the PCs were her only customers.

In the Tombwood, the PCs try to navigate through but their path is blocked and they are exhausted (re: lose a healing surge) hacking their way in the thick wood.

They head back into the barrow mound and engage a pair of goblin sharpshooters and three guard drakes near the entrance. The guard drakes do some awesome damage and the sharpshooters remain hidden, sniping for most of the fight; one of them breaks to alert the drunken hobgoblin commander.

The PCs clean up the drakes but the goblins get away. They decide to head back outside the mound to take a breather; before they can, they hear some commotion - more goblins and drakes and their leader.

They decide to try and hide from the goblins but the drakes sniff them out; before they can get their short rest in, they are attacked.

DM's notes: That was an interesting choice; they could have tried running off into the Tombwood but instead they decided to hide.

When the group hides, I have the PC with the lowest modifier roll his Stealth, and everyone else Aids.​

The fight does not go well for the goblins; most of the PCs barely move from the blessed circle of protection that Hekubus creates with a short prayer to the Raven Queen.

At this point I was getting irritated; I meant to have the Tombwood do something cool, something like randomly swatting characters, both goblin and PC, or pushing them, or doing something when a character was bloodied, but I didn't. I was frustrated, I guess. Lame.​

One of the goblins surrenders and tells them what he knows, which isn't much:

-They set up a guard post to watch this exit
-Their hobgoblin leaders are on the lower levels, though you have to pass through a level full of undead

He guides them through the barrow mound. They search it and they don't find any Staff of Defense +1, which is what brought Apothis here in the first place, but they do find a walled-off tomb. They know that this is probably the ancient king's burial chamber, and that he's related distantly to the Tigerclaw Barbarians in the north.

They start digging through the wall. Hrogar guides the dig, because as a dwarf he knows where to dig without bringing the whole place down on top of them. Hekubus presses the goblins into service, whipping them. Apothis helps people who are getting tired by rubbing down sore muscles, and Lendil keeps blasting away.

There is one small hiccup; some stones fall after Hrogar gets too tired and chips away at the wrong stone. This attracts some skeletons, but once they are destroyed (and how easily!) the PCs make it into the tomb.

In the tomb they find the Staff of Defense +1, a relic of the ancient chieftan, and his shield. Both are of value to the Tigerclaw Barbarians.

This was a skill challenge; 6/3 and any failed roll would lead to an encounter. They made most of the rolls, only failing at the last one, and that triggered the 4 skeletons + 4 decrepit skeletons who wandered in.

Those skeletons, I though, would have been tough, but no - they were just creamed. The PCs hit nearly every time and I wasn't rolling too well.

I didn't run this skill challenge well at all. I should have taken a more pro-active stance with the wall, but instead I said, "Okay, what next?" It was removed from the fiction and turned into the boring series of rolls some people get. Oh well.

The relics from the tomb are actually valued by the Tigerclaw Barbarians, and that might come into play if the PCs decide to go there. No one uses the shield, so they'll probably sell it; if they sell it to the Tigerclaws then they'll get more cash, and if they give it to them they'll gain a friend. If they sell it on the market the Tigerclaws might get upset with the tombrobbers who desecrated their ancient chieftan's final resting place.​

Next time: I am not sure what the PCs are going to do. I think they might sell/trade the shield to get some info from the wizard in Fallcrest for the location of a Chaos Tooth. They might also decide to deal with Kelson. Or they might just explore the lower levels of the Tombwood Crypts. Luckily I have all of that written up, so we're good.