Critiques for a campaign "arc"

[Anaesthesia]

I'm hoping for some suggestions/critiques, etc.

Two of my PCs went on a side adventure, where they encountered a Prince that wasn't entirely good, and whom they promptly through into jail. I was thinking for the next arc that party finds that a minor noble and a daughter of a baron are in dire straights.

The noble was challenged by the Baron, if he wanted his daughter's hand in marriage, the noble had to prove himself and go thru the Trial of Champions. Good news is the noble had passed, nearly unscathed. Bad News is that the Baron hired an assassin to kill the noble, anyway.

The next few "scenes" I'm not quite sure how to actually write/put together (or if what I have is enough-I'm more used to taking pre made adventures and tweaking them for my purposes).

The party's able to trace a thieves/assassin guild that's rival to the one that they know of (in the city that they are in) from a spy of King Salamonis (he's the guy that threw the above prince in jail--the king I mean, not the spy.).

After a few days on the trail of the assassin, they hear rumors that other minor nobles/court people have been dropping like flies in other areas (who they are and what kingdom/duchy/etc they belong in, I haven't figured out just yet, however I think I want to have a few in King Salamonis' court be one of the first cases).

Somewhere between the middle and the end, they figure out that while the assassin going after the first noble (and the baron's daughter) was slightly before the other murders, they find that in the end, that all of the other murders were done by the Prince from jail.

I was also thinking the party rogue/assassin could have some sort beef with either the assassin out for the noble & the baron's daughter or the assassin under the prince's directive. (What it is, I'd have to figure out.) The player who has this character will be out for the next few sessions, so I think I might have some time to work up something (and segway him from being an NPC-> ie mission to find assassin, alone).

While the Prince and the High Priest (see below) are villains in their own right, and although not allies (but on the same side of things); there's a larger, bigger evil guy that's behind the scenes, orchestrating everything. I'm not sure if I should actually have a bigger and ultimate villain at the end, or just that things happened to go from one adventure to another, and in most cases, and each having a similar thread to the previous adventure, with no big villain at the end (but some massive closure/end of story thing).

What do you think?

Side note: The city that the party is in right now, they are using as a sort of base of operations (their favorite tavern/rumor mill is located there, as well as a number of npc contacts the party has), and is basically a city of Thieves. (I'd also take any suggestions for involving this city in any plots and/or rumors or any way could involve their NPC friends).

What the party's done so far (in summary):

Spoiler

My game has been revolved around an evil cult (and taking it down) and clearing an NPC's (Waldo, a Merchant) name of murder. They have so far cleared Waldo's name of murder, but the line between Waldo and the Cult is starting to blur a little, at least for the party.

Currently, they are trying to locate 2 crystals that the (undead) evil High Priest was hunting down, so he can resurrect himself/give himself a new body and/or resurrect his long gone deity. In the process, he kidnapped Waldo to use as his new body. The High Priest encountered the party, in the guise of Waldo. Part of the party think the High Priest has already merged with Waldo, but at the moment it's just a spell the priest had used to disguise himself. When they find the other crystal, they'll also find Waldo, safe and sound (and had no part in the cult's plots whatsoever), but the party'll ultimately (hopefully) destroy the crystals, and find an Inevitable on their side to take down the high priest. I kind of want the priest to be a minor villain, just a pawn in a larger sense of things.

 

[Anaesthesia]

BTW. I was thinking the noble could offer some sort of large reward for the party-possibly being access to an armory (or something similar), instead of their standard monetary reward from large wealthy benefactors.

My big problem is that somehow most of the treasure I put into the game as reward somehow always gets back to the party sorcerer (even if i put something in, and intended for another player). Any suggestions on this?

(minor side problem: I think I let the party off too easy when it comes to combat)

I have-
2 human clerics (one tends to come and go)
1 halfling sorcerer
1 halfling rogue/assassin-will be out for a few sessions
1 elf ranger (comes and goes)

I used to have two fighters, but both left due to rl issues (unrelated to the game), so I have no real fighter types.

(and apologies if my thread was in the wrong location, please move if necessary)

 

[TheClone]

It's really difficult to campaign criticism with that much vary information, but in general your "arc" seems to be okay. But you do make a lot of assumptions about the player behavior ("the players do this and that"), which might be a little tricky. It's mostly better to think about "This happens and then that" and see the players to take notice and hope they react (you may want to use direct hints that the events are linked to their plot, dropping notes in villain pockets and stuff). Also you don't say much about the hook that gets the players involved in this noble assassination thing, which is always an important point in every plot.

Your crystal search plot seems not to be related to the assassin hunt, as far as you have written. Is that true?

And what system are you using? Would help to spend some thoughts on that combat problem.

 

[Anaesthesia]

I do tend to make player assumptions, so my apologies (difficult habit to break...).

Well, for the plot hook, I was thinking that the Noble & the baron's daughter comes to the party in the middle of the night. Not terribly creative, though..

As far as I written, the crystals and the assassin plot aren't related yet; however I was thinking that perhaps the prince and/or the rival assassin guild might be interested in the crystals, possibly either for their own uses or to succeed where the High Priest had failed and/or hand it off to a bigger villain than they are.

I was thinking that one of the first murders was a handmaiden Princess Sarissa (of Salamonis), a case of mistaken identity-the handmaiden was wearing a dress that the Princess generally wore. I was thinking the info would have been passed to the rogue, via Salamonis' court spy. I was thinking the trail could start here, with possibly a clue, ie: a empty vial of some powder (with no label of course), found on the floor of Sarissa's wardrobe. Unless the party finds some sort of alchemist (or the party rogue decides to try to figure it out), they can find out what type of powdered poison this was. Perhaps it is only grown or found in one area of the continent and/or only one type of assassin's guild has a monopoly of its use and its creation into a powder form.

It's D&D 3.5, however, I've been using the Battlefield Events from the Black Company Campaign Setting (so far we haven't used it, as no one's rolled a 1 in combat).

 

[TheClone]

Hm, with an average cleric number of 1.5 you do have a notable amount of healing available. Clerics do make a quite good fighter replacement in 3.5, especially with the right spells. But usually they do have lover attacks and don't deal much damage compared to a fighter or even a barbarian. But they can make up the front line in battle most of the time. I think you should try to bring in monster with no too high AC and HP. Then your player's shouldn't miss a fighter and the rogue will be able to deal some damage (as rogues don't have that high attack bonuses, too). Maybe you can try to use some more monsters of a relatively low level and boost their attack a little (thus increasing their CR). With the sorcerer the group will be able to clear the battlefields of large amounts of low levels fast. By that you don't run into an accidental TPK and if the fight is too easy, you can just increase the number of enemies. You can also mix a main monster with a group of smaller ones. But too much hard to kill monsters in one encounter may be tricky, although the sorcerer might counter that partly, because they usually do their damage in some way.

As for making player assumptions: Try to break your habit Try to think more of people and places or events that give the party knowledge about whats going on and how to link them. That also helps in knowing where the PCs will go during the session to plan some events. But it takes some practice to predict on which hooks the players will bite and which they ignore. Seems to be the great myth of dungeon mastering

If your hook is simple, it doesn't matter. As you said you are just starting to write your own adventures, so just keep it simple and straight forward (which definitely applied to your hook, the players can't avoid it). If you try to make it too complex, the players may not catch an important hint and then the whole plot might break. Also - according to my experience - you should avoid events with fixed time, like when the PCs don't reach the villains castle on day 10, their friend dies. This can be difficult to handle some times and may be an option for later, when you can predict your players behavior better.

So talking about simplicity, maybe you shouldn't mix the crystal and killing spree things to deeply. But there may be some sort of connection, which provides the PCs with additional hints about the crystal plot. Maybe the assassin had a mission for the High Priest or someone else that was connected to the crystal finding plot and when the PCs track him down they find a hint to that. Maybe one of the killed nobles knew something about the crystals (which makes sense if the prince wanted him dead). That knowledge could have survived the killed noble or was known to his relatives anyway. It may be a reward for tracking down the nobles murder (if it makes sense to offer it). One question you should have an answer to is "Why is the prince killing all the nobles?" He should have some reason for it otherwise it may seem unrealistic or constructed just to have a threat.

 

[Anaesthesia]

I have a pretty good idea what the Prince's motive for going after the Princess (he wanted to kill her when the party stumbled upon his plan the first time around).

I was also thinking the Prince would most likely have the motivation to get the crystals. The idea is that inside his court he had a council, which two court wizards were in. They promised that they could get the crystals for him. When the either couldn't or didn't get the crystals, they broke the deal with the Prince when he went to prison, and switched allegiances to another noble in another city-state. These two ended in a gruesome death.

I was thinking that the party either knew one of these wizards or were in the noble-on-the-run's court, and were discovered missing when all communications from them were cut off-last remaining letters said that both were afraid (for unknown reasons) for their lives.

Anyway, I was thinking that the handmaiden's death and the wizards' death were different, as to cover up that it was one assassin, but in any case all points to one guild of assassins (as in this one guild specializes in certain types of assassinations).

I want to make it slightly difficult for the party to figure out just who it was that did it, besides the methods of the assassin. I was thinking perhaps there was some sort of code that one of the wizards left behind to point the finger towards the prince...so working on that.

 

[TheClone]

Don't try to make it too difficult, it might ruin the plot, if the players don't catch the clue.

 

[Quartz]

and find an Inevitable on their side to take down the high priest.

Bad DM! The PCs should take him down themselves, not gate in a Deus Ex Machina. The crystals are the obvious way: maybe if they're Blessed they'll kill him? (Will Save or be disintegrated).

 

[Anaesthesia]

Bad DM! The PCs should take him down themselves, not gate in a Deus Ex Machina. The crystals are the obvious way: maybe if they're Blessed they'll kill him? (Will Save or be disintegrated).

Well, it was just a thought. I like the idea of the crystals being "opposed" to him, though.

Somehow I always manage to make things too difficult.

Here are some more thoughts about the Assassins:
1. Both are somehow connected somehow to birds (tattoo, guild crest, etc)-They are tipped off about this connection if/when they are snooping around the Baron's place/city-state. (knowing my players they'll probably ask the Thieves guild in Blacksand, first for clues as well).
2. The assassin that's after the Baron's daughter & minor noble was under an order from two guild-masters from Blacksand's Thieves' Guild, as they were hired by the Baron & the guild-masters sent an underling to do the job. The party isn't too wild about these two guild-masters, but is on good terms with another guild-master. However, I was thinking that the guild-master they're friendly with may have to do some searching for the connection with the other 2 guild-masters before he tells the group anything-and perhaps not until a while later they get any info, like when they are in the Baron's city-state.
3. The assassin under the direction of the Prince has a guild crest with a falcon in it; the powder poison found with the handmaiden was linked to this guild, as the murders of the two wizards a specialized technique of this particular assassin.

Another thought. In the first module when the players ko'd the priests of this evil cult, their god comes thru and inhabits this brass golem-the module had him as the final BBEG. I've been postponing this battle, because I wanted to have High Priest dealt with first, and perhaps put this fight at the end of this arc. I'm not sure that the god/brass golem would just try to take out the pcs by itself.

I think the players like this world they're in at the moment enough to keep going on adventures (what the adventures would be, I don't know).

Any thoughts?

 

[Anaesthesia]

If anyone's still out there, I'm still struggling with this arc.

What I have written, is too straightforward. I separated everything by a section, but each of them has only one paragraph (no complications of any sort, I have a lot of NPCs saying "Hey you know about this murder?"), and I don't have any encounters for when they are in between locations.

I have a mini encounter between the group's initial location and their next location, which involves some "highway robbers" who shoot at them from trees. However, I have the feeling my players will try to find the robbers, kill all but one and use a charm spell on the last to get info on where the robber's loot is located.

I'm not exactly sure how to end it either. I know the group will be going after two different guilds and a avatar of a god, but I make my fights way, way, too easy (I pretty much don't have the NPC bosses make a hit or my rolls are so low that they don't hit anyway, and the players kill them off within 2 or 3 rounds).

I'm almost wanting to print a pre-generated adventure and call it a day, but still wouldn't help me on the Avatar combat, anyway.