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ShortQuests -- individual adventure modules! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed to plug in to your game.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="takyris" data-source="post: 2097805" data-attributes="member: 5171">I was trying to create a more realistic campaign, and succeeded brilliantly with the campaign's first fight -- two of the PCs (a pair of federal agents) and a trio of belligerant and stupid college kids who, incensed at the PCs behavior started throwing punches.They were fighting in a 5x5 hallway, two abreast, so they were using the "cramped conditions" rules.  One PC had Combat Martial Arts -- nobody else did.  It ended up turning into an awkward mess of grappling, tripping, and nonlethal damage, with exactly one punch for lethal damage -- the PC, after getting tripped cracked one of the guys across the jaw.  Eventually the college kids ran off.  The PCs had that awkward, ticked off feeling that an inconclusive real-world fight brings out.Later, the party got run down by an Acura, which then plowed into another vehicle head-on.  The PCs spent several frantic rounds rescuing their own and dragging folks from the burning cars before they exploded.  It was a fantastic bit of non-combat excitement that had people on the edge of their seats -- when you can see flames licking around the car's engine, a jammed seat belt and an unconscious car passenger can be pretty terrifying.At the end, the party got some more satisfying combat.  The gun-specialist got to plug some hired killers full of holes, and he did so with no trouble whatsoever -- one attack on one guy (a Double-Tap with a Desert Eagle, and a failed Massive Damage save), and some hand-to-hand against the other hit-man.  The party ended that one feeling pretty good.In another adventure with these guys, things didn't go so smoothly.  I had a town terrorized by bikers who were in turn being led by evil skeletal bikers who were the undead ghosts of war criminals killed in Vietnam.  The skeletal bikers had Regeneration, and only holy or blessed weapons would hurt them. I was expecting the party to go all Seven Samurai on me, whittling down the bikers bit by bit, but they got greedy instead, and tried to trap all the bikers at once.  A lot of townsfolk got killed in the mayhem, mostly by the skeletal bikers -- the ordinary bikers were taken out without a whole lot of trouble, but the skeletal bikers turned out to be too combat-specialized as I'd made them, and the party was seriously overmatched.  This was my fault -- I'd planned the first encounter to be a "look how scary they are" encounter, with the thought that the big end fight wouldn't happen until the PCs knew how to hurt these guys.  When the PCs skipped right to the big end fight, they were in over their heads, and stuff got ugly real fast.  One PC died, but that wasn't my fault -- when a Tough/Bodyguard at -9 hit points elects to use his Harm's Way ability to put himself in the line of fire against a skeletal biker that has demonstrated himself to be a cold killer with the sawed-off shotgun, that's not murder, that's suicide.  I believe it was 32 points of damage (Double-Tap and a crit, on top of Soldier specialization).</blockquote>

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