First time GMing

[flabby_fabby]

Hello,

I have never GM'd before and I would like to give it a go.

The adventure I am thinking of will be about a group of adventurers looking for work in a town. They come across a man who is well respected in his town. He tells the party that his daughter should be getting married and has gone missing and he will pay the party (not sure how much) to find and return her. The daughter will have somehow ended up in a forest and forgot who she is. Unicorns have found her and are protecting her. When the party finds her, she will not leave until a group of baddies (goblins?) have been defeated as they are coming to the forest and killing unicorns for their horn. Upon returning with the unicorns the daughter is introduced back to her fiancée and remembers everything. The unicorns say goodbye and let the party know they are always welcome back to the forest.

I know that is very basic, I will be fluffing it up a lot more. Does it seem okay?

 

[Gilladian]

It does sound like a fairly do-able adventure. However, there are a couple of potential issues...

1) are goblins a viable threat for unicorns? I don't play PF, but in 3.5, unicorns are a healthy cr 3, and gobbos are cr 1/3. Unless the goblins are able to get the drop on the unis repeatedly, I don't see this as terribly realistic.

2) why do the players care about this girl? Maybe you can tie her story into a PC's backstory somehow? Or her father may be owed a debt by a PC? pure money is rarely a good motivator, unless the pcs are quite mercenary.

3) if the PCs are very mercenary, they may think that selling unicorn horns sounds quite lucrative, and prefer to join the goblins (or replace them) instead of rescuing the girl.

4) what is the mechanism of the memory loss/recovery? Even if you don't say WHY she lost and recovered her memories (ie who did it to her), you should know HOW it happened. For example, did someone feed her a potion of memory erasure, but the temple in the town is able to reverse it? Or do the Unicorns do it with their magic once they know the problem (and why didn't they already cure her?) Or did THEY do it? If so, why, and then how/why was she in the forest already?

Leaving some threads open for a future adventure would be fine (like why she was given the potion, if that's what you choose), but PCs will be aggravated if they get NO answer.

 

[flabby_fabby]

They are all very good points. I will have to go away and think of some answers

Unicorns are CR 3 in Pathfinder also, I only chose goblins because the plays are only 1st level. I'm not really sure what level the enemies should be. The higher the level, the easier it is to get the unicorns horn but harder for the party to kill; but the lower the level, the easier it is for the party to kill but the enemies will be no threat to the unicorns.

Any ideas?

 

[Lwaxy]

She could have lost her memory because another man in town, who wanted her as wife, made her forget everything in the hopes she would then pick him. Maybe with a spell or potion? When the unicorns found her, she was innocent in every way, having no memory, and they felt obligated to protect her.

 

[Thotas]

I was going to say that I don't really see a need for the memory loss in the story, but I really like Lwaxy's suggestion.

 

[flabby_fabby]

I was going to say that I don't really see a need for the memory loss in the story, but I really like Lwaxy's suggestion.

She would just go back home to her fiancee if she remembered everything. I also like this suggestion.

 

[BriarMonkey]

Or, if you want to twist it around, the lass could have been walking in the woods and come across the goblins trying to take down a unicorn. In the ensuing scenario, the goblins could have seen her as another potential source of income and kidnapped her (ransom note to be delivered soon-ish); or, in a darker view, one of them may have though she might make a fine prize to present to their king/chief, thus taking her with them.

So, playing things out, the gal is still missing, and when the party goes to investigate, they may find the scene of the attack. Mayhaps the unicorn is still in need of aid - or if the goblins succeeded, they would find the corpse of the unicorn.

This means no needing to come up with memory loss, and it puts rather a different spin on things.

 

[Nookie]

It does sound like a fairly do-able adventure. However, there are a couple of potential issues...

1) are goblins a viable threat for unicorns? I don't play PF, but in 3.5, unicorns are a healthy cr 3, and gobbos are cr 1/3. Unless the goblins are able to get the drop on the unis repeatedly, I don't see this as terribly realistic.

2) why do the players care about this girl? Maybe you can tie her story into a PC's backstory somehow? Or her father may be owed a debt by a PC? pure money is rarely a good motivator, unless the pcs are quite mercenary.

3) if the PCs are very mercenary, they may think that selling unicorn horns sounds quite lucrative, and prefer to join the goblins (or replace them) instead of rescuing the girl.

4) what is the mechanism of the memory loss/recovery? Even if you don't say WHY she lost and recovered her memories (ie who did it to her), you should know HOW it happened. For example, did someone feed her a potion of memory erasure, but the temple in the town is able to reverse it? Or do the Unicorns do it with their magic once they know the problem (and why didn't they already cure her?) Or did THEY do it? If so, why, and then how/why was she in the forest already?

Leaving some threads open for a future adventure would be fine (like why she was given the potion, if that's what you choose), but PCs will be aggravated if they get NO answer.

1) Gobs have huge stealth bonuses and can ambush unicorns allot of the time with zero ranks in stealth gobs still have a +10 stealth modifier assuming an average dex of 14 for a gob. AN out of the box unicorn has a +10 Perception. Now take into account that a Goblin warband each has a goblin dog that unicorn is looking at multiple attacks a round from the dogs and taking fire from the goblins themselves. I think the gob hunting party is a good viable idea and original.

2) Players are hiered to find her right?

3) Or kill the gobs earning the Unicorns trust than ambushing the unicorns themselves later Muahahaha..

4) Threads are always good

 

[Systole]

As mentioned before, goblins have big stealth bonuses. In PF, a pack of 6-8 goblins could be a legitimate threat for a CR unicorn. However, if you want to go the trapping route, kobolds would work quite well.

 

[flabby_fabby]

But would 1st Level PCs be able to beat the goblins/kobolds