Forge of Fury: Deathtrap? (spoilers)

[Liolel]

Sorry for bumping this thread but as this thread is now a treasure trove for a dm running the forge of fury I thought I'd archive the session I ran in the Forge today.

It was a interesting session. It started by a battle in the troglodyte caves against the 5 warriors, the giant lizard, and the leader. It lasted 10 rounds and the pc's were damaged once. Cursed unlucky dice. The battle might have lasted longer, but in the end the remaining trogs surrendered their leader unconscious. The cleric did an intresting action, and summoned 5 celestial monkeys, which the trogs barely even killed before loosing the battle. Very cursed unlucky dice.

Of course the trogs spoke draconic and the party didn't so they healed the leader, and then I noticed that the leader only spoke draconic as well. After taking all the trogs loot, they left the trogs alone, with the 6 females (who weren't in the fight) the hatchlings, the two warriors, and the leader. I don't plan any revenge for two reasons. 1 the trogs were basically creamed, and are smart enough to know they won't have better luck. 2. As part of my plan to make the party have mercy with hostages (which they do but I want to keep it that way) I don't have released prisoners come back for revenge very often if at all.

Now the party then stumbled across the subterrian lizard. They saw the chests and the fighter went for it. Had fun asking for the flatfooted touch armor class and the lizard grappled the fighter. Next round I rolled a total of 22 on the strength check the fighter rolled a 6. So the lizard pulled the fighter all 10 feet in one round and hit with its bite attack. It got one more successful bite in before the sorcerer magic missiled it to death. Strangely this one cr 3 monster did more damage then the whole trog tribe.

Well it was an interesting session to say the least.

 

[Gizzard]

Cursed unlucky dice.

You dont mention the Trog's Stench ability; did everyone save against it?

(I suppose this is a 3E->3.5E conversion issue; a 3.0E Trog made PC's lose 1d6 STR if they failed their saves; it looks like a 3.5E Trog "sickens" PC's which gives them a -2 to everything instead. Probably about the same overall.)

Anyway, I remember fighting a couple battles against the Trogs, they were fairly matched, especially the one with the Leader. Our party got stuck on the staircase and the Leader used some of his special abilities to get to the top undetected and start hammering our spellcasters from behind. That was a bit scary, but the party was never in TPK range during the combat.

 

[rounser]

(i.e., the bard made a bardic knowledge check to recall a roper's weakness)

That's quite a massive fudge though, isn't it? If bards could recall MM information with bardic knowledge, they'd be a must for every party...

 

[Klaus]

Well, any character with a decent Knowledge (dungeoneering) modifier could conceivably recall that the roper is a Strength-draining aberration that can only be effectively battled with fire (much like a hunter knows how to best hunt a tiger). The basic Knowledge (dungeoneering) DC would be 20, with an additional information being available at 25. A 4th level character that maxes out the skill (a wizard, for instance) would have a modifier of, say, +7 (ranks) +2 (Int) = +9. A rather large chance of knowing something on ropers.

Check out the latest Dragon's Breath article at www.fierydragon.com for more on this topic.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Let me suggest a change I made to Forge when running it for my group. I happen to like adventures whose pacing can be broken up a bit with a variety of encounters -- combat, rp, traps/tricks, etc -- so that players with different preferences can all be satisfied. When they were playing Forge, it was pretty heavy combat after the orcs (hobgoblins IMC) and trogs, so I felt they needed a bit of a breather (see diaglo's Banewarrens d20 story hour if you want the details).

I inserted a small myconid colony at the back of the Glitterhame -- actually, a single Myconid king whose circle had been wiped out by the trogs. He'd been a resident there for a long time, knew a bit about the history and residents of the place, needed some help, and was willing to provide some assistance himself in the form of fungal infusions (think potions of bull's strength or cat's grace, only with shorter durations, and some bizarre side effects).

It seemed a good fit -- the party enters the glowing, fungus forest, and encounters a giant animated mushroom blowing spores at them. Luckily they refrained from going into sushi mode, and had a great RP encounter with a bit of humor, which loosened some of the tension, before going on to the more involved encouters in the Forge area itself.

Forge of Fury is my single favorite published adventure for 3E -- I love the combination of classic dungeon crawl elements with some challenging encounters, a reasonable background, and of course the potential for a climactic ending.

 

[Gilladian]

I've run FoF twice and played through it twice. Each time was very different. The one I liked the best was when I turned the Forge into a part of a deepearth locale. There was a lot going on, but basically the Forge was controlled by Ogres instead of orcs, and the Duergar were standing them off as they used the forge. The PCs eventually got past the ogre gate guards (in this case the only other ways in were inaccessible) by climbing through the arrow slits (stone shape to make them bigger). They eventually made a deal with the ogre-shameness who helped them take on the trogs. I can't remember any more if I replaced the trogs with something else or if I just buffed them up a lot. I remember that I replaced the gricks with a mimic. That was fun! He imitated a streak of precious ore in the wall (I figure he could stick things to his skin to aid his mimicry; in this case it was some uncut gemstones).

Because the party was 7th level when they hit the dragon, I increased her age by one category. This was an almost fatal mistake, as I took 2 of the 4 PCs into negatives before they finally got lucky (the rogue went invisible, drank a potion of swim, and managed to sneak-attack the wounded dragon while the wizard kept it's attention with a lightning bolt).

 

[Liolel]

You dont mention the Trog's Stench ability; did everyone save against it?

The cleric and the sorcerer failed but they were mainly casting spells a few things of note. We were playing 3.5 so the trogs stench wasn't that effective on the casting characters. I had a party of three who went around the trogs for a while so they were all level five. The fighter made the save, and he basically fighting in the doorway. Might have been bad tactics, but the trogs had hatchlings and females to defend. You don't always act rationally in that situation. The fighter also had an ac of 19, with trog attack bonus of +1 at highest, this basically meant I had to roll a 18 or higher. The group tends to fare well against multiple weaker opponents between the sorcerer's 7 magic missiles and the fighters high armor class. Well at least the foundry has some stronger foes.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Frankly, I simply don't believe the stories of 4th-level PCs beating the roper on initial encounter. Not by the module as written. It can't be done. I attempted it with my PCs over and over and over again, after the TPK. Even with good luck with the dice, the result was the same.

Good luck with the dice means
1) The heavy hitters in the group make their saves against strength-drain attacks
2) They hit often, with a high number of crits

First, there aren't enough clues on the roper's existence, and by the time the PCs even have a chance to spot it (against its Hide of +18), they are within range of its tentacles. And that's for the folks with low-light vision.

We never saw it until it attacked, upon which it basically took out the rogue, and tied up one of it's own tentacles.

Second, the roper is intelligent. It knows it's all but invulnerable to magic, and it knows it doesn't have a hard time hitting armored creatures. It'll take the fighters and clerics out first. Sure, they have decent Fort save, but at 4th level a DC 18 save is tough.

We didn't have anyone heavily armoured. Which was interesting. The entire party was mostly relying on dex for ac. Even so, he hit basically everyone he attacked.

Third, despite what a couple of folks have said, you can't charge the roper. The cavern floor slopes down into a stream. The roper sits on a ledge on the other side. It'd take even fast PCs two rounds of movement to reach the roper. That's 13 tentacle attacks (including one from the almost certain surprise round). And against 4th-level PCs, its AC of 24 is pretty good protection against AoOs it might incur by continuing to use its tentacles once it's threatened.

What sort of distance are we talking? Jump checks (good ones) get you across the stream. I believe one of the previous adventures has a ring of jump in it? At the time jump rings were +30 to jump checks, making leaps like the bridge possible and likely.

Fourth, the roper has SR 30, immunity to electricity, cold resistance 10. Lesser fire orb is obviously a great spell for this situation. (Unfortunately it didn't exist when the module was released and for some time after.)

Which didn't matter because we thumped him.

Fifth, as written the roper isn't willing to negotiate until it has "secured its first victim," and even then the PCs have to be the ones to make a call for parley. Even very smart players are going to be loath to surrender or negotiate in this situation, especially when they -- possibly both player and PC -- probably don't know how vastly outclassed they are by the creature.

Yeah - we never had the faintest idea that the creature would be willing to negotiate. With slightly worse dice rolls, we would have been forced to retreat, leaving half the party or more for dead.

I altered the encounter and had the roper make the call for parley, bemoaning its monotonous diet. I have one charismatic player, however, who is of the "PC should never die as long as they're acting heroically" school of thought, and he managed to convince the others not to negotiate or surrender. (We've since discussed our gaming philosophies many times, after several of his PCs' deaths, and he's aware that I don't share his opinion.)

Altering the encounter so the roper opens negotiations is probably the best thing to do by far.

If you run the encounter as written, it will kill PCs. Possibly all of them. And there's no surer way to sour someone's taste for roleplaying games.

Yup. He's basically an undetectable, unsurvivable trap that you can't escape once you've triggered. If you get ludicrously lucky, you might kill him, but you should by no means rely on this level of luck.

 

[rounser]

Well, any character with a decent Knowledge (dungeoneering) modifier could conceivably recall that the roper is a Strength-draining aberration that can only be effectively battled with fire (much like a hunter knows how to best hunt a tiger). The basic Knowledge (dungeoneering) DC would be 20, with an additional information being available at 25. A 4th level character that maxes out the skill (a wizard, for instance) would have a modifier of, say, +7 (ranks) +2 (Int) = +9. A rather large chance of knowing something on ropers.

Check out the latest Dragon's Breath article at www.fierydragon.com for more on this topic.

Is this a 3.5 thing or a Fiery Dragon thing?

 

[Klaus]

It's a 3.5 thing. The different Knowledge skills cover different types of creatures. It makes sense if you realize that the characters have always lived in a world where such creatures have always existed. I mean, we know a great deal about real-world animals and even extict creatures like dinosaurs, so why wouldn't fantasy characters (specially scholar types like wizards and loremasters and bards) not know stuff about creatures?