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Message: <blockquote data-quote="StreamOfTheSky" data-source="post: 6715916" data-attributes="member: 35909">[sblock]The green dragon was surprisingly brief for my group.  They could tell immediately she was nothing to mess with.  I did make a fun little alleyway maze with secret tunnels for them chasing down Nathan Lowduke (they arranged to meet him; he chose the location... 'natch), and they did lie to the dragon by saying he got away when in reality they let him go rather than subject him to the dragon's wrath, so it was a bit interesting.To be clear: in my game I had the halfling ("Cerneban"?) arrested.  Paradim was explicitly still at large and the party kind of forgot about it after a while.  But yeah, have fun re-using him.  I made him a Transmuter 7 for the fight with a bunch of aberrant feats from Lords of Madness.I don't give xp, either.  Makes it easier on me.  But I try to stick to the "13 equal CR encounters per level" guideline, and just in general...it's pretty lame when they spend a single in-game day at a given level before going up again.  This campaign seems to love doing massive gauntlet runs of encounters at the end of a chapter.  I guess it's nice for keeping the casters in line, though.I also did the random emotions thing before s/he died whenever any of them failed the daily save and were "violence'd" out of it early, albeit only for a few rounds.  Best part was when the really abrasive/jerkish PC got calmed and the rest of the party left him like that for hours because he was far more tolerable that way. It even caused him to have to sit out a combat and just roleplay being a hippy while they took care of it.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />About the calming boon and the bartender guy...the numbers are just impossible, as written.  There's no way he'd stave it off for weeks.  That bothered me.  So I complicated the rules for the DC a bit.  I made the DC 10 lower if you hadn't engaged in anger or fighting in the past week (so, no change for the murder hobo party), I reduced the DC if you had neutral components to your alignment (-2 if partly neutral, -4 if True Neutral).  And...I buffed the bartender's will save.  All three combined meant the mellow retired TN bartender w/ strong will could logically stave it off while most around him (including any who fought against the ragesians attacking) fell to it.I would definitely go for a harder fight.  The more beaten down and spent they are after it, the more obvious it will be that they're in no condition to continue on to the valley w/o resting.  I actually narratively "railroaded" them into blacking out from exhaustion and they were annoyed a bit, but knew full well they would've needed to rest anyway.  The harder it is, the greater they'll feel when they overcome the odds, too.One thing I tried to do in this chapter was establish the Ragesian army's dominance.  I had spent the whole campaign talking up how unstoppable they were (since Coaltongue's rise, Duke Gallo's been just about the only one to decisively beat them, and that's with his great tactical skills and virtually unassailable position in the mountain pass to defend).  The party had fought a bunch of thugs, maybe with an inqusiitor, up till now.  But this is their first experience against the Ragesian army proper.  There's a reason Kiernan is hesitant to go to battle with them and they've amassed so many victories, and I wanted the party to see that.  It also meant that it was a historic moment when they actually defeat the Ragesians at Eresh, leading a bunch of untrained peasant militias, no less.I buff and tweak pretty much every NPC (including Three Weeping Ravens...he ended up pretty badass, actually), but I've put a lot of effort into the Ragesians.  Aside from my changes to Inquisitors (general buffs...especially defensive... and all of them are a LE adaptation of Church Inquisitor), I also <a href="http://torchofspirit.proboards.com/thread/202/3-5-forsaker" target="_blank">revamped the 3.0 Forsaker</a> prestige class and use it for some of their elite soldiers (in this chapter, they were the "Veteran Soldiers"), added in Ragesian archers (they have a stat block w/ CR near the party's...but are oddly not really used here), and I also got sick of how useless the Commander class was and made a Tome of Battle <a href="http://torchofspirit.proboards.com/post/463" target="_blank">version of Marshal</a> to replace it (which will apply to others besides Ragesian officers....one of my PCs now has levels in the class, too).  I also tried my best to have them utilize smart tactics and synergize with each others maneuvers.The mountain path fight before Eresh actually killed Torrent (she had a rough chapter....).  She got reincarnated (technically Last Breath, but same concept) as a gnome.  Anyway, I wanted to present the Ragesian soldiers as a force to reckon with and be cautious about, and I think I got the point across.  It meant they didn't want to risk attacking the soldiers outside Eresh, then in Ch. 6 the whole "hurry before the army gets there" is a legitimate, scary proposition for them.I didn't have any air elementals on the valley path because it felt like I had enough encounters already and I wanted the owlbears (for foreshadowing) and the storm danger (they round trip through a valley of storms that is rumored to be so active that people think thunder gods dwell there and...nothing?  seriously?) more than them.  Also, the party has a druid w/ an air elemental companion, so they had already come to the view that the elementals were not really enemies and merely forced to do the bidding of the monks, so yet another fight against them would've been unsatisfying.I heavily re-did Caela, as I did all the monks....seriously, they suck.  Just stick to the intent that she be mobile, flashy, and defensively sturdy, but not that dangerous offensively.  I created a Battle Dancer (monk-like class, but with Cha to AC) fix <a href="http://torchofspirit.proboards.com/post/462" target="_blank">based around the martial art of Capoeira</a> (one PC has levels in it) and used that for Caela and the East Wind monks instead of monk.  Though you could just stick w/ Monk and Aesthetic Mage feat to get the Cha to AC.  I also gave all the monks Practiced Spellcaster (for both casting classes for Caela), among other things.For the forest battle before the valley (and if they had stormed the monastery) I had the West Wind monks set up as tanks and with Shield Other on an East Wind partner, using their whips mostly to trip or disarm.  The East Wind monks, meanwhile were quite deadly* with their (Energy Subbed to Electric) Combust spells.  Which they could combine w/ +2d6 momentum kick damage (a feature of my battle dancer class) w/ a feint check (Insightful Feint spell + Imp. Feint to do it as a swift action) and normal unarmed damage.Caela was actually less dangerous than them...for single targets, at least.  Her main schtick was Like Lighting + Snap Kick.  I also gave her Wings of Cover (though I nerfed it to "only" a +8 cover bonus, not an auto-miss).*In my campaign, the player with visions can potentially negate up to one attack per round (for one ally), so "one big hit" attacks aren't nearly as scary for the party unless they come in clumps.  Also, they are fairly high powered.  Though I actually ban Persistent Spell (and night sticks), while as you allow it.[/sblock]</blockquote>

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