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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 8976440" data-attributes="member: 27780">Well, I guess we've made it to three years of this thread now. Polyhedron approaches it's last few years, but we've still got a long way to go before Dungeon is completed. Let's see if we manage to make it all the way. Dungeon Issue 73: Mar/April 1999part 4/5Side Treks - The Necromancer's Pet: After all the complexity of the last adventure, we go back to the fairly basic quandary of finding a creature that needs help, only for it to turn out to be evil. You come across a bulldog being attacked by werewolves. It's barely alive by the time you get rid of them and any decent party will want to save it. Suckers! It's actually the ex-familiar of a necromancer, and has a bunch of magical enhancements, mostly of a vampiric nature. It can drain your HP, and will do so during the night, leaving party members with lower HP than you think. It can bond it's life to one of the party members, so 50% of any damage it suffers goes to them instead. When caught out and they try to fight it, it can feign death and come back to trouble you again if you aren't thorough with destroying it. Your basic no good deed goes unpunished situation to encourage players to be a little more ruthlessly paranoid next time. Of course, in Ravenloft, you're in just as much trouble with the dark powers for attacking people in genuine need, so they can screw you both ways, but oh well, no-one ever said being an adventurer would be simple or easy. This definitely falls into the category of adventures that are an entertaining read, and could also be useful as general worldbuilding as it has a new spell & magic item in, but shouldn't be overused, as making the PC's paranoid about everything bogs a campaign down. A little screwage goes a long way.The Setting Sun: Rakshasas are just the best (or the worst, depending on your perspective) for a mystery adventure. No risk of a bad save penetrating their disguises, they either automatically no-sell your magic with their resistances or they don't. (although the failure of more subtle divinations is at least a confirmation they're not just a regular guy in itself, but that still leaves plenty of options, not all that mean they're automatically the villain.) A trio of them have taken over the temple of Pelor in a remote town on Greyhawk's Wild Coast. Ironically, the thing that's aroused suspicion is that they're actually really good at their job, as mind-reading means you always know how to meet people’s expectations, they can defend the place from marauding humanoids at no threat to themselves, and the number of people they secretly eat is less than the casualties before they arrived. The higher-ups want to know what's going on (and since divination isn't one of their spheres, can't find out the easy way) and find out if their methods could be useful elsewhere.  The rakshasas will do their best to fob you off, claiming the protection is provided by a simple spinning top that they're pretending is a powerful ancient artifact that repels evil as long as it's kept spinning. (that doesn't show up as magical because it's just that awesome and mysterious.)If you take this at face value and go home there's obviously no adventure. If you don't, or decide you've spent all these weeks trekking out here and might as well see if there's any dungeons nearby to delve before you go home, then you have a pretty decent little sandbox to play in, as you could solve this by detective work aboveground, or by venturing down into the catacombs and coming across the rakshasa's stash of secret slaves, which they're using to dig for actual artifacts with. (the reason they came here in the first place) So this is nicely flexible, and like the other big adventure this issue, thinks about the long term consequences of your actions as well, providing further adventure possibilities whatever choice you make. You could easily save the day but wind up making things worse long-term for the general population, now they've lost both their protection and their fake but comforting spiritual guidance. That's the kind of complexity I approve of. Another adventure that's turned out pretty well overall.Nodwick has seen enough genuinely impressive artifacts that a spinning top holds absolutely no wonder for him.</blockquote>

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