Lord of the Iron Fortress - salvagable?

[Psion]

As anyone who has read my review knows, I was none too impressed with Lord of the Iron Fortress. I found the motivation weak and the the adventure boils down to a planar kick in the door dungeon crawl.

However, I am running a planar game and they are getting to that level. To make the premise more palatable, I had thought about planting the seeds for that adventure by introducing a legendary smith they know right now.

But is it even worth it? How can I make the adventure more interesting, more plausible, stronger, and, well, less of a straight up bash-em? I hate to bypass the opportunity of an adventure whose general characteristics are close to the mark of my game.

 

[Voadam]

I'm running it right now in an e-mail campaign. I laid the plot seeds over a year ago as they investigated a murdered swordsmith guildmaster while visiting the dwarven cleric's homeland and then got sucked into doing demon god's fane which they recently concluded and have now again taken up the dwarven king's commission to bring justice to the guildmaster's murderer.

I have ties linking it to released villains from the banewarrens [SBLOCK] (the kyton, the mephit, the main bad guy who I redid so he's a warlord from the past) [/SBLOCK]

It is my first significant foray into the outer planes for an extended time and I've picked up a bunch of old planescape pdfs and am having a lot of fun with stuff as they bumble through the outlands and get to know the dark of things and have different misconceptions about what things are like.

[SBLOCK]I have changed a number of things. The outlands prevent any alignment powers from working (sort of like Ravenloft), Rigus is populated by duergar, hobgoblins, bladelings, goblins, orcs, and others with no significant human population. I also plan on throwing in those forge devils from Book of Fiends and have everybody in the fortress be followers of Belial, including turning all the duergar to devil worshippers instead of Laduergar and Ashardalon. I plan to turn the monk bodyguard into an unholy warrior of belial if I can get my BOF returned before they get to her. The dragons are rust dragons using descriptions from 2e and stats from 3e Draconomicon. The toughest part is that pit fiend who changed significant powers and CR going from 3e to 3.5. I'm tempted to make a lesser pit fiend that is comparable to 3e powers and CR. At the end I am expanding the hook to the next path module by having the warlord planning assaults of massive numbers of devils towards Ashardalon as part of blood war machinations.

I'm also tempted to make all the maps 10 feet based instead of five so that all the big creatures fit in their 3.5 spacing (it was already tight in 3.0)[/SBLOCK]

Currently they have popped into the outlands but were thrown off target when the plane shift was dragged off course by a modified teratomorph from MMII that had crawled out of Pandemonium and was engaged in a battle with a herd of Bariaur and a Forlorn (from Complete Minions).

Having dispatched the chaos blob they are now going to journey overland to Rigus with the Forlorn horizon walker as a guide, having declined the bariaurs' offer to join them on their trade mission to Sigil where they could have picked up a mimir and a direct gate to Rigus.

 

[Psion]

Ooh! Being a fan of BoF (and in particular, Legions of Hell... the other two sections didn't quite come up to it's brilliance), I like the cut of your jib.

[SBLOCK]I have changed a number of things. The outlands prevent any alignment powers from working (sort of like Ravenloft), Rigus is populated by duergar, hobgoblins, bladelings, goblins, orcs, and others with no significant human population. I also plan on throwing in those forge devils from Book of Fiends and have everybody in the fortress be followers of Belial, including turning all the duergar to devil worshippers instead of Laduergar and Ashardalon. I plan to turn the monk bodyguard into an unholy warrior of belial if I can get my BOF returned before they get to her. The dragons are rust dragons using descriptions from 2e and stats from 3e Draconomicon.[/SBLOCK]

I like most of these changes.

[sblock]The toughest part is that pit fiend who changed significant powers and CR going from 3e to 3.5. I'm tempted to make a lesser pit fiend that is comparable to 3e powers and CR.[/sblock]

Perhaps use an Asherak (sp? - the scythe wielding devils) from BoF?

Currently they have popped into the outlands but were thrown off target when the plane shift was dragged off course by a modified teratomorph from MMII that had crawled out of Pandemonium and was engaged in a battle with a herd of Bariaur and a Forlorn (from Complete Minions).

Since you mentioned using Complete Minions, perhaps you could use a thodol in the place of the aforementioned

Spoiler

pit fiend

. They do seem more mercenary, so they might thematically fit better than an asherak.

Thanks for the input.

I do like that you have tied it to your game and banewarrens more... I do sort of need to find a way to do that myself. Hmmm... I may have to work my Raveller angle.

 

[Voadam]

LoIF is pretty weak on giving structured plot events except for the fortress assault and the random encounters so I'm working out a lot of details and city/investigation plot myself.
[SBLOCK]Most of the interaction and investigation I expect to happen in Rigus and perhaps with the ant colonizers in Acheron. I've got some red herrings as their research on Acheron has mentioned bladelings a lot and they erroneously expect them to be the movers and shakers behind everything with a drow connection from their murder investigation. I also have to use an army clash of orc and goblin spirits on a cube as I've built up those legends from the 1e dragon articles on orc and goblin gods as well as 1e Manual of planes info. I recently bought cry havok but haven't had time to read it yet, hopefully it will have some applicable war stuff I can use.[/SBLOCK]

 

[Psion]

Perhaps use an Asherak (sp? - the scythe wielding devils) from BoF?

That would be ashmede.

Cool buggers. Gotta love a vorpal scythe. Horrid wilting use to annoy my players, too.

 

[Nightfall]

Another option if you want scythe devils, Iron Devils from CC II. Plus they are semi-compareable if you add in say Unholy template from AB. Another alternative to the main BG, two Infernal Sentinels and Fear Devil.

Just bouncing some ideas here Psion.

 

[grodog]

Alan, like you I loathed LotIF, in particular the fact that the adventure is structured so that you have to navigate the main dungeon linearally, which is absolutely inane. If you're going to do anything successful with this module, I think you need to completely re-map the dungeon setting.

 

[Psion]

Well, that's a good point. But makes me wonder: what's worth keeping from this adventure?

 

[grodog]

Well, that's a good point. But makes me wonder: what's worth keeping from this adventure?

Not much

 

[Snotlord]

I kept most of it and enjoyed it. I changed the villain to fit a long-running plot, and used the Iron Fortress as the peak fight.