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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Fredrik Svanberg" data-source="post: 3896203" data-attributes="member: 12996">I'll start writing a bit about the campaign we're playing here. I'm starting at the third adventure since I've forgotten too much details from the first two, but I might fill them in as I recall them later on. Anyway, the title of the thread is referrig to how I've messed up the campaign by managing to kill off characters, and complicating things even further with the new characters who replaced them. Since I can't be sure my players won't read this too soon I will have to leave some spoiler information out until they figure it all out.Let's begin with my first mistake: messing with the Swamp Witches. As the lazy GM I am I didn't want to run a fight with three casters with different kinds of spells and abilities - especially since I knew that the characters would slaughter them easily, seeing how weak and pathetic npcs usually are. I decided to simplify things to hopefully make the fight more fun and easy to run, so I replaced the witches with a harpy, a green hag and an annis.With hindsight I should have dropped the Spell Resistance from the hags, but that's easy to say now.The fight was a disaster, for the characters. They had made camp on an island, setting up tents and boats around their fire to hide it from the goblins they had seen signs of during the trip (totem poles, taboo markers, etc - actually goblin warning signs to not go into the witches' territory). Hiding the fire would have worked if it wasn't for the harpy witch seeking out fresh victims from the air. Once she had located the camp she went back to get the hags and they approached by boat.The witches were described as they were in the adventure, I merely used the stats for a harpy and the hags, so the players couldn't be sure what they were up against. They soon figured it out though. I started by having the harpy sing to them from the boat, 300 feet away from the island, hidden in obscuring mist. The characters had guards, of course. At the time of the attack it was Gogar the half-orc barbarian and Torrent. They heard the song before it was close enough to affect them, but debated about what to do about it long enough for the witches to come within range. I had almost expected the barbarian to fail his save, but then Torrent rolled a 1 and was entranced as well. Both the guards splashed into the water and disappeared in the mist, where the green hag easily drained their strength to zero and the annis stuck them in the boat.During all this the other characters had made some succesful listen checks and awakened. Some of them were affected by the song but the others stopped them and tied them up to keep them safe. The knight Athelstone, and the druid Luna were the only player characters able to defend themselves when the witches' boat reached the island. The annis immediately called up a fog cloud, effectively preventing all ranged attacks and spells. Haddin managed to dispell the cloud, but by then it was too late.Athelstone had been sleeping and was out of his armor, so when he charged to attack the annis witch he was strength drained by the green hag, slammed and grappled by the annis and effectively beaten down in a couple of rounds. As for the rest of the characters and npcs, they were all casters and failed to do much against the aforementioned spell resistance of the hags. The harpy was almost killed by a few lucky spells but she didn't really matter once the fight was up close and personal and she had stopped singing.In the end Gogar, Athelstone, Luna and Torrent were all taken away by the witches to be boiled alive, while the remaining character, Mistral the warlock, ran away with the remaining NPCs, Haddin, Crystin and Tiljan. Luna later escaped by wild shaping into a bird and flying out of her cage, but not before witnessing the boiling of her friends in the witches' cauldron. She also lost the Living Blade which she had been entrusted with in the fire forest. Luna rejoined the other survivors and they continued the journey to Seaquen while the players of Gogar and Athelstone rolled up new characters.The fight would have been fine if both the guards hadn't been affected by the song, if the knight had been able to keep his armor on and if I had reduced or dropped the spell resistance altogether. I had failed to take the weakened state of the unarmored characters into account, but I think they could have survived and won the fight if even one of the guards had made their saves. In the end it all came down to bad luck, and perhaps Gogar's decision to not wake up and warn everybody when he first noticed something.Next: new characters!</blockquote>

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