My game "session" notes (Dark Sun, Eberron, Gamma World and PoL)

[Aegeri]

Dark Sun: Builder's Cry

After a bit of a hiatus due to Christmas and New Years eve based shenanigans I was back into the game this week. Unfortunately, Hadithi the Dray Shaman's player was unable to play anymore so I was forced to find a new leader for the group. One of my former IRL players was keen but unfortunately I don't think his internet got to his house quite in time - so they had to deal with this session without a leader. This is a tall ask in a game the way it was going so I decided to have a shortened session and delay things out a bit. Ultimately the players wouldn't want to go too many encounters without a leader - the sheer "swing" factor is immense in these situations - and I didn't want to introduce a PC whose player wasn't even in the game yet!

I took my time at the beginning of this session just explaining the situation, with the caravan and asking the players what they had done during their year away (or in) what is now called "Free Tyr". I also established that numerous factions vied for control of the now "Free" city state and a recent development threatened to swing that balance of power. Rumors of a city that had risen up from the sands far to the south east of Tyr had begun circulating for months - with nobody finding them credible. Until one group came back to the city with unusual artifacts and even masterwork metal items of unknown origin. All of whom claimed that the artifacts had been found from the so called "Lost" city that the rumors had been speaking of.

This evidence firmly convinced many in Tyr - not to mention many factions outside of it - that there was something substantial to these rumors. So a full expedition was planned to journey to the new city to plunder its riches for Tyr (or whoever makes the smartest move to usurp them). Essentially, I established that numerous power groups within and even outside of Tyr had a vested interest in the treasures of this place. To entice the players characters, I seeded some general plot hooks that could be developed by players as a part of their background to get them involved. For example, numerous noble and merchant houses in Tyr are helping fund and equip the expedition: But none of them want to truly share the glory with the others.

To emphasize this, I had the lead NPC of the caravan Techulan come down the line inspecting those he was to depart with. Upon coming across the PCs he had a short conversation with them, giving the group a mysterious statement that he would "Need individuals who could get things done when the time comes" - a potential offer of work or maybe even a veiled threat. I would feel this is the first of many offers the PCs might get as they rise in power and prestige - who they support will be very interesting indeed.

Ultimately though this module is about travel. I've always loved the long haul desert caravan concept in Athas. In this module I wanted to really show just how difficult traveling long distances through the wastes safely was in Athas. When you aren't dealing with monsters, you're dealing with immensely inhospitable terrain and even more terrifying than any monster the unforgiving weather. In many ways this module is a true mood setting for Dark Sun as a setting. Although I didn't get time in this session to introduce it, an important concept early on that I will be introducing into the game is sun sickness. How the blasted dying sun of the world warps, mutates and generally makes life miserable for almost anything.

In order to set the mood for "Travel" in Athas I didn't want to show the PCs the whole map. There are two things I hope this accomplishes. The first is to show the PCs how little of the actual world their characters truly know about - mostly a region in and around Tyr itself. The second was to really show a sense of progression through the world visually and not just from a purely descriptive point of view.

The amount of the world the PCs know about

After the caravan left Tyr, the first hazard they faced was - quite fittingly IMO for the theme and feel I am going for - a blistering dust storm that rapidly rolls into the caravan's path. This was a "three part" skill challenge that was mostly done communally and had a simple structure. Each round the PCs made a communal athletics check or endurance check. If at least half the PCs made it they got a general success on the skill challenge. If more than half failed, they got a failure. The initial goal was to flee from the dust storm before it arrived to seek shelter in a nearby rock formation around a mile off the main road. A success here put the PCs in a good position and meant they avoided the second, much more difficult part of surviving in the open during the dust storm. The final part was simply taking shelter in the rocks and enduring the storm.

Simple, but demonstrates the power, speed and danger of Athas' unpredictable weather. The PCs succeeded at the first part with fair ease and like with any SC, I was pretty liberal in general with letting the PCs ideas work if it fit. A great thing to see was most of my players spend their ceramic before leaving Tyr on items that fit the setting quite well. Things like desert clothing, sun balm, desert filters and similar. I allowed PCs to make use of most of these, combined with secondary checks like perception/nature to improve their chances of succeeding the skill challenge. Naturally, the PCs escaped rather unscathed in the end - though some of their colleagues were not so lucky and were rent apart in the violent swirling dust before their eyes. This again had a distinct point other than trying to be dramatic: I wanted to emphasize just how dangerous the weather was to those who travel the wastes. Not just have gratuitous death for the sake of it.

Even with the successful skill challenge, the PCs still found that the caravan had split up to a great degree. Perhaps fortunately the PCs heard a sharp cry of a Crodu - a tall velociraptor crossed with chicken reptile used as a beast of burden - within the distance. Investigating, they found one of the pack Crodu carrying precious survival days had become lost. Unfortunately for it the beast had blundered right into a silt sink and was going under quickly. To make matters worse the caravan had been tailed by several ssurrans. You'll remember that the PCs encountered a bunch of these guys before and really hated them then.

Naturally the ssurrans were unimpressed with the arrival of the PCs and neither were the PCs happy about their potential survival days being looted. The fight of the sinking Crodu was on. The ssurrans started by splitting their attentions between stealing what they could from the Crodu and delaying the PCs as long as possible. Roughly 3 minions attempted to steal survival days, while the bulk of the ssurran forces attacked the PCs to hold them up. I had two purposes behind this.

1) The first was to emphasize how opportunistic the inhabitants of Athas were and to make the world feel "alive". These monsters weren't specifically interested in the PCs whatsoever, merely the previous supplies that the Crodu was carrying. They were opponents just by circumstance, not because they were lurking around in a dungeon waiting for the PCs to put an axe in their brains.

2) The party had no leader, so this allowed me to deliberately stall back any "alpha" strike from the hard hitting ssurran dune walkers and shaman. Effectively the tactics were delaying, not to win and so the creatures were only interested in grabbing what they could then running. This helped just even out the combat and not put as much pressure on the PCs, especially compared to if I had committed 100% of the monsters to the combat.

The ssurran shaman hung back near the Crodu, using his ranged powers to harass the PCs from safety. When it looked as if his front line clan mates were going to fall, he beat a hasty retreat before the PCs could get a good shot at killing him.
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And after keeping the mage dominated for almost three rounds due to some unlucky saves - the shaman recognized a losing cause when he saw it, ordering his clan mates out of the combat.

But to fight again?

We shall have to see........

Brave sir Inix Skull ran away he did...

The mage having recovered from his dominate chased down one of the fleeing ssurrans and killed it for a fitting revenge. Although there is now the issue of how they get the Crodu out of the silk sink, I decided to leave that until next session and hopefully I can introduce the new player through that skill challenge. Overall I had ticked the main points on what I wanted to accomplish immediately with this 'travel' section of the game. So I am pretty happy.

But it's going to get so much more diabolical.
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[Aegeri]

Eberron: Dark Prohecy
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I had to go walkies in the morning for key supplies and got unfortunately rather delayed before the game - losing a bit of the session. Pro tip for aspiring DMs: Make sure you have your delicious snacks and drinks ahead of time! This means you don't get caught out on an early morning walkies and miss some of the game! In any event DnD was had and shenanigans abounded: Pretty much as usual in fact.

In any event the game got underway with the PCs finding a route through the webbed town to investigate the source of the noise. This did only come about after some careful deliberation about just burning down the web and the village with it. Inevitably they found the source of the yelling - an elderly gentleman standing outside his tiled house fending off numerous hungry giant spiders. Curiously the fellow was not trying to use his spells to harm them, merely keep them back while "talking" to the creatures. Trying to explain rather diplomatically that the spiders shouldn't try to eat him as he was their "friend".

Of course it was obvious that the spiders had other ideas, with several of the stealthy critters having already moved around behind him. Charitable as the PCs are they moved into combat to help deal with the spiders - in a slightly more violent manner. Things proceeded fairly well, clearing out the majority minion spiders with relative ease. Even the deathjump spiders that had plagued them in the past didn't prove to be as dangerous - despite jumping from the roof. In a slightly ironic twist, the elderly man went down as the minion spiderlings felled him with bites combined with vulnerability.

Gryll the "spider expert" got quite a nasty surprise here.

The PCs were more than in control of the situation and were able to rescue him before an unsightly death. He explained to the PCs he was trying to force the creatures back and had never known them to be so hostile. Naturally the characters told him about the fact the spiders were controlled, which caused Gryll to remember that he had indeed seen a woman with the beasts. After a short conversation explaining what was going on, Gryll suggested further survivors may be at the mayor Arden Galen's house. Gryll regretted that he had 'confiscated' the mayors main weapon, a magical flaming halberd in fear of destroying the entire town*.

As the PCs had saved them Gryll had no problem handing over the weapon, several vials of alchemists fire and some potions of his own concoction "Gryll's Amazing Arachnid Damaway!" Aside from having a strange name, this item has two important points in the game. If you read the previous session write up, you'll see the PCs got firmly hammered and many of them are very down on surges. Although an extended rest would be perfectly fine at this point in the game, I wanted to keep a bit of pace up for a short while. I also wanted options for regaining surges when the PCs advanced to the next area to regain surges.

Like the previous "tonics", these potions restore 2 surges but they have another powerful benefit: They automatically end effects ongoing upon the PC that have the poison keyword. You might think this is something more than worth hanging onto if possible, but like many things I made sure they had only a specific utility. Gryll carefully developed his serum to interact with the injuries and poisons of arachnids. Unless you're damaged by such an arachnid it doesn't function. The point of this is both a fluff and again, mechanics reason. This part of the game has a lot of arachnid enemies, so allowing these to be used only when damaged by an arachnid (since your last extended rest it should be noted) means it keeps it very useful here - but rapidly means they become useless later.

Effectively it means it keeps the adventure flowing and gives the PCs some extra surges, without actually becoming a problem if they are saved up later into the campaign. Either way the players decided to just hang onto them for the time being and moved on, marching through the town to reach mayor Arden's home (and hopefully further survivors).

On the way the PCs ran into something genuinely horrifying in the town's central square. Almost entirely webbed over, numerous disfigured and disgusting web bound humanoid creatures rose up. These were the unfortunate victims of a terrible monstrous spider called a tomb spider, which turns the dead into walking corpses filled with a nasty surprise: A swarm of deadly spiderlings. Here is where a bit of planning from the items I gave the party comes into play.

This encounter was pretty difficult but it could become even more difficult if the zombies were not killed in the correct way. Each one not killed by a fire keyword power would immediately burst like an overripe balloon - spilling numerous spiderlings out. The spiderling swarm is not only more powerful than the zombie (a level 2 brute vs. a level 5 lurker swarm), but imposes considerably better effects and an aura. The zombies however were incompetent fighters, having no ability to make OAs or even charge (due to lacking a melee basic attack). So good use of the PCs flaming halberd (suitable for the Paladin defender), the alchemists fire and the Artificers chaos engine weapons powers could make all the difference.

To cap off the encounter was the tomb spider itself, which I actually changed quite dramatically to fit more of a lurker role with a couple of new powers. Instead of the powerful ongoing damage, I added straight dice to damage for the bite, added another alternative bite attack and a potential jump attack (similar to the deathjump spider). Although he could not attack twice a round as a dedicated elite could, the spider made up for it by being able to front load damage effectively. The pounce attack for example knocks a target prone and then automatically hits it with the bite attack.

Combat began with the rogue staying back and throwing a dagger, being cautious about the zombies - while the Warforged assassin plowed into one. The critical hit smashing the creature to pieces, but then releasing the swarm of biting and deadly spiders into the fight! With the jig up on the purpose of these rotting undead husks, the PCs realized they would need to finish them off with fire or risk further swarms appearing. By the end of the first round, everything looked well under control until the tomb spider parent joined in.

The tomb spider bound into combat, knocking the paladin prone and then inflicting an extremely painful bite. A second enfeebling bite then put the paladin into an awkward position.
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The tomb spider was a considerable threat with its bite preventing the use of an opponents second wind for that encounter. Additionally I copied the black dragons heal check removal power for a secondary enfeebling bite attack. Should the power hit, the unlucky PC ends up with a -2 penalty to speed and vulnerable 5 necrotic until the end of the encounter (or a successful heal check as a standard action, ouch!). Unfortunately for the paladin, the spiders initial jump slammed into him successfully and he got automatically bitten. Fortunately for the paladin, when it rolled for damage the hit was a critical! This is fortunate because the attack was an automatic hit, so couldn't get the massive 25 damage from the crit. The spider was forced to settle for a more measly 17 points of damage. It made up for it with enfeebling bite, imposing the conditions above and dropping the paladin unconscious.

Now the fight just got real. The zombies continued to present little threat, while the swarm pursued and damaged other PCs. Inevitably, the tomb spider cornered the artificer and provoking an opportunity attack (with little other choice - hemmed into a corner with a zombie nearby) the spider bit him down. This left the combat in a delicate position!

The artificer was pinned against the wall and made a risky attack, which unfortunately for him didn't come off.
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However with the paladin up and not interested in further spider or zombie based shenanigans, he rapidly finished off the tomb spider (with a sigh of relief from the other players). With the vile beast dead the situation was still precarious.

The tomb spider was dead but the zombies were still up and about.
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However several things were firmly in the PCs favor. The first was that the zombies were mostly badly damaged - so a solid hit from any fire power or a vial of alchemists fire would finish them off. The second thing was that I made the zombies have the clumsy property - so they had no melee basic attack. This meant the PCs could walk around them with impunity and quickly feed potions to their allies. Even when the rogue was clunked unconscious by a brutal critical hit (wasn't far off being killed either!), the PCs didn't have to worry much about moving away from the creatures.

Using the ability of his weapon and the paladins flaming halberd, the PCs finished the remaining zombies off without further swarm incidents - albeit ending the combat in a very hammered state. Due to several players needing (or wanting, I hear there was FOOTBALL?! in the US that day) to leave early we ended it there. Some interesting times lay ahead I feel, but once again I am incredibly happy to have another tight, interesting combat that swayed back and forth. This is something that I seem to be getting more and more in 4E - usually without killing anyone often. The number of tight combats I've had, compared to the number of PCs I've killed is very high. This is a really good thing.

Part of the reason I felt satisfied was also that it was a good set up for making the magic items I gave PCs really count. Chaos Engine's ability to turn a power into a fire keyword power and the flaming halberd were central to the combat. Good use of these items would present a far easier encounter than if they didn't use them. Making them relevant and important choices in magic items - not just another +2 ranged and +1 melee weapon.

As you can tell this was a really close combat and when you factor in an additional three potential swarms, the use of these items was essential to victory. I did remind the artificer about Chaos engines powers though. It was a couple of weeks since last playing and at the time, it may have been the difference between fighting an extra swarm (or not fighting it). This naturally helped finish off the remaining zombies with satisfying sounds of murderous baby spiders popping.

*This seems stupid, but in reality Gryll was afraid of setting the main webs on fire. This would not kill many of the spiders as the web would not burn fast enough, but would destroy many of the towns house's thatched roofing - exposing them entirely to assaults by the creatures inevitable return. Not to mention that dispersing the creatures would cause them to flow into the surrounding forest, preventing the villagers from escaping that way either. Unfortunately, I did not get this explanation across to the PCs at the time. Another pro-DM tip, always read your own story notes so you get across important concepts before the game.

Edit: Enfeebling bite was name changed to Festering Wound (which I thought was more appropriate). Here is the tomb spiders stat block.

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[Aegeri]

Dark Sun: Builder's Cry
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Once again I was faced with the challenge of designing encounters for a party that lacked a leader, due to my new player not having internet yet. This is always a challenge, because if monsters front load too much damage or have a bit of luck go their way it can make life very awkward. Additionally PCs cannot use their healing surges in a very efficient manner and so burn through them faster. With these challenges in mind, I shifted around encounters so some of the more rolepaying orientated encounters came earlier so to give the PCs longer breaks between combats.

Firstly came some clean up from the end of the last game session. The Crodlu was still sinking beneath the silt and with it all 24 (!) of its remaining survival days of rations. This was not a situation that the PCs wanted to be in, as survival days will be gold at a later stage in the campaign. After some debate, the wizard started to pull some of the weight of the struggling beast and the other PCs pushed some of the large bones into the silt. With sufficient purchase the Crodlu was heroically rescued and they earned themselves a new pet! After a moment to name him, eventually they decided upon simply "Bob" they rejoined the caravan.

Unfortunately not all was well in caravan land since the dust storm. The sun was getting even hotter and brighter, literally boiling the unfortunate members of the caravan alive making travel extremely difficult. I started to require the PCs to make endurance checks even when supplied to avoid the suns especially intense heat. If you're familiar with Dark Sun as a setting, you can totally guess what might be in store soon creature wise! None the less the intense heat was also causing other problems.

The dust storm combined with the rapid raid on the caravans supply beasts had reduced the amount of water they had considerably. The PCs soon found themselves on half the normal water ration because of the vastly reduced stocks! Techulan admitted that they would not make it all the way with their current water supply. He had diverted the caravan further west than intended so he could potentially raid a nearby oasis for more water. Unfortunately the scouts he had sent there didn't report back and he suspected the worst. Realizing the PCs were the sort who got things done and best of all quietly, he enlisted their aid.

During this I wanted to put some hints as to things coming up in the game and also show just how powerful the seering stone Techulan was using is. While conversing with the PCs, Techulan examined his dusty orb and was looking at the images within it. One of the PCs risked a look and couldn't quite handle the influx of psychic information that rushed in with it. He took some damage and picked up a couple of strange, distorted images. One of an army of ssurran's led by a familiar figure and the other of a broken city, with five tall towers stretching up all the way to the burning sun above.

Under the cover of darkness the PCs left the caravan to go and secure the oasis, so some of Techulan's men waiting nearby could gather enough extra water. Here is where I wanted to show that even at night Athas is a brutal and horrible place. While the PCs will burn during the day the night offers no solace as it becomes freezing. Traveling at night requires a more difficult endurance check due to the sub zero temperatures and exposure (while the PCs have items, like Sun Balm that can make travel under the sun easier). The PCs pretty easily succeeded in the end, but it was a quiet reminder that Athas' environment does not let up regardless of day or night.

Eventually the PCs arrived at the oasis and quickly found that it actually was almost luminous. Strange energy permeated the cliff, plants and the strangely glowing water. Approaching carefully at first, the PCs could see nothing among the rocks but neither could they see any sign of the missing scouts. Only upon reaching the oasis proper did the PCs find the reason for the scouts disappearance. The oasis rapidly revealed itself to be a shifting piece of terrain appearing partially in Athas from it's dying feywild. The eladrin guardians rapidly made their presence known and demanded the PCs leave or die. The characters of course attempted to reason with the eladrin but they had no interest in what the filthy "defilers" wanted. Battle rapidly begun.

This is actually a crossing into Athas' dying feywild, where the eladrin have shifted from the feywild into Athas to defend the spring. Several water elementals animated by primal spirits summoned by the magic of the spring also rose up in its defense.
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The eladrin started by pounding into the PCs and the snipers jumped out from hiding, trying to drag the PCs down with their thrown chatkcha. Most of the snipers threw pretty poorly and so the PCs avoided most of the extra damage from hidden sniper. They were then blown off the cliff by use of the mages scorching burst. The executioner front loaded pretty much everything into the eladrin veiled warrior to nearly down him round 1 (10 HP, only 1 HP from death attack ). The eladrin and elementals though did not give up and assaulted the PCs to deal some damage. But things looked firmly in control.

With only a single elemental left on the field and just the mirage adept left on the top of the cliff, the battle had been mostly won.

Despite the losing position the mirage adept continued to fight to the death. Never giving in whatsoever to the "Defilers" and vowing their deaths to her final breath. Impressively her last few turns were considerably productive as she dealt some considerable damage to the PCs. Although a critical hit from an arrow to the thigh almost killed her, it was another amusing case where the assassin failed to get a death attack by 1 HP (she was left on 11 HP). She stood tall on her rock until the very bitter end.

A satisfying resolution to the combat. Without a leader the party could have been prone to a very swingy fight, but as it was I damaged the party enough to be challenging without anything feeling unfair or that dice could kill them any minute.

As the PCs checked out the water, which fresh from the spring had some mild healing properties (restoring a couple of surges, though the party wasn't too bad off pleasingly). They suddenly found they had another guest who had been watching them. An elven woman - incidentally rule #1 of Dark Sun is never trust an elf - approached the party and commented how pleased she was they had cleared away the eladrin. Introducing herself a Variya, she offered the PCs a bit of an interesting proposition. Some of the caravan's inix's were carrying valuable weapons and other supplies. If one of them would get "waylaid" and end up in the desert unguarded, she would see to it disappearing. Then the PCs would be able to gain a reward - equally as mysteriously you understand.

This provoked a lot of back and forth from Variya, who was more than happy to talk the PCs heads off and run circles around them with words. After a somewhat involved conversation the PCs somewhat agreed to the terms she set. I'm not entirely sure what they are planning to do, but one of the weapon laden inix's with the caravan is actually serving the contingent of templars sent with the traveling party by Nibenay. It does not appear that the PCs would be at all upset if one of their inix's was to suddenly go mysteriously missing. Though how exactly they plan to carry out this nefarious deed will remain to be seen!

Also - almost as a casual afterthought - Variya mentioned that while talking to the PCs they had "borrowed" a couple of the Crodlus that the other soldiers waiting nearby had. She then promptly vanished into the sands of the desert as mysteriously as she arrived, leaving the PCs with quite the interesting choice. There is where we left it but you had better believe the sheer magnitude of backstabbing available here is going to be immense. I'm not done setting up backstabs and counter backstab options for the PCs just yet, many of whom will have very long term ramifications...
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[Aegeri]

Eberron: Dark Prophecy

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Following on from the giant spider madness of the previous week, we continued with a very similar theme of... giant spiders! Though I suspect the PCs will soon yearn for the good old days of "just" spiders soon enough. For now there was a job to do: The Mayor was under attack and were the PCs bad enough dudes to save him?

After treating their injuries from the last combat, the PCs moved towards the house where the mayor was trying desperately to make a last stand. Most of the other able bodied members of the town were unconscious or badly injured - Arden's wife in particular was so badly envenomated that she would die soon without treatment. Suspicious at first of the PCs approach, Arden only opened the door after some brief convincing. This was because a woman had previously convinced him to open up and in doing so, numerous spiders had taken the opportunity to rush in. With his brother and others having left on a near suicidal rescue mission towards the spiders lair. Arden was the last and only thing between the wounded and death.

That is until the PCs arrived! Arden was relieved to see them and soon explained the situation. Tybalt examined Arden's wife and realized one of the potions that Gryll had given the party could revive her. This turned out not to be a difficult choice, but I always like to present such "moral" choices to the party. Where they don't gain anything in particular for what they do, but it does cost them something (even if it is fairly minor in the long run). In any event Arianne turned up near the house and asked the PCs to "Parley".

Of course it's worth noting that Arianne's idea of a discussion is to have her spiders stick their fangs into you and digest your delicious organs. So you can imagine that you don't get far trying to "talk" to her and simple passive insight revealed the malicious intent behind her words. Arianne was not in any mood for diplomacy and simply insisted that the PCs die horribly. A bitter twisted wreck of a person, the PCs saw that she bore the same mark upon her that the murderous arthropods they had encountered. Within a short while of talking to the PCs she revealed her plan, to marry Leonan (the man her spider abducted at the wedding) by noon the next day. Then promptly turn her army to butchering new Cyre for the honeymoon.

With this several phase spiders and two mournland stalkers (converted Dark Sun crystal spiders) entered the building. Here I had put tokens representing large holes through the walls, providing line of sight/effect for powers (like teleporting ). The goal here was simple: Use the phase spiders reaction to teleport PCs onto the other side of the wall, then tear apart individual PCs with the hidden mournland stalkers. This plan worked fairly well, with a phase spider sending the artificer tybalt through the wall - right into the crystalline claws of one of the mournland stalkers.

Tybalt is stuck on the other side of the wall, with a stalker in the same room and the rest of the party trapped fighting the phase spiders in the central room.
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Despite the tactical trickery, the party performed pretty well and the spiders were soon sorted out. Hitting the Paladin in particular proved difficult as I (the paladins player sadly couldn't make it) kept within his reach of 2 and stuck near the wall to prevent easy flanking. With the battle in the center handled, Marhu tried to smash his way through one of the weakened walls to get through but bounced off (much to my mirth). The second attempt worked perfectly though and he got through, engaging the other stalker to prevent it having too much of its way with Tybalt.

In some ways this encounter worked quite well, but in other ways it wasn't quite as efficient as I hoped. Mostly the phase spiders didn't have a great time on their attacks and were killed fairly easily. The point of the encounter was met and made for an interesting tactical situation. So I was quite pleased. Once the spiders were dealt with, a quick retreat back to Gryll's warded house provided safety for an extended rest. With time pressing in with Arianne's impending wedding, the PCs took their reward (some gold and potions of resistance to poison - handy) and followed the southern stream to Arianne's lair.

From the utterly silent forest the PCs came across the cave that the creatures lived in. Here it's worth noting that the forests silence was explained: The horrific creatures had basically swept the forest clean of life. All manner of animals such as deer, wolves, bears, cats and every bird imaginable was stuck within the web (in various states of decay). Many sacks of balled dry rotting meat were also suspended from the entrance and ceiling of the cave. The general theme continued within the pitch black interior as well, with lichen and moss growing whenever there wasn't thick mats of white webbing.

The PCs soon ran afoul of the caves ferocious defenders, a pair of deadly centipedes that rolled a bit poorly on their stealth checks. Rushing from their rocky hiding places combat began! Gaining the advantage initially, the PCs began to surround and deal with the centipedes relatively easily. During this period two ambush spiders, which haven't been seen since the beginning of the game snuck around into position. On the second round one of the PCs got slightly too close to a large fungus formation, which soon rose up, sprouted legs and then two huge fangs...

This creature, a new monster of my own making was a Sporetrap Spider. If you're wondering about the strange name, I actually made it for gamma world initially and then made a DnD "conversion" I liked the concept enough. Covered in deadly spores that can confuse enemies, the sporetrap can rapidly shuffle enemies around the battlefield and even make them attack one another. Unfortunately when I put it into maptools I didn't put the attack as the "failed save" effect, which meant it got a bit more than intended. Fortunately the mistake wasn't too significant, due to the PCs rolling horribly to hit one another anyway - except the rogue who pulled out his dagger to whack the assassin (but it was just a dagger :O).

Dazed and firmly confused, the PCs got slid into a big pile and had some fun flailing (rather ineffectually in the end) at one another.
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The dazed paladin then suffered two brutal attacks, hitting mostly due to the effect of combat advantage. The first spore attack and melee attack would have missed as well if it wasn't for the sporetraps handy centipede flanking buddy, which the paladin was near originally. Gaining combat advantage against defenders is utterly invaluable for any monster - especially one that attacks multiple times every round. The trapspore then action pointed and attacked with his double attack, pulling the paladin back and inflicting a bite that dropped him unconscious! This is where the PCs discovered the danger of this creature, as it gains future bonuses to damage against opponents it has grabbed (dealing 1d6 extra poison damage).

The round started to swing back towards the monsters, as the PCs found themselves ambushed from the nearby cobwebs by ambush spiders. The quick and accurate attacks from hiding landed home, inflicting ongoing poison damage on numerous PCs. The Paladin got himself back up but was rapidly dropped back again by the trapspore spider, who with the centipede continued to drop him unconscious. Once again the sheer value of the CA the creature had was ever present: ensuring the paladin didn't act at all again on his next turn (he was before the leader in initiative).

Eventually the PCs killed the centipedes and one of the ambush spiders, but one was still left and the trapspore had a decent - but not huge - amount of HP. This left a very precarious position, as ongoing damage managed to drain the warforged of HP (he failed four saves against his ongoing damage!). The other ambush spider helped out though by failing to successful hide from the PCs, greatly reducing his accuracy on his charging venom bite (+3 from hidden!).

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Here the PCs have been hammered, the leader is out of healing and ongoing damage is starting to take its toll. The trapspore is in a feisty mood and so is the ambush spider.

This was quite a tense situation! The final turn went as dramatically as I could have hoped. The trapspore tried to attack the paladin, who kept it marked and without CA, missed his all important bite attack. Marhu decided he'd had enough of the creature and finished it off with a brutal critical hit - combined with its vulnerable 5 fire - to send it from 19 HP to -18 in a single blow :O. One of the advantages of being unconscious for most of the fight is you still have your encounter powers later on

The final ambush spider then critically hit the paladin to add a final insult to injury, but was then quickly dispatched by the other characters without much issue: Ending the battle. If this had not happened, several of the PCs may have gone down due to ongoing damage! The wizard was on single digit HP and the artificer had healed the previous round (so wasn't too bad). The most remarkable thing about this was that the three front line characters had the HP totals of 1, 2 and 3!

Marhu the Paladin is on a single HP. Walker the Assassin is on 2 HP. Ryske the Rogue is on 3 HP. That's a pretty remarkable way to finish a fight.

Investigating the corpses, they found signs these were some of the men who went on a rescue mission to the caves. It seems they did not get very far at all, having feel victim to the trapspore spider. Although this didn't come up in game, what is left of the body is being consumed by saprophytic fungi. These fungi are then picked up by the spider and placed onto its carapace, keeping the life cycle of the spider going. The bigger the spider and the more fungi it has upon it, the more successful it is as a predator. Why did I put this in here? No reason, I just wanted to convey that bit of information I wrote in some manner.

Moving on further into the spider filled tunnels, the PCs rapidly encountered an underground stream... with the only crossing point looking to be numerous slippery slime covered rocks...

Edit:

Trapspore spiders stats. Note that he slides as an effect, making him particularly effective at getting rid of Knights and Defeners that need to be adjacent. Except dwarves. He hates dwarves. But everyone hates dwarves. Also, it is actually a large creature (not medium, silly MB).

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[Allanon]

Very nice session notes. Hope you keep doing it and I'm wanting to start a Darksun game soon and this is excellent inspiration.

 

[Aegeri]

Thanks, there is going to be a break for a few weeks as various real life shenanigans sort themselves out but I shall continue to do so once my games resume

 

[bryanw1995]

Please keep posting, I joined the forums just to subscribe!

 

[Aegeri]

So I am in fact actually still alive. I have got married and moved to a new country, so I have had a bit of a lack of internet as of late. This means I haven't been running my games as normal and such. Now that everything is up and working again I will resume my games. That naturally means there will be more descriptions of them!

Spending several weeks without consistent internet is hard :O

 

[Aegeri]

Dark Sun: The Builder's Cry

I restarted my DnD after a long break - as you can tell from the thread - with my Dark Sun game and introducing a new character into the party. With introducing a new PC into the campaign, I wanted to actually integrate him more into the story and make it feel less random than normal. Essentially having the new PC introduced like an encounter and to accomplish this, I made a new item to do so. Effectively a shadowy spirit, it can flinch items and scout ahead in times of need - a legacy of the new PCs former house. In order to get the parties attention, the creature stole some of their items and then ran back towards the new character. After a short skill-challenge based pursuit, the PCs were lured away from the caravan and met up with the new player.

After having a pleasant chat and getting over the whole "stealing stuff from them" part of meeting, everyone realized they had some similar plans in common. Thus did Alek, the human noble adept ardent join with the party, conclusively solving their problem of a lack of a leader. Not to mention giving a certain DM far less kittens designing encounters. With the party now having a healer within it, I felt an extended rest to get everything back to normal was a good idea and the party got themselves a mere 36 or so degree Celsius day with a balmy -2 degree night. More than cool enough for a good long rest.

Unfortunately the next day bought hazards of its own, as a large group of ssurrans who had (silently) been pursuing the caravan descended upon it at dawn. Led by a familiar foe the PCs had fought before, the ravenous humanoid reptiles entered a swirling melee with the caravan and with the PCs as well.

Of course the point of these encounters - mechanically - was to see how the new PC was going to handle things. In reality I haven't seen an ardent in play and so didn't really know a lot about them. So these fights were a way of testing out the ardent and seeing how it worked in play. The first encounter saw some minions, a ssurran shaman and more dune stalkers enter the fray. The PCs handled this encounter pretty well, with the ardent easily keeping up with the healing requirements. Of particular note in this encounter was Bob - the parties pack Crodlu - having a great time rolling crits for his claw attack. The players rapidly discovered his pounce power was more than handy for dealing some good damage and maneuvering bob into flanking positions.

I think that bob being so useful is going to make certain decisions later potentially very difficult. At the same time I am pleased to see the little crodlu is pulling his weight in the party and helping out. One of the things with mounts/companions that I always worry about is if they will prove useful to the party. In my experience, if an NPC/mount/pet doesn't prove very handy many PCs don't get very attached to them.

With the first encounter reasonably easily handled, the second encounter started with another group of ssurrans approaching from the eastern side of the battle. This time they were led by a large pack of Jhakar - vicious dog like lizards with big jaws. The last time the players encountered these was in the arena, but not in the sheer numbers in this encounter.

In reality it was the large Jhakar pack that was the focus of this encounter. It's worth noting that Jhakar's may be level 1 monsters, but once you get a bigger XP budget for higher level encounters don't discount how well lots of lower level creatures can perform in an encounter. En masse and with an "annoyance" power like opportunistic chomp they can be as effective as higher level monsters - while being simpler to hit and kill individually.

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Additionally, I decided to make one of the Jhakar's a pack alpha. This was a simple process of making its bite power function slightly differently (getting two bites) and doubling the HP. A quick, dirty and simple elite that added a bit more extra oomph to the other Jhakar's in the pack. Had I thought about it a bit more, I also would have given him an aura that meant other Jhakar's within it could use their opportunistic chomp - even if they had expended it.

The combat started quite aggressively, with initiate (the wizard) about to charge close to get a burst off before remembering the Jhakar's opportunistic chomp. This power isn't actually that great despite the considerable damage, due to the poor accuracy of the level 1 Jhakar's by this point in the game and it's an encounter power (so can be used once). It's psychological effects though are very interesting. Mostly because it means if a character gets close to too many Jhakar's at once, the character can be quickly surrounded and torn to pieces. This meant initiate had to hang back and use a less efficient power, or risk being eaten alive.

The result of this ended up being that the combat after a couple of rounds turned into a "rugby scrum" as I was thinking of it.

Every creature in the combat is basically whirling around in this chaotic close quarters melee. It was oddly appropriate for the situation I had described.

The party started to take some heavy damage as the creatures closed in and here it was where the ardent was put to the test. Especially as shortly after the above both Initiate and Eshara went down!

Initiate and Eshara go down, placing the party into a precarious position...

But here I found the ardent was actually a pretty solid healer. Energizing strike with an augment 2, combined with the ardents regular ardent surge healing got both characters up in no time (while letting the ardent deal decent damage as well). Considering the limited healing and difficulty that the shaman experienced in similar situations to the above, this was a very positive start for the Ardent.

It also meant that while the PCs took some damage, they were able to finish the encounter in a solid - albeit battered - manner.

At the end of the combat the PCs were battered and bloodied, but in an extremely comfortable style.

So my initial impressions of the ardent were very positive indeed. Given that energizing strike can be used twice (augment 2) and ardent surge can also be used twice, the ardent has some good depth to his healing reserves compared with the previous leader. Given how lethal the game has seemed up to this point, it is a pretty good start and I think will work very well.

At the end of the combat, initiate finished off one of the Jhakar's with non-lethal damage. Clearly the PCs have some plan for the Jhakar but at the end of the combat came the end of the session. I decided to leave the game there (and whatever fate the players have planned for the Jhakar) until next session. Due to the amount of time between playing, I also decided to give my players the next level, advancing them to 4. I figured they must have felt they were level 3 since forever and decided it would be good just to let them level up a bit.

I wonder what they plan to do with the Jhakar...
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[Aegeri]

Eberron: Dark Prophecy

My second game of the weekend is proving quite the challenge. Due to the fun of international time zones and my moving country, it has become quite early in the morning compared to what I was used to. None the less I am persistent and I was there for some good old fashioned hitting things. Like with the Builder's Cry I have lost a player from this game, so I had to find a replacement. I decided to go with a relatively simple "You were trapped by the bad guys and get rescued by the party" introduction, so to keep the momentum up into the final encounter of this adventure.

Before introducing the new player though, we had the "simple" matter of getting across a dark, damp underground stream with some slippery rocks. Absolutely nothing could possibly go wrong in this situation right?

Oh.

Crauds IMO are one of those fantastically goofy monsters that MM3 added, which I really love and have a similar position in my heart to chuuls. As aberrations are on my restricted monster list, the crauds became a good substitute. Additionally crauds - these are actually cave crauds technically - were an enemy type that fit the situation and they didn't have tremorsense. This gave Ryske and Walker a bit of a break and let them use their stealth abilities more effectively.

In this situation the party started the encounter at somewhat of a disadvantage. Firstly the rocks were slippery, making rapid movement treacherous and secondly they were spread out over the rocks. These factors combined to make this even levelish encounter a bit more exciting than a simple straight up fight. Squinter got the worst of the initial attention as one impaler chased him around up north. Walker similarly had to escape from a devious impaler, while the majority of the party dealt with the rest of the crauds on the lower rock.

Squinter had to then swim away from the ferocious impaler, while the rest of the party got thumped around the face by the huge clawed crusher and poked by impalers. Overall though the party didn't really have much of a struggle with this encounter and easily dealt to the various crauds. Towards the end of the encounter, Tybalt got in amongst the party with some excellent positioning to grant nearly every character a magic weapon bonus. The other impalers remaining stood very little chance and delicious cave craud was served.

Unfortunately nobody remembered to bring any butter.
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The party then marched on towards Arianne, the strange sounds of wedding music beginning to fill their ears as they approached ever closer to her inner sanctum. Eventually they came to a horrific cavern filled with the corpses of strung up dead creatures. All of whom were wrapped up in deadly crystalline silk! Conveniently though, one of the packages was still wriggling and this was how I introduced the new character to the party: the Kalashtar battlemind Andraos.

After a quick introduction and swearing of revenge, the party moved towards the sound of the music - only to be intercepted by something truly terrible.

The parties most deadly opponent yet...
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Combat began with the white widow rolling highest and subsequently the nasty surprise she bought with her - the sacks of rotting meat of various dead creatures being used as bludgeoning weapons! Effectively a hazard of their own, these bags of broken rotting flesh can be swung from the webbing like battering rams into unfortunate victims below. This provides basically an extra attack every round on the widows initiative + 10. PCs could stop the attacks by cutting down the corpses as well, making themselves more difficult to target.

Being a solo, the white widow began combat by rushing into the PCs and dealing as much damage as possible with her attacks and an action point. She inflicted heavy damage across the party very quickly and almost killed the hobgoblin paladin with a brutal impale attack (Paladin had bloodied value of 21, she reduced him to -20!). This left the party in a tricky position, but dazing the creature and imposing some nasty penalties put her into a defensive position - going invisible for a round to buy some time (until she could make full use of her next turn).

The white widow downs the paladin and he survives only just.
​

On the next round with the widow bloodied the battlemind successful drew her towards himself and the nearby assassin, pinning the creature in place with a power (so she couldn't use her scuttling assault anywhere near as effectively). The assassin then used his shade form ability, but in a crucial mistake this actually meant he was now radiant vulnerable - a flaw that made a considerable difference.

On the white widows turn she immediately started by scuttling around to get her additional attacks, slapping a bite onto the battlemind but otherwise having no luck. Unfortunately for the assassin she was able to generate CA and thus, extra radiant damage. Despite the insubstantial, the radiant vulnerability proved the killer as it just upped her damage enough to drop him and then actually kill him! Walker perished as the beast sunk a crystalline claw right through his mechanical heart.

The next round was chaotic, with the party scrambling to kill the almost defeated white widow and attempting from preventing it from getting further victims. Unfortunately they were not *quite* able to finish the beast off and it amazingly began round 4 on a singular HP! Here the creature dropped the paladin using her crystalline cocoon and then impaled him. This did *just* enough damage to kill him as well! Accounting for two players this encounter, the PCs eagerly finished off the creature at last - taking some time to mourn their losses before swearing revenge on Arianne and her arachnid horde.

At the end of an extremely dramatic encounter, two PCs lay dead and the rest - except the battlemind ironically - were heavily injured. But victory was close in sight now...
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From a DMing point of view, it really isn't that fun to kill someones character as you always want the PCs to succeed. Getting horribly mangled in the process of course, but succeed is generally the goal and generally speaking a character death is more annoying than most things. In some fairness, due to having 6 PCs (but only 5 actual players, remembering I lost one) I changed the encounter somewhat from its original intent. Adding in the corpse swinging hazard and upping the white widows level by 1.

Other than this, the main reason is this encounter was lethal was because I was trying to kill the old character (Marhu) to some degree and Walker just got plain unlucky. Stuck adjacent to the battlemind (and then knocked prone!) the creature didn't have a choice of targets for its main attack. So it had to split them between just the two characters and ultimately, the slight amount of radiant vulnerability pushed the damage up just enough to kill the assassin despite the insubstantial (oops).

On thinking about things, I might have chosen to impale the battlemind instead of using the scuttling assault power in that situation. At the same time, either move was logical for the monster to do at the time. If I had checked the ranges and noticed she couldn't really attack more than two targets, I may have changed its action a bit and seen what result that had. None the less though, I made sure I had an idea what the player wanted to do and will probably wait until the next module to introduce his next one. If there is a silver lining to a player death, it means I might be able to introduce the next module into the game with the new player character. Solving two issues at the same time and advancing the story.
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