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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aegeri" data-source="post: 5576568" data-attributes="member: 78116">This is going to be long because I am quite a bit behind in actually doing these write ups consistently. Just been busy with other things in the dreaded real life and actually writing my games.Eberron - Dark ProphecySo last time I wrote about this game, which was a really long time ago I was explaining how the PCs had "Circumvented" things a bit by managing to go possibly the most direct route possible. Well they have continued down that line quite successfully since then. The first thing that the PCs did upon getting to town was to bring the severely wounded barbarian to the Chapel of the Sovereign Host - where it's head priest Talorhan examined Haerag’s body. Keeping the barbarian overnight within the church, the PCs slept in the inn and got a well deserved extended rest, before going back the next morning to check his condition.Talorhan unfortunately had grave news for the characters: His healing rituals and magic were ineffective at preventing the disease slowly spreading through his body. Desperate for answers the increasingly desperate priest had began consulting everything he knew about magical diseases and curses, until he found an account of a rare flower used in powerful curative rituals. Extremely rare and very valuable for its healing properties, the Vaalian flower grows at the base of mountains within Eberron. He realized that he had actually seen one of these flowers in the past, having had it bought to him by a friend of his one day as a symbol of good luck. While he didn’t have that flower anymore, he knew where his friend who was an avid hunter had got it: The forested area north of the town near the Last War memorial right at the foot of the mountain range. Whatever the PCs choice however, Talorhan made it clear they had only until that night to make it as Haerag would not last much longer.At this point there was some debate about saving the barbarian, particularly because whatever started all this devastation must be out there still. Certain members of the party were keen to go and try killing the creature before it could do more harm than going flower picking. Eventually this was all sorted out and the party headed towards the hunting grounds to find the flower Talorhan wanted.When I last wrote about this game, I spent a bit of time explaining how the areas would change over time and react to what my players were doing. Here the PCs found another example, a deranged man and his dead companions within the hunting grounds. These are the mercenaries that I mentioned early after the PCs entered Stonehelm. If the PCs had gone looking for them first, they would actually have found some of them still alive and gibbering wildly about some “unkillable” horror in the forest. Due to the fact they’ve had an entire extra day alone in the woods, any hope of survival has passed and the last mercenary is just undergoing the final steps of a terrible transformation.Approaching carefully, the characters tried some interaction with the man but were met only with insane ramblings. Shortly after he finally lost his final grip on his own humanity, twisting horribly into a man eating monster! With this numerous other wendigo rose from the corpses of those around him and then the terrible beast itself: The wendigo came crashing into the clearing.<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v305/Aegeri/TheWendigo1.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /> The man transformed into a terrible creature before their eyes, shortly before the beast that created him joined the combat in its full fury (the large yeti like creature). It's worth noting I've changed the art of the wendigo from the demonomicon picture, to fit better with the way the rest of the creatures look since this point.Naturally the PCs started by taking the fight to the wendigo and its servants, dazing the beast while attacking the others to down them. Overall this didn't seem like a difficult battle and the PCs soon dispatched most enemies except the wendigo itself (and a storm shard, who started quite a distance away before getting anywhere). With a strong blow, the parties rogue downed the wendigo and thus did they think the threat had ended. Or was it over?Here the players (and their characters) discovered that the wendigo had a very special property: He could not be killed. By killing the vile creature all they did was cause it to reanimate a short time later, both stronger and more deadly than the previous time it had been killed. In this case, the wendigo triggered its vile reanimation power, restoring to life with an additional level and gaining a new power for its efforts at the same time. This power triggers once per day, but ensures that it effectively takes the PCs two attempts to actually remove the wendigo in a given encounter. As mentioned, it also means that the wendigo becomes stronger and more deadly as it feeds off and learns from every defeat it suffers.This "unkillable" enemy is the sort of concept that can easily backfire on you as a DM. So its design had to be carefully weighted against how often the creature would appear and how the PCs could deal with it. Mechanically the point of the resurrection mechanic was twofold: Firstly, to make the wendigo fight somewhat like a solo if required as he needs to be killed twice - theoretically giving him roughly double the HP of a normal elite. This also makes him resistant to conditions and effects, because his resurrection power removes him from play and reintroduces him without any status effects at a reasonably close location of its choosing.The second point was to scale the wendigo with the party. As they defeat him, it grows stronger with the PCs and begins to get better powers. This helps in two ways: The first is that it means the wendigo cannot be out leveled very easily and secondly it keeps them guessing as to what it might do. By picking up new tricks the wendigo remains an interesting opponent even after the PCs have fought it several times, while still being familiar enough they can plan appropriate tactics.Obviously the most important reason for this mechanic was story. When designing this module, I wanted the antagonist of it to be a force of nature and more of an obstacle than something that could be defeated. A creature like the wendigo, which can't be defeated in combat has interesting connotations on the story (and gameplay as well). Firstly, avoiding or attempting to avoid killing the wendigo becomes an interesting choice instead of "CHARGE!". At the same time, killing the wendigo is not impossible because the creature does not have to vastly out level or have some means of reliably escaping an encounter.This also meant the PCs have to find another way to defeat the creature (which I will discuss later). For now they had to get over the horror at not only failing to stop the creature, but in having to kill it again!<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v305/Aegeri/TheWendigo4.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /> The players reaction to the wendigo coming back was most pleasing, a mix of horror, being generally annoyed and realizing they needed to find another solution!It's worth noting before continuing, that it's important to make sure such a mechanic as this is limiting and used well. The wendigo should be a source of tension and its appearance an "Oh crap" moment in the story/encounter. It's not worth throwing the beast into every encounter just to try to make it an absurd level: Instead I use it in important encounters to enhance drama or to give the PCs a difficult choice of action. Additionally, the wendigo also gains more power over time as well, adding a looming sense of dread to the PCs travels around the area. Spend too many days hiking and the Wendigo can very well become unstoppable. Of course it takes several days for the wendigo to gather power like this, but only a single combat to become more powerful: So avoiding the wendigo where possible was always a good choice for the players.Once again the PCs fought the wendigo, attempting to prevent it from overwhelming them and it managed to down a couple them (particularly with the arrival of the chaos shard). At this point the chaos shard, a level 4 artillery monster from MM2 is well worth using in any encounter to enforce a bit of mobility. It's basic ranged attack does a middling amount of damage, but it has an incredibly strong effect: Any enemy that doesn't move at least 4 squares from its starting position on its turn takes a whopping 3d6+6 lightning damage. You can believe that gets peoples attention, because if it knocks you below zero with its ranged power the situation can quickly become very dire! The rogue was one of the first to suffer from this and in the shot below, you can see how to move a fair distance away or risk horrible death (the best kind of death of course).<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v305/Aegeri/TheWendigo5.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /> The chaos shard and the resurrected wendigo really took the fight to the PCs at the end, with the chaos shards brutal movement control effect nearly killing one character!In the end they prevailed, but tempered this with the knowledge they they had made their opponent the stronger with their victory. This also caused a harsh reality to dawn upon the PCs as well: This wasn't something they could beat in a fight and so finding more about their opponent became imperiative. The Vaalian flower they sought became all the more meaningful than mere "Flower picking" now.Of course the wendigo may be a force of sheer evil, but it has its long term plots and one of its servants had been dispatched to destroy the plant already. Lyrea, a child of winter who worshipped the Wendigo as a prophet of Winters inevitable destruction and then rebirth of Eberron was also seeking these flowers. In her case though, she was sending some of her wolves to destroy the remaining flowers at the hunting grounds. The PCs arrived with enough time to spare to see the Lyrea's wolves also searching for the same Vaalian flower. With Haerag's life at stake, Lyrea spent some time taunting the PCs through one of her wolves with an animal messenger like ritual and then combat began!<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v305/Aegeri/SavingtheVaalianFlower1.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /> Lyrea's wolves arrived to destroy the last of the flowers upon her command, but had to get past the PCs in order to do it.Here the players met their first winter wolf, a terrible beast that can breathe blasts of intense cold in a large area. Being a level 7 skirmisher, this creature is pretty difficult to deal with and does good damage: Especially against a level 4 party. This made life quite harrowing and before long the wolves had wounded a great deal of the party!<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v305/Aegeri/SavingtheVaalianFlower2.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /> It looks as dire a situation as it actually was. So much stuff bloodied in one small area!Even with their injuries the characters fought on and finally felled the rest of the wolves that Lyrea had sent. Particularly important was the dispatching of the two dire wolves, which allowed the party to focus on the winter wolf and fairly easily dispatch it. Quickly gathering the flower, the party returned to Stonehelm and Talorhan prepared the ritual to cure Haerag (who was almost dead at this point).<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v305/Aegeri/TheExorcismofHaerag.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /> This scene played out a little like the exorcist, but without as much green pea soup.Upon attempting the ritual Talorhan found that the growing spirit within Haerag was more than willing to fight back, attempting to tear him apart even as they tried to drive it out. This resulted in a skill challenge inspired a bit by the "exorcist" movies, where the characters had to restrain the thrashing barbarian and assist in the final moments of the ritual. Upon succeeding at this everything seemed normal... until the air grew very gold and an ethereal chill descended upon the chapel.<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v305/Aegeri/TheDreamcatcher1.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /> This vile beast the PCs encountered was a spectral wendigo, not quite within this reality but within it enough to have a tangible effect.Due to how strong the wendigo spirit that was overtaking Haerag had become, the ritual did not destroy it and instead drove it out. Taking a tangible form and still feeding off the residual psychic energy of its victim, the vile spirit animated a pair of shadows to attack the PCs! In this combat, I pictures the shadows not so much as undead creatures, but as spectral images that the dreamcatcher made to assault the PCs minds. At the time, I really should have made their attacks psychic and flavored them a bit more like that instead of the strict shadow stat block I did use. It was still an effective image and this combat proved quite difficult.<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v305/Aegeri/TheDreamcatcher2.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /> The vile beast started by imposing an encounter length effect called waking nightmare upon Ryske. This power causes the victim to basically have terrible hallucinations constantly, reducing their ability to fight (attack penalty) and increasing vulnerability to psychic damage.The shadows soon accosted the weaker members of the party, melding with different PCs to improve their defenses and gain a substantial bonus to their damage. This soon resulted in several PCs getting badly wounded and some fell to the cold marble floor of the chapel!<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v305/Aegeri/TheDreamcatcher3.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /> Ryske and Andraos fell to the abominations attacks in combination with its shadowy servants. The battle started to look rather desperate!The dual leaders of the party soon got them back on their feet, but the shadows insubstantial quality plus the dreamcatchers heavy damage attacks kept them at bay. Most of the party had penalties at this point or were firmly bloodied, only Tybalt who was standing further back with his ranged weapon escaped most damage.<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v305/Aegeri/TheDreamcatcher4.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /> Ying-Ling is moved into position tactically to provide his defense bonus aura to Andraos and Ryske to stop the onslaught.Eventually the PCs managed to destroy the terrible abomination and send it back to the spirit world. Its shadowy servants were able to put up a fight for a time, but inevitably the characters were victorious - if very battered and bruised.<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v305/Aegeri/TheDreamcatcher5.jpg" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" /> Undead like these two shadows can be a nasty surprise in a party that isn't fighting very many and hence not prepared with a lot of force/radiant attacks.With the final dispatching of this foul beast Haerag began to recover, although he was still unconscious and the characters decided to retire for the night (a level higher than before as well - it felt rather appropriate to get level 5 after this battle).Storywise, this was an important event because it ensured that the PCs obtained a really important NPC (more on why in future) and have the most direct information on their opponent possible. Even with this important victory, their contact with the dreamcatcher ensured a less than ideal sleep and full awareness of just how formidable their enemy really was...</blockquote>

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