Of Sound Mind

[Piratecat]

Holy cow! It's dangerous for 1st lvl PCs, but it should be a cakewalk for smart 3rd lvl PCs. That's just scary. It's also the first time I've heard of a group failing, I think.

Not to second guess you - that's neither fair nor justified - but did the PC in the barn wake up (or at least roll a listen check) when you-know-who walked up? I'm not sure it's fair to make that an instant-kill situation, especially when the bad guys take so much delight in taunting their victims first.

Wow. I hope they learned a lesson about buying healing potions ahead of time! Meanwhile, i'll give some thought to long-term plans for him.

---

Kal Torak, they're taking on a lot of challenges without serious treasure elsewhere in the module; the treasure room is designed to be something of a gimme, a fun change in pace from looting bodies and a reward for what they're going through. *grin*

 

[Uvenelei]

Not to second guess you - that's neither fair nor justified - but did the PC in the barn wake up (or at least roll a listen check) when you-know-who walked up? I'm not sure it's fair to make that an instant-kill situation, especially when the bad guys take so much delight in taunting their victims first.

MORE SPOILERS - VAUGER THAN BEFORE, BUT STILL THERE


The way it played out was that "they" were already in the barn when he entered - he was worried about the horses escaping again, so he checked on them before going to sleep. He slept in the hay loft above the horses - he wanted to avoid staying in town lest he have nightmares as well, and didn't stay in Othic's house as another PC did. We he fell asleep, "they" used their power to control him to roll out of the loft and stay still. He failed both saves, the first one and the 'actions against his will' save, so they CDG'ed him. This was around midnight; the later, preplanned murder happened around 4:00 when Othic came in to let the horses out to graze.

I didn't give the PC a listen check, because he was controlled before he had much of a chance to hear anything. And "they" may have enjoyed taunting him before killing him, but they realized that it's easier to taunt a helpless foe than a ready foe.

I really didn't want to kill him, but I couldn't come up with a rational explanation as to why "they" would let him live after he failed twice to maintain control of his actions.

 

[Piratecat]

Nope, I would have handled it exactly the same way. Two saves is two more than some folks get. Interesting thought: I just got an image of the other PCs finding his body in the morning.

"It's Ragnor! Dead!"
"How did he die?"
"He accidentally fell out of the hay loft. Err... seven times."

Incidentally, Teflon Billy, thank you. Your group's opinon is highly flattering, as is your own. I'm very much glad you liked it.

 

[Dr_Rictus]

Anyone else have the PC's fail to stop Copperdeath? Any ideas as to what he'll do next, long term plans wise?

Yep. My group has a bad habit of charging into situations without thinking, and fighting until they're far too low on resources. They ran out of steam about halfway through the fight with the goblins. Luckily for them, they'd already killed the goblins' leaders, and the psion had run out of power points and taken the better part of valor.

Unfortunately for them, their inability to finish the job once they'd started it gave the fleeing goblins plenty of time to regroup, get spider climbs from the blue, and get out of there. With the dragonstone. When they got back to town the next day, I gave them a window of opportunity to sneak into the now-charmed town, but instead they got distracted by Tamalruk (who had escaped them earlier) prowling around, and they went after him instead for some reason. My party also has a bit of a neurosis about the presumed importance of anybody who gets away from them. Plus, I think they were too awed by the dragonstone to really believe they could sneak in (which they could have; it would have detected their minds within range, but had no special way to know what they were up to except via its minions).

In the end, the dragonstone fell into the hands of agents of the Scarlet Brotherhood while the PC's were off chasing the troglodyte. I haven't decided what they're up to yet.

 

[lord irial]

I ran this module for my group a few months ago; none of the party were psionic, though I allow them in my campaign (Kalamar). I use the option of psionics being different from magic in my game, which the players began to realize about halfway through the adventure- they hadn't realised the effects they were seeing were actually psionic before then.

Though they had no defenses against psionics, they thoroughly enjoyed the module, as did I, especially loving the climactic scenes at the end of the adventure, which was far more satisfying than many "climactic" scenes in adventures. It is perfectly possible to survive and complete the module without psionics in the party, even if you don't alter the psionics in the module to regular magical effects.

Since then, one of my players has multi-classed his character as a psion (he'd originally been thinking of Sorcerer, but enjoys the psionics much more). He has not yet run up against the anti-psionic prejudice that most folk in the Kingdoms of Kalamar espouse, but that day will be soon.

PirateCat, I've heard you're the author, and are now working on a sequel. I must say that this is by far my fave module for 3e, so far at least, and I highly recommend it to everyone who asks on the Kalamar boards about which module they should run first for a new campaign. I'm looking forward to the sequel, and must say, keep up the great work!

 

[Pielorinho]

I finally got to run this adventure at DragonCon, after wanting to run it for nearly a year. Sadly, we weren't able to finish it, but what we played of it was a blast.

Our pickup group was mostly good. We did have one tweaker join, who referred to the elven rogue character he got as "the elven bitch," who behaved bizarrely in battle (when fighting the horses, he leapt onto one horse's back and tried to "giddyap" the horse out of battle -- this was after he'd tried to sneak up on the two horses standing in the middle of a field). Fortunately for us, he had to meet his girlfriend for lunch, so he left after the horsefight scene. Fortunately for us; unfortunately, I can only assume, for his girlfriend.

But most of the players were great. My favorite was the guy who roleplayed a fighter with an 8 wisdom to the hilt. When confronted with the screaming severed heads, he lassoed them one by one; the first one he just pulled toward him, tucked it under his arm like a football ("Aaah! Aaaaah! AAAAAAH!" I screamed while he was described this to me) and sprinted through the cavern back to the well ("AAAAAAAAAAH!!!") above the underground river and chuck it in ("AAAAaaahkersplash!") The second and third heads he just flung to various corners of the room. It's quite fun, as a DM, to play a screaming severed head.

Getting into the dragon's room wasn't much of a challenge: the low-wisdom fighter took one look at the sapphire-eyed dragon and knew just what to do. It nearly got him killed: I ruled slightly retroactively that a silent image of the fighter getting up and running away would be enough to provoke the statue's AoO, so that when the real fighter got up and boogied outta there, he was safe. All the characters scattered, except for the rogue, who hid and then investigated the passage beyond the statue. The fleet-of-foot monk went back to the first room and waited for the others; the others reconnoitered back in the tribute room, saw the passage, and went down it before the dragon statue returned.

The session, sadly, ended with the PCs scouting down the revealed passage -- and the monk character looking sadly at his soon-to-expire magical light and realizing that his friends weren't coming to meet him.

It was a blast, very cinematic in feel (well, the screaming football head wasn't particularly cinematic, but it was lots of fun). I'm hoping to run the adventure again sometime, maybe for my regular gaming group.

Daniel

 

[JoeBlank]

First of all, how cool is it to have access to PC like this? As if you didn't already put enough in the adventure about scaling and modifying for non-psionics. Thanks again for all your help. And for calling my idea "brilliant".

I am thinking about replacing the Dananshee. There have probably been enough spoiler warnings in this thread, but I will just say my campaign has seen a run of this type of encounter and I think the players are ready for a break from it. I need a more generic, combat-type monster(s) that would be stuck in the same location as the Dananshee. Any suggestions, from PC or others?

Our group can be pretty good at negotiations and roleplaying them, but once they get in the "dungeon" they are more likely to start hacking. I will go on record now with my prediction that they do not deal with the trog in a diplomatic manner, and I doubt they would deal with the Dananshee diplomatically.

Thanks again, PC.

 

[Plane Sailing]

SPOILERS


The slivers of glass ought to give away the easy way of moving the statue, but the "pry off the eye and run like blazes" method seems to work, too. It's very Raiders of the Lost Arc.

Late to this party, but I just wanted to say that OSM was a blast - and the above method was exactly the one, uh, "chosen" by my PC's for handling the problem. The chase through ancient mine tunnels was exciting and dramatic, and the wise cleric realised that there was a possible solution to the problem...

You can read how it panned out for my adventurers in my story hour (see .sig). They were 5th-6th level, and basically I scaled the adventure by adding a few levels to all levelled creatures, and the highest level ones becoming 8th level.

I'm sure you'll have fun with it.

Cheers

 

[Piratecat]

I loved reading about Plane Sailing's experiences with the adventure!

I would replace the dananshee with either an advanced dananshee, or a corrupted nymph of some kind.

 

[Davelozzi]

****MORE SPOILERS **** (for OSM and Sunless Citadel).








Piratecat's already heard this but the rest of you haven't (well, not unless you actually read the Plots & Places forum on these boards).

Anyone else have the PC's fail to stop Copperdeath? Any ideas as to what he'll do next, long term plans wise? I hadn't thought he'd achieve a complete success, so I'm still thinking over the possible rammifications.

My party let Thrimdrul get away with the stone, but it was taken far enough from Bellhold to end the threat there. Now they've tracked him back to the Sunless Citadel (IMC his group was part of the Durbuluk goblin tribe from the Citadel) and are about to attempt to wrap things up.

In the meantime, my other group of players has slaughtered most of the old leaders of the tribe leaving Thrimdrul to take over.

...Although it's possible that the Dragonstone might 'slip' out of his hands and into those of Meepo & crew, to be digested by Calcryx, yielding Copperdeath a younger vessel in Being John Malkovich fashion .