DeusExMachina
First Post
So today my group and I did our second playtest today. We did part of Raiders of Oakhurst last time and I was planning on finishing that on the second session, but after I saw the Orc previews I just new I had to do something with them, because they were sheer bits of awesome in the shape of little statblocks. So I designed some new encounters with some level 2 minions (scaling them down according to the guidelines we've been given), designed a few boar minions and regular boars as sort of Orcish pets and ran that for my 5 players.
I started out with declaring that they were done with the dungeon near Oakhurst and were on their way back to the town, where they saw that a column of smoke was rising from it. Hurrying towards the town they found it had been raided, wagons smashed, all the people gone and the mayor's house on fire. From the inside of the house they could hear the screaming of a young boy and I gave my party their first skill chellenge ever, which was to get inside the house and save the boy.
Explainign the concept to them took some time and it was kind of hard to stick to it. Some actions just didn't fall clearly into a skill check or were hard to incorporate, but I think we'll get the hang of that once we get used to them a bit more.
All in all it went fairly well, where the warlock used thievery to open up the door, then he and the fighter used endurance to make it through the smoke and perception to find the screaming boy on the first floor. Turns out there were also a woman and an unconscious girl in the same room. The tiefling joined the fighter, unconcerned with the fire, but still bothered by the smoke. In the meantime, the fire had spread and they couldn't get down the stairs anymore while carrying the people. Also when the warlock wanted to pick up the boy, the boy panicked and to keep hims till, the warlock knocked him unconscious (which I used as a failure on the skillcheck, I would have accepted any of the social skills as valid options, but he didn't use those).
Outside the remaining players used a blanket to somehow try to catch the characters and the trapped victims as they used acrobatics to jump out. Unfortunately they failed their 4th check here and failed the skillcheck altogether. This meant that the boy died due to too much smoke inhalataion and the knocking unconscious and the woman, overcome with grief for her son, would not help the adventurers by telling them who did it and what they wanted and such.
Anyway, everybody else still got out and after setting up the woman and her daughter in a safe house, the party used some nature checks to follow the trails that were leading north, though they couldn't make out who had made those trails except that they were medium sized humanoids.
After a few hours of traveling, the wizard suddenly stepped into a little hole, felt something snap aroundhis leg and was suddenly hanging upside down from a tree. While the other stried to get him down, 2 orc skirmishers, some orc drudge minions and a few boar minions attacked. All except the skirmishers went down fast like minions are supposed to and the skirmishers meanwhile got some proper hit sin throwing axes. Also the warlock fell into another trap and got a pinata treatment from an orc with a club that was quite funny. Fortunately he managed to get himself out of the trap before that could take too long. After a few more orund sthey managed to take down the skrimishers as well. All in all a combat that wasn't too hard, but quite satisfying.
Having survived this ambush for any followers of the Orc raiding party, the group made their way to the Orc base camp, which had a wooden pallisade with some tents, a cage and a stone ring inside it, guarded at the 3 entrances by more orcs.
I made getting the villagers (trapped in a large cage in the middle) out safely another skill challenge. They used bluff in combination with ghost sound to distract the guards on one side and take them out quietly (they were minions), the snuck in to see how hard it would be to open the cage. Not too hard as it turned out to just have a simple bar on the outside to keep the people imprisoned.
They stealthily dispatched the other guards (including a very well placed critical on a split the tree ability) and got the villagers out of their cage without alerting anybody inside tents. They gave the villagers as much weapons (taken from the orcs) as they ould and send them on their way back after hearing that the mayor was inside a large tent, taken there by an orc with only 1 eye (indeed an Eye of Gruumsh). The ranger got deteteced trying to eavesdrop on the orcs in this tent and soon the party was fleeing into the woods as orcs woke up all over the camp.
I then had the Eye of Gruumsh shout out to them that if the party fought his champion, they would be allowed to leave with the mayor if they lived. After a little hesistation, the paladin stepped up to the plate and the rest of the party followed.
Knowing it could very well be the end of the party, I set up the 5 of them against an Orc Bloodrager in a duel to the death. Fortunately the party quickly learned his abilities and started to use theirs to max effect. The two defenders flanked him and used their marks back and forth whenever one of them got hurt too much. Also divine challenge makes sure that he gets damage if he retaliates against anybody other than the paladin, so was pretty good. Meanwhile the others used their ranged attacks to beat away at them. After he got bloodied (anmd having found about their warrior's surge from earlier orcs) the party quickly used their dailies and action points to beat away at the Bloodrager and get him down to zero hp before he could use those. Unfortunately for them they failed and got the bloodrager to only 178 hitpoints, a mere 16 points away from defeating it. THey were decidedly unhappy when the or hit the bloodied fighter and managed to regain 58 hitpoints while knocking the fighter unconscious.
Anyway, it became a really close fight after that. The ranger's Careful Attack became extremely useful as it wa sthe only attack that could hit reliably (50% of the time), but the bloodrager still managed to kill 2 party members before they finally managed to take him down and they only managed that due to a stroke of good rolls from the wizard and the warlock. It could have been just as easily a TPK. ANyway, the whole part cheered when the bugger finally went down and the Eye fo Gruumsh, totally shocked at having his champion defeated, actually let the survivors and the mayor go back the village.
All in all it was a great session. The skill challanges are going to take some work, but I hope the DMG will have more info on how to run them properly and ombine them with spellcasting and or combat. The orcs in all their different incarnations are absolutely great, they feel and play differently from each other and were easy to adapt to a lower level. I put this whole session together in about 2 hours ands could probably have done it in about 30 minutes if I had been more familiar with the rules. It was also extremely easy to DM the whole thing, which made it way more fun for me.
It was also the first time we used the megamat from paizo and it worked just fine to create some fast and easy to used plans, drawing obstacles on it just to erase them after the fight. We'll definitely use that one more often. All in all I think everybody left the table a happy camper...
I started out with declaring that they were done with the dungeon near Oakhurst and were on their way back to the town, where they saw that a column of smoke was rising from it. Hurrying towards the town they found it had been raided, wagons smashed, all the people gone and the mayor's house on fire. From the inside of the house they could hear the screaming of a young boy and I gave my party their first skill chellenge ever, which was to get inside the house and save the boy.
Explainign the concept to them took some time and it was kind of hard to stick to it. Some actions just didn't fall clearly into a skill check or were hard to incorporate, but I think we'll get the hang of that once we get used to them a bit more.
All in all it went fairly well, where the warlock used thievery to open up the door, then he and the fighter used endurance to make it through the smoke and perception to find the screaming boy on the first floor. Turns out there were also a woman and an unconscious girl in the same room. The tiefling joined the fighter, unconcerned with the fire, but still bothered by the smoke. In the meantime, the fire had spread and they couldn't get down the stairs anymore while carrying the people. Also when the warlock wanted to pick up the boy, the boy panicked and to keep hims till, the warlock knocked him unconscious (which I used as a failure on the skillcheck, I would have accepted any of the social skills as valid options, but he didn't use those).
Outside the remaining players used a blanket to somehow try to catch the characters and the trapped victims as they used acrobatics to jump out. Unfortunately they failed their 4th check here and failed the skillcheck altogether. This meant that the boy died due to too much smoke inhalataion and the knocking unconscious and the woman, overcome with grief for her son, would not help the adventurers by telling them who did it and what they wanted and such.
Anyway, everybody else still got out and after setting up the woman and her daughter in a safe house, the party used some nature checks to follow the trails that were leading north, though they couldn't make out who had made those trails except that they were medium sized humanoids.
After a few hours of traveling, the wizard suddenly stepped into a little hole, felt something snap aroundhis leg and was suddenly hanging upside down from a tree. While the other stried to get him down, 2 orc skirmishers, some orc drudge minions and a few boar minions attacked. All except the skirmishers went down fast like minions are supposed to and the skirmishers meanwhile got some proper hit sin throwing axes. Also the warlock fell into another trap and got a pinata treatment from an orc with a club that was quite funny. Fortunately he managed to get himself out of the trap before that could take too long. After a few more orund sthey managed to take down the skrimishers as well. All in all a combat that wasn't too hard, but quite satisfying.
Having survived this ambush for any followers of the Orc raiding party, the group made their way to the Orc base camp, which had a wooden pallisade with some tents, a cage and a stone ring inside it, guarded at the 3 entrances by more orcs.
I made getting the villagers (trapped in a large cage in the middle) out safely another skill challenge. They used bluff in combination with ghost sound to distract the guards on one side and take them out quietly (they were minions), the snuck in to see how hard it would be to open the cage. Not too hard as it turned out to just have a simple bar on the outside to keep the people imprisoned.
They stealthily dispatched the other guards (including a very well placed critical on a split the tree ability) and got the villagers out of their cage without alerting anybody inside tents. They gave the villagers as much weapons (taken from the orcs) as they ould and send them on their way back after hearing that the mayor was inside a large tent, taken there by an orc with only 1 eye (indeed an Eye of Gruumsh). The ranger got deteteced trying to eavesdrop on the orcs in this tent and soon the party was fleeing into the woods as orcs woke up all over the camp.
I then had the Eye of Gruumsh shout out to them that if the party fought his champion, they would be allowed to leave with the mayor if they lived. After a little hesistation, the paladin stepped up to the plate and the rest of the party followed.
Knowing it could very well be the end of the party, I set up the 5 of them against an Orc Bloodrager in a duel to the death. Fortunately the party quickly learned his abilities and started to use theirs to max effect. The two defenders flanked him and used their marks back and forth whenever one of them got hurt too much. Also divine challenge makes sure that he gets damage if he retaliates against anybody other than the paladin, so was pretty good. Meanwhile the others used their ranged attacks to beat away at them. After he got bloodied (anmd having found about their warrior's surge from earlier orcs) the party quickly used their dailies and action points to beat away at the Bloodrager and get him down to zero hp before he could use those. Unfortunately for them they failed and got the bloodrager to only 178 hitpoints, a mere 16 points away from defeating it. THey were decidedly unhappy when the or hit the bloodied fighter and managed to regain 58 hitpoints while knocking the fighter unconscious.
Anyway, it became a really close fight after that. The ranger's Careful Attack became extremely useful as it wa sthe only attack that could hit reliably (50% of the time), but the bloodrager still managed to kill 2 party members before they finally managed to take him down and they only managed that due to a stroke of good rolls from the wizard and the warlock. It could have been just as easily a TPK. ANyway, the whole part cheered when the bugger finally went down and the Eye fo Gruumsh, totally shocked at having his champion defeated, actually let the survivors and the mayor go back the village.
All in all it was a great session. The skill challanges are going to take some work, but I hope the DMG will have more info on how to run them properly and ombine them with spellcasting and or combat. The orcs in all their different incarnations are absolutely great, they feel and play differently from each other and were easy to adapt to a lower level. I put this whole session together in about 2 hours ands could probably have done it in about 30 minutes if I had been more familiar with the rules. It was also extremely easy to DM the whole thing, which made it way more fun for me.
It was also the first time we used the megamat from paizo and it worked just fine to create some fast and easy to used plans, drawing obstacles on it just to erase them after the fight. We'll definitely use that one more often. All in all I think everybody left the table a happy camper...
