Red Hand of Doom - need help modifying slightly

[Sidekick]

So I’m looking at running RHoD for my group when I return to New Zealand. The thing is one of the players has already done chapter 1 under me as a DM while one of the other players used RHoD’s Web enhancement for his own FR hobgoblin adversaries in a story arc he’s been putting his group through.

So I’ve been thinking of changing some of the mechanics around so that my player who knows the stats won’t be tempted to meta-game and this is what I’ve come up with so far.

Ambush: I’m keeping that the same I feel. I’m thinking of changing the Hell hounds for something else but I’m not too sure what. Any ideas?

Vraath Keep: I’m changing the minotaur into a bugbear psychic warrior (with expansion of course) and a ruddy great Maul for a weapon. I’m also going to post a guard on the walls and am thinking about changing the Manticore, but I’m not to sure what to replace it with.

I’ve also ditched the Worg Riders for now (last group found this encounter VERY hard), although if I need to I can always add them in if the PCs are winning easily.

Wyrmlord Koth is now a Warlock6 rather than a sorcerer. I also changed his wand to a wand of lightning bolt to give him that line effect option still. His Hideaous Blow invocation along with Walk unseen means that he’ll be able to engineer some rather ferocious damage if the PCs let him get away with it.

Skull Gorge Bridge: I’m rather stuck as to what to do here. I obviously want to keep Ozzy around but I’m unsure how/if I should change his stats/appearance.

I’ve ditched the hell hounds and I’m going to give them a worg-rider and a couple of hobgoblin regulars so the PCs can down at least some of them in 1 hit

I’m also unsure as to how I can modify the groups hook in through Drellin’s Ferry so that the player who’s done this bit before doesn’t get totally bored/switches off.

Once I can get them back to Drellin’s ferry from seeing the Horde at Cinder Hill it’s all good and can proceed as written with only minor statisitical changes to the BBEGs (eg Saarvith is going to be a Dragon Shaman instead of a ranger).

So any ideas or suggestions for Sidekick?

P.S. this will be run in Eberron, with the Elsir Vale inbetween Q'Barra and the Talenta Plains (a route through the Endworld Mountains)

 

[Peni Griffin]

I registered on this board today solely in hopes of getting help modifying this very module! However, I'm past this point.

My group started out higher-level than the module allows, so I had to beef up Chapter 1 a lot. This makes sense at Skull Gorge, since it's a vital strategic point. One of the problems I have with the way encounters are laid out in this book is underutilization of resources. In this case, the Horde has manticores, wyverns, chimerae, and dragons at its disposal, most of whom aren't doing a thing at this point. There's no excuse for not having more air support at this location. Also, everyone seems to have 24-hour work shifts! I added a couple of chimerae, whom Ozyrrandion could leave to cover the bridge when he flew down to confab with Koth or slept. Your party is different from mine, so chimerae may not be the best option for you. Scour those "ahead of the horde" and "into the horde" encounters and the stat blocks at the back for logical resources to deploy to this position.

In Vraath Keep, I beefed up the garrison and made a few treasure and personnel modifications to fit the module into my campaign better. The best change I made was to give Koth a familiar. It darn near escaped to warn the ranging patrols that something was wrong and carry away the key to the Phylactery box (I've eliminated Ch. 2 in order to get my PCs' levels into synch with the module's level assumptions, so Koth had just gotten the Phylactery passed to him and was holding it for pickup). This could have had a major effect on the defense of the bridge, and catching the familiar and using it as leverage against Koth provided some of the most memorable moments of the game so far. ("Yes, I know a weasel in a sack is an exotic weapon and I'll have to take the -4 penalty.")

Definitely put guards on the walls! "Isolated location" my Aunt Fanny - it's right off the major trade route in the region. Of course there are sentries.

 

[Lord Zardoz]

I just got my copy last night

I bought this module via Amazon, and look forward to running it. I expect to have to make a number of modifications in order to fit my campaigns assumptions.

For one, my campaign is a bit of a mashup of Brightright and Dragonlance (Birthright for kingdoms / realms / NPC's and politics, Dragonlance for the Gods, Orders of High Sorcery, and Knights of Solamnia (now Knights of Anuire).

One change I intend to make is to drop in a few handfulls of Draconians. I also expect to incorporate some tweaks to account for my campaign's explanation of Goblins. In my game, Goblins are a race of humanoids that do not have souls, and basically work to try to bring an end to all life. They are more agents of Chaos then Evil, but are known to throw in with other beings.

I also need to alter the adventure hook a bit. The players have already been made aware of a large goblin uprising in progress, and that the goblins are particularly dangerous. I may also drop in spells and templates from the Book of Vile Darknes.

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[Peni Griffin]

Both of you need to tailor your hooks to your parties, and it'd be hard for someone unfamiliar with them to help you.

Since what I'd told my players about the geography of the campaign world was a little hard to squeeze Elsir Vale into, and the party is not formally bound at the hip, I needed to produce individual reasons for all of them to want to make a long journey. One of the PCs is a paladin attached to a monastery that is a paladin training facility; no such facility exists in Elsir Vale; therefore, I planted a wannabe paladin from the Vale at his monastery, killed him off in the line of duty, and put Sir Tib in charge of escorting the body back to his family in Drellin's Ferry. The rogue's errant mother, whom he hasn't seen since he was 8, is getting married in Brindol and sent him an invitation. The dwarf cleric has bossy relatives with business in the Hammerfist Holds, and since Wulfgrim has friends going that direction anyway he might as well conduct it. I put an Eisteddfodd in Dennovar to attract the bard. And the fighter, whose player is into drama, has a mysterious boyfriend who is being blackmailed by his mother, Lady Kaahl, into returning to Brindol against his will. Once in Drellin's Ferry, events overtake all these goals rapidly, but each hook keeps tugging at them and provides a framework within which the players move and make decisions. Aunt Wulfina's money is being embezzled to pay for magic items, the rogue is worried about his mother, the fact that the fallen paladin was the nephew of Kellin Shadowbanks presented them with an automatic friendly local tie, and so on.

Your players might not need anything so elaborate, but if you think about what motivates each of them and their characters individually, you should be able to construct a hook that will genuinely hook them, so that they don't decide that they've done enough for these people and really just want to bust past the roadblocks and head for the hills. Mine their backstories, if they have them. Players love it when you use those. If your players are the sort who are in it for the loot and have no functional past before meeting in the bar, what has happened in the campaign that can lead them here?

 

[Lord Zardoz]

Most of the customization issues for myself are going to be regarding how to make the adventure fit the established elements of my campaign better. I am not really worried about the hook except that since I already foreshadowed a big goblin uprising, it will be harder to keep the sense of astonished 'Holy Crap! A big Goblin Uprising'.

The customizations I want to make are as follows:

1) I need to work in events that will continue story elements particular to my campaign. One of the players has a Legacy weapon, and he will have a hard time powering it up in the context of this adventures time constraints. There are also elements of my players back stories that I wanted to get to between levels 5 and 10.

2) I want to introduce Draconians into the campaign, and this adventure is a good place for their first appearance. Deciding which encounters to tweak / modify, and what sorts of Draconians to use while keeping the CR of the encounters appropriate may be tricky.

3) Goblin related mythology is unusual on my world. Having goblins worship Tiamat / Takhisis is not something I had planned on. (In all fairness though, it could very well fit what the players have already experienced of goblins). I will probably want to tweak the goblin 'Wyrm Lords' to have them better reflect what goblins embody in my game.

4) There are only 10 individual dragons in my world, and only 3 or 4 of them are active. However, Dragons are also able to exist in multiple bodies at the same time. The idea behind this is that it allows me to have the players defeat dragons who later show up again. This means altering the existing dragons to account for this.

5) I had established the existence of a mysterious object that has 4 key stones that is sacred to goblins, and the players are already seeking the keystones. I told them that one of them was in the same general area as the goblin uprising. This was before I read the adventure. My original plan was to have the gate be the doorway to the planar prison of a very powerful goblin villain. But, this adventure already has the goblins releasing a great evil from another plane. I may want to alter that element of the story somehow.

6) I own the Book of Vile Darkness, and dammit, I want to use it. Customizing some of the significant spell casters in this adventure so that they use some spells from that book would fit very well.

My only real concern for this adventure is that many of the combat encounters are going to be tough, and while I do have 4 players, I often end up only having 3 show up because of 1 player or another being unable to make it. My current policy is to explain away their absence by whatever means is convenient. I cannot afford to cancel games for the absence of one player because it will kill my campaign. But I dont want the adventure to go off the rails because what was a tough encounter for 4 turns into a TPK for 3.

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[Peni Griffin]

Lord Zardoz, we're very much in the same boat! I already had a Big Bad and rumors of another. Bram the Chosen is a bureaucrat who's organizing the duergar into a corporate-style empire dependent on a war economy. Their battle cry is "Full employment!" They conquer and enslave other races, and when they enslaved hobgoblins - well, what are hobgoblins good for, apart from fighting? Also, there's some aesthtics I knew my players would have trouble with. Ninjas with breath weapons would make them fall on the floor laughing. So I'm changing all the warlords to duergar and all the religious references to Luduergar, and dropping the Fane of Tiamat, though if the Companions of the Claw decide to bring the war home to Bram I'll probably raid that section for usable stuff.

since I already foreshadowed a big goblin uprising, it will be harder to keep the sense of astonished 'Holy Crap! A big Goblin Uprising'.

Trust me, that view of the gathering Horde, with its ettins and dragons and chimerae, will give them all the "holy crap" you need. I even gave them a glimpse of a slaughtered trading caravan cut off as it tried to come down the Dawn Way, with piles of corpses and trade goods, and two small figures - halflings? gnomes? children? - being led into a tent. And they couldn't do a thing about it.

1) One of the players has a Legacy weapon, and he will have a hard time powering it up in the context of this adventures time constraints. There are also elements of my players back stories that I wanted to get to between levels 5 and 10.

Yeah, the adventure will feel railroady to them if you can't let them take care of their personal stuff. The module as written makes railroading too easy. I suggest scouring the town descriptions for NPCs who can be popped out and replaced with more convenient people, or hooked up to existing subplots. I'm afraid I don't know how Weapons of Legacy work, so no help from me there.

Having goblins worship Tiamat / Takhisis is not something I had planned on.

When you read the encounters in detail, you'll find that, until you get to the Fane or deal with dragonblooded hobgoblins, most of the Tiamat worship is window-dressing, easily swapped out. Since I already had an established Luduergarian villain set, I just decided that the conquered hobgoblins had been forcibly converted, and this was the second generation who knew no other god, so I wouldn't have to convert all the hobgoblin priests and monks to duergarian ones. This required a change in the relationship between the Horde and the dragons, too. The dragons are all youngish and looking to establish themselves in lairs. They help the Horde take Elsir, the Horde helps them take the Hammerfist Holds for starter lairs.

Since you have a goblin-led uprising and want to introduce draconians, you don't need to get that complicated. You can keep the core idea of the dragonblooded goblinoids, but introduce a political rift. The bulk of the Horde consists of traditional goblins with traditional goblin goals. The dragonbloods, draconians, and dragons wish to spread Tiamat worship. Both factions use each other, jockeying for position, perhaps taking opportunities to use their military foes (i.e., the PCs they just captured) against their political ones. The party could have a good time with that, and it would give you options in situtations that might otherwise by TPKs.

But, this adventure already has the goblins releasing a great evil from another plane. I may want to alter that element of the story somehow.

Any reason you can't just plug in your existing keystone idea on top of the Fane?

Customizing some of the significant spell casters in this adventure so that they use some spells from that book would fit very well.

May I suggest Miha Serani? This character is a lovely concept, but I'm having to completely rewrite her. She's a spy with no Gather Information check, fercryinoutloud. Since my party lacks spellcasters, I hope she can attach herself to them, probably by vamping the rogue. Anyway, that missing Gather Info skill means you'll probably want to rewrite her if you want to use her prominently at all, and you might as well vile her up at the same time.

Also, check out the Kulkor Zhul mindbenders. Those things are freaking nasty and Vile is a good fit with them. The module underutilizes them IMHO. I'm going to put them on wyverns and use them as scouts.

On the missing player front - I think you should tell them going in that this is a tough, deadly module that will kill them if they're careless. Encourage them to assign people to play their characters in their absence and to pick up NPC aid. A shorthanded mission could be sold to them as a scouting trip only. There's fewer x.p., but more security, in small-group reconnaissance followed by a large-scale raid using local resources.

 

[Mark CMG]

Rock on, Sidekick!

Lots of good ideas, Lord Z and Peni!

A template here and there can adjust some of the encounters rather brutally. Are you in possession of GR's Advanced Bestiary?

 

[Lord Zardoz]

Any reason you can't just plug in your existing keystone idea on top of the Fane?

/*Minor spoiler for Sunless Citidel*/

Because my players have already located that particular portal, which replaced the Troll Dragonpreist room in the Sunless Citidel. Hell, the first keystone was actually at the root of an altered Gulthias Tree. I modified that adventure so that the druid (Belak) was doing research on why Goblins do not have souls. That druid used the Gulthias Tree (which had grown around the keystone and was corrupted) and the souls of abducted children to transfer the souls to the goblins. The result was me using the Fiendish Goblin, and human children with what ever passes for a goblin soul instead of a real soul.

On a side note, I have a question. Why is it that every time I put my players inside a room that has a door which causes demonic visions when they touch it, and is difficult to open, scrawled with warning glyphs, and contains a mysterious black marble slab with 4 key stones in it, the players inevitiably place the keystone object they have found into one of those holes? And why is it that they immediately set out and look for the other key objects?

Anyway, my players even went and inserted the key they found into the portal. Kind of hard for the existing goblin horde to use that particular object to gate in Tiamat. The Fane of Tiamat would hardly fit inside a 10 foot by 10 foot room tucked into the Sunless Citidel.

I am sure I will figure something out though.

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[Peni Griffin]

I meant taking out the Fane of Tiamat entirely and letting the adventure lead to your keystone thing instead. I may not understand your keystone idea sufficiently. If you use the idea of the draconic faction vs. the traditional goblin faction, might the draconics have means/motive/opportunity to hijack the keystone phenomenon for their own purposes?

My group started in Sunless Citadel, too, and have an alliance with Yusdrayl the Kobold Queen. What a lot we have in common.

I guess it's time to explain my problems now. I'm not sure that the kind of help I need is possible to get on the net - but if there's a resource out there someone could steer me to I don't want to miss it.

My chief problem as a DM is that I'm not good at mechanics. This is less of a hassle than you'd think during the game, because I'm (without false modestly) very good indeed at character and story and two talented game mechanics sit at my table. They are as anxious as I am for the story to go smoothly and I can almost always (they are human, after all) trust them not to try to trick me into giving the party an unfair advantage. As long as the story keeps moving, and everyone gets to at least try out their clever strategies, use their cool class features, and set up their dramatic scenes, we're a happy bunch. I'm running modules specifically so I don't get bogged down in the tedious business of making gobs of stat blocks. Most modules have a logic flaw or two, but I can alter a map or rewrite a motivation without feeling burdened.

We're also playing 3.0, whereas RHOD is written for 3.5, using the PHB (not PHB II), DMG, and MM primarily. Splatbooks and online features are allowed only selectively, dependent on the ability of the person who wants to use something selling me on its story possibilities, or if I can't find what I need for the story in those three books. Two of our players have limited budgets and experience of tabletop gaming, and making the switch to 3.5 would be a burden on them, not to mention that the sometimes subtle differences have the potential to screw me up. In retrospect, I probably should have looked harder for an older module, but we're committed to RHOD now. Everyone knows there's a discrepancy between some of the module assumptions and the campaign assumptions, and we've agreed to accept the stat blocks in the book without subjecting them to comparative scrutiny, though there've already been instances of the game mechanics getting weirded out. No system's perfect.

But, because they're being good sports about this, any NPCs I have to stat out for myself (Sertieren, Avarthel, Delorra Zann, Kellin Shadowbanks, and Morlin Coalhewer, so far) or rewrite completely I need to make 3.0 legal. We've completed Part 1 and the PCs, with Avarthel, Sertieren, and Morlin are sitting in a deserted Drellin's Ferry waiting for a response to their message to the Ghost Lord and trying to figure out how to attract allies. I told them we'd need about a month hiatus while I worked out the ripples of all their efforts so far, and we've switched to somebody else's campaign. I managed to get the Ghost Lord section squared away, though I was upset (when GL and Ulwai got into a lying contest as she tried to keep him from learning that his phylactery was stolen and he tried to keep her from knowing that he's gotten a communication on that subject) to find that Ulwai has no Bluff score. I admit it - I'm so bad at mechanics that I have trouble absorbing info from a stat block until I try to use it!

The next phase I focused on was: What's going on in Brindol? Because I'm treating the Elsir River as a highway rather than a barrier, refugees arrive in Brindol before the Horde even gets to Drellin's Ferry. Miha Serani, as the Horde spy able to pass as human indefinitely, started the module in Brindol. I'd already modified her some to make her more effective - a Wand of Sending instead of the scroll, a hawk famliar instead of a viper, and some walking around treasure. I went to roll and see what she learned from the refugees, and that's when I discovered she had no Gather Info skill. This is absurd in a spy and I can't ignore it, but when I dismantled her I found that I couldn't just (for instance) cross out Disguise and plug in Gather Information. Almost all of her skills are cross-class under 3.0. I found myself adding on two rogue levels just in order to give her the most important spy skills, without bringing them up near as high as the module does. This increases her C.R. I don't have a problem with that - much - because she's a lone agent. If she doesn't succeed in infiltrating the party, they'll make mincemeat of her with tactics and teamwork, because that's what they do to lone monsters.

But it took all evening to rewrite her, I'm not convinced it was the best solution; and now I'm going to have to go through every NPC provided, focus on the stat blocks, ask myself "How am I going to use this character?," and break down and rebuild every single one that doesn't work for me. I know I'll have to do it to Skather, who previously I'd just been going to graft on top of a MMII or III critter called the Durzagon - a half-fiend, half-duergar - but now I don't trust that to work. And if I rewrite him, then the assassins in "marked for death" have to be totally rewritten, and what else am I going to turn up?

So I guess what I want is shortcuts for converting 3.5 NPCs that don't satisfy my needs into 3.0 NPCs who do! Methods. Net tools. Tricks. Anything to keep me from taking six months to get back to the campaign!

 

[Lord Zardoz]

First, to answer your question, the Keystones / Gate are meant to function as follows.

The Gate is essentially a large obsidain slab with four slots. The keystones are small obsidian objects about the size of door knobs. You insert the 4 keystones into the slab, and you essentially manage to open something you probably should not have. My current solution is to have the keystone as an object used by the villians to open their own portal. The problem with that is simple; Why the hell are the goblins opening a portal for Tiamat when they could be trying to open the portal in the Sunless Citidel? It also seems redundant to have two plots in this campaign focused on magical portals. Happily, its the sort of problem I can probably solve seamlessly at the last minute.

Now for your questions / concerns.

Well, for the spy, if your not happy with a re-write, why not use a Doppelganger and toss in a few class levels? That should give you a very powerful spy type without having to worry as much about filling the right Niche. Still no Gather Information, but it does get Detect Thoughts.

Now, as for having to go through all the NPC's one by one and figure out how you intend to use them, I suggest a slightly different approach.

Figure out what kind of NPC's make sense for you to have in this adventure, and then find places to drop them in. Since much of the adventure is event driven, its not going to be too hard to insert your own custom events (aside from the work involved in detailing them). It is even easier to cut or drop events that you do not like.

From a mechanical standpoint, I would do this.

1) Review the primary villains. This means all the Wyrm Lords, and the Lich. Make sure you like the builds, and customize as needed. If anything is likley to need to be rebuilt, it is these NPC's. They are meant to be signifigant combatants, and while they are powerful as presented, you should not hesitate to customize them. Ideally, you should know every reasonable dirty trick and tactic they are likley to use.

2) Identify recurring NPC's that you want. Do not look at the adventure for this, just decide what you want to have. For myself, I am probably going to drop in an allied Lore Master that the players can ask questions of (No one has ranks of history). I will also want to have a few military commanders on hand that can recur. I will also want to have a few other NPC's to represent interested parties (One each for the Elves, Dwarves, Khinasi, Anuireans). Also identify a few villain types that the players may capture.

3) Identify what NPC's in the adventure you like. I have not had as much chance to fully review this adventure yet, so I do not know what NPC's I particularly like or dislike from those presented.

4) Familiarize yourself with the stock recurring combat events, and tweak them if necessary or desired. There are a few raiding party configurations on hand. I intend to create a few variants (adding Draconaians and templated goblins).

The only parts likely to be difficult from a mechanical standpoint are familiarizing yourself with unfamiliar spell casters and special abilities.

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