Red Hand of Doom: Score 2 for Koth

[Lord Zardoz]

Obviously spoilers.

My players just recently managed to complete the first section of the adventure. it capped off with a rematch against Wyrmlord Koth, who managed to survive the first encounter at Vraath Keep. It was a pretty entertaining and great way to cap off that chapter. It consisted of a very nasty ambush involving Koth, 2 Doom Hand Clerics, 5 Baaz Draconians, and a Sivak Draconian. The fight was crafted to the players weaknesses, though within justification. The players had managed to let a number of opponents escape alive to report back.

However, Koth managed to survive the rematch as well. He has proven surprisingly resilient.

I think it will be a while before Koth turns up again, but I would not mind hearing suggestions for the 2nd Chapter where Koth may be useful.

END COMMUNICATION

 

[YourSwordIsMine]

Odd, I dont remember Draconians.... Nice addition by the way, much better than the plethora of Hell hounds... Now that was one monster over used lol!

 

[Lord Zardoz]

Draconians replace the Dragonspawn in my game. They simply fit better with the theme of a humanoid adventure. As cannon fodder, the Baaz are handy due to decent HP and the potential to disarm a player for the remainder of a fight.

Also, I just like them.

Hell Hounds are ok, but have not been a huge factor in the game so far. The Breath weapon gives me a way to damage high AC players, but they do not have much staying power.

What is most striking about Koth is that as written, he has great staying power, but not much to indicate that he is likely to stay around. By providing a plausible escape plan, and some effective support, I can leverage his Hp and keep him around.

That in turn gives me a very durable spell caster with some very effective blasting spells that I can turn loose on my players. Furthermore, I can do this while using tactics tailored to the Pc's.

I should note that I customized Koths spell list a bit, giving him Scorching Ray instead of Detect Thoughts.

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[RichGreen]

Hi,

I turned Koth into a warlock (which was suggested on a couple of other RHoD threads on here). He proved a more interesting and worthy opponent that way as several players weren't familiar with the class.

Cheers


Richard

 

[Keith Robinson]

Koth survived in my game as well, so I placed him at the bridge in the second chapter. He didn't really come into play there much, as he just marshalled the troops before the players brought the bridge down (quite quickly), so both he and the green dragon survived. They'll be sure to encounter both again (in fact, we're just reaching the end of chapter 4, and I intend to put together a large battle scene to give the players a real sense of scale and a fitting finale for the war. At some point, amid the chaos of the battle, I'll introduce Kharn and his sidekick, Koth, who will immediately strike at the players )

 

[MarkB]

Koth survived in my game as well, so I placed him at the bridge in the second chapter. He didn't really come into play there much, as he just marshalled the troops before the players brought the bridge down (quite quickly), so both he and the green dragon survived. They'll be sure to encounter both again (in fact, we're just reaching the end of chapter 4, and I intend to put together a large battle scene to give the players a real sense of scale and a fitting finale for the war. At some point, amid the chaos of the battle, I'll introduce Kharn and his sidekick, Koth, who will immediately strike at the players )

Koth showed up at the bridge in my game, too. The players did manage to dispose of him despite him being on the opposite side of the bridge (summoned hippogriffs, as I recall), but not before he'd hit one of them with a Blindness spell, making their subsequent rout into the woods to flee the green dragon a good deal more interesting.

My policy with any wyrmlords and dragons who survived their initial encounters was to involve them in one ambush scenario against the PCs, giving the PCs another shot at them. If they survived that, the PCs wouldn't see them again until the battle at the city (for the wyrmlords) or the attack on the fane (for the dragons).

In the event, none of the other wyrmlords survived their first encounter, but the black dragon also got away. I ran separate ambush scenarios with the green and the black, and the players were able to slay the black dragon, but the green got away again.

This made the encounter at the entrance to the Fane significantly harder, since both the green and the blue were there - sufficiently so that, though they slew the green in that encounter, it turned out as a TPK a few rounds later, which ended the campaign.

 

[Klaus]

Hi,

I turned Koth into a warlock (which was suggested on a couple of other RHoD threads on here). He proved a more interesting and worthy opponent that way as several players weren't familiar with the class.

Cheers


Richard

If I do actually run RHoDOOOOOM, I'll rejig Wyrmlord Koth as a Hexblade.

 

[Mark]

Have Koth turn up as a zombie in the big stone lion because of his failures to bring down the PCs. Koth could go down there to report to what's-her-puss, be killed and tortured, then turned zombie by the former druid. When the PCs come across him, you will likely get the mixed reaction of the players enjoying his demise then wondering what took the guy they couldn't kill and turned him into walking dead. When they first see him, don't let on he is a zombie.

 

[Eidalac]

Koth very nearly got away in my RL RH game, via Fly, but the characters with bows didn't give up, and after a couple of lucky shots to wear his HP down, the longbow user nailed him at the very extreme limit of his range (one more round and he would have been at the tree line and out of sight).

Not enough to kill him, but enough to KO him, which tends to be fatal when you are that far from the ground.


But, yeah, he proved much more resilient than I was expecting, and is, as stated, prepared to flee if he has to.

 

[Keith Robinson]

My policy with any wyrmlords and dragons who survived their initial encounters was to involve them in one ambush scenario against the PCs, giving the PCs another shot at them. If they survived that, the PCs wouldn't see them again until the battle at the city (for the wyrmlords) or the attack on the fane (for the dragons).

Strangely enough, Wyrmlord Stormcaller got away, so I had her lay an ambush for the PCs on their return trip. Didn't think about it for the green dragon.