Herobizkit
Adventurer
Sorry to butt in, but is there a link to the "new" thread?
-
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D&D 4E Running player commentary on PCat's 4E Campaign - Heroic tier (finished)
- Thread starter Sagiro
- Start date
Oh PC, we all know you can't stop the flaying without replacing it with flensing/flogging/abrading/corroding/incinerating/discombobulating/etc. It's in the RBDM sign up contract, right? Three bullet points after "earn your players' trust and respect" but before "stop short of actually breakage someone's spirit".
Then again, I can never get a hold of the newest printing of the darn thing. They only hand 'em out when you sign up- after you sign, of course.
Which reminds me... Why are you a head in a jar? Are you a future president/celebrity? Or apprentice undead?
@ Herobizkit; I don't think they've started the next thread yet. They may have to play a game first so Sagiro has something to write about before putting fingers to keys.
Then again, I can never get a hold of the newest printing of the darn thing. They only hand 'em out when you sign up- after you sign, of course.
Which reminds me... Why are you a head in a jar? Are you a future president/celebrity? Or apprentice undead?
@ Herobizkit; I don't think they've started the next thread yet. They may have to play a game first so Sagiro has something to write about before putting fingers to keys.
Piratecat
Sesquipedalian
Not started yet. We'll start it and link it once we talk about the final game session at heroic level. There's some musing I want to do, but I don't want to provide spoilers.
Sagiro
Rodent of Uncertain Parentage
Run #52 was last Thursday, and marked the end of Heroic Tier in particularly fine fashion.
From the available written clues, we figured out how to access Inquisitor Zacris’s tower, but it wasn’t trivial. We first purchased seven large mirrors, and then headed to the edge of the killing zone that surrounded the tower. You may recall that there’s a single circle of safe (we hoped!) space in the center of the death zone. Strontium used Arcane Gate and we all stepped through, teleporting into the safety circle. The good news was, we all seemed to be protected there; no one was getting flayed alive. The bad news was, the moment we arrived, the tower started to “unpack” itself into the enormous golem creature from which we had previously fled. At Stron’s urging, we held the mirrors up in a circle, while he called up on the being “dread Ysid.” Seven eyes appeared, one in each of the mirrors, and now it simply remained to get them properly aligned before the tower-golem annihilated us. Because we were each* holding a mirror, everyone had to make Arcana checks (or Thievery checks) to get the mirrors aligned. We barely made it, and with the golem about to lower the boom (i.e. its huge anvil fist), the mirrors were locked in, light flashed amongst them, and the golem/tower reset to its harmless mode.
Immediately following, the circle we were standing in became a platform, lifting us into the air until we hovered in front of a locked door into the tower. The door itself animated and posed a question (an obscenely difficult and obscure word problem involving the physics of some rare creatures walking up slippery ramps), to which we obviously had no answer. But it occurred to Strontium that he never would have asked his door to present so banal a safeguard to his own tower, so instead of answering the question, he threatened to blast the door open unless it opened for him. It obliged.
Facing us in the “foyer” of the tower was the creature Xen, who had previously warned us not to intrude upon Zacris’s property. Nothing we could say or do could convince it that Strontium and Zacris were the same person, so it attacked us before we even had a chance to step inside. A brief and fairly easy battle followed, and an interesting thing occurred afterward: little homunculi skittered up and carried Xen’s smashed-up warforged body upstairs.
I don’t have much interesting to say about this fight; it was short and to the point. Our strikers pretty much chopped, blasted and stabbed the heck out of Xen in 2 or 3 rounds. Piratecat tells me Xen was a modified Corroded Helmed Horror – a Level 11 soldier – with beefed-up hit points and an added fireball attack. One thing I’ll note about that last one: 4e fireball may be a disappointment to many, but when you’re 8 squares away from your enemies, and all seven of them are clustered together on an elevator platform, it’s pretty devastating.
(Another note: had we failed the skill challenge involving the mirrors, we would have been facing the tower guardian, an Industrial Automaton, which is a level 12 solo brute. Glad to have missed that one!)
After dispatching Xen, we went level by level and room by room, always upward, through the tower. We found a throne room, guest rooms, Zacris’s personal meditation room, and a treasure room. Stron sat upon the throne and found it preternaturally comfortable. Cobalt tried sitting on it too, on a whim, and it physically expelled him at great speed, smashing his face into the wall opposite.
And the treasure vault – ah, yes. Two million gold pieces worth of loot in a single large room. A room that we can freely walk into, and in which we can pick up, examine, bath in, and ogle all of the coins, jewels, etc. But Stron was able to detect a magical effect in the doorway, that would eradicate anyone foolish enough to remove treasure, without first solving some gruesomely complex mental riddle. (We also tried throwing treasure out of the room, but items so tossed vanished at the doorway, and then dropped back in from somewhere near the ceiling.) So, yes, we have an enormous treasure horde, which we have no way of getting out of the room, let alone spending.
Thanks, Piratecat!
The topmost level of the tower was full of scuttling homunculi, attending to heaps of trashed mechanical devices and creatures – everything that had broken down in the past few centuries. Xen’s body was there, deposited without ceremony. There was a trap-door onto the roof of the tower, which we took. The view from the tower-top, looking out over the capital city of Capria, was breathtaking.
Thunder rolled through the sky. It had been doing so since before we entered the tower, which was only odd in that the Emperor had apparently outlawed thunder some time ago. And while we stood atop the tower of Inquisitor Zacris, perhaps the most feared public figure in the history of the Empire, a bell began to chime somewhere out in the city.
It was the bell that only chimes when the Emperor has died, and while it sounded, parts of the city crumbled to ruin. Every edifice that used divine magic in its construction – including the main Church of Caprios and the Emperor’s Palace – collapsed as we watched. Screams and shouts echoed through the avenues of Capria. Smoke rose from a dozen scattered locations. And we all had the same thought: the Emperor was probably killed by Oak, the famous assassin that Bramble had unknowingly ushered into the kingdom.
Welcome to Paragon Tier!
* We had seven in the party, since a guest player was in attendance. He was playing a quiet, nervous ex-burglar named Ratty.
From the available written clues, we figured out how to access Inquisitor Zacris’s tower, but it wasn’t trivial. We first purchased seven large mirrors, and then headed to the edge of the killing zone that surrounded the tower. You may recall that there’s a single circle of safe (we hoped!) space in the center of the death zone. Strontium used Arcane Gate and we all stepped through, teleporting into the safety circle. The good news was, we all seemed to be protected there; no one was getting flayed alive. The bad news was, the moment we arrived, the tower started to “unpack” itself into the enormous golem creature from which we had previously fled. At Stron’s urging, we held the mirrors up in a circle, while he called up on the being “dread Ysid.” Seven eyes appeared, one in each of the mirrors, and now it simply remained to get them properly aligned before the tower-golem annihilated us. Because we were each* holding a mirror, everyone had to make Arcana checks (or Thievery checks) to get the mirrors aligned. We barely made it, and with the golem about to lower the boom (i.e. its huge anvil fist), the mirrors were locked in, light flashed amongst them, and the golem/tower reset to its harmless mode.
Immediately following, the circle we were standing in became a platform, lifting us into the air until we hovered in front of a locked door into the tower. The door itself animated and posed a question (an obscenely difficult and obscure word problem involving the physics of some rare creatures walking up slippery ramps), to which we obviously had no answer. But it occurred to Strontium that he never would have asked his door to present so banal a safeguard to his own tower, so instead of answering the question, he threatened to blast the door open unless it opened for him. It obliged.
Facing us in the “foyer” of the tower was the creature Xen, who had previously warned us not to intrude upon Zacris’s property. Nothing we could say or do could convince it that Strontium and Zacris were the same person, so it attacked us before we even had a chance to step inside. A brief and fairly easy battle followed, and an interesting thing occurred afterward: little homunculi skittered up and carried Xen’s smashed-up warforged body upstairs.
I don’t have much interesting to say about this fight; it was short and to the point. Our strikers pretty much chopped, blasted and stabbed the heck out of Xen in 2 or 3 rounds. Piratecat tells me Xen was a modified Corroded Helmed Horror – a Level 11 soldier – with beefed-up hit points and an added fireball attack. One thing I’ll note about that last one: 4e fireball may be a disappointment to many, but when you’re 8 squares away from your enemies, and all seven of them are clustered together on an elevator platform, it’s pretty devastating.
(Another note: had we failed the skill challenge involving the mirrors, we would have been facing the tower guardian, an Industrial Automaton, which is a level 12 solo brute. Glad to have missed that one!)
After dispatching Xen, we went level by level and room by room, always upward, through the tower. We found a throne room, guest rooms, Zacris’s personal meditation room, and a treasure room. Stron sat upon the throne and found it preternaturally comfortable. Cobalt tried sitting on it too, on a whim, and it physically expelled him at great speed, smashing his face into the wall opposite.
And the treasure vault – ah, yes. Two million gold pieces worth of loot in a single large room. A room that we can freely walk into, and in which we can pick up, examine, bath in, and ogle all of the coins, jewels, etc. But Stron was able to detect a magical effect in the doorway, that would eradicate anyone foolish enough to remove treasure, without first solving some gruesomely complex mental riddle. (We also tried throwing treasure out of the room, but items so tossed vanished at the doorway, and then dropped back in from somewhere near the ceiling.) So, yes, we have an enormous treasure horde, which we have no way of getting out of the room, let alone spending.
Thanks, Piratecat!
The topmost level of the tower was full of scuttling homunculi, attending to heaps of trashed mechanical devices and creatures – everything that had broken down in the past few centuries. Xen’s body was there, deposited without ceremony. There was a trap-door onto the roof of the tower, which we took. The view from the tower-top, looking out over the capital city of Capria, was breathtaking.
Thunder rolled through the sky. It had been doing so since before we entered the tower, which was only odd in that the Emperor had apparently outlawed thunder some time ago. And while we stood atop the tower of Inquisitor Zacris, perhaps the most feared public figure in the history of the Empire, a bell began to chime somewhere out in the city.
It was the bell that only chimes when the Emperor has died, and while it sounded, parts of the city crumbled to ruin. Every edifice that used divine magic in its construction – including the main Church of Caprios and the Emperor’s Palace – collapsed as we watched. Screams and shouts echoed through the avenues of Capria. Smoke rose from a dozen scattered locations. And we all had the same thought: the Emperor was probably killed by Oak, the famous assassin that Bramble had unknowingly ushered into the kingdom.
Welcome to Paragon Tier!
* We had seven in the party, since a guest player was in attendance. He was playing a quiet, nervous ex-burglar named Ratty.
Where'd the bit with the mirrors come from? I don't remember anything that would have led to it. Granted, I haven't read through the whole thread recently...
This is fantastic. I like that going up a tier has been suitably epic in advancement- not ridiculous, but you can feel the party stepping up to the plate of a higher calling. It's awesome! I can only hope that it is a product of the game, and not wholelyhead in a jarPirateCat being an incredible DM.
This is fantastic. I like that going up a tier has been suitably epic in advancement- not ridiculous, but you can feel the party stepping up to the plate of a higher calling. It's awesome! I can only hope that it is a product of the game, and not wholely
Piratecat
Sesquipedalian
Post 1084, in the Spoiler Block.
A few notes:
- The death field outside the tower doesn't actually kill people per se. It does slow them after a round and do ongoing damage; enough to wipe out normal people, but not heroes, and enough to make fighting the industrial automaton a very dicey proposition indeed.
- Sagiro didn't mention the level with the teleportation circle and three summoning circles. One of the circles was sundered and ruined; the other two were occupied by demons. The group conferred to find a way to dismiss the demons that wouldn't allow them to easily gain revenge for their thousand-year entrapment. It hearkened back to the days of 1e's very carefully worded wishes.
- The arcane library here is huge but very old and fragile. The group can get a +4 item check when researching arcana or history, but only while in the tower and only if they take more than an hour to do so.
- Similarly, anyone who casts arcane rituals can select three rituals of their level or below to learn for free every time they go up a level. I've been handling ritual book treasure this way instead of selecting the rituals for myself, because it pushes the responsibility off on the player (if they don't pick three, they simply chose not to learn them) and saves me time.
- Hopefully one of those rituals will be Linked Portal. you know, what with the teleportation circle and all and the tricky front door entrance!
- I generally used the recent rules in Dragon for building PC strongholds. Attached is the tower's layout in PDF format, created in Visio. Took about 45 minutes and was fun to do. The group hasn't explored the bottom two levels yet.
- Sitting in the throne caused Strontium's head-sigil to glow slightly; putting on Inquisitor Zacris's wizard's hat caused it to briefly blaze. Once this occurred, he could stop the tower from spinning at will.
- We had a guest player and I used him to pass on rumors about what's been happening in the city, such as the emperor outlawing thunder and the recent declaration that fish were allies, making the eating or possession of a fish to be a capital offense.
- And hey, how about that for a convenient view-point to witness what happened when the emperor died? Having ancient buildings crumble - buildings which were built with the empire's power literally worked into their foundation stones - is probably a bad thing. I didn't expect the PCs to be in Capria when it happened, but things worked out really nicely.
- Sagiro didn't mention the level with the teleportation circle and three summoning circles. One of the circles was sundered and ruined; the other two were occupied by demons. The group conferred to find a way to dismiss the demons that wouldn't allow them to easily gain revenge for their thousand-year entrapment. It hearkened back to the days of 1e's very carefully worded wishes.
- The arcane library here is huge but very old and fragile. The group can get a +4 item check when researching arcana or history, but only while in the tower and only if they take more than an hour to do so.
- Similarly, anyone who casts arcane rituals can select three rituals of their level or below to learn for free every time they go up a level. I've been handling ritual book treasure this way instead of selecting the rituals for myself, because it pushes the responsibility off on the player (if they don't pick three, they simply chose not to learn them) and saves me time.
- Hopefully one of those rituals will be Linked Portal. you know, what with the teleportation circle and all and the tricky front door entrance!
- I generally used the recent rules in Dragon for building PC strongholds. Attached is the tower's layout in PDF format, created in Visio. Took about 45 minutes and was fun to do. The group hasn't explored the bottom two levels yet.
- Sitting in the throne caused Strontium's head-sigil to glow slightly; putting on Inquisitor Zacris's wizard's hat caused it to briefly blaze. Once this occurred, he could stop the tower from spinning at will.
- We had a guest player and I used him to pass on rumors about what's been happening in the city, such as the emperor outlawing thunder and the recent declaration that fish were allies, making the eating or possession of a fish to be a capital offense.
- And hey, how about that for a convenient view-point to witness what happened when the emperor died? Having ancient buildings crumble - buildings which were built with the empire's power literally worked into their foundation stones - is probably a bad thing. I didn't expect the PCs to be in Capria when it happened, but things worked out really nicely.
So now we transition over to paragon tier. The last two years have gone really quickly. How have I done?
- We have ongoing adventure hooks for everyone's backstory except for Gilran, and I hope to remedy that soon. some of these came out later than ideal, but I think the pacing has been pretty good overall.
- The next tier's foundation is solidly in place. I'm pleased about how the adventures are unfolding.
- I have been a woeful slacker about world-building. I need to make maps and more maps, and write history.
- I need to tweak the combat/roleplaying/skill challenge/puzzle balance a little away from combat and more towards the other things. I think the campaign plot/mystery balance is pretty good.
- The party has about the right amount of treasure for their level, perhaps a little low. That's easily adjusted. They also have some treasure that is more powerful than they realize. My magic items haven't been quite as flavorful overall as I would like. (I'm doing better with this in the Merchant Prince game.)
- I have come to the conclusion that alchemy sucks as written, which is a shame when two players were really interested in it. I'll be dramatically increasing the efficacy of alchemical attacks as a result. House rules, ho!
- We're pretty good, but there's more distraction at the table than I'd ideally like. I'm considering re-establishing the Pig as a result.
- Games are never long enough, but we're all busy adults, and my players are fantastic with their attendance. We play every two weeks like clockwork. It works out fine.
- I couldn't run the game without the Compendium, at least not for magic items and monsters. It's a tremendous help for fast prep.
- As a result, running two campaigns simultaneously isn't a hardship or burden in the least.
- I would benefit vastly by tracking all the NPCs in the campaign and listing them on the sadly underused wiki. (See: lament about world-building, above.)
- Having copies of every character sheet up on that wiki is really, really useful.
- The player-free brainstorming thread I created, where people thought up cool unique marvels for Capria, was a huge help in envisioning the city and helping make it come alive.
- The next tier's foundation is solidly in place. I'm pleased about how the adventures are unfolding.
- I have been a woeful slacker about world-building. I need to make maps and more maps, and write history.
- I need to tweak the combat/roleplaying/skill challenge/puzzle balance a little away from combat and more towards the other things. I think the campaign plot/mystery balance is pretty good.
- The party has about the right amount of treasure for their level, perhaps a little low. That's easily adjusted. They also have some treasure that is more powerful than they realize. My magic items haven't been quite as flavorful overall as I would like. (I'm doing better with this in the Merchant Prince game.)
- I have come to the conclusion that alchemy sucks as written, which is a shame when two players were really interested in it. I'll be dramatically increasing the efficacy of alchemical attacks as a result. House rules, ho!
- We're pretty good, but there's more distraction at the table than I'd ideally like. I'm considering re-establishing the Pig as a result.
- Games are never long enough, but we're all busy adults, and my players are fantastic with their attendance. We play every two weeks like clockwork. It works out fine.
- I couldn't run the game without the Compendium, at least not for magic items and monsters. It's a tremendous help for fast prep.
- As a result, running two campaigns simultaneously isn't a hardship or burden in the least.
- I would benefit vastly by tracking all the NPCs in the campaign and listing them on the sadly underused wiki. (See: lament about world-building, above.)
- Having copies of every character sheet up on that wiki is really, really useful.
- The player-free brainstorming thread I created, where people thought up cool unique marvels for Capria, was a huge help in envisioning the city and helping make it come alive.
Hmm, I think that's it for the moment! I welcome commentary or thoughts. We'll start the Paragon tier thread in a few weeks; I'll leave this one open for comments.
Last edited:
Cerebral Paladin
First Post
Somehow, the story of the 2 million gp treasure reminds me of Mark Twain's "The Million Pound Bank Note," which is one of my favorite short stories. Now, if only the PCs can find as much use for it as the protagonist in that story...
(On another note, thanks for the link to the character wiki PCat--I'd give you some experience, but I can't right now.
)
(On another note, thanks for the link to the character wiki PCat--I'd give you some experience, but I can't right now.
)
Prince Atom
Explorer
Make sure you get their money before they go into the room.
Also, some kind of a release of liability would be beneficial if you can't stop it flensing people alive.
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