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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Scorch" data-source="post: 3074997" data-attributes="member: 1502">Adventure 4:  Almost killed by a vine.The next adventure had me confident that I would not kill my players.  Barakus was written with a well-balanced party of four players in mind and I had six players plus an NPC smashing their way through it.  With the success of the were-rat lair behind I decided it was time to try out some of the wilderness encounters.  But to get them out into the wilderness surrounding Endhome I needed to reel in one of the story hooks I had placed beforehand.The night passed uneventfully with no attacks from vengeful were-rats.  The players felt more confident now that they were healed back up.  The first order of business was to report the were-rats to the town watch.  Bragger Bondhome was back in town after being out in the field and he met the players.  Their previous work in Micon’s Hideout plus the letter of introduction from their former employer were major pluses on his reaction to them.  He listened politely to what they had to say and thanked them saying that he would take care of checking out the sewers despite all the other problems the city was having.  At which point the players asked if he was referring to the Green Tree Bandits they had heard about.When reading about Bragger I got that he was a pretty “no nonsense” kind of guy who maintained his position for so long as the Captain of the Watch in Endhome because he did the job well and did not let the internal politics of the city distract him from keeping the populace safe.  As an 8th level fighter he was also one of the most powerful NPCs in the city.  Bragger knew an opportunity to use the players as a resource so he told them about the recent spate of attacks on merchant caravans coming down the north-south route to Endhome.  He had just come back from investigating the most recent attack.  He then mentioned the 500 gold piece reward plus the possibility of additional rewards from merchants if their merchandise was recovered.  All the players needed to hear was “500 gold pieces” (a king’s ransom at that level) and they were ready to go running out the door.  More level heads got additional information from the Captain including a location on the map of all the bandit attacks.  At this point I would like to say how useful the PDF file containing the maps was.  I printed up a keyless map of the wilderness when one of the players purchased one from a city vendor and we pinned it up to the corkboard in the game room where we played.   On it I penciled in notes and locations that the players knew about.Before setting out for the wilderness, the players made a stop at the big weapons shop in town (which just so happened to be outside the barracks) to place some advanced orders for masterwork and silver weapons.  Aislenn spent a few minutes with her nose pressed up against the display case, admiring the magic weaponry within.  “One day” she whispered “One day…”  They also sold off the loot from the were-rat lair.  Micca spent his share on hiring workers to fix the temple and get some new locks put on the doors.  Father Beamus promised to keep an eye on it while they were out in the wilderness.The next morning they were ready to head out.  Curley Barnes, having proven himself in battle against the were-rats, was hired on by the party.   The players paid him with a masterwork flute they had found earlier.  Now here is where I decided to compress travel time.  The players had already traveled down this road before.  I wanted things to move quicker and I thought it prudent not to bog them down with mundane travel.  I just rolled for encounters five or six times a day in rapid succession and three times during the night.  There were only two encounters of note.  The first was with giant bees (They were not falling for that dancing lights trick again!).  The other encounter was one of the goofier ones. During the night the players split into three watches.  During one watch I rolled “The Hanged Man” encounter.  We decided that it was silly that the person on watch would turn around and notice a dead body hanging from a tree they had not seen before so I just rolled again.After three days of travel they reached where the most recent bandit attack had taken place.  I started reading up on how the ranger could track.  I took into account all the factors in the environment, time that had passed, etc. and came up with a number.  The player running Keldin promptly took 20 and picked up the trail left by the bandit hauling the merchant wagons they had stolen into the Penprie Forest.  Here is where I had to make some decisions about “Taking 20”.  How it was written in the PHB led me to believe that if a player had 2 minutes to spare on a task then they could Take 20 on a task.  I sort of felt that it was like Aragorn in “The Two Towers” sniffing out what had happened at the scene of a battle, though he was probably hitting a DC 80 as opposed to the DC 25 to 27 I was hitting my ranger with.  For Keldin tracking this was not much of an issue but later on Absinthe started taking 20 for everything she was doing.  In any event, Keldin had picked up the trail of the bandits and the party set off into the woods.  By coincidence the line they were taking would lead them through several encounter locations in the forest.  I still rolled for encounters with the appropriate modifiers since the forest is a pretty dangerous place for a low level party.Their first encounter was with the flying monkeys.  They ignored the advance guard of the ranger and the rogue and went right for the central pack of the party, raining darts from above.  They then moved in to get the flank attacks on players, using their flying to get around the battlefield quickly.  The party did pretty well against them slaying four of them in the first round and then picking off the others.  One or two of the creatures fled the battlefield but were picked off by the ranger.  A search of the area revealed some gold carved into the form of acorns.The other encounter of note was when they camped at night in the woods and were attacked by two big spiders.  The two players who were on watch quickly dispatched them before the others even had a chance to awaken fully and grab their weapons.The next day the party came across the river that runs through the forest.  The bandits had entered the river and then traveled down along its shallow bed to the south to throw off the trail of anyone tracking them.  The DC of tracking them adjusted appropriately and the ranger could not make it even if he took 20.  They would need to guess north or south.  The party guessed north and started up the west bank of the river.After a few hours the Absinthe noticed an unusual looking hill set back in the woods from the riverbank.  The party stopped to investigate and made out the broken doorway leading into the hill.  This was the Mysterious Crypt encounter.  I made mention of the thick vines hanging down over the door.  Absinthe’s player started scouting ahead and then made the flip remark “Yeah, watch these suckers animate and attack me or something.”Poor, poor rogue.WHAM!  The assassin vine got the surprise round in and KOed Absinthe in one shot.  She fell into negative HP and dropped like a sack. Everyone stared at me slack jawed and I just shrugged saying “Well, you did walk right into it.”   In my defense, the ranger missed his spot and wilderness rolls.Init was rolled, the action music started, and it was ON!  The assassin vine went first and for it’s action it dragged the rogue over to its root structure where it would feed from her decomposing body… that is if she was dead.  I decided that since the vine is a mindless plant it could not tell if what it had attacked was dead or not and if you stopped moving then it grappled and moved you to where it could feed on you.The party worked as best they could in the situation.  Aislenn moved in and just started power attacking but she was not rolling that well on the damage.  Keldin and Ravenspur stood back and peppered the vine with arrows and rays of frost.  Micca and Adson attempted to move in as well to see if they could free Absinthe and heal her.  It was pretty tight for three rounds as bad rolls on the party’s part and good rolls on the vines part had the party almost at the point of death.  A final blow from the fighter finished it off and the party grabbed Absinthe and ran back to the riverbank.At that point I called it a night.  I had many dark looks thrown my way as I calculated up experience.  Fortunately those went away when they realized they had all hit second level, even the ranger who had missed a session.  I ruled that if they got a good night’s rest then they could level up.They did so and everyone was happy that they had survived to second level.  They would need it for what would come next…Next up:  Into the crypt then bandit bashing time!</blockquote>

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