The Exploits of Flint's Hot Fuzz, or how I never should have taken a party of 6 with 3 alpha strikers

[Aleithilithos]

I started running Zeitgeist in 4E online over IRC, using Virtual Daivve for the map, on March 7th (according to the logs) last year. with six players The campaign's been amazing so far (at the time of writing they just left the Isle of Odium after meeting Ashima-Shimtu). After the latest module they encouraged me to finally start posting about the adventures so far because of the amount of fun they've been having.

The six constables are:
Chandrasekhar Singh: Eladrin Paladin Vekeshi Mystic - travelling for a while, was in Ber for a while and managed to work his way from being an ambassador from there to Risur into joining the RHC about 10-15 years ago.
Ernst Gohins: Human Artificer Technologist - Firstborn and bastard child of Mayor Gohins' husband. Recently joined RHC to try and help Parity Lake's situation.
Garrett Woodson: Human Rogue Spirit Medium - Grew up in Bole, didn't cope well with discovering his medium abilities at first and turned to drugs, but now is trying to turn himself around using his ability to help people instead of using it to divest them of their money. Joined the RHC a couple years ago.
Gerald Cooper: Human Ranger Gunsmith - Grew up in Parity Lake and was sponsored by a rich fellow trying to help out some kids to go to Battalion academy. Joined the RHC recently after graduating.
Phyllis Lenz: Dwarf Wizard Eschatologist - Grew up in Crisillyir, 122 years old. Got tired of arguing with the Clergy and moved to Risur a few decades ago. After spending a bit of time at Pardwight University, she joined the RHC a couple decades ago. Talked Chandrasekhar into joining.
Zane Bieto - Half-Orc Assassin Martial Scientist - Son of an Executor, trained in Ber, but came to Risur and started working for the RHC a couple of years ago.

They easily split into 3 different partners based on when they joined; Garrett and Zane even took the Wall Crawlers guild training to help their Athletics scores.

We mostly use IRC because someone has a tool to convert logs from it into wikitext so we can store the logs online easily, and we have some dicebots (one of which can even cover rolling brutal 2 on the firearms) and a program I can easily use for Initiative tracking and calling.

Character sheets, logs, etc. are hosted at http://storagebin.wikidot.com/zeitgeist

 

[Aleithilithos]

Module 1

I'd like to say the campaign started off with a bang but the sabotage of the Coaltongue never made it off the ground. I had the crowd skill challenge require a couple of extra successes and threw an extra docker in there because there was 6 of them, but they managed to find all of them just before they ran out of time.

On the Coaltongue itself, Ernst, our Technologist, decided he'd rather be bored watching the engine than dealing with politicians and nobles, and the engineers didn't have any time to start their sabotage under his watchful eye. The combat basically started with him holding off the 2 engineers from himself and the 'normal' engineer while the others dealt with Sokana and the halflings. One of the halflings was one of the few NPCs the PCs have killed so far, and Delft gave Zane a bit of a talk about that. Gerald, the ranger, didn't hear the commotion for a couple of rounds, but when he did, he decided the fastest way to get down a couple of desks was to roll off the sides of the stairs a few times. Made him roll Acrobatics and he ended up landing prone with a few damage, but he still managed to peg Sokana with at least one shot from his shotgun.

The infiltration of Axis Island went pretty well for them after that: They tied up the foreman after subduing him (and eventually came back to free him after liberating the island), avoided the damaged golem, and managed their party stealth checks fine to get to the lighthouse. They didn't have much problems taking it or defending it, even with the larger group sizes. Most of them had ranged options so that helped (both the Ranger and the Artificer are maining shotguns for one thing).

They didn't really talk to Lt. Marseine, but they did manage to talk down Gillie Dhu. I ended up using the Lv2 Solo version of Asrabey since they didn't have much in the way of auto-damage (the Wizard is an Illusionist and didn't take Magic Missile. With three strikers in the party, they opt for more controller-y options, including some abilities with no direct damage but large area effects). They ended up giving back all three of the icons to Lya at the end, too.

 

[Aleithilithos]

Module 2

The Dying Skyseer showed me multiple times just how quickly a couple of strikers using their AP wait daily/encounter attacks and a executioner assassin using their Assassin Strike can kill things. The party has a tendency to ignore the mooks and go for the bigger targets and burst them down

The constables found most of the evidence at the consulate, just didn't check inside the consular's office. I may have been a bit lenient in time, but they split up, talking to Wolfgang's references and managing to track back to Kell. They didn't feel like caving in to his demands so they halted there on Track 3 for a bit. They went after Track 2 next, and managed to wrap most of that up the 2nd day/third morning. They managed to capture the dragonborn brothers but they wouldn't talk right away.

Delft managed to get them to start looking into thread #1 and some escapades were had when they went to talk to The House Elf. After that they talked to Gale, and having just learned about the upcoming deal, they convinced Gale to pull out of the deal. Chandrasekhar, the vekeshi mystic, managed to talk her into a more moderate stance in her actions.

The 4th day was looking to be busy. They crashed the warehouse, stopped the golem after only a few rounds (it got one good toss in against Zane on the catwalks), but between penalties and bad rolls for the golem, and alpha strikes from the others, it went down fast. I did throw in a Skulking Knife-Fighter for the sixth party member, but Zane was able to take it out in the first round. The Dawn Square encounter happened, although the jaguars didn't manage to directly attack Nevard, just take down some of his groupies. They were all prepared to stop a trade deal that night, but Morgan Cippiano called them over to his coffee shop, introduced himself, and told them he'd called off the exchange that night. He did give them the location of Wolfgang though, trying to say 'no hard feelings'. (He then had the exchange happen a couple nights later instead, when they weren't watching. Didn't get as many wands without Gale's money, but still got most of his deal).

The constables managed to talk down Kell's guards and convince them to walk away without a fight, but word had already been sent to Creed so they showed up when they made to leave with Wolfgang and his documents. The paladin's radiant damage meant they made short work of Creed, but Leone had already blocked off the entrance by that point. The module didn't say anything about not mentioning his name, so it wasn't until later when I was reading through module 5 in-depth that I found out that Morgan was supposed to supply his name then and they were only supposed to know him as 'The Steelshaper'...

The next day, with the arsonist brothers having talked last evening, they had all the evidence they needed to go after Macbannin. Sadly, because I was still using the original module release and didn't find out I should be using the compiled release until mid-next module, he crumpled in one round without Bond of Forced Faith. They were going to bring him in, but he managed to convince them to head to his hidden lab first. Creed tried to attack them during that, but was repelled and arrested. They managed to stop the industrial accident from going to far with Macbannin's help. Parity Lake was saved, and the party was treated like heroes.