Mansday 28th Nauvambor, Year 599 (continued)
The fight against the drow was short and brutal. Especially the magic powers of one of the drows caused the Fists some problems, but luckily for them, no one fell to the drow poison used by the other drow. The drows had nothing which could indicate what in Pelor's name they were doing out of the Underdark, but the Fists did manage to salvage some drow poison and a couple of House Insignias.
[sblock=Comments]The drow fight was yet another fight where I took level 10+ monsters, took 5 levels off, and made them elite in order to use them against lower level opponents. It really works decently, but the fight became too easy as it was supposed to be 3 drow against 5 players. One player got delayed and I only got word very late, so I downgraded the encounter to 2 drows against 4 players. Not quite such a big hazzle. It did still serve it's primary purpose, which is to make the players wonder what the hell is happening, with mindflayers and drow running around on the surface. A sort of a foreshadowing of things to come.[/sblock]
Onsday 30th Nauvambor, Year 599
A couple of days later, the Golden Fists arrived at Laketown. At the gate, they were welcomed by a handful of guards, led by a fellow named Bob. Bob informed the Fists that they were to pay an adventurer-tax, or rather, that they had to deposit 50 gp per person at the gate in the advent that they would destroy something. Too often had adventurers visited Laketown and left it again with buildings or other things destroyed. They were also informed that drawing ones weapon was illegal and that squatting in one of the many empty houses would be dealt with harshly. In general, Bob and the other guards seemed very proud of living in the only democratic town in Draegor.
The Golden Fists immediately made their way down the main street, asking around for the Massis. They were directed down to the harbor, where they met up with Jonathan Massi. He knew nothing of a medallion, but promised to relay their questions to the patriarch of the family, Leo Massi. He suggested that they take some rooms at the Golden Pheasant, a nearby inn.
While waiting, Arpametan spent most of the day brewing some of the new potions he had learned to make. The others did as little as possible.
[sblock=Comments]Since I do not play magic items and magic item creation by the book, I have had to figure out what to do with potions. At first, it was easy. Remove any requirement on potions, except that you can only have 1 potion in your body per encounter, or you risk something bad (and explosive) happening, just like in 2e. But then one of my players asked if he could take brew potion, because he kinda liked the vibe and feel it gave his character. I said yes of course, but had no idea on how to handle it, without unbalancing things.
Then, after having killed a Wyvern, the player asked if he could harvest some stuff from the monster, ingredients for making potions. So we rolled some harvesting checks (Arcana and nature) and he acquired something usable. Which led me to the current system.
With brew potion, you can make magical potions. You start with no recipes, but can acquire more, either by finding out by yourself, or buying them. A potion has a base residuum price, and some required monster ingredients. For example, Arpametan has some white dragon blood, which he discovered can be used to make cold resist potions, potions of dragon breath or cryo-potions (that freezes the target), depending on how much dragon blood is used. So basically, what we do is that each time he harvest a new monster, we roll some checks to see how much he gets. Then, when the character has had some downtime and been able to experiment and research a bit, we roll some more checks and I make up some new potions that he can make.
Balanced or not, I have no idea. I control how many ingredients he can acquire, so in that regard, there is some degree of control, but we will see how it pans out. I personally like how it adds more to an otherwise boring as hell potion-making system.[/sblock]
Torsday 1st Deecambor, Year 599
On the next day, they were contacted by a member of the Massi-family's staff, and brought to the huge Massi mansion, which occupied a significant area of the north-westernmost part of town, down by the lake. There they met with Leo Massi. As it turns out, he knew the medallion of which they spoke, but it became clear he had no intention of selling it, and no intention of just handing it over for nothing. He did have a suggestion. His much younger wife, Victoria, had recently been behaving oddly, slipping out at night on unknown business. He wanted to know what was up. If she was whoring around, he wanted proof, so that a divorce would become much cheaper for him. A much easier job than they expected.
They left soon after, and spent the day making plans. At night, they spread out, covering all possible exits. But no one came out.
Lordday 3rd Deecambor, Year 599
They spent the day sleeping and waiting for night to come. Just like the two previous nights, they spread out and staked out the Massi mansion. Finally something happened. During the darkest hours, a robed figure slipped out of the mansion grounds and headed towards the harbor. The Fists got a hold of one another, and followed the figure.
Down at the harbor, it entered one of the empty houses. After waiting a bit, River decided to follow it inside. Using his new magical armor to turn into a mouse, he quickly found a hole in the wall and entered the house. And almost got stepped on, as the robed figure was heading out again.
The robed figure moved up through the ware-house area and entered one of the warehouses. The Fists snuck in after the figure and found themselves in a warehouse full of boxes, kegs and other assorted containers. But no robed figure anywhere. As they were searching, a door was opened and a torch tossed inside. River made it out by reflex alone, just as the building blew up. Soon they were swarmed by fanatic cultists and robed spellcasters. The fight was tough, but in the end, the Fists all stood alive while the Orcus cultists were dead. No trace of the original robed figure though.
The Fists quickly returned to the house, to see what was there. All they found was trace of a ritual being cast in the room where the figure had been. They then ran back to the mansion, to be there when the robed figure returned. But no one came.
Sonday 4th Deecambor, Year 599
The next night, the Fists once again surveilled the Massi mansion. Once again, the robed figure slipped out of the grounds and headed towards the harbor. The Fists got together and followed it. Just as they decided to attack it, it turned up and headed into the ware-house area again. As the Fists tried to catch it, they were once again ambushed, and this time the cultists had brought a big red angry demon.
The fight was rough, and especially the demon, which seemed to get aroused by the sight of blood, was positively lethal. But it was still sent back to the Abyss by Paavu, well helped by the healing of Elron.
[sblock=Comments]I often talk a lot about making players happy, that it is not my campaign, but our (the group's) campaign. And I do mean it. This also means that I might, in the near future, need to compromise on some of my ideas. Several in fact.
First of all, it seems my players loved playing the epic part of my last campaign, so I have promised them that this one will stretch into epic play as well.
Second of all, I also wanted to stretch things, so that leveling wouldn't happen quite so often as during my last campaign (22 level ups in 64 sessions), but I am starting to get the feeling that my players would prefer the leveling up to happen more often. Like before. Since we do not use XP; it's not hard to turn the progression up.
Last but not least, there is the issue of no magic item creation. But I am not quite there yet, since I think its mostly one of the players who is not perfectly happy with my restrictions there. But as always, we will evaluate and see if there is a better solution.
Because playing D&D should be fun for everyone at the table
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