Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Truename" data-source="post: 5099380" data-attributes="member: 78255">Session 4 (Scene 2-5, 3-2, 3-3)My players continue to surprise me. I was convinced we were on our way to a TPK last session, but the dice turned and they pulled out a narrow victory. By the end of the fight, four of the six players had been dying at some point. One of them rolled a 20 and recovered, one of them had been healed, and two were still dying. Aspetra had a nail-biting moment where she had failed two death saving throws in a row and no one close enough to activate her second wind. Luckily, she made her save the third time, and was brought back the next round.So all the cool TPK stuff I had planned didn't happen. No escape from restraints, no discovering the link between the Black Horse and the Ragesians. Instead, the players looted the place and then decided to go warn Erdan Menash of the plot against. Luckily, I had my RP stat block for Erdan prepared, as well as a couple of whimsical items. (My favorite was the sword cane with carefully placed holes that whistled a dirge when you drew the sword.) Here's the stat block:Appearance: Extraordinarily fat human, moves with grace of a walrus.Voice: High-pitched, wheezing.Key Traits: Infectiously enthusiastic, easily distracted, unabashedly mercantile, savvyGoal: Do what’s best for long-termMotivation: Free trade, happy populousFears: Foolish council, invading armyWeaknesses: Out of options, ready to grasp at strawsI didn't do the skill challenge--I've always found RP skill challenges to feel forced at best, and high complexity ones (this one was supposed to be 8 successes before 3 failures) just don't have enough interesting elements to sustain the number of checks required. Instead, we just played it free form. I had a lot of fun with this--my notes on whimsical items plus the bulleted list of the events of the attack the night before gave me lots of things to throw in.The PCs got here before escaping the city was a major concern, so they didn't ask Erdan about his help. I was nice and had him volunteer, after appropriate probing. I figured that they were generally nice to him, delivered the warning, and also killed the wyvern rider--that was enough of a success for me. He told them to visit Cpt. Harreman when they were ready to leave.I also had Erdan probe for their destination, but they didn't trust him enough to tell him, so he didn't give them the Dianoem. I guess time will tell as to how much that matters.The party druid noticed the ambushers from scene 3-3 on the way back to the temple. He told Volk, the barbarian (ostensibly in charge in Torrent's absence), who turned with a wonderful "What the f--- do you want!" rather than the subtle approach the rest of the party wanted. I gave him a Fate Point for that one. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />It was daylight and the party was able to cow the would-be ambushers, so they defeated that encounter without a fight. The encounter with Rantle went uneventfully, and they returned to the temple. We ended with them successfully assisting in the ritual to heal Rivereye. Next time, we'll start with Torrent's report of what she found at Gabal's School.Here's Rantle's RP stat block. I didn't expect to need it today, but luckily I had done this one in advance.Appearance: tall, dark-haired, roguishly handsome human. Goatee and greatsword.Voice: Very slightly over the top “hero” voiceKey Traits: Scoundrel, self-absorbed, charming, defender of common manGoal: Have party deliver letter to sister KatrinaMotivation: Genuine love for sisterFears: Sister is in real troubleWeaknesses: Overestimates himselfOverall, a fun session. It went much differently than I expected, but I knew the adventure well enough to roll with the punches. That was nice--there's enough background detail in WotBS that I feel like I can improvise when I need to. It's a big difference from Scales of War in that regard. It takes more studying, but the result is far richer. My players seemed to really enjoy tonight's session.</blockquote>

Verification