Pathfinder 1E Weekly game cancelled - entertaining myself with Haunting of Harrowstone analysis

[Wycen]

I'm already jonesing for my next Carrion Crown fix, so to help stave it off, here are my impressions of the encounters and adventure, first starting with Haunting of Harrowstone.

I'm not sure if the first of the 5 big bads we fought was the Lopper or the Piper. That is because the group started without me and once I joined they played twice without me because they don't communicate very well. So, the first of the 5 ghost prisoners we fought was the Lopper, but since I don't remember encountering the Piper, maybe it was him.

The Lopper fight was a slog. We couldn't hit, but part of that was because we are still in the 3.5 mind frame and didn't realize the way Pathfinder handles the incorporeal ability. We ended up with the druid's animal companion stuck in the bottom of the hole for most of the fight, but that was good because we found treasure down there.

We next encountered the Splatter Man. Maximized Magic Missiles seem like a bad use of spells to me, but used against 1st and 2nd level characters I can see why it would be a useful attack. Personally I was thinking we should go back to town and find some rats in a cellar to kill first, before jumping to fighting a 7th level wizard - we had found his spell book so we noted he had 4th level spells and that was enough to make me worried.

The cleric took the brunt of the attacks and could have gone down if the Splatter Man actually used battle tactics that made use of his incorporeal ability. He just stood there throwing spells instead of ghosting in and out of walls. So eventually the barbarian walked up and smacked him with an attack of opportunity - I don't know if this was the DM being overconfident or the Splatter Man's listed tactics. After this battle I got enough XP to level up so we went back into town to improve gear and rest.

This lead us to the more interesting encounters, at least in my opinion. A bunch of flaming flying skulls interrupted a town meeting which was a fun battle. They were easy to beat, but we constantly had to put out fires while battling zombies and trying to save towns people. The zombie attack on Kendra's house was also good because she got involved in the battle and we had to hide her father's zombified corpse from her after the battle. The cleric wanted to tell her her father was one of the zombies but we talked him out of it.

Eventually we waded back into the prison, after exploring the pond near by and finishing off a wave of drowned skeletons and introducing another new player as the sheriff's deputy, to make sure all we were saying about the prison was true.

Our next encounter was the Moss Water Marauder but he was a chump. A few smashed skulls and waves of positive energy later and that was over.

But the DM immediately triggered the "battle" with Father Charlatan. He attempted to possess at least 2 party members (probably could have taken over the boar animal companion, but I don't think that would accomplish much). We ended up using Hide from Undead to disrupt and confuse him while the cleric used positive energy to finish him off. It helped that when the ranger got wrapped up by the ghostly chains the DM said our Detect Magic showed necromancy and illusion, so the older players in the group starting trying to think of ways to tell the possessed player to disbelieve.

I'm not sure how the haunts and monsters interact, but I think the haunts, at least the Splatter Man haunt were more frightening than the monsters, due to ability damage. When we first found the Splatter Man haunt my character and the rogue both failed will saves and ran for our lives.
After finishing off the Father, the DM revealed the trust mechanic and said we had to stay in town 15 more days to fulfill our 30 day "watch over my daughter and then get paid" deal. We didn't bother to play this out, just told her what we were going to do during the time. We got some discounts on prices in town but didn't have the money to buy anything. And then of course she reminded us we had this magic Ouija board and haunt siphons that I didn't know about and the rest of the party forgot about. Maybe they'll be useful in Trial of the Beast. I did have fun with the Ouija board, holding a seance with the Crooked Kin after we found the 3rd pin head.

 

[Wycen]

Our weekly game has been on haitus for awhile now, the DM had surgery and is recovering. So, we are in the second module now, Trial of the Beast. We've just driven off the wraith in the abandoned town, and will be heading back for our second day of the trial.

Perhaps it would be better called "Trial of the Golem that Wasn't." This investigation and court case must be tricky for the DM. Mechanistically it seems some of our evidence is wrong or irrelevant.

It is established, at least in our game, that the beast is a golem. A construct. It just so happens this one can talk and think. That's all well and fine, but I pointed out a problem I saw to the DM.

The beast is a golem. Thus he has Damage Reduction. So, would he really have scars from a crocodile bite? We don't know the crocodile involved, so maybe. In this case, we are basically fooling the court by saying "look, no scars from a crocodile bite, it couldn't have been him!" But in fact, his damage reduction may be the reason he has no scars.

Of course you can also point out that being a construct, the beast doesn't heal like normal so if he had scars they would still be there. Or not knowing this could assume that the wound healed in the time between the bite and being captured. Ultimately the DM said the nature of the beast was such that if it had been bitten you'd know. However, I don't know if anyone else noticed this little contradiction, the DM then had an NPC explain to the court the exact opposite, using a snake bite as an example. I let it pass as I want to play the game and see the story unfold.

This is not the only situation which would seem to be difficult to adjudicate. Our youngest player was excited to point out that the beast could not run, thus couldn't possibly escape through the swamp. Our evidence of this was based on the beast's own testimony, which probably should not have been allowed, but this is hindsight now. As is the hindsight that neither we nor the court has seen the beast run or try to. The beast made no attempt to escape and we've only seen him chained up in a cell and later chained inside the court chamber. We've never seen the guy move (except to drop trou , trow? in court to show he didn't have a leg wound).

That particular bit was fun I admit. But the initial reason I thought that running through the swamp was irrelevant was that he's a golem and thus doesn't get tired. Not to mention he's super strong, as evidenced by the smashed wall the DM described when we first arrived at the university. Actually rereading this I suppose becoming exhausted is not the same as being weak or not being able to run. That testimony is still useless from my opinion but I guess my gut on why is wrong too.

When we play next we'll be presenting evidence about how he could not have gotten into a 2nd story room to kill a girl and not left any mark. Again our evidence points at the brute force involved with smashing a stone wall at the university. This I'm more confident on. We manged to get one of the villagers of Morast to exclaim "the only favor the Beast ever did for us was to not smash anything" which was admitted as testimony in court and "verified" by the village elder-eye witness.

I think then we'll be off to check out a fire at a 3rd location. I suspect I'll have some questions about this too, but I'll just be happy to play again.

 

[Mr.E_Danger]

Our group has been doing the Carrion Crown AP for 18-19 sessions now, currently wading through the 4th book. I heartily enjoy your review of the first book, the Haunting of Harrowstone.

I know our party found the prison to be pretty tricky, as no one but our halfling could knock down any of the doors. Most of the major haunts and ghosts weren't too troublesome, though splatterman was difficult. In fact, the hardest enemy we fought there was probably the scythe, because of it's hardness. I think it was a bottle of holy water that finished that off. Overall, it was a great beginning.

The Trial of the Beast was an interesting AP. I dont know how other groups did it, but because the trial takes place on three consecutive days, we found that in order to get everything done, we had to split up the party. Our bard and rogue spent the time in Lepidstadt being the Beast's trail lawyers, while the rest of the party had to investigate the various areas, gather evidence, and bring it back before the next day's trial. I won't say anything further, as you seem to be in the thick of it.

No spoilers ahead, but I think you will be very pleased with the next book, as we found the Broken Moon to be both very fun and tough. There were quite a few instances of the party being in a bit over their head, but surviving like champs. As a bit of warning to you though, we carried a lot of items with us, thinking we'd run into a big merchant or city outside of lepistadt. If your DM runs it like ours did, you may want to sell any items you don't want before you leave town.

We are now in the Wake of the Watcher, not sure how far in. Needless to say, our group has enjoyed this AP quite a bit.

 

[Wycen]

Tonight we invaded the chemical works of Vorkstag and Grine and killed a bunch of mongrelmen and some little monster who may be Vorkstag or Grine, or somebody else, we don't know. The last few sessions have been a mixed bag.

We pretty much botched the Herstag portion of the trial. We drove off the wraith, dug up the kids and brought them to court for Speak with Dead and then all failed our Diplomacy rolls. I rolled a natural 1 and the other 2 players both rolled numbers below 5. And apparently because the kids had been turned into wraiths also, our Speak with Dead just confirmed the kids had been turned into undead, rather than provide evidence that the Beast wasn't involved. Which also means at some point we are going to have to track them down and destroy a bunch of wraiths. Maybe we'll forget about that when the time comes.

Next we went to talk to Karl about the fire at the Sanctuary, though we did some investigation in town on some surgery tools we found. The mood in town was actually celebratory because everybody thought our testimony from Herstag sucked so much the Beast was bound to be executed. So my character got free drinks and a venereal disease.

At the Sanctuary we were warned about undead ghouls may be around so lucky for our our cleric player was back with us. They turned out not to be as dangerous as they should have been because our DM hasn't read the rules for Protection from Evil. But it proved fruitful because we found evidence sending us to investigate Vorkstag and Grine, plus the evil doctor's corpse told us more than the children from Herstag.

On our way back to the courthouse to log in the new evidence we discovered some townsfolk had decided it was time to burn/kill the Beast and so we had to disperse the mob. This was a great session. We managed to keep every single member of the mob alive, plus the Beast of course, but in a pretty swashbuckling and not so swashbuckling way. The cleric used diplomacy to convince the angry mob that justice would prevail. The rogue swung from balcony to balcony stabbing the ring leaders, while I used intimidation to disperse people and sneak into the back of the jail - probably should note for future reference the back way in isn't heavily guarded or even locked apparently The warrior smashed the battering rams and ladders the crowd wanted to use to get into the jail. I was a little disappointed that the boiling oil I fired up to pour on the attackers was all for nothing, but I managed to keep my spell slots unused for breaking into Vorkstag and Grine's place.

More on our latest session later.

 

[tylermalan]

I usually DM, but a friend ran us through the first two books of this AP. The first book was mine, though, and after we stopped playing I read through it. It seems like SUCH a good adventure/idea/setup, but it's also very difficult to do "right." It wasn't the most fun adventure I've ever played through, but it was decent. I think the biggest problem is that there is so much stuff going on that is difficult to convey to the players in a meaningful way. Similar to how some DMs, when writing their own adventures, write too much backstory that the PCs never learn about. All of the systems that are woven throughout book 1 are complex and there are many elements that the players just don't seem to ever know about.

 

[Wycen]

We are still playing and successfully defended Frank but I'm not going to continue with this thread. To sum up our last 3 sessions it goes like this:

1. We end up going to the castle, except for my character who stays in town for 1 day to craft a magic item.

I was present at the session but my PC arrived after the battle with trolls and troll hound. This was a two hour battle of ridiculousness. I suspected the DM is pulling her punches or isn't aware of the rules or doesn't care or some combination of the above, but her daughter playing the barbarian also had something to do with the ridiculous battle.

2. Battle again, with my character present with a bigger troll and golem on bridge. Having watched the previous two hours of ridiculous I decided someone needed to be an advocate of the monsters so I pointed out whenever we provoked attacks of opportunity. My suspicions of pulling punches are heightened. The barbarian fell off the bridge and fell over the waterfall. No damage? To be fair nobody bothered to ask how high up the water fall is.

3rd session this Wednesday evening. We open the door to the castle and find a huge air elemental inside. Because it was huge I decided it would be too disruptive pointing out every attack of opportunity we provoke so I'm more passive as a monster advocate. We defeat it and then find the animated hooked object in the corner. The barbarian says "I wanna punch it" to which I said "you don't want to do that". Ordinarily she just looks sullen and decides to smack monsters with her weapon but this time she asked "Why not?" I answered "Because you'll do non-lethal damage". I didn't bother to point out provoking an attack of opportunity it would get for an unarmed attack. The guy playing the rogue, who's married to the DM and is the step-father of the girl playing the barbarian waves his hand and says "ignore him".

And with that I leave this thread.

I plan to play still, but at least I understand we aren't playing Pathfinder now.