I try to be a rat bastard every session, but not in everything, although I'm sure it sometimes feels that way. This Monday was so RB, I had tears of laughter from the the antics of the players and their questions of, "why do you hate us?"
Background: The campaign is a cell of the Thieves' Guild of Northport; the characters are all 5th level. Recently, their sole reliable contact with the main organization of the Guild had offered them an assassination contract against a hill giant for 10,000 gold. The price was high, but so were the risks.
Their contact was notorious for underbidding and taking risky assignments, then shafting the party on their split. He's really only supposed to get about ten percent of the cut of a contract, but he usually under-reported the value and skimmed a higher rate. The party confronts him, turns the contract down and goes off to do other things.
Soooooo, our tough contact slips in, aces the hill giant solo (I diced it out with another player to keep things above board.) The contact used Black Lotus poison.
The players are concerned over some vague vampire sightings within the city and have begun to notice the contact only shows up after dark, avoids bright lights, holy symbols, claims to have garlic allergies. Some other prominent and powerful NPCs seem to be also carrying lots of garlic, holy symbols and silver. One of the dealers in rare antiquities (i.e., Ye Olde Magic Shoppe) has a minor water elemental bound under his storefront and it constantly circulates running water under his domicile. The other major mages they know suddenly stop doing business after dark. Period. No explanations.
Meanwhile, they find out through some other sources the contact's half-brother (a half-drow, the contact is a half-elf), and the contact have some sort of vicous rivalry ranging for the last few hundred years, each one trying to get ahead in the Guild while the other one hires hit men to wipe out their respective cells.
That explains the squad of rangers who almost TPK'd the party a few weeks before. They'd been hired to capture the PC's. It was a glorious fight. The party was down to one man on more than one part of the fight, and a series of amazing saves and miraculous hits finally had the PC monk down. When he was revived with most of the rest of the party, he managed to make an unarmed attack and put the last injured ranger down. Before they could escape with all the loot from the ranger group, the cabin they're in got fireballed. A couple of times. Via a wand. They barely made it out with the gear they started with.
Consequently, the players are elated to get a contract from a bard-slash-lawyer-slash-guildmember escorting a "mage and his students" to a safe tower. The mage wants to get out of the city because of all the violence lately. He wants to toughen the students up by doing an on-foot five-day hike. No problems.
On the way to the meeting, the party is being followed by some mysterious pale stranger, even though the sun is up. They turn and accost the pale stranger, who sprouts a wolf's muzzle, then becomes hairier and hairier as the fight progresses, seems to be shrugging off their damage.
The party wizard is alarmed to discover the party melee experts have neither silver nor magical weapons. The fight goes poorly, and probably the only thing that saves the PC's is a tanglefoot bag and good movement abilities. They flee, the critter escapes but is nigh unwounded.
After they spend themselves almost completely out of cash to procure innoculations from the temple against any lycanthropism, they get a little bit of minimal gear.
Next day, they're off with the mage. He's loud, obnoxious, and doesn't seem terribly bright. Frain is covered in Continual Flames (he's a fire-themed sorcerer). He explains he has a few plans to protect the group and has given some Magic Missile wands to the 20 apprentices. One big sigh of relief later at not being solely responsible for the safety of the pack of magelets, they're off.
Two days into the hike, they run into a six-pack of hellhounds and then they figure out this is about where the hill giant lair had been. Sure enough, there's a hill giant backing up the hellhounds. Frain offers to send in fireballs, they tell him to wait.
Finally the hellhounds are down, the PCs are mostly invisible or well-hidden and they use the apprentices as a lure for the hill giant. Like a well-oiled machine, they pounce on the giant and then call for the apprentices to fire off the wands.
Nothing happens. Frain had tried to save money, got a good deal, but all of the wands were fake. They had a magic aura on them, but weren't magical. Now the PCs are suddenly targets and the giant was whaling away madly, so they call for Frain to Fireball.
"Are you sure?" he says.
"YES," three-fourths reply (1 who was in melee didn't have evasion).
BOOM!
Frain wasn't "optimized" or balanced to handle a slew of different encounters, but did have Spell-casting Prodigy, a Cloak of Charisma, Spell Focus and Greater Spell Focus. 6d6 later, with a save DC of low-20's, half the party is almost dead. The hill giant looks mostly unphased. (I made sure and tell them TWICE how the giant seemed uninjured by the fire, and to reiterate he looked like the handler for the hellhounds).
The hill giant is wearing a ring of Elemental Resistance (minor). He took 5-7 points of damage while the rest of the party was badly scorched.
Meanwhile, the story progresses next week, as they skipped past the abandoned hill giant fort, had a run-in with 20 orc marauders (Barbarian 2) and are on their way to the Black Tower Academy. I think the wizard will want to join; he has the prerequisites for entry.... but it's a complete RB scenario as well.
Greg
