World's Largest Dungeon in actual play [Spoilers!]

[Traevanon]

Boyikt is no human's familiar! Boyikt is him own person! Fireballs and Curses on you!!

Just kidding.

Sorry to see that the Kobold Sorcerer, his bodyguards and the Krenshars got beat so bad. That was a favorite encounter of mine.

I hope you used cover and poor footing. That's what turned the possible battle into a parley for us.

Water under the bridge.

So, regarding Kobold Familiars, I would say no. There are plenty of rats around though.

 

[Hussar]

Sigh, I'm doing up the die rollers for Region K and it's a bit of a grind.

I think I got spoiled. G was a breeze. I found almost no mistakes in the entire region. It was as tight as a drum as far as I could see. I think the most serious thing I saw was there were no stats for the Trumpet Archons trapped in the Horde's lair. Meh, that just means I gotta stumble over a couple of pages. No biggie.

K, so far, has been a shock to the system. Even on first time through, I spotted half a dozen fairly serious errors, like not listing the number of creatures in an encounter. Getting the SR wrong for Lightspear (No, you cannot voluntarily fail your SR check, you have to spend an action lowering it) and now, as I'm doing the Hag Covey, the tactics section takes a big hit. Mahe is supposed to cast darkness and invisiblity. That's a bit tricky for a first level sorcerer. Never mind that darkness is not the impenetrable black sphere it used to be, but, just a shadowy area. So, now I have two choices. Either jack him up to a 5th level sorc, or give him a couple of scrolls.

I just might break out my Tome of Magic and make him a shadowcaster instead, but, since he's supposed to be a throw away, I'm not sure he's worth it. Maybe I'll just hand him a couple of scrolls.

That and the fact that a number of the locations on the map are well described, but don't appear on the map. It's one thing when it takes place on the lake floor, but, when it's a series of rooms that the party might just pick a fight in, that sort of thing would be nice to see.

Phew. I feel better now that I've ranted. On the plus side, I now have room descriptions done for Regions K and J, so, I can pretty much run the WLD until Christmas without doing any more work. The die rollers just make things go smoother, but, they aren't required.

 

[Kafkonia]

Did they off the kobold sorcerer? There's a possible familiar right there. And a nice source of information. Sure, the sorc didn't have one in the book, doesn't matter.

Actually, he had a lizard.

I like that idea, though.

 

[Xiag]

Yeah... the lizard... well, the lizard didn't make it.

I've got an ex-marine playing, knowing he's in enemy territory, and doesn't want to leave anyone behind who may follow them.

On the other hand the druid (I know, I know), is uber compasionate to everything, and doesn't want to kill anything if she doesn't have to.

As for the battle, here's the recap I emailed to our group:

But, as they passed the other door, and recovered the human's shortsword. The mage said he'd like to map the other side quickly, because he thinks that's where the kobold went. Rather than risk the party the druid asked her bat, Stryx, to scout the other side of the door.

Stryx went through the crack the dwarf had opened for him. THe party immediately heard four bow strings twang. cracking the door again, the druid called to stryx that came screaming out of there like... um... a bat out of... ummm... somewhere. I'll think of it...

Anyway, Stryx told them he saw 5 little dog/lizard men and a big cat/wolf/thing, and no hallways.

With no other options, the dwarf gave the party warning, then threw open the door and prepared for battle.

The gnome fired a magic missle at the cat as it charged, and the bard matched him with an arrow that struck the beast right in the the throat as it landed.

The dwarf fired his crossbow, but again, had forgot to load it. So began switching to shield and waraxe.

The druid lit the room with a light spell, disrupting the kobold mages spell.

The dwarf kept his shield wall going as the bard kept firing arrows into the mage. Disrupting him just enough to not get a spell off, while the mage set prepared to counterspell incase the bard missed.

The dwarf's shield was doing well to protect the bard, but it wasn't quite enough to keep him safe, as the many different angles seemed to always leave an opening for one side of him or the other to get a shot through.

So the dwarf charged a kobold, the kobold managed to push him to the side with a well placed swing. It missed the dwarf, but slowed him from his charge.

The druid began casting create water to douse the kobold mage with and disrupt his spells (hopefully).

The human, seeing his oportunity now that the dwarf was out of the way, charged the mage, and succeeded it taking him down with a solid decapitation (crit and solid hit with 2nd weapon). As he pulled the swords out of the body, he was doused with the druids water spell.

The kobolds the dwarf charged had begun backing up to get away from him, so he charged the other side of the room to take out the kobolds there. As he ran at them he brought his waraxe down on the kobold with a broken bow, killing it, but not before the kobold got one last shot, digging into his side.

The druid had been trying to get her bat to fly interfearence or atleast attack the kobolds, while she fired at them with her sling. The bat, however, was still shaken from the initial volley, and not going to do that again.

The human rose up from having killed the mage, and turned to help the dwarf. He climbed the rocks the mage had used for cover and lept at the kobold with the bow... but triped during his leap and came down on the ground infront of them.

The dwarf moved quickly, however, and cleaved through the kobolds bow, and then again, into the kobold.

The kobold initially charged by the dwarf had broken his string as well, and began to charge the druid. The elf fired a shot that skinned him, but it was the Stryx the bat, who flew down to finish him off biting into his previous wounds.

Everyone now turned their attention to the final kobold, which fell unconcious from a well placed sling stone the druid shot (took him to exactly 0).

All this while the gnome was guarding the hall.

Tying him up, the waited for him to regain conciousness.

​

long winded interigation....

Then the human, having had enough, grabbed him, held a knife to his throat, and asked the druid (the unofficial leader) what to do. She said he could live for now, and that they'd take him with. The mage was told to get him to draw a map to the old kobold fort, and to be acurate, because he was comming with, and he couldn't promise his safety from the fighter who just attacked him.

The kobold began drawing a map as the party rested for the day.
​

Ok, I gave the kobolds bows, not slings. My bad, but the party lived anyway.

So, here's what I have from the kobold's eyes:

A bunch of people, bust in the room, killed his pet, his leader and his friends. They're still there, but this gnome (who he didn't see take part in things because the gnome was in the hall), is keeping people from killing him, and is able of speaking his language.

I may have a Gollum situation later if the kobold ever decides the gnome is more the parties friend than his, but until then, he's the last one alive (that he knows of), the gnome is protecting him from people who will kill him, and he really doesn't have any other options.

The map he gave them takes them through the maze so that the party will either kill the trogs, or the trogs will kill the party, either way the kobold wins, but he's already starting to attach to the wiz. He may not be thrilled with a gnome as his friend, but he doesn't exactly have a lot of options at the moment. He hasn't told them the orcs were in his lair, and has only mentioned that the flying squid have been seen, but not numbers, etc.

The human fighter and the bard see this as a threat to the party, need it put down, and move on.

The dwarf fighter hates seeing it here, but has this nagging sense of fair play, and the defenselessness of it tears him between the two camps. He was actually going to offer it a duel for freedom (since he was down to 2 hp, he thought it would be fair).

The druid sees it as a living thing with as much right to live as the party, but isn't assertive enough to really push the point.

The wizard suffers the same pangs as the dwarf, but also trusts the info it'll give (why I don't know).

As for the leadership skill/feat/thing.... I don't use it for one on one encounters. In those situations role-playing should dole out the results. If it was for a squad of men you don't know, or something like that, leadership would be handy, but this will depend on the actions of the wiz.

As for the kobold, I know you're not supposed to allow things like that as familiars right off the bat, but, in this case... why?

Familiars raise the int up to avg human of an animal, kobolds already there.
He doesn't have any more HP.
Sure he can use weapons, etc, but not exactly well, and doesn't have a lot of the natural bonuses other familiars have.

So, without towing the line of the PHB and DMG, is there any reason I shouldn't bend the rules in this case to make for a better story?

 

[BlueBlackRed]

So, without towing the line of the PHB and DMG, is there any reason I shouldn't bend the rules in this case to make for a better story?

Do whatever works best for you and your group and everyone's fun.
My only concern beyond that would be if any of the players would use this as an opportunity to break the game in some way.
But if you trust your players, it's not an issue.

 

[lukelightning]

If you somehow get a kobold wizard as a familiar, then he can get you as a familiar! Woo hoo! Natural armor bonus! Evasion! Spell resistance! Ability to speak with creatures of your type!

 

[Xiag]

If you somehow get a kobold wizard as a familiar, then he can get you as a familiar! Woo hoo! Natural armor bonus! Evasion! Spell resistance! Ability to speak with creatures of your type!

There was a great story in a dragon magazine a long time ago about a young wizard who tried to make a dragon his familiar, and instead, the dragon got a new familiar. It was really well done, can't think of the name of the story now, I'll have to look it up.

I think the point about sentient familiars would be that you can't 'force' them into service unless you can dominate them.

If they were to do so willingly, however, that's a different story.

 

[chrisheff]

latest session updated

Journal entry 6 can be found here:

http://www.geocities.com/cptzaphod/wld.htm

The group will be moving on to region B.

 

[Max Rebo]

So we played today with my group making its way BACK across the plain of Region M. There they fought a roc during a random encounter and dispatched the thing.

Next they made their way to N4 where they had once gotten their butts kicked. Using the previous time as an example of what not to do, the buffed up the paladin with stoneskin, displacement and aid. The gnome cast fly on himself and levitate on the cleric. The shadowdancer went invisible using greater invisibility.

Long story short, the battle with the two shield guardians and five gargoyles took 16 rounds with no PC dying (although the paladin did get down to -7 once). The group (two 12th level PC's, two 13th level PC's) used nearly all of their spells so they camped out in front of the tomb.
During the night they encountered two wandering skeletons that they turned. They woke up, the cleric used one of her incense sticks of meditation, and they went in.

But, man, was that fight in N4 awesome! Great stuff!

Region N is shaping up to be pretty cool indeed...

 

[Hussar]

I suppose a kobold could be used as a familiar. However, I would be drastically changing some rules. No advancement for Mr Kobold as per the PHB advancement. Maybe 1/2 level. Something like that.

Really, making Mr Kobold a cohort with the leadership feat would make a lot more sense.

I'm thinking that maybe Mr. Kobold could prove to be an actual benefit and thus be kept alive. Maybe lead the party to something beneficial in an attempt to gain some trust. Sure, he's not liking his position, but, maybe if he's servile and useful enough, the party won't cut off his head and who knows?

As an idea, have him lead them to the armory in Region A. And let him warn them about the lightning bolt trap. The Armory isn't that big of a deal, it's sweet, but not overpowering. He gets to prove that he's useful, the party starts to like him.

THEN he can betray them.