What are you supposed to do?

[Aycarus]

1143743121[/unixtime]]It's hard to write a legitimately good trap module in D&D. Because it's rather pointless if all the traps are detectable.

I rather enjoyed the Grimtooth's traps series for this reason. Although most of the traps in that series were designed to kill PCs (or disable them beyond usefulness), there was a lot of creativity put into random trap designs that - even when already triggered - required some intelligence in order to find your way out of them.

[RandomCasualty]

1143822346[/unixtime]]
I rather enjoyed the Grimtooth's traps series for this reason. Although most of the traps in that series were designed to kill PCs (or disable them beyond usefulness), there was a lot of creativity put into random trap designs that - even when already triggered - required some intelligence in order to find your way out of them.

I don't particularly have a problem with lethal traps, at high levels especially I think they NEED to be lethal, unless you want to put them in the middle of a battle, otherwise the PCs just whip out their wands of CLW and are good as new.

You really gotta have something that can screw them up badly.

What I generally dislike is the idea that finding and disarming traps are just a couple of rolls. This works fine for average adventures when you dont' want to spend much time dealing with traps, but if you want traps to be the focus of the adventure, it just doesn't cut it.

[Username17]

With so many encounters, I would assume that a traditional wizard character would run out of spells fast. And thereby, become a weakness to the group. Am I right here?

Not really. The encounters are individually hard and long, but actually fairly temporally spread out. You pretty much have to camp between any of the major encounters because they are like a day's walk between them.

You begin the game at level 5, which is high enough level that you'll never run out of spells in any single encounter because your entire side would get overrun and killed before that could possibly be an issue. You'll be a 5th level specialist with an Int of 16+, so you have three 3rd level spells, four 2nd level spells, and five 1st level spells, and all of those can be significant in battle. Even the harshest combats aren't going to last 12 rounds, so the deal here is really picking the right spells - the same dilemma that the sorcerer enjoys.

The problem for a Wizard here is that the adventure itself is time dependent. So while you have a day to kill between the assault on Verath Keep and the assault on the Skull Gorge bridge, you don't have enough time to actually scribe any spells. You get two free spells every time you level, which is of course enough to keep up with a Sorcerer at every even level and surpass him at every odd level from 5th to 12th (which is coincidentally the projected level range of the module, so you'll never get to the point where you are crushingly superior at levels 13+, nor did you have to wade through 1st level where you were essentially inferior in a battle situation and only superior during downtime). Your big wizard power of being able to trade downtime for power is worth precisely nothing because you don't get any. So a wizard is roughly equivalent to a Sorcerer assuming that spells are chosen equally well on both sides.

Hey Frank, mind add what level you were to those encounter synopses? Or was it the same for all of them?

River: 5th level

Verath Keep: 5th level

Skull Gorge: 5th and 6th level

Ruined Stedding: 6th level

Forest @ Owl Corpse: 6th level

Lake @ Rhest City: 6th level

-Username17

[User3]

1143788905[/unixtime]]Here is a link to some other players playing this adventure. Link

Considering how often they get dropped, and how they use high-level scrolls, I guess this is how you are supposed to play the adventure.

You can almost hear the words "and here is where the DM didn't kill us."

No kidding. The thing where they pawned all their goods to get a scroll of Storm of Vengeance that they lacked the ability to use and then their Druid ran off to go high roller it all by himself in the middle of the camp (rather than from a quarter mile away from the camp as per the range of the spell) was amazingly stupid.

Then the DM took pity on the character and had the scroll not simply kill his low level ass outright when he miscast the scroll, and then the DM had the control winds rip up the enemy camp some despite the fact that the character was burrowing and had forfeited line of effect.

Sigh. Without DM pity the players would have simply taken all their money and set it on fire in order to allow their druid to run off on his own and get killed.

But you're right, I think that's how it's supposed to go. The DM takes pity on the characters and they don't die when there's no rational reason for them not to.

-Username17

[fbmf]

River: (By river I assume you mean the Hydra encounter) is rated at EL 6.

Verath Keep: ELs are 2, 5, 5, 6, 7. Poking around a bit will net you some pretty awesome treasure including a Staff of Life with 7 charges. The designers commentary says, "Giving out the staff of Life is a way to help the PCs face the tough challenges that lie ahead.")

Skull Gorge: EL 10

I haven't gotten to the other encounters yet.

Game on,
fbmf

[User3]

Verath Keep: ELs are 2, 5, 5, 6, 7. Poking around a bit will net you some pretty awesome treasure including a Staff of Life with 7 charges. The designers commentary says, "Giving out the staff of Life is a way to help the PCs face the tough challenges that lie ahead.")

Don't forget that that, except for the ECL 2 trap/location, all those other encounters are simultaneous. Check the map link here(spoiler):map link The baddies are in areas 6,7,8, and 10, which means the average party is going to get cluster-fvcked.

I'm not sure what an EL 5, and another EL 5, and an EL 6, and the another EL 7 all add up to when they happen all at once, but considering that any party not composed entirely of ninjas is going to get gang-banged by all those encounters at once with no time for out-of-combat healing or even potion quaffing....its pretty grim if its played to the hilt by the DM.

------------
On another note: I wipe my ass with a Staff of Healing with 7 charges. Thats one Raise and two Heals or seven Heals.

You don't Raise anyone; dead PCs are Greyhawked for equipment pretty quickly unless they are the DM's girlfriend. Seven Heals are slighty better, but that kind of crap doesn't work if you can go from full HPs to -11 or worse in under a round.

[Zherog]

1143875469[/unixtime]] I'm not sure what an EL 5, and another EL 5, and an EL 6, and the another EL 7 all add up to when they happen all at once, but considering that any party not composed entirely of ninjas is going to get gang-banged by all those encounters at once with no time for out-of-combat healing or even potion quaffing....its pretty grim if its played to the hilt by the DM.

I think to figure that out, you'd need to know the CR of each thing involved. I don't think you can combine the EL of two encounters to get the EL of the two together. For example, I don't believe two EL 5's equal an EL 7.

[fbmf]

You don't Raise anyone; dead PCs are Greyhawked for equipment pretty quickly unless they are the DM's girlfriend.

Not in our campaign, but YMMV.

Game On,
fbmf

[User3]

Not in our campaign, but YMMV.

If you were playing this campaign, you would. Its not that you're not getting your special exotic equipment....crap like +1 Adamantite Consumptive Kukris. In this adventure, you are fighting Sorcerers who don't have + Charisma items and finding small-sized equipment is right out.

I mean, out of 7-8 sessions, the last adventure was the only one where Frank found a usuable item (small +2 mithral chain shirt). I still haven't found a useful item for my Sorcerer (unless you count the scrolls of Mount and Summon Monster III).

Basically, we've been piling magic equipment onto our fighters and hoping for the best. Since we have to sell items for half and pay to have things made at full price(and this is a time dependant game, so we don't get much of that), Greyhawking is the only way to get decent equipment.

[Username17]

Afraid of no Ghosts:

The Trip:

The land of the Ghost King is a dangerous and crappy place where the undead stalk the land and the fields themselves turn against you with foul briars. Fortunately, you fvcking well fly through that part because if you don't you'll be stranded in the briar patch for days while ghost lions come and pick you off one by one until you're all dead.

Once again, if you don't have flight, you're totally fvcked. You'll have to wander around the woods for days doing XP dancing until you can find and kill enough of the razorfiends that the elves give you owls. Or raise a zombie chimera. Or die.

Thundera:

So the Ghost King is apparently Mumm-Ra, the ever living. He lives in the Thundercats Lair now that he has defeated Lion-O. The place is surrounded by apparitions of Lions, hich is pretty worrisome. I have no idea what they do, as we killed them all at long range with a ghost touch bow.

The place is very confusingly worked out, where there's the mouth door that the flies in through, and then there's door in between the paws that people are supposed to walk in through. We chose to fly in through the mouth, which was completely pointless, because there are huge stone doors here that block off... get this... you ready for it...?

Another fvcking set of stone doors! Also there's a pile of four monks in that room, and that's it. It's a complete waste of time. You can kill the monks, they specialize in grappling, and while they do admirably large amounts of damage in grapples, you don't care because they are just monks. I honestly have no idea what this entire structure is supposed to be for, you can't get into it without climbing or stone shape, and there's nothing of interest. Totally bizzare.

Make too much noise and the Half-Fiend Behir will come up to play. He's a badass, and makes the best zombie of any creature you've yet seen (all the rakes are a special attack in addition to his single attack full-atack "progression" of "bite"). Woot! He was pulling some flying bullshit and we literally killed his ass with a color spray, as he fell to earth and got curb stomped before he woke up. Then it's time to slink your way deeper into the dung- Thundera- I mean Ghost King's Lair.

Kill your family, party of three?

The "Lion's Walk" is a place where you have to fvcking know the rules backwards and forwards or you're all going to die. There's 3 Ghost Lions that camp inside the walls making no nose and having full cover from the wall - you cannot detect them, even with such garbage as detect undead. That's bad. Also they have reach, and what they are apparently supposed to do is to wait until you're in the hallway, and then start attacking you through the walls with the reach, that they have. Holy shit would that kill every party - if the rules actually worked that way.

Thing is, they don't. Sure, they can attack through a wall and you can't attack them back, but they can't be more than 5' deep into stone, and they can't see through walls. The fact that you can't see them means that they can't see you! So we're just going to assume that behind the wall is a space that ghost lions can occupy, but that still means that to even detect the party they need to make a Listen check that beats the Move Silently check of the party through a fvcking stone wall. So really this is just a trap where if you don't score high enough Move Silently, the entire party dies a horrible death. It's like walking on avalanche-prone mountains or something.

The Heart of the Lion:

Lesser Bone Drinkers? FTW? This is one of the most disgusting, yet non-threatening encounters ever. They're all undead and crap and our entire party is composed of characters who are Scouts or Rogues, and it's still a breeze. Lesser Bone Drinkers are small-sized grapple monsters. I just don't give a damn.

-Username17

[Username17]

OK, so as predicted, the Ghost Lord is a little bitch.

He's got a flamestrike that is big enough to be a player killer, and he has a touch attack that causes paralysis - he can quite legitimately expect to kill a PC, he rolled average damage on that flame strike and took our party sorcerer from full hit points to zero. Also he's practically immune to physical damage - DR 15/Magic and bashing might as well be 15/fvck off. But fortunately our Rogue (my character) had a pile of acid and holy water and a wand of gravestrike, so we dropped him before he got his third attack.

The real deal here are the Ghost Lions. Our Sorcerer took the spell Wings of FLurry from Races of Power as this is arbitrarily good against Ghosts, which we knew we'd be up against. Even so, some of us walked out of there with Strength Drain before we destroyed the obsidian sphere and removed all the Ghosts from ever having been.

The we faced the Wyrmlord, because every segment has a Wyrmlord:

Wyrmlord Stormcaller is a little girl, and we had to grab the book from the DM because apparently she has a 2 page description of her tactics that aren't legal at all. She is supposed to hide her location by casting invisibility and ventriloquism to mask her location while spellcasting - but that's not what those spells do. Ventriloquism is a figment, it allows you to make sounds issue from another source, it doesn't mask the sound of you actually speaking or casting spells.

Also she's supposed to attempt to fly away, which she does not appear to have the power to do. It's very confusing, but essentially what she did is start to cast a couple of group buffs on a small pile of monks and clerics and hadn't even finished the casting routine when we'd killed all her minions and then she surrendered because the way she was supposed to escape was completely improbable.

The monsters in this adventure are designed to kill parties - but the characters are designed to make players feel good about their choice to stick with straight Barbarian 1-20. They are dreadful, and well paid. We chose at that moment to let her live and become our herald after we conquered the horde. We've already picked out the spot we're going to make our goblin/human city - Skull Gorge. It'll be called Skull Gorge.

Then it was back to Brindol, with a santa sack full of loot and our captive:

You are then required to explain to the high council how leaving town is suicide and seding your army out to get shelled with giant rocks is suicide too. We went for the plan that we always go with - telling the civilians to stay inside while we sneak into the enemy camp and murder all the leaders.

-Username17

[User3]

player killer, and he has a touch attack that causes paralysis - he can quite legitimately expect to kill a PC, he rolled average damage on that flame strike and took our party sorcerer from full hit points to zero.

Let's not forget that my sorcerer has +10 HPs from Dragonic Toughness, which is a bullshit feat choice that I picked up to get Draconic Legacy for the three bonus spells known. For a wizard/sorcerer character of my level who doesn't pull that kind of crap, that attack is an actual AoE Save or Die. Even with action points, the odds strongly favor a dead spellcaster.

[MrWaeseL]

Let's hope this module sells like shit so there won't be too many people who think Ventriloquism can mask spellcasting

[Fwib]

If Ventriloquism can't actually do what it says on the tin, what is the point of it?

[edit] Well, I suppose hearing the casting from 2 places at once could sow confusion, and you could use it to do ranged whispering.

[edit2] I guess it ought to be a glamer.

[Book]

This is targeted to those who are currently playing the Red Hand of Doom module. Very interesting commentary so far.

In retrospect, if you could go back in time and have your group recreate your characters before starting play -- what party composite would you chose?

This is assuming a 4 to 6 player party of 5th-to-6th level characters.

--

I'm very curious since I've thought about picking up the module to DM for my group. And knowing what the perfectly optimized party would be for such a campaign would help my ability to assess the group's overall power level.

Such knowledge will be helpful because I like to subtlely help them optimize where possible. And this module looks to be mondo-tough.

Thanks for your help!

[Username17]

OK, you need a diplomancer, and the module punishes you for letting the diplomatic talents of the rest of the party slide. That means that having feral barbarian half-minotaurs is actually contra-indicated. Having a secondary diplomancer is actually a good deal the way hey have it set up, so having two Charisma-dependent characters is fine.

The entire party lives and dies by the lowest Move Silently check of the party, and the adventure hands out mithril like it's going out of style. But it means that any primary casters must be tweaked out for Stealth. Wizards need to not only be Illusionists, but to invest in a special background or cosmopolitan-style feat that allows them to get Move Silently without spending at the bullshit cross classed rate. A divine caster needs to forget about their ability to wear plate armor, and either spend a lot of time in animal form or take stealth-related domains. A warrior needs to have Ranger levels.

You'll need a rogue. No imitations are possible, though that won't be obvious for a long time..

My suggestions would be:
Deep Halfling Rogue (Diplomacy, Stealth, and Trap Monkey).
Cleric of Mask (Necromancy, Stealth, and Buff spells)
Wizard Illusionist (Monster Juggling, Stealth).
Warrior (high damage output, wilderness exploration, and stealth)

The last position can float the most, and could be filled by anything from a Ranger/Paladin to a straight Druid to a Ranger/Barbarian to a Scout.

-Username17

[Book]

Thanks, Frank. Good stuff. Although I find it interesting that Move Silently is mentioned as mandatory, but not Hide.

I tend to play in a lot of games where the typical 5 person party tries to have a specialist in Diplo, Bluff, & Intimidate each. That way you cover all the social skill angles for encounters where only 1 or 2 of the above have potential impact. Although if playing with broken mechanics, an amped-up Diplo can end any encounter if not reined in or tweaked by the DM.

[fbmf]

[The Great Fence Builder Speaks]
Discussion on the inadequacies of the Hide skill was given it's own thread.
[/TGFBS]

[fbmf]

[The Great Fence Builder Speaks]
Discussion of why Living Greyhawk and Living City is so god awful was split off. Back to topic, folks.
[/TGFBS]

[erik]

Actually, a bit of my LG inclusion on this thread was germane.

This mod will someday be offered in LG, and I'd like to take a hack at it, or at least offer sage advice to fellows of mine who wanted to try it out.

Usually folks don't plan balanced parties in LG, since you will often play with different folks. Things could be different for these adventure series type mods though. Also, folks rarely ever make move silently type characters since it is usually an utter waste in LG when you travel with the 5 noisiest characters on the planet. Only once have I had a party escape detection and that was because the patrol somehow failed their checks to notice us 50 feet away in a sparse forest when our lowest checks were low low single digits. However if I can whip together some decent players that I know, we would probably be able to plot out an acceptable party.

I'm pretty sure things like co-opted zombie mounts are simply non-options for a goodie two shoes LG campaign, and even if you could do it for a single session, rules are such that you almost certainly couldn't keep a non-adventure record benefit like that for use in the next session.

I imagine there will be plenty of changes in order to break up the campaign/adventure into many separate modules that may be run as home games, and I don't expect to remember much of this by the time the game becomes available to a party and DM that I can muster. I'm just seduced by the difficulty of how in koresh's good green earth an LG party can hack this stuff.

The 3 party members:
*Deep Halfling Rogue
*Illusionist Wizard (probably gnome or halfling, cat familiar, cross class move silently, boots of elvenkind are a possibility, to make up for the lack of cosmo feats)
*Nature Warrior

Those are totally doable in LG, the necro-cleric not so much. I wonder if there is any other viable replacement for him.

Mostly I'm concerned about the transporation/flying.

I'm leaning towards a druid since he could at least lighten the load. Also having a summoner druid would probably help out some, especially for finding things like ghost lions hiding in walls. I've enjoyed playing in parties that send wood woses on fact-finding missions in LG.

A druid with a dire bat animal companion could wildshape himself and have his bat carry the rogue. At level 8 the druid could carry the wizard whilst in dire bat form himself. But that still isn't really enough to cover all the bases for flight-mobility, especially at the lowish levels. Zombies aside, is there another way to attain long-duration party flight other than a wing of druid carriers?

I was temped by a notion of lots of applied suggestion from a pimped out enchanter on the Chimera, and once you get Charm Monster he's yours forever... except that he probably is just written off as defeated and lost forever once you hit your next session, same problem as a zombie. Damn you LG!

I'm rather stumped on how to get a flying party (other than having 3 druids and 3 very light other characters) at levels 5-7.

Would a super sun-cleric be enough to stem the tide against outrageous ghosts mayhaps? Thus allowing easier travels and less mandatory flight. Probably not.

[erik]

Tactics pondering. On how to bring down dragons (listed CRs 5-7ish)

Readied Ray of Enfeeblement or Enlarged Ray of Enfeeblement (probably will take a couple castings of either) to hopefully reach the flying bastiches, then summon some hippogriffs to grapple it in the air and bring the bad boy down. Medium dragons with their 17 strength and +11 or 13 base attack might not be able to handle that noise once they lose 2d6+4 strength. Especially if the summoner is in possession of Augment Summoning. You'll need multiple hippogriffs since I'm sure the first will drain the AoO on an attempted grapple and fail. The second will likely win. A Dire Bat companion can help out too.

These tactics are within reach of a 4th level party at least.

[dbb]

Does LG allow stuff from It's Cold Out (tm Frank) and the books of that line? I'm sure you can discern my train of thought from that question.

--d.

[erik]

1145857755[/unixtime]]Does LG allow stuff from It's Cold Out (tm Frank) and the books of that line? I'm sure you can discern my train of thought from that question.

Stuff in It's Cold out is almost entirely "restricted" (i.e. banned) or "limited," which means you have to play a specific adventure and do the right stuff in it (which usually happens unless you are paired with morons or bad luck) with the specific character who wants that particular access.

For all intents and purposes for these adventures, I wouldn't expect access to anything limited, since most of the adventures the party will play will be low level intro type stuff in order to qualify for the "You must be this tall to play", and those types of adventures aren't that helpful in that regard. From then on it's into the adapted adventure modules, which are a crap shoot and I won't expect to get handed much decent access (it's loosely based upon stuff you encounter, but so loosely that one can't predict it. tis one of the things that makes building LG characters up to high level a bit harder than usual).

So nothing from It's Cold Out. Nothing good from the other terrain books either. The Complete books are mostly accessable with exceptions to evilish classes/feats/spells. The Race books are mostly limited access however the Wildrunner is considered "core," and that is a quasi-tempting pick for the nature warrior.

Assume that this is mostly core stuff. Player's Handbook, DMG, Monster Manual (for polymorph/alter self forms). There are a fair number spells in the Big Fat Spellbook that are allowed, but assume that most of the *really* good ones from non-PHB are right out due to nerfing, banning, or limited access. Some examples of what gets banned: Wraith Strike is gone, Planar Binding is gone, Permanency is gone, Spikes used to be gone but is now back like a mo-fo, also I should note that Persistent Spell is gone.

[Username17]

Honestly, acquiring overland flight is probably nowhere near as much of a problem in a LG setting as it is in a real play through. While you won't be able to take your successes, zombies, and out-of-box thinking from adventure to adventure, remember also that travel times are a non-issue in this context. So you'll be unceremoniously dumped on the doorstep of the Ghostlord at the opening of chapter three, and the adventure will simply use up some time units. Overland Flight, rather than being a requirement is actually pointless in this context - it doesn't end up saving you time because the time units of the adventure are not dependent upon your actual time spent (while in the "real" adventure every hour counts).

Now, there's still the fact that characters who

Row a boat across the Lake of Rhest or
Enter the ground floor entrance of the Ghostlord's fortress

are going to die. It's a forgone conclusion. But that really doesn't require you to be airborne for long. A Bronze Griffin should be plenty and more than plenty for those needs.

And yeah, shivering touch is restricted in LG. So is destruction, what the hell is that about? When was the last time anyone complained that destruction was overpowered compared to finger of death? What's that about?

-Username17

[erik]

Heh, I think destruction is too evil. Hilarious, no?

It's probably more to do with keeping it out of the hands of villains (and villains can dominate PCs...), since you will require a 9th level spell to come back after that mess, and that's little harsh in LG. Not that permanent character deaths don't happen in much more mundane fashions mind you, I just think that that must be the reasoning behind it.

Heh, and what I wouldn't give for a bronze griffin. I guess I do have on character who has access to it (he can buy any DMG magic item 25k gp or cheaper)... but that is my only character who could get it and he isn't destined for this stuff.