WotBS WotBS Scouring of Gate Pass - customized version

[OnlineDM]

Note: Some spoilers are ahead.

Since I'm running my online group through War of the Burning Sky using MapTool and Skype, I thought this forum might be interested to hear how it's going, what I've decided to change, what works and what doesn't for my group. The details of the first two sessions can also be found here.

To summarize, I'm using the campaign as inspiration rather than strict direction (I don't think I can run a long-term campaign as written without taking it in my own direction). I had already run the group through one unrelated session before starting WotBS, so they were halfway through level 1 when we began.

I ran the first encounter (meeting Torrent in the Poison Apple Inn, being ambushed by bounty hunters) pretty much as written, although I did a lousy job of forcing the battle into the alley (so the dogs never came into play). I had a hard time grokking Kathor's motivations, so when the party kicked the bounty hunters' butts I had Kathor parlay with them. The party decided to try to recruit Kathor into the Resistance, which I thought seemed pretty interesting (though we didn't end up picking this idea back up).

I then ran the "trek though the burning city" skill challenges more or less as written. I did run "Animal Crossing" (recovering Kiki the dire weasel), and I'm glad I did - the party had lots of fun with it.

At this point, I started changing things around. I honestly didn't like the complications of having an eladrin spy steal Rivereye's case (aka MacGuffin) and send it with his cronies back to the ghetto, then meet the party and flee with his solon. It all seemed overly complicated, and it looked like the encounter in the depository would be boring. So, I changed it completely.

In my version of the depository encounter, it's a Ragesian counter-spy who has taken Rivereye out. This one is a doppelganger with half-orc thug allies, and the case of information is locked in one of the bank vaults and requires Peppin's ring to get it out (Peppin had rented the vault for Rivereye and had the bankers key it to Peppin's ring for withdrawal). When Torrent realizes that this isn't really Rivereye, the doppelganger and his cronies attack. I also made the lightning trap a little more interesting - it deals 2d6 damage (I considered also having it daze until end of next turn), and it appears in a row determined by rolling 2d6 and subtracting 1 (and making a result of 1 count as a 2). This way it's more likely to be in the middle rows, where the action will be. It was a fun battle when I ran it.

Next, since I wasn't running any of the "recover the case from the eladrin" encounters (since the party already had the case), the party needed to escape the city. I offered them the option of working with the councilman as written, but I also said that some dwarves had recently joined the Resistance and gave the Resistance an ancestral map that showed that what is now the sewer of Gate Pass connects with some natural caverns leading into the southern mountains. However, this exit from the sewers is only open today because it goes through a haunted crypt - yes, that's the Dead Rising encounter, repurposed. Happily for me, the party decided to go through the sewers and the crypt.

The Dead Rising battle was run exactly as written, except that I lowered the death explosion damage from the Boneshard Skeletons from 3d6+4 to 1d6+4 (maybe I'm a softie, but 3d6+4 seemed like way too much for a burst 3 attack). It was a very tough battle (partly because my dice were hot), but the party made it. I also put a big treasure cache here, since the earlier encounters bringing them to level 2 were a little light on loot.

I've had a lot of fun with WotBS ever since I decided to go my own way with it. Next up is a trek through the caverns, which we'll be running next time. That one is entirely outside the published adventure, but I'll still be happy to share it here if anyone is interested.

 

[Skyscraper]

Thanks for sharing, I'll be interested to read your reports.

Sky

 

[OnlineDM]

Our group ran its third War of the Burning Sky session yesterday evening (more details on the blog). This session was entirely home-brewed, but still might be of interest to those who want to run a different take on escaping from Gate Pass.

The party ended the last session having walked through the sewers of Gate Pass and fought through a crypt of undead dwarves (the Dead Rising encounter), beyond which were some stairs leading to the natural cave system in the mountains south of the city. I placed a sizable treasure cache in the crypt, including the Dianoem. Last night's session began with a fair amount of inspection of this mysterious blue box.

Navigating the caves is an extended skill challenge, which I wrote in advance but modified on the fly as I saw fit. It involved some navigation challenges (figuring out which way they're going, choosing among several different paths) interspersed with other obstacles (dealing with a steep downslope, crossing a pit over a narrow natural bridge).

Failures in the skill challenge led to combats. When the party's swordmage fell into the pit, she was attacked by crauds (the pit was filled with waist-deep water with an underground channel leading out of it). The crauds also rolled first in the initiative order and dropped the swordmage unconscious, which made her let go of the end of the rope she was holding - so the rest of the party had to get down there and rescue her. This ended up being a surprisingly intense encounter for something that was below the party's level.

A wrong turn in navigation led to an encounter with cave fishers, which began with Torrent being ensnared in their filaments and dragged up to the ceiling. Cave Fisher Anglers are way fun, I must say.

I included an interlude in an underground natural grove (a hole in the ceiling far overhead let in sunlight and rain). This was linked to the back story of the minotaur druid in the party, who doesn't know where he came from. Because of some good role-playing here, I ended up introducing an artifact to the adventure (details are still being developed).

We ended the session with the party having discovered a well drilled through the rock in one chamber, with a rope making for an easy climb up to the surface. The dwarf fighter in the party climbed the rope and found himself in a ruined, snow-blanketed village, which he slowly came to recognize as the village where he grew up as a young boy. In his back story, that village had been pillaged and destroyed by orcs, and he was the only survivor. He hadn't been back in over 10 years, and now the party finds itself in the village ruins.

So far so good! I'm expecting that we will soon be getting back on the published path (to some degree - I know that I can't just leave it all alone), most likely with the end of Chapter 4 and beginning of Chapter 5 of the first published adventure. We'll most likely continue into the second adventure from there.

 

[OnlineDM]

Our fourth War of the Burning Sky session is now in the history books (as always, more details are on my blog). The party left off the previous session in my home brew "escape from the city via the sewers and natural caverns" skill challenge, resting in the ruins of the dwarven village where our fighter had grown up.

Two of our players were late and the other three wanted to game, so we began by having those three delve back into the caverns looking for a path through while the other two were presumed to be looking for a way out of the ruins (the valley had been blocked by a rockfall). I threw the three spelunkers into an encounter with a trio of deathjump spiders. Just as things were looking grim (especially for the warlock and the druid in the group - the swordmage/wizard was fine), the shaman player showed up and I let his character come to the rescue.

After that battle the fifth player logged on, and we moved onward. The next skill challenge was a group Endurance check to get through a long, tight passage, which everyone made easily (penalty for failure: lost healing surge). They then had to pick a path, and picked poorly (low Dungeoneering check), so I threw them into an improvised battle with a single level 7 cave troll. It was entertaining - I love the way the cave troll will grab a character and use them as a weapon to smack another character!

Upon beating the troll, the party made it out of the caves and back onto the adventure path. I had them encounter the kingdom of Marben Diamondheart and the double skill challenge. I ran it more or less as written and had a good time. I liked having a character who was trying to fix the lifts getting ready to try something dangerous, but before resolving the roll have the action cut away to the other skill challenge in the store room. The players succeeded in fixing the lift but not in completely solving the thefts, so Marben let them go on their way without extending any hospitality.

The last encounter of the night was Gnoll Hunt, again run pretty much as written - although I accidentally had the hyena Pack Attacks at +12 versus AC instead of +7. Oops. After killing a character I realized my mistake and un-killed the character. Heh. I awarded extra experience for the battle, since the hyenas definitely got some hits that they should have earlier in the battle.

From here I'm back on the published path. I've started looking at the Fire Forest adventure, and I think I'll at least start it as written. Any tips on improving that adventure will be greatly appreciated.

The last encounter

 

[Neonchameleon]

I've customised the encounters a lot, but three sets come to mind.

First, the Fire Forest. I've completely changed the Indomitable Zombies. What I do is take stock monsters and give them 66% hp and insubstantial (to reflect their undying nature). If hit with a cold attack or pushed into water, the insubstantial is suppressed for one round as the flames are beaten back - fire can reignite monsters. (Oh, and they have a flaming aura, but I digress). This normally leads to a tug of war element to fights with the PCs trying to push the monsters into the nearest river, pond, or well - and the monsters trying to push the PCs into flaming trees. Keeps things interesting

I also really changed Flaganus Mortus; I don't like solo humans out of nowhere and other than the kid, the encounter struck me as a grindfest. So what I did was downgraded Flaganus to a L4 Elite (Half Orc Beserker + Shock Trooper IIRC) and sent someone (L4 artillery - I forget which one) down on a dragon wyrmling (L4 elite from the Dragonomicon) to rescue him from the city. I played the rescuer as a young, idealistic sort who was horrified when Flaganus cut the kid's throat to keep the PCs off him and on his next attack roll dropped a burst 1 on PCs and Flaganus alike. Then the dice gods took a hand.

After cutting the kid's throat, the PCs threw everything they had at Flaganus - and the kid was at the other end of the initiative order. Flaganus was by this point bloodied. Kid dropped his encounter attack and rolled. Natural 20 on his attack against Flaganus - and missed two out of three PCs, with the attack doing minimum damage. Checked damage. Checked Flaganus' remaining hit points. Clean kill to the outraged Ragesian lieutenant. Arrow over the shoulder of PC (causing him to flinch and lose hp) and straight into Flaganus' eye. When the dice gods hand you something like that, you take it - and the party diplomancer (a former Ragesian officer/ Cha 18 Warlord) grabbed it with both hands by not only talking the kid down, but talking him into defecting through RP + a tough skill challenge. And then I set them the challenge of carting the dragon + defector to a cellar for safety (everyone's including theirs) before they made contact with senior members of the Resistance. (Cue improvised plan + skill challenge involving looted cart, horse blankets, hay, and pretending to be a plague cart to keep everyone away).

Finally the boneshards. Looked like a poor encounter that didn't advance the plot and was far too lethal. So I replaced it with a Ragesian inquisitor behind White Wyrms who was busy indoctrinating recruits and torturing their Resistance contact (who they'd been too busy dealing with the wyrmling to meet that night). The torture chamber itself had cages, an iron maiden, and assorted other junk - and the local thugs enjoying helping the Inquisitor/being indoctrinated managed to push the Paladin into the Iron Maiden for most of the fight. They also pushed the Eladrin swordmage plus his opponent into one of the cages - he just looked contemptuously at the bars and Fey Stepped out, leaving one NPC bad guy trapped for most of the rest of the fight. (That fight was good - but would have been incredible if I'd remembered my plan to convey the raucous atmosphere and cheering as they pushed the PCs into some of these traps).

Still, my big change to the Fire Forest is that the PCs are trying to escape - white water rafting over the waterfall (Indomitability would catch them if they went overland). I'll have to write up how that encounter goes.

 

[Ormazd]

Still, my big change to the Fire Forest is that the PCs are trying to escape - white water rafting over the waterfall (Indomitability would catch them if they went overland). I'll have to write up how that encounter goes.

Not to hijack the thread, but I'm pretty sure it's impossible to white water raft UP a waterfall.

O

 

[Neonchameleon]

So I changed the geography around a bit. White water rafting down a waterfall is much more fun than climbing it...

 

[OnlineDM]

Finishing Scouring - Moving into the Fire Forest

My party played a sessions two weeks ago in which we went on a side quest since one of our players was absent. Part of it was a total side quest, completely unrelated to WotBS, but there was one encounter that I highly recommend - a battle with zombies in the ruins of the Gnoll Hunt encounter. The PDF of the encounter is here and it's described on my blog. There are ruins described but the players can't go in? What a missed opportunity!

This evening the party finished the side quest and then went into the final chapter of the adventure - the battle with the Inquisitor at the home of Haddin and Crystin. Because the party had some failures in their navigation of the caves to escape from Gate Pass and in one of the skill challenges with King Marben Diamondheart, plus the fact that they took an extra extended rest after the Gnoll Hunt, I had them arrive at the farm and be greeted by Crystin - at which point the Inquisitor and his goons attacked the rear of the house, before they even had a chance to meet Haddin.

My goal, frankly, was to have the Inquisitor kill Haddin in front of Crystin. This was partly because I thought it would add some depth to Crystin's character, and partly because Haddin seems like a pain in the butt NPC and I had no interest in running him.

The party rushed to Haddin's rescue, but I eventually had the skeletons break down the wall that he was using for protection so that the Inquisitor could finish him off. Since several of the bad guys had spent time focusing on Haddin, the player characters didn't take much damage and had a pretty easy time of the battle.

We had some nice role playing in the aftermath of the battle, dealing with Haddin's burial and Crystin's pleas for the party to take her along (which they did, after much deliberation). The party also took precautions to travel the last distance to the fire forest under cover of darkness to avoid detection by enemies - not that there were any enemies planned, but I appreciated the lengths they went to in order to plan this out.

We then went into the forest and had a run in with the dire bats and the elemental goblin - a nice little warm-up encounter (no pun intended) to introduce the party to the forest.

My only complaint about the forest so far is its name. Innenotdar is really hard to pronounce and to remember. Any tips on a nickname for it, aside from just "the fire forest"?

 

[Skyscraper]

My only complaint about the forest so far is its name. Innenotdar is really hard to pronounce and to remember. Any tips on a nickname for it, aside from just "the fire forest"?

Not to argue with you, but The Fire Forest seems pretty straightforward to me. How many are there anyway that you would want to distinguish it from the others?

The PCs in my campaign are discussing how to get out of Gate Pass in-between their encounters and with two eladrin on-board, they are thinking of cutting through Shahalesti and taking a boat to Seaquen. If they opt for this I won't oppose their decision and I'll design stuff for their trip, not sure what yet, I'll wait to see what comes up. The point being: nah-nah, I won't have to handle the cumbersome fire forest name!

Sky

 

[Zinovia]

My only complaint about the forest so far is its name. Innenotdar is really hard to pronounce and to remember. Any tips on a nickname for it, aside from just "the fire forest"?

You ain't kidding! I called it the Innotdari Forest, making it less tongue-twisting. I also changed the name of a certain (spoiler)

Spoiler

trillith from Indomitibility to Tenacity.

Much easier to say. I have changed so many names in this series that I made a spreadsheet to help me keep track of all the NPCs, listing their original name and race along with what I changed them to.