Return to Witherhelm

I am running my first session of Dungeons and Dragons since my brain injury, which is a little scary. I am somewhat confident things won't go completely off the rails in a boring way.  All the main NPCs were killed in battle and the entire world as the PCs know it has descended into anarchy.

So, the party is going to raid a wizard's tower. A few short weeks ago they saw this wizard take a fireball to the face and fall out of the sky. The halfling rifled through his corpse. Now they are heading to his house to continue looting.

The wizard's tower is in the middle of the biggest known city. Where two of the characters are from. I have done very minimal prep on this city and the characters in my campaign have very minimal backstory (On average we have one death every session so why bother).

So, what happens if the PCs want to go to a bar or speak with their old friend or visit their dad or whatever? There is no info about the characters or the city really.

So here's the rule:  Anything the characters say about a connection they have in the city can be true. They just have to pass a charisma check. There will be modifiers for more powerful potential patrons.

Here are the modifiers:
Regular shmoe  0 (artisans bartenders etc.)
Important schmoe -2 (local politicians, fences, bookies, notable lotharios)
Shmoe who would be worth more than 10,000gp -4 (and an additional -4 for each 10kgp)
person with class levels -1 for every level

Frostgrave Scenario: The Flame Imp

I've been playing a fair amount of Frostgrave. As people who play Frostgrave know over the course of a campaign it can happen that one Wizard will become much more powerful then the others. I started thinking about ways that scenarios that could compensate for this by disadvantaging more powerful wizards.  Here is an example of the kinds of mechanics I have been thinking about.

A Pillar of flame shoots down from the sky nearly killing Red Rogo. After the smoke clears Rogo finds himself locked in combat with a flame imp.

THE FLAME IMP

For weeks you’ve had to swallow your pride and subsist on the scraps of Felstad. Your rival has been kicking you around and amassing power and decimating your warband. You’ve had to resort to underhanded tactics. It was by chance you heard of small fiery demon that hunts powerful wizards and eats their spells. All you had to do was let it be known that you would be heading out for your rival to follow you into Felstad. Little did they know that you were leading them into a trap!

Setup:

            Setup the board and place treasure tokens as normally. Place the flame imp in the center of the table. Make sure the flame imp is obscured by plenty of terrain.

Special Rules:

	Move	Fight	Shoot	Armor	Will	Health	Notes
Flame Imp	3	+2	+0	12	+1	12	The Flame imp has two sets of behavior: before it has killed a spell-caster and after. They are detailed below

Before the Flame Imp has killed a Spell-Caster:

If the flame imp is in base contact with the highest-level spell-caster within 12”, it fights that spell-caster.

Otherwise, at the start of the flame imp’s activation, select the highest-level spell-caster is within 12” of the flame imp irrespective of line of sight. If there are two spell-casters of the highest level, select the closest one. For the purposes of selecting a spell-caster, an apprentice counts as being 10 levels below his/her wizard. If there is no spell-caster within 12” the imp moves in a random direction, but will stop before leaving the edge of the table.

The selected spell-caster makes a will roll against the flame imp. If the spell-caster wins then nothing happens. If the spell-caster loses, the flame imp casts elemental bolt on the spell-caster and teleports into base contact with the spell-caster. No casting roll is needed.

 After the Flame Imp has Killed a Spell-Caster: 

            Once the flame imp kills a spell-caster it will use both it actions to head towards the nearest board edge in the shortest path possible. It will climb over any obstructions. It suffers no movement penalty for climbing or rough terrain. It can travel over any normally impassible terrain.

            If the flame imp is killed after it has killed a spell-caster its model is not removed from the board but is treated like a treasure token and can be picked up.

Bonus Experience and Treasure:

            A warband that kills the flame imp before it has killed a spell-caster gets 50 xp. If the warband whose spell-caster was killed by the flame imp, secures the flame imp corpse they get 80xp and there are no further effects.

If the rival warband secures the Flame imp corpse, the rival wizard can choose to consume the flame imp corpse. In that case randomly select a spell from the dead spell-caster list of spells. The wizard can add that to his/her list of spells. The spell has the same casting number as that of the dead spell-caster. If the dead spell-caster had a higher casting number than the wizard nothing happens. Also, flame imp tastes bad.

 For example, Lord Swampbone’s apprentice is killed by the imp. His rival, Kerf Merklin’s warband kills the imp and carries it off back to Kerf’s base. There, Kerf Merklin consumes the body of the imp with a healthy amount of wine. A spell the dead apprentice knew is randomly selected. It’s push.  The dead apprentice needed a 10 to cast Push. Kerf now has a push roll of 10. His apprentice however still does not now know Push. Lord Mandingus still knows Push with a casting roll of 8, but if his apprentice can no longer cast Push! He will need to secure a new grimoire to teach it to him! Salty!

Stargazer Comparisons Play Report: Wait this is not a play report at all. THis is crap.

I haven't been able to run a game of Dungeons and Dragons since I got hit by a car at the end of July. Don't ever get hit by a car. This post is just as much to see if I can write yet without getting a splitting headache as it is to talk about Tower of the Stargazer.

The siege of Witherhelm was over. The town of Witherhelm was descending into anarchy. So the party decided to go on a vacation to the Tower of the Stargazer.

<<BREAK TIME GOT A HEADACHE>>

A lot of people have run this adventure and written about it on the internet. This guy did it as a DCC Funnel. I didn't use any of his ideas but adding skeleton cleaning crew is a good idea. I should have done that.


Someone else wrote about ....


<<OUCH BREAK TIME>>

OK Let's start again.

* And then, even though he was very hurt, one of our clerics decides to look in one of the obviously magic mirrors. He fails his save, his reflection grins and steps out and then slits our cleric's throat. The reflection looks at the party and says, "What?" After a tense minute, everyone shrugs and lets the reflection join the party.

I really wanted that to happen. But instead the party kept looking into the mirror that made you raise or lose ability scores. One character looked in the mirror like 3 times and got their scores dropped 3 times.

This person turned the chess puzzle into an a die roll

The Dungeon of signs guy/person figured out the puzzle in the basement. My wife figured out the puzzle. The party got to the basement. They poked around the forcefields cautiously (someone had already died).  After futzing around with the switches my wife says "ZELDA!" and solves the puzzle by using the fake coins from the fake treasure room to test the forcefields. 

Blood, Death, Satan, and Metal perhaps not surprisingly had the most in depth coverage of Tower of the Stargazer. There is good stuff on there but my head is starting to hurt.

I'm just going to publish this. I guess. After all blogs are just for posting rambling nonsense.

Doominator’s Dangerous Delve

 So one of my player’s in my online game decided he wanted to ceded control of his character to me and go exploring the first level of the Holmes Basic Dungeon. The easy thing to do would be to just give him the map. He is a 5th level Gold Dragon.

I am an idiot though. So, let’s come up with some rules. I know a little bit about this player’s attitudes. The first thing is that his characters all react strongly to monster body horror/monster sexy time. I don’t aim to put that type of stuff into my dungeons. When I read a module that has that stuff in it, I think it’s stupid. But When I actually run a game... There’s something wrong with me.

So, I am going to give Doominator the gold Dragon 10 Klang Tolerance Points, or KTPs. Doominator will lose a KTP whenever he encounters one of the monsters in the dungeon that have evolved into gross weirdos ie kobolds and goblins. Then I will make a reaction roll. A positive reaction roll means that Doominator ignores whatever weird nonsense is happening. Negative means that he attacks, causing noise and possibly attracting more monsters. When Doominator runs out of KTPs he will leave the dungeon after presumably telling the dungeon master that he is some sort of sexual deviant.

Doominator the put upon gold dragon

That brings us to the second thing. I am not going to do combat by myself. Doominator will be able to kill anything on the 1st level of the dungeon. His entourage could be in danger though. So we are going to give them an entourage survival score. NPCs have a base 50% chance to survive an encounter. They then have +2% per hitpoint and +4% per AC point below 9 (these numbers are totally made up.) They have blah blah blah. Let’s make a chart:

Level above 1	+5
Per hit point	+2
AC point below 9	+4
If the party has more members then the monsters	+5 for each NPC in excess of number of monsters
You’re a wizard	+10
Having a missile weapon	+8
For each +1 on weapon in Npcs possession	+5
For each HD the monsters have	-5
For Each ac Point below 9 monsters have	-3
If the monsters outnumber the party	-5 (each extra monster)
Monster has paralysis	-6
Monsters have missile weapons	-3

Neat... and totally arbitrary.

Let’s meet the entourage:

Darby Thief lv 2 has missile weapon AC 7  hp:  5 base survival chance: 81%

Meepers Thief lv 2 has missile weapon AC 7 hp:  4 base survival chance: 79%

Lodine Magic user lv 2 AC 9 hp: 6 base survival chance: 72%

Geraldo Fighting man lv 1 AC 4 hp: 5 base survival chance: 80%

Guiseppe The 0 level carpenter (he won’t be doing any fighting)

Seems pretty scary.

Doominator is a 5th level gold dragon though. There is basically nothing that can kill him besides a guilty conscience after he sends a bunch of hirelings to their deaths.

 Ok, Adventure time.

Turn 1: Doominator and entourage head into his basement. and watch Guiseppe fix a door.

...1 hour later: door fixed. The carpenter heads up and starts working on the roof of the tower.

Turn 2: The party heads north into the rotating statue room and poke around. Before heading east So far so good.

Turn 3: The party keeps heading east and find some giant rats. Reaction roll says they give the rats some food or something. Doominator is apparently strutting around the dungeon like he is running for mayor, handing out bribes and kissing rat babies. The party heads south.

Turn 4: Cool room. Let’s keep going.

Turn 5: neat Doominator has managed to travel in a circle and is back in the Thaumaturgist’s  underground lab. He thinks about the good times. Before heading back to the unexplored part of the dungeon.

Turn 6 and 7: Doominator had wanted to rest but instead the party comes across some koblolds doing weird kobold stuff in the Sundial room. Doominator is now at 9 KTP.  However he manages to maintain focus and heads north to rest. But looks like there is a full on kobold orgy, which is basically egg rubbing going on in the rushing stream room (don’t ask) 8 KTP. Doominator ferries they party across the river while trying to avoid getting sticky.

Turn 8: Great goblins.... 7 KTP. Doominator however has the patience of a saint and manages to ignore Their nonsense.

Turn 9: cool a sea cave. There is a major smuggling Kuo Toa hybrid operation going on down here. Doominator is playing it cool with a 9 on his reaction roll and leaves without starting a fight. Eyes on the mapping prize.

Turn 10: cool. A breezy tour passed some nonplussed smugglers.

Turn 11: Oh god not this again. 6 KTP. Don’t make eye contact. Keep moving.

Turn 12: A rest by the stairs.

Turn 13:  A spiked door. More kobolds fighting each other and eating each other and eating themselves. Where did all these freaks come from. A couple you’ve seen have been wearing hats. 5 KTP. Doominator rolls an 11 for his reaction roll. He is engaging in passive resistance.

Turn 14: Neat coffin room. 10 reaction roll. Even the Kuo toa you meet are chill today.

Turn 15: It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood. You find some stairs leading down.

Turn 16: Try and avoid those kobolds. Find some more stairs. In a room with a bunch of dead  kobolds and 1 goblin jacking it. 5 KTP. Doominator keeps his distance and leaves the room before things go from edgy indie film to straight up pornography.

Turn 17: Avoiding rooms with weird stuff thank you very much.

Turn 18: Let’s rest by this weird well. Doominator does not trust the dungeon enough to read whatever writing is on that wall.

Turn 19:  cool more stairs down.

Turn 20: let’s go up through the church and say hi to the elves that live there

Man All those rules were for no reason. The reaction rolls were too high. Everyone heads to the Green dragon inn. Doominator ponders petitioning to have the name changed to Gold Dragon Inn.

Now let’s roll to see if any of Doominator’s horde went missing while he was on his little adventure. On 1-3 yes. On 4-6 no. I rolled a 6. Doominator can’t lose today.

Book of War Posts

A collection of Book of War updates from Delta. I have not had a chance to use them yet as the Wizard in my game got blown up by a fire ball before he could raise any undead.

New Units:

Elementals
Elephants
Giants
Treants
Undead
War pigs (I know it's April Fool's but whatever)

Unit Expansions:

Knights
Wizards and heroes

Rules: 

Cold
partial hd
random armies
weather control

The Siege of Witherhelm

I finally had my D&D group play the siege I have been planning at posting about for months. I used Book of War by Delta. I took some advice from the internet and I ignored some probably very good advice from the internet. Everything worked out though.... sort of. 

Dave hard at work setting up the evil army

The campaign is in shambles but in a good way I wanted to have a meaningful battle where the objectives were determined by things that mattered in the large framework of the world and not just objective markers. This made the game more like a real war in that there were no winners. The high level 'good' NPC was devoured by a purple worm in the basement and the high level magic user was blasted out of the sky by a fireball after he got overconfident. That means that all known cities of the world are without leadership and in a state of anarchy.

I look on with no idea that half a continent is about to be thrown
into anarchy.

Setting up took a long time. I was ready to use chgowiz's Fellowship Supplement for Book of War but the part spent the whole time hidden in the inn. They weren't discovered until the guy playing the evil army lifted up the inn as a joke and saw them in there. By that time it was too late; he couldn't get any troops over there and his wizard had been fried.

There is ivy growing on the keep because I screwed up making it
 and had to cover up my mistakes.

This picture is blurry due to the heat from the fireball that is rushing towards
the evil wizard. His last stand was on top of a beer.

The goal of the evil army was to capture a very important wraith trapped at the top of
Witherhelm stronghold or barring that free the wraith and destroy Brock Thickstone.

Brock Thickstone's goal was to inflict as much damage as possible to the evil army before retreating so that it could not attack his home territory a few hexes away. Both sides failed spectacularly.

Here is a synopsis that one of my players wrote (I bribed him with xp):

Alright so I will take a wack at this as I am I dire need for the xp and there is a sick amount of it.  

Witherhelm keep sat at the center of the board topped by a pyramid and encircled by a series of obelisks.  The rest of the land was covered by farms, a pub and a pair of hills and a pair of forests.
Clargarser’s army attacked on 4 fronts having first strike:
1.  Pikemen and medium infantry from the castle front which was actual north in Philadelphia so I will call that north in Witherhelm.  
2.  Cover of forest at the southwest for pikemen and heavy infantry
3. The primary front from the Southeast by cover of forest which included cavalry, archers, Raglom and Clargarser
4. Purple worm

Witherhelm defended with our rabble group under the concealment of the pub, with proximity to the front from the north, taking opportunity to hide the stirge in a wheat field.  Their front was also aided by archer cavalry.  This front was successfully defended.

The southwest front was taken by surprise by a unit of pikemen utilizing a spell “tree form” meaning concealment by fake forest.  The pikemen rocked the infantry and then came to successfully defend from the pikemen offensive by Clargarser.  

The southeast front remained hidden in the forest, facing combat late in the game and then retreating, but not before a flurry of events transpired.

First, the purple worm emerged in the basement of the stronghold. Thickstone ventured to the basement to inspect the racket.  Severely injuring the worm before being eaten whole.  Brock was gone in the first round of play.  Fortunately the units were unaware of this or else morale would have plummeted.  

Next Raglom tried some fancy shit while flying and was blown out of the sky by Xylarthen’s fireball wand.  

So then the purple worm re-emerged to destroy one of the obelisks.  This was sad news for the band of longbonermen taking to the roof of the keep. This action released the wraith, who proceeded to make these archers wraiths as well.  Scary stuff.  

Fortunately Xylarthen was able to levitate and use his fireball wand to knock these wraiths off before they ran amok.That plot line was brewing since Naked and afraid day 1.  

The stirge returned to the keep full and Clargarser left town.  Glad we took out the catapult factory.  Thanks Nupo the Gnome.  We love you.  

This is the first turn of the game

A short time later

The battle reminded me of the Anabasis, which is ridiculous. this was much sillier.  A lot of people died though.

I made a hard to read chart (I suck at Information Design):

You can see the initial army list with a mostly accurate point value for the armies. I multiplied by ten to get the cost of the armies in gold pieces. Brock Thickstone didn't care that he lost a lot of money on the battle because he died.

Host of Clargarser		pts	Defenders of Thickstone			pts
10 pikemen		50	16 pikemen			80
14 medium infantry		70
10 heavy infantry		90
6 archers		42	5 archers			35
			6 longbowmen			60
			10 horse archers			130
10 medium cavalry		120
			10 stirge			80
1 purple worm		60
			1 PC party			???
Raglom		80	Xylarthen			80
Clargarser		65	Brock Thickstone			65
Total		577				530 + ???
Remains at the end of the battle
				9 pikemen	45
10 heavy infantry	90
				4 archers	28
				3 longbowmen	30
				5 horse archers	65
5 medium cavalry	60
				1 PC party	???
				Xylarthen	80
Clargarser	65
Total	215				248
Difference	362				282
Loss percentage	62.7				53.2
Host of Clargarser was 8.9 % bigger