Joel’s Scattered Thoughts

Present this week were:
* Cinner - dwarven rogue
* Riamara - loresong faen greenbond
* Ruke - human paladin
* Kevgretor - dwarven cleric
* Miru - human fighter

After finding a note saying that Xyhcichyl, queen of the Holy Swarm, had been killed by treachery, Ruke chopped his way through the door to her chambers. The party found the formian queen’s corpse and another of the wardsatves. On their way to return it to Kelara, they ran into Sarraas and her pack of barghests. Sarraas thanked them for killing Morat. She then proposed that the PCs negotiate a truce between the celestials and the barghests and warned them not to return unless they brought word of a deal.

Kelara was delighted to have another wardstaff returned. The celestials healed the party and showed them to a room to rest. Cinner continued to make strange comments and play with the dead rats he picked up here and there. In the morning the party buffed up and returned to kill Sarraas and her pack. Doj accompanied them to assist.

The fight proved fairly simple. Riamara opened up with a sorcerous blast, wounding most of the barghests. Cinner got a good whack in at one of the barghests with his sneak attack and Ruke finished it off. Miru hit another barghest with her shiny new spear. Ruke moved in to attack Sarraas with a mighty Smite Evil. Miru and Cinner killed another barghest as Riamara healed Ruke. Ruke hit Sarraas with another Smite Evil, leaving the barghest leader nearly dead. Doj managed to trip a fleeing barghest with his chain and beat on it. Sarraas tried to run but was cut down by Ruke. The last surviving barghest made its escape into the darkness of the dungeon.

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Again, a session with a lot of talk and not too much fighting. I expect to get back to hack and slash fairly soon though. The party’s new collection of magical weapons proved devastating against the barghests. This was very close to the same difficulty as the fight that killed Rosco and the party was barely even scratched.

Here’s the formula for bonus spells and combat rites in Arcana Evolved

A=Ability score
S=Spell Level (if S=0, S=1 in calculations)
B=Bonus spells for that level (if B<0, B=0)

if A > (10+S*2)
B = FLOOR((A-(2+(S*2)))/8)
else
B = 0
end if

FLOOR means round down, e.g. FLOOR(5.8) = 5, FLOOR(5.1) = 5, FLOOR(5.5)=5

E.g. for Ability score 18, spell level 2
Floor((18-(2+(2*2)))/8) = floor(1.5) = 1

Jaimie, don’t follow this link. Misc Creatures posts 14 and 16 would make a fine adventure idea for a greenbond, probably highlighting greenbond abilities that don’t get used much.

Present this week were:
* Cinner - dwarven rogue
* Riamara - loresong faen greenbond
* Ruke - human paladin
* Valik - dwarven wizard
* Kevgretor - dwarven cleric
* Miru - human fighter

After resting up following their fight with Morat, the party awoke to something pounding on the door to the north. Upon opening the door they found what looked like a short stocky elf with silver hair and rainbow eyes and a human in full plate. After confirming that they were responsible for killing the barghests, Doj, the celestial, asked if they’d seen another celestial with a mighty sword. Miru showed him Rosco’s holy longsword. Doj took this as confirmation that his mate, Sensil was dead. This hit him hard and he asked Ruke, the paladin accompanying him, to take the sword while he went to seek his mate’s body. Miru requested that Doj bless Rosco’s body. Doj said a prayer and pointed a wand at Rosco’s corpse. The corpse began to shine with light and became as bright as the sun. When the party could look again, it was gone.

As he was about to leave, Doj notice that staff that Riamara was carrying. He examined it and proclaimed it one of the wardstaves. Ruke proceeded to lead the party to the celestial’s leader, Kelara. Kelara was thrilled to get one of the wardstaves back. Cinner found Besar to be agreeable enough and they started chatting and swapping recipes for the creatures they’d encountered. Kelara told the party that the inevitables have decided to use whatever creatures they can conscript to fight evils. She pointed the party in the direction of some of the other wardstaves and gave them a number of weapon-enhancing oils to assist them and to thank them for returning one of the wardstaves.

The Holy Swarm, a group of celestial formians, had one of the wardstaves. Cinner recalled seeing the symbol for the Holy Swarm on one of the doors he checked, so the party headed off in that direction. There was a brief fight with some shadows where Ruke bore the brunt of their attack. Then they found room after room full of dead formians.

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Wow, this was a great session for roleplaying! Given that this is a massive dungeon crawl, we tend towards letting the dice do the talking. Until the fight with the shadows at the end, it was almost all talk. I’m hoping to set something like this up in every region to give those who like more drama a treat. We’ll see how that works out. This is one case where my typing/improvisational speed is a real bottleneck though as I can’t set up the responses ahead of time.

Give Your Players a List of NPC Names - Treasure Tables is a really good idea. I want to do this for both my campaigns so that the players have something to refer to. In my tabletop game, players are always going “You know, what’s her name that gave us that thing that one time.”

(possible spoilers for DCC: Aerie of the Crow God)

Their former patroness Kelys called them and told them that a friend of hers needed help. Lady Pendour has had her daughters’ lives threatened if she doesn’t get the key to her husband’s safe. Her husband disappeared some time back while on a mission to get rid of harpies that were plaguing the settlement of Peldrenford. Shortly after his disappearance, Peldrenford was destroyed. In return for their help, Lady Pendour offered to call in favors with Vi-Taran and Meragoth’s ceremonium to give the PCs free access to a couple of beneficial ceremonies, some now and some upon their return.

Using their contacts with the merchant’s guild, they easily found passage down to Peldrenford. They were attacked by akthars who didn’t prove to be much of a challenge. From there they rowed upstream to Gurnard’s Head. They were attacked on the stairs by a pair of harpies, but Justin’s stunning magic proved to be their undoing – a sorcerous blast coupled with the electrical template sent the bird-men falling to their doom. The party spotted arrow slots and crawled below them.

Upon reaching the top of the stairs, the PCs found a sword stuck in the flagstones by the tower. Kayla picked it up and got a vision of a man being defeated by the birdmen and the sword falling from the top of the tower. They proceeded to break into the tower. After bypassing the trap on a nightstand drawer, they found a note describing the concerns of a former inhabitant as well as a scroll of teleport.

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It was a fun enough session, but short. On top of that, the kids kept interrupting. I’m hoping that the next time we get together to game we can go longer and with less chaos.

Present this week were:
* Cinner - dwarven rogue
* Riamara - loresong faen greenbond
* Rosco - deep halfling barbarian
* Valik - dwarven wizard
* Kevgretor - dwarven cleric
* Miru - human fighter

This session was pretty much one big three hour battle. It worked out to be just about perfectly – tough enough without ever threating a total party kill.

The party collected two barghest heads, planning to use them to try and fool Morat. As they were near the end of their resources, they set up camp in a hallway. A barghest came by, but Valik managed to convince him that there was nothing to see.

In the morning the party brought the barghest heads to Morat. He recognized the heads as those of his own barghests and he and his attendants moved in to attack. Three of them got blows in at Valik, Miru, and Rosco. Morat enlarged his attendants. Rosco and Miru got a solid hit on their barghests while Riamara icebolted Morat and Valik hit two with Burning Hands. Riamara healed Miru and Valik boosted her strength.

Rosco managed to shake off the effects of the charm person just in time to be attacked by barghests. Miru feel victim to Morat’s crushing despair. Rosco managed to take out one of the barghests with his greatsword. Riamara healed Rosco up as Miru and Valik attacked another barghest. Cinner and Kevgretor flanked a barghest and both hit solidly.

The barghests managed to hit Cinner, Valik and Rosco and Morat bit and clawed Miru. Rosco slaughtered another barghest. Riamara flattened another with a hand of battle (critical hit, leaving it extra, extra, extra dead). Valik boosted Rosco’s stregth as Cinner taunted Morat. Morat began to back away, but Rosco got a vicious hit in. Riamara healed Miru and Miru and Valik attacked another.

The barghests fled as Morat make some obscene gestures and disappeared. Cinner chased him and got knocked unconscious. (In a nice juxtapositon ** Cinner relives him self in his unconciousness so they can see the wet foot prints on the floor** GM: It’s a hit! ) Rosco narrowly missed with his attack on Morat.

Miru and Rosco fell to the barghests’ charm person while Valik shrugged it off. The barghests hadn’t coordinated their attacks and one jumped at Miru and snapped her out of it. Riamara icebolted a fleeing barghest and Valik and Kevgretor manged to kill it. Morat continued to attack Rosco as the rest of the party flailed away at him.

Rosco dropped out of rage and his exhaustion while Miru’s attack failed to pass Morat’s damage reduction. Morat snarled, “I’ll take you with me!” and proceeded to slaughter Rosco. Valik cast true strike and grabbed Rosco’s sword. Miru’s attack again failed to affect Morat. Valik hit Morat and passed the sword to Miru. Morat slashed at her as she picked it up but she finished him with a mighty blow.

The party was greatly saddened by Rosco’s death. Miru was in tears and even Cinner seemed touched. They barricaded themselves in and prepared to rest.