While it's not an actual death, I did have two near-death situations in my last game, all thanks to Ogre Hooks.
First, a little backstory - I chatted with the group concerning critical hits and we agreed to a new methodology - from now on, when you roll a critical, it automatically confirms. You no longer roll for damage - instead, x2 modifiers give full x1 damage, x3 modifiers give a full x1.5 damage, and x4 modifiers give a full x2 damage. Thus Ogre Hooks, with their x3, are doing 1.5 full damage per hit.
When fighting Hucker Graul, the first person to rush into combat was the NPC Arcane Trickster. Due to her being a glass pistol (I'd not say a glass cannon as she just doesn't do THAT much damage! But she tries!) they've given her several magic items to boost her armor class. And knowing these things are dangerous, she used combat feats to boost her armor class and Offensive Defense. Her armor class fighting Graul was 35.
He rolled a natural 20. If we'd gone by the old rules and if he'd confirmed (and the dice were being mean to the players so it probably would have), a raging Barbarian ogrekin (with boosted stats to compensate for high player stats) would have done 66 damage prior to die rolls. Instead, he "just" did 32 damage, bringing her down to the low teens.
Graul then proceeded to start pounding on the Barbarian. A Barbarian who started with over 140 hit points was reduced to 9 hit points despite the Cleric using Channel Positive Energy several times in the fight. And he was tripped by one of the donkey rats so at the end he was fighting on his back before Graul finally fell.
So two close ones. :) And a most intense battle. The group is rightfully scared of the ogres coming up next. ;)
Name of PC: Lini
Class/Level: Gnome Cleric 7
Adventure: The Skinsaw Murders
Catalyst: Xanesha
Story:
So I have a 6-person party of characters and it's been my experience DMing that either through poor encounter management or simply too much mercy that my players are having too easy a time of it. So I added a flesh golem to the Xanesha encounter [in addition to the Scarecrow].
The party climbed up onto the top of the tower to find an illusion of Nualia to greet them. Surprised, the party wizard [also a gnome and sister to the cleric] opened fire with magic missile and was promptly sneak attacked by Xanesha.
The encounter played out as the party split...fighter and paladin dealing with the golem and the casters/rogue trying to bring down Xanesha from range and having limited success. The fighters were whittling down the golem, but Xanesha was clearly toying with them for several rounds. She finally moved up and attacked the cleric after the second time she saved the fighter from death at the golem's hands. Her spear crit, and impaled the gnome, reducing her to -4 HP.
[WARNING: I began taking extreme liberties with the combat rules for cinematic reasons here]
With the gnome at the end of her spear, Xanesha grinned wickedly and simply flicked her off the spear...and the tower. In a panic, the party druid [currently in air elemental] dove after her, and I ruled that he had the speed to catch up with her and drop out of Wild Shape [about 60 feet from the ground], with the intent to grab her and absorb the impact of the fall as best he could. He succeeded, but that left both of them lying on the ground BADLY wounded, him with several broken bones at 0 hp and her still negative [though she had made her roll to stabilize].
Meanwhile, the flesh golem was growing weaker, so Xanesha, annoyed, ordered it to grab the dwarven fighter and charge off of the tower. Through several back and forth grapple checks, the dwarf managed to break its hold and get out in time to make use of air walk...but not before the flesh golem impacted on the cleric.
The sad part is that the druid saw it coming, and opted to cast gaseous form rather than risk failing any checks/saves I made him roll to pull the gnome out of the way.
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Once again I have mixed feelings about it.. On the other hand she had it coming, but on the other.. Meh. Another one bites the dust!
(and they had resources to bring her back if she'd want to)
Name: Faroth
Race: Cat, medium (male)
Class/Level: Ranger's animal companion / 7
Adventure: The Skinsaw Murders
Catalyst: Xanesha
Name: Ilori
Race: Human (female)
Class/Level: Sorcerer / 7
Adventure: The Skinsaw Murders
Catalyst: Xanesha
Just a moment before the fall they had discussed of an alternative approach while they were quite evenly spaced out 20ft-30ft apart from each other, still climbing the terrible stairs.
Now rest of the group was at the stairs some 70ft-80ft above the ground, starting to head back down when they heard & saw figures approaching from above along the stairs. Meanwhile Ilori had started to heal her wounds with her trusty wand.
Few rounds of ranged combat & steady run down, Ilori was joined by Faroth and Harsk the Cleric at ground level while Alpharius the Ranger & Alfred the Fighter held rear at the stairs, some 30ft-40ft above. Or so they thought. First a swirl of thick smoke surrounded Harsk and within that smoke Ilori saw a figure of a demon moving. Harsk stood firm, trying to spot the outsider, when Ilori, standing at the bottom of the stairs, was surprised by invisible Xanesha (who had climbed down from her nest and took fight to them). Faroth followed Alpharius's command and tried to guard Ilori, but was quickly put down in a flurry of stabs by Xanesha's spear. Ilori didn't get the memo and she was finished only 6 seconds later with a critical stab through her belly.. Long before Alfred & Alpharius made it to bottom..
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Name of PC: Hez
Class/Level: Witch 12, bard 1
Adventure: Sins of the Saviour
Catalyst: White dragon induced fall
Story: After the party scattered from the dragon attack, Arkrhyst targeted the spellcaster for a snatch. A quick blast of dragonbreath, Arkrhyst let the PC take the 200ft plunge.
Thankfully, a breath of life followed.
Name of PC: Yang
Class/Level: Oracle 9 (cohort)
Adventure: Sins of the Saviour
Catalyst: Earth elemental induced fall
Story: Having barely defeated the dragon, the party healed and made the climb up Rimeskull mountain to be ambushed by elementals. With most of the party unassailable due to sihedron amulets the elementals went after summoned creatures and the party healer cohort. Another 200ft fall followed.
Er... no Feather Falls in the entire party? Eeeew...
Name of NPC: Jaagrath Kreeg
Class/Level: Level 8 Barbarian Ogre
Catalyst: One truly devastating Sorceress
Story: After having bypassed half of the encounters, the adventuring group faced off against Jaagrath Kreeg's family, whittling them down after four rounds (due in part to a lucky fireball against the three "ordinary" Advanced Ogres Moe, Larry and Curly) while cutting down an Ogre Fighter in two rounds and Jaagrath's mate soon after.
Using Door Sight, they realized there was one nasty-looking ogre on his own, so they did a couple buffs (the Sorceress cast Heroism on the Paladin Cohort and the Half-Orc Barbarian)... and kicked in the door to face down Jaagrath himself. In one round, he hit the half-orc thrice and brought him to below half hit points. The group managed some truly nasty strikes and a lot of lesser whittling blows that brought Jaagrath down to 45 hit points.
That's when the Sorceress decided to cast Hideous Laughter. And Jaagrath rolled a Natural 1 for his save.
I didn't bother finishing the combat. The Arcane Trickster (who was flanking) would be going next, Jaagrath wouldn't get to act, and then the Barbarian would go. I just summed up the encounter with "and you proceed to turn him into a Sloppy Joe" and after realizing he was the Pappy of the ogres, they lopped his head off. I think they plan on shoving it up Lucrecia's behind. While she's in half-snake form.
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Name of PC: Triggi
Race: Ratfolk
Class/Level: Alchemist 4
Adventure: Rise of the Runelords: Chapter 1
Catalyst: Malfeshnekor
Story: The group attempted to whittle away at this large beast, as Triggi ducked into a closet for attempted cover. Mal, fed up with taking damage from the one person who was actually hurting him via holy flasks (party had a hard time getting past the DR because no-one had magic weapons at this time), used the closet as a no-escape trap against our mutagen-less alchemist, and a full-round attack action of a successful bite and 2 claw attacks instantly killed perhaps one of the most beloved members in the party. One of the other PCs carries around a rabbit in his honor, since Triggi had sworn to release the rabbits found in Thistletop after dealing with the terrors below the ground floor.
Name of PC: Sunaki Kaijitsu
Race: Human
Class/Level: Ranger 13
Adventure:Remix/Blend of "The Tomb-World of Alak-amur" and "Tomb of the Iron Medusa" inserted in between Fortress of Stone Giants and Sins of the Saviors
Catalyst: Nekkron, Keeper of Karzoug's Dead (Lich, with standard stat block from the Bestiary (Necromancer 11)
Story:Spoilers for end of Fortress of Stone Giants
Circle of Death can't kill creatures with more than 8 HD. Both the level 13 ranger and his 9 HD Animal Companion should have been unaffected unless they had a bunch of negative levels.
Circle of Death can't kill creatures with more than 8 HD. Both the level 13 ranger and his 9 HD Animal Companion should have been unaffected unless they had a bunch of negative levels.
Ho-lee crap... Wow, now I feel bad. And, ya know, we had a nice discussion about save or die spells and how things changed from 3.5 to Pathfinder. Frankly, I was just as surprised as to the results of the spell as the party was, and I should have been suspicious. I have been known to give my players a hard time (jokingly, mostly) about not reading an entire spell description (like Glitterdust allowing a new save at the end of each round to remove the blindness) and now I've gone and done it myself - with terrible consequences!
Well, I'll give the player the option to retcon it all. We've only had a single encounter since, and his new character was only there for the tail end of it, so it shouldn't affect much.
Thanks for the clarification.
Name of PC: Cromdarr Thunderhead
Class/Level: Half-Orc Fighter 2
Adventure: Burnt Offerings
Catalyst: Erylium
Story: Cromdarr started the game as a GMPC as the party only had 3 members at the time: Jasok the human rogue, Roanak the life oracle, and Jarvis the elemental sorcerer. A player took over Cromdarr after or during the third session, when the party went to the glassworks.
In the Catacombs of Wrath, the party entered the Runewell chamber fully charged; they had rested after clearing out basically everything else.
Though I gave the party a chance to check with Father Zantus about what a Quasit might be, nobody took the bait, so they were not prepared to face an invisible enemy nor did the party have cold iron weapons, except for Cromdarr who just had one for the hell of it. So while the party had all their resources at their disposal they didn't know what they were facing despite a number of clues.
Erylium opened with cause fear. Second round her Monster Summoning I was disrupted and round 3 she turned invisible. The party had already brought down the sinspawn at this point. Round 4 she started monster summoning II and round 5 a lemure appeared (I used a lemure because it was the list that I didn't have to adjust the stats for being fiendish, and I had a miniature for it).
The sorcerer with knowledge:planes successfully identified the lemure... barely (he exactly made the DC). So I told him he could know one specific thing about it and let him ask something. He asked: "does it have any spells or spell-like abilities?" No, it doesn't. So the party doesn't know the lemure has DR/silver, though two party members have silver weapons.
Within a few rounds Cromdarr was fighting the lemure in front of the runewell. He had scored a hit or two but the DR kept the lemure alive.
Erylium hit him with the slumber hex, and he went down.
Then the lemure did a CDG on the sleeping Cromdarr.
I felt kind of bad afterward about having the monster do a CDG, though honestly the lemure's damage was so weak that I figured there was a good chance that he would make the save. He didn't.
The player was OK with it afterwards, saying that if characters don't die then they play stupidly. He hadn't created the character anyway so I got the feeling he was OK with the chance to design his own character. His new character (a half-elf paladin) is so poorly designed that I now am worried about the future of the party. The main damage dealer is the party rogue, which should tell you something. When the sorcerer lines up his burning hands properly he can do a lot of damage but he wastes his time casting magic missile most of the time (though that did work against Erylium).
Eventually the party was able to pin down Erylium; the oracle used create water to splash water in a space to spot Erylium when she was invisible, which worked when he guessed the right square. Eventually the sorcerer managed to hit her with ear-piercing scream twice (I let the party find a partly-charged wand of it) and she failed the save both times, so the party was able to gang up on her and eventually got her, but it was a grueling slog.
Overall I think I crossed the line a bit with he CDG attempt. But the party has moved on and are happy with he way things are now.
Peet
PS: for the record, characters have been dropped to below zero several times so far. The rogue went down when fighting the goblin dog in Die, Dog, Die, and again when Koruvus did a full attack against him. The party has a dedicated healer but despite this they are going through potions like crazy.
They just broke into Ripnugget's room and in the fight Ripnugged scored a crit for 16 hp on the paladin and took him down. It doesn't help that the party came to Thistletop by boat, scaled the cliff, climbed the stockade, and cut a hole in the roof above what turned out to be Ripnugget's bedroom, so the party's first encounter at Thistletop was the boss fight, and they hadn't had the "filler" encounters that would bring them to 3rd level yet.
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We're all new to tabletop RPG so we're using Hero Points to facilitate resurrection. So far we have had 2 permanent character deaths, though the players usually exhaust nearly all their Hero Points they gain from leveling. For us I think this creates a good amount of tension without being unbearable. Before starting the campaign we had a discussion about death and the players wanted to have the threat of real, permanent character death, so that is how we are playing.
Death #1-
Name of PC: Nilbog
Class/Level: Gunslinger 1 (Musket Master)/Alchemist 2
Adventure: Burnt Offerings
Catalyst: Gogmert
Story: The party did not want to crawl through the brambles in front of Thistletop, so Nilbog decided to pull, MMORPG style, enemies through the brambles to the outside where it was easier to fight. He did not anticipate the ability of druids to simply walk through the brambles. He was cornered by Gogmert, the goblin dogs, and Tangletooth and was slain. Using Hero Points he was heroically able to drag his dying body out of the bramble while the rest of the party killed the enemies in revenge. (Except Gogmert- he was captured and questioned.)
Death #2-
Name of PC: Kyra
Class/Level: Cleric of Sarenrae 3
Adventure: Burnt Offerings
Catalyst: Yeth Hounds
Story: Kyra is technically a GM NPC but the group decided to use Hero Points to save her. The group stumbled upon the two Yeth Hounds in the temple of Lamashtu in Thistletop. Literally stumbled - we're all new to tabletops but despite my warnings to avoid "kicking doors in" they literally kicked in the door to the temple and failed saves against the baying. In the chaos the group fled but Kyra was tripped and killed. Using Hero Points the Yeth Hounds decided to capture her for Nualia and eventual sacrifice to Lamashtu. The remaining party members then had to rescue her.
Death #3-
Name of PC: Uklug
Class/Level: Fighter 6
Adventure: Skinsaw Murders
Catalyst: Sandpoint Devil
Story: I bought the Sandpoint Devil figure from the Pathfinder Battles series and decided to try him out. My group is familiar with the tales due to our playing the Rise of the Runelords card game. I had the Devil encounter them on their way to the Misgivings and let the group have a surprise round and everything but, being new players, still charged in without buffing first. They did pretty well considering they failed the knowledge check for weaknesses but Uklug fell in the chaos. Orik Vancaskerkin uncharacteristically decided to save Uklug (Hero Points!), dragging him away while the Sandpoint Devil lost interest and flew off. Orik did this because Uklug talked Nilbog into saving Orik's life back at Thistletop and Orik owed him that debt.
Death #4-
Name of PC: Nilbog
Class/Level: Gunslinger 5/Alchemist 2
Adventure: Skinsaw Murders
Catalyst: Xanesha
Story: Out of the party only Nilbog wore light armor and was dextrous enough to fearlessly climb the Shadow Clock. And he did- all 120 or so feet of it to the top, soloing the Faceless Stalkers, dodging the bell, getting farther and farther away from the rest of the group as he did so until he stumbled across Xanesha's dragon illusion. She then snuck up on him and killed him in a single round. They used hero points, chalked it up to a lesson to not split the party up, and Nilbog snapped to it at the bottom of the tower with a horrible vision of what lurked at the top...
Death #5+#6-
Name of PC: Nilbog, Uklug - Permanent death
Class/Level: Gunslinger 5/Alchemist 2, Fighter 7
Adventure: Skinsaw Murders
Catalyst: Xanesha
Story: The party took over a month and a half to deal with Xanesha and her cronies... they were having items custom crafted and went travelling and went fishing mostly. While all around them the death count kept rising higher and higher until Lord Mayor Grobaras died. As a result, the townspeople became very suspicious of these "heroes" sent to help with the murders yet not actually accomplishing anything (while announcing that the problem was taken care of- after dealing with Aldern Foxglove). Xanesha eventually decided to put an end to it, framing the two with a pair of surviving Faceless Stalkers to a murder. Charmed Justice Ironbriar ran a sham court and condemned the pair to death. Ultimately Kyra and Orik got away because they did not openly wear the Sihedron symbol (Nilbog had the necklace and Uklug wore Nualia's breastplate which had the symbol carved onto it).
Death #7-
Name of PC: Blendafiss (transformed into Kaiju)
Class/Level: Alchemist 8/Master Chymist 1
Adventure: Hook Mountain Massacre
Catalyst: Ogres
Story: The new group was retaking Fort Rannick with the aid of the Black Arrows... minus Kaven who was found to be a traitor and fled. They were slinking around the catacombs through the Waterfall at the suggestion of Vale Temros when they found a secret door near the crypt that opened up into the courtyard. Forgoing any subtlety, they kicked the door down, alerting all of the ogres in the courtyard. Kaiju went down in a flurry of javelins and ogre clubs while the others fled. Thanks to the miracle of hero points, the group thought that Kaiju had died but Blendafiss miraculously caught up to them later.
Death #8-
Name of PC: Himmelsdorf
Class/Level: Ranger 9
Adventure: Hook Mountain Massacre
Catalyst: Big Wet Papa Grazuul
Story: The group braved the depths of Skull's Crossing to save Turtleback Ferry from being wiped out by a flood. Himmelsdorf the ranger was taken out by Grazuul's vicious trident. Shalelu received a circumstance bonus to damage and attacks due to her rage at seeing her love fall in battle. Using Hero Points- and his own brotherly tears- Blendafiss was able to brew a magical potion to revive him - something that by all accounts should have been impossible for an alchemist of his skill to do.
That's it for our deaths!
I *love* the way you describe those deaths:
#2: "despite my warnings to avoid "kicking doors in" they literally kicked in the door..."
#3: "...let group have a surprise round and everything but, being new players, still charged in without buffing first..."
#4: "...getting farther and farther away from the rest of the group as he did so..."
#7: "Forgoing any subtlety, they kicked the door down..."
Yes. Unwritten rules of RPGs:
(1) Splitting up the party is always Bad.
(2) Kicking down doors is (almost) always Bad.
...
(down on the list, but still on it) Buffs win fights.
Hehe, well, like I said we're brand new to tabletop RPGs - my players played a little VERY informal D&D a long time ago but nothing actually challenging and with no roleplay or plot. I think the Hero Points were a good decision and I recommend them to anyone who is in a similar situation to ours- we are well accustomed to board games and video game RPGs but the bad thing about being used to video games is that it is hard to shake that "video game mentality" when settling into tabletops. I think that if we had 8 real, permanent character deaths instead of 6 deus ex machina and 2 deaths, my players would have become discouraged quickly. As is, the hero point deaths are still taken seriously and are usually taken as a lesson in how to play better next time, and besides... random miraculous occurrences are common to fantasy stories (The eagles are coming!) and the players have fun coming up with cool ways their characters survived certain death.
After each death we talk about it and if I think it was due to a poor decision I let them know... while playing it is a difficult thing to balance giving strong hints while not simply saying "do not run around the goblin fortress kicking doors in or you will get killed- you know that there are scarier things than just goblins in there" or "climbing 120 feet of steps alone in a tower that you know houses a powerful lamia matriarch will get you killed". As for execution to Ironbriar- I gave them the option of continuing with Nilbog/Uklug but after explaining to them what they had done they were alright with letting the characters go. They just had that video game mentality that when you get a "quest" you have pretty much as much time as you want to finish it and the world will pretty much stay the same until you get around to it. Not so in tabletop RPGs, as they discovered!
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This'll be my last post as off-threading obit threads quickly gets you yelled at, but you hit the nail on the head:
- In video games, a soulless CPU will wait forever for you to complete your quests, and nothing happens outside of the scope of your perception.
- In RPGs, a good GM has a basic understanding of everything that is going on in the world, and all the NPCs, monsters, allies, and so forth act in accordance with their own wishes and designs, regardless of whether or not the PCs are there. There's a great thread on this where a group of PCs learned that a group of NPCs just fell into a sinkhole and vanished forever. The PCs' response? Craft items for 45 days! Any GM worth his/her salt should ask the players, "WTF?!?! Your friends and neighbors were just sucked below the earth and died with the echoes of their screams resonating to the surface, and you're going to SIT AROUND AND CRAFT ITEMS?!?!?!"
The real ugliness your PCs will face in this is in "dungeons", with large numbers of enemies in a small space. If you make tons of noise, the other enemies don't just sit in their rooms and wait for you! Ohs noes! Try to get them away from the mindset that enemies are static and will not leave their rooms to attack. Otherwise there are places in the AP where if they make enough of a ruckus they're 100% guaranteed to die, hero points or no.
And thus ends my off-topic ranting.
We return you to your regularly-scheduled PC deaths.
It would have been nice if the character's race were included in those obit entries. (It's too late to edit them now, unfortunately.)
Otherwise, keep up the good work! :)
And yeah, that videogame mentality can infect even previously good RP gamers if they've been away from the table and in front of their computers for far too long. :(
Name of PC: Wolim
Class/Level: Fighter 10
Adventure: Fortress of the Stone Giants
Catalyst: Grappling Dire Bears and Hard-Hitting Stone Giants
Name of PC: Correlia C'Tar
Class/Level: Sorceror 10
Adventure: Fortress of the Stone Giants
Catalyst: Grappling Dire Bears and Hard-Hitting Stone Giants
They reached the site of the first giant attack and dispatched all three giants, although they took a couple rounds longer doing it than they should have. When they arrived at the site of the second giant incursion, they were somewhat disadvantaged because the giants and dire bears had already made it across the bridge into town. Wolim rushed to attack one bear, which promptly grappled him. Meanwhile, the others were too slow to act, and so the other dire bears engaged them, effectively splitting the party. A bear grappled Correlia, as well. Wolim and Correlia were both slain through the concerted efforts of the grappling bear and one of the stone giants. Elsa Jane also was knocked unconscious, leaving only Landon standing. Recognizing that he could not survive a combat with two giants and a dire bear, he fled the town, watching as half of it went up in flames.
After things had finally settled down, he reentered the town only to find that the stone giants had carried off Elsa. It remains to be seen whether he will raise Wolim and Correlia from the dead or instead rely on a new group of heroes to help rescue Elsa from the giants.
It really is weird. My other group had no trouble at all with this fight (or with the entire defense of Sandpoint, for that matter), but it was just an utter mess this time! You never know...
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While not strictly a valid obituary entry (it's an NPC from the AP, not a PC), I do consider this particular death to be noteworthy - due mostly to the the "how badly can things go wrong?" aspect of it all. :)
Name of NPC: Tsuto
Class/Level: Monk 3 (zen archer) /Rogue 1 (sniper)
(yes, I did change his level distribution and give him two archetypes)
Adventure: Burnt Offerings
Catalyst: Careless party
Cut to Thistletop. Quite by accident, the party of four (paladin/fighter, rogue, bard, and oracle) had made it safely over the rope bridge to Thistletop without setting off the trap. IIRC, the rogue had checked for traps but was unsuccessful, and then gone ahead of the party to scout before the others came over.
After dealing with one watch tower and the barracks of sleeping guards, the party found the stairway down. And they decided to go down instead of clearing the rest of the ground level first. This will come back to bite them hard ...
Downstairs, the party found Bruthazmus in the harem and killed both him and Ripnugget's wives. Next up were the quarters of Nualia and her company. The only foes present were Tsuto, who had heard the party coming a mile away but had been unable to sneak past them to join Lyrie, and Orik.
Tsuto set up an ambush in Nualia's room. Orik hid out of sight in the corner, while Tsuto shot arrows down the long, narrow corridor at the party. The rogue, tired of being unable to reach Tsuto, finally managed to tumble past him into Nualia's room - only to be hit by Orik. Moments later Tsuto was cut down to negative hp. Orik surrendered, and gave his parole. Tsuto was stabilised (though still unconscious), bound, and gagged. Out of healing spells and having just acquired Tsuto as a prisoner, the party decided to return to Sandpoint.
Coming out the door of Thistletop, they ran into two of the wandering goblin guards and their goblin dogs (two of the four who were playing "killgull" earlier). These foes were killed, but the fight woke up the sleeping guards in the other watchtower. They spent a round tossing their contraband over the edge before sounding the alarm. This brought the remaining "wandering guards" and their goblin dogs, so the party rushed for the rope bridge. The rogue, fighter, and oracle stepped out onto it, and then came the disarmed Orik carrying the unconscious Tsuto. Orik got to say, "Wait a minute, did you lot manage to ... oops?" before the bridge trap was sprung.
The three PCs managed to hang on, but Orik fell into the water. He had enough hp to survive and reach safety on some nearby rocks, but Tsuto - unconscious, bound, and gagged - died on impact. While more merriment continued above (desperate Climb checks, etc. while under fire, and the bard making a courageous near-last stand by the bridge's remaining ropes), Tsuto's body sank.
And then the bunyip realised that lunch was served.
Thus, Tsuto did not make it back to Sandpoint for trial. He will not be missed. :)
My group just got to Jorgenfist this weekend, but we had a casualty on the way. We use hero points so it was not permanent.
Name: Blendafiss (half-elf CG) as his alter-ego, Kaiju (feral mutagen, NG)
Class/Level: Alchemist 9/Master Chymist 2
Adventure: Fortress of the Stone Giants
Catalyst: 6 Hill Giants on the Storval Stairs
Story:
The players got to the Storval Stairs. Kaiju, as a feral mutagen, is able to fly so he was able to reach the top faster than the rest of the group. So he enlarged, grabbed his half-brother Himmelsdorf (elf ranger), and flew all the way up to the top as soon as boulders started rolling to the bottom of the stairs. They fought the hill giants but it took a few rounds for the rest of the group to catch up and Kaiju died (ret-conned to just unconscious with hero points). Once the stragglers reached the top the hill giants were toast!
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My group just got to Jorgenfist this weekend, but we had a casualty on the way. We use hero points so it was not permanent.
Name: Blendafiss (half-elf CG) as his alter-ego, Kaiju (feral mutagen, NG)
Class/Level: Alchemist 9/Master Chymist 2
Adventure: Fortress of the Stone Giants
Catalyst: 6 Hill Giants on the Storval Stairs
Story:The players got to the Storval Stairs. Kaiju, as a feral mutagen, is able to fly so he was able to reach the top faster than the rest of the group. So he enlarged, grabbed his half-brother Himmelsdorf (elf ranger), and flew all the way up to the top as soon as boulders started rolling to the bottom of the stairs. They fought the hill giants but it took a few rounds for the rest of the group to catch up and Kaiju died (ret-conned to just unconscious with hero points). Once the stragglers reached the top the hill giants were toast!
Ahh, one of the classic blunders:
- Never start a land war in Asia- Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line
- Never split the party.
So far I've had two TPK by separate groups, I play through Black Fang's Dungeon first then onto RotR.
Name of PC: Valorous the Dragon-Slayer
Class/Level: Fighter/
Name of PC: Kyra
Class/Level: Cleric/
Adventure: Burnt Offerings
Catalyst: Erylium
Story: With only a party of two this was always going to be a dangerous fight, refusing to back off and get betters weapons even after she ran out of spells and slowly wore them away the party eventually fell to the attrition of the fast healing damage resistance demon.Name of PC: Dante
Class/Level: Rogue/Gunslinger
Name of PC: Borgut Schliefer
Class/Level: Barbarian/Cavalier
Name of PC: Cre Yasher
Class/Level: Sorceror/Magus
Adventure: Burnt Offerings
Catalyst: Thistletop and angry bugbears
Story: After clearing the top floor of Thistletop, with a huge battle that left them on the verge of death and Borgut unconscious at -6, the party decided to sleep in one of the watch towers. A single bug bear, Bruthazmus came out exploring at the night to see what was going on. He killed one, and the other fled at 4 HP (and disappeared)
Do we then add:
- Never be afraid to run- Never camp, sorely wounded, in an area where the enemy is still active?
46 Climb checks?!?
I'm impressed! :)
Name of PC: Ulrich
Class/Level: Ranger 5
Adventure: The Misgivings
Catalyst: Bad decisions, Skaveling
4 PCs want to head into mansion, but Rogue went down well and Ranger followed. Ranger went into tunnel, Rogue did not. Ranger gets head bitten off by Skaveling. Same Ranger also went in alone under Thistletop and faced Bunyip and nearly died then.
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See Latrecis' post above...
My newbie PCs got close to wrapping up Jorgenfist this weekend but we ended up having a couple of deaths :( They ended up using their last couple of hero points to reverse things but things are looking kind of grim...
Name of PC: Shalelu Andosana
Class/Level: Ranger 6/Fighter 4 (Elf)
Adventure: Fortress of the Stone Giants
Catalyst: Forgefiend
Story: The group got to the library level of Jorgenfist and the Forgefiend tormented them as they moved around, staging quick hit-and-runs from the walls. The group cleared the room with the Headless Lord and his zombie army when immediately after combat the Forgefiend jumped them from behind, showering Himmelsdorf (elf ranger 10/sorcerer 1/arcane archer 1) and his girlfriend Shalelu in slag with Searing Spew. Shalelu failed her reflex save and was encased in molten slag, killing her. This was ret-conned with the assumption that she had remembered to cast Resist Energy on herself after they FIRST encountered the Forgefiend...which would have saved her. I said this mostly to try and encourage the ranger player (who plays both his ranger and his girlfriend, Shalelu) to try and value his spells more highly since he never casts any spells...ever! On either character! Not even gravity bow :( So hopefully telling him that Resist Energy could have saved them some Hero Points might get him to value the buff more highly...or probably not as evidenced by the other death this week...
Name of PC: Himmelsdorf
Class/Level: Ranger 10/Sorcerer 1/Arcane Archer 1 (Elf)
Adventure: Fortress of the Stone Giants
Catalyst: Mokmurian
Story: So my group of PCs are new, both to tabletop gaming and to the Pathfinder system. Through the lower levels of RotR there aren't a whole lot of flashy spellcaster enemies, and that combined with a lack of arcane casters in their party composition, has lead them to seriously underestimate arcane casters in general. So despite a lot of warning from both a captured Barl Breakbones and later Teraktinus that Mokmurian was a powerful mage (including some descriptions of his favorite spells in an effort to make preparation for it even easier), and the fact that my group had decided Mokmurian was the big bad guy of the AP, they didn't really try to prepare for the fight at all. They figured he would simply end up a "grappled chump", as they put it. So they were caught completely by surprise by his quickened spells, fog, and various cloud AoE effects that took up large parts of the room. Mokmurian focused on Himmelsdorf, as he viewed the other arcane caster as the largest threat in the room, and finished him off with multiple fire spells (robe of runes!), the final one being his quickened scorching ray. Himmelsdorf, who still didn't bother to cast resist energy on himself, was incinerated! The rest of the group retreated back to the library, along with Himmelsdorf, who dodged that last scorching ray and ran to safety.
That ended the session so now I am faced with a hard decision - to (A) have Mokmurian pursue them to the library, which has a good chance of finishing the group off as they are out of wand cure charges and pretty much out of resources in general, but seems more realistic in terms of what Mokmurian would likely do, or (B) let the group rest in the library and have Mokmurian come hunt them down later after having rested and studied his spells himself, and probably with a couple of stone giants in tow, which gives the group a better shot at success but at the cost of versimilitude. I'm afraid that if Mokmurian waits until after they have rested the group will know that I went easy on them and that knowledge will take away the thrill of victory over him. A selfish part of me wants the group to pay the price for ignoring my advice about dungeon prep, as ever since way back with Erylium I've repeated that if they know what they are fighting ahead of time they should try to prepare for it, and to consider any knowledge they get about what lies ahead as a valuable advantage, but they've consistently winged every encounter in the AP so far despite my warnings. At least I have a week to muddle it over- either way I'm afraid I'll probably be back in this thread next weekend!
None are so blind as those that will not see.
Retreating to the Library is in and of itself pretty dangerous - they will be trapped there. Can they try to flee back up toward the surface? Still a stretch of verisimilitude (great word - don't find it on many internet forums!) but more plausible they could escape or hide that direction. And yea, I know it's probably dangerous that direction too (pending what they left behind) but they'll last longer than they will "against that Death Star!"
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Rushing across the bridge to Thistletop.
Sordil Til, human alchemist 4th level, fell through a broken board plummeting to the icy cold(it's winter in my game) waters below. After a few rounds, he is unable to find his way to the surface and drowns.
Hal, human fighter(defender) 4th level, went after his friend. Climbed down to the water line via his silk rope. Only to fail a climb check and he too fell into the water.
The bunyip, already agitated from Sordil's fall, and the two goblins who's corpses were tossed in the waters early, charged this living meal. Grabbing his left arm in it's mouth and draggin Hal under water, the two struggled until the bunyip gnawed off Hal's arm and he bled out.
Of course, our cleric/inquisitor was out that night, leaving 3 new players(more or less) just moving on and leaving those two to their own fate.
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Name of PC: Drogar Ironstone
Class/Level/Race: Inquisitor, 7th level, duergar.
Adventure: The Skinsaw Murders, at Shadow Clock.
Catalyst: Scarecrow and bad luck.
Story: Party entered in the tower, and where greeted/distracted by Lyrie. And he didn't roll well on perception to notice Scarecrow. Being the closest one to golem, he was struck first. Then he rolled badly on initiative. So Scarecrow went first, scoring and confirming critical hit on him.
The next one was reincarnated back.
Name of PC: Utavel
Class/Level/Race: Magus, 7th level, elf.
Adventure: The Skinsaw Murders, epilogue part.
Catalyst: Grab, pin, tie, constrict damage and coup de grace.
Story: This one is something insane. PC was venturing back to tavern through Magnimare docks, after some hours of searching a specific buyer. I rolled for random encounter, and got 01. Ok, then i rolled for foes. Just 2 reefclaws - 1 CR. He's 7 level magus we all think, he'll win fast. But the luck wasn't on his side. He rolled 1 on initiative for start. Still, at first we where just joking, when saying that some crablike will take him down. But then, after killing the first reefclaw, second one grappled him.
Suddenly he can't use his Black Blade Rapier. Tries to hit the monster with enchanted with fire and ice dagger. Reefclaw is still alive and gives him pinned condition. PC shouts for guards. 10 rounds to wait.
He has about half hit points, and is poisoned for like 8 round 3 times now (a lot of awful save rolls on fortitude). PC is using his slumber hex. With no success.
He's tied up (reefclaw uses his body as rope). Breaks the tie up condition twice. Tries to levitate - too heavy. Is tied up with no possibility to escape. Trows Evil Eye hexes, just to do something. Resists two coup de grace attacks. 2 more rounds for guard, he has like 7 hp, reefclaw in minus -8 but ferocity is keeping him alive.
Other players start to speculate - the dead reefclaw was the wife of that which is grappling, and it's too personal now. Or these two are assassins send by Lamashtu, to take revenge for thwarting her plans with Nualia.
So, reefclaw makes another coup de grace. This time it wins. Elf is unconscious but stabilized. Reefclaw falls with tied magus in water from pier. Magus is drowning.
Guards come, but are unable to take immediate actions. So reefclaw wins and gets 3200 exp. After, the body is fished up from water (by uncorrupted guard's who didn't stole anything - a good roll for once) and send to city morgue. The next day other PC go to find their magus. Nobody can stand to roleplay it serious, when their characters are informed of the cause of death. The next step - they go to buy some reincarnation and restoration scrolls. Now the proud elf is halfling. And he's working on hat of greater disguise, to return even a resemblance of his previous body.
P.S. Xanesha was killed in 2 round with no casualties.
Name of PC: Blendafiss
Class/Level: Half-Elf Alchemist 10/Master Chymist 2
Adventure: Fortress of the Stone Giants
Catalyst: Mokmurian + 6 Stone Giants
Story:
So Mokmurian ended up hunting my heroes right away in the library, grabbing a platoon of 6 stone giants with him. The group focused the stone giants down but Blendafiss (who was out of mutagens for the day) went down to an unlucky crit. I figured this was the deathknell as Blendafiss was the only one who stood a chance at dispelling Mokmurian's considerable buffs - the group was having a lot of difficulty hitting him. And indeed, most of the group went into the negatives. But with some quick thinking, the group realized there were a few unused potions of cure serious wounds on Blendafiss' body, and that was when the fight turned around.
Himmelsdorf, the arcane archer, finally used all those spells that he has never used before, and after a few crits with gravity bow/enlarge Mokmurian was toast! Himmelsdorf leveled up from the experience, decided to spend his skill points on Use Magic Device, and used the scroll of Limited Wish to cast Raise Dead on Blendafiss. And then the group immediately started looking up buffs that are effective against wizards, after realizing that their next destination, the Runeforge, would surely be full of wizards. Hurray!
Name of PC: Utavel
Class/Level/Race: Magus, 7th level, elf.
Adventure: The Skinsaw Murders, epilogue part.
Catalyst: Grab, pin, tie, constrict damage and coup de grace.
Story: But then, after killing the first reefclaw, second one grappled him.
Suddenly he can't use his Black Blade Rapier.
Unless you houseruled otherwise, being grappled shouldn't affect his ability to use a rapier unless its some weird two-handed rapier.
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Hm. Now I understand that I was fooled by other players, when the one, who is a bit of Rule Advocate, said that Rapier isn't light so it wouldn't work (fist time he made a mistake), and others supported-agreed with him. Even magus was aboard with this, so i didn't bother to recheck this moment in rules.
Well, will give him a hero point as compensation.
Just for Clarificaion: It doesn't have anything to do with being light or not. You can use ANY one-handed weapon while grappled. Just not two-handed weapons. The only thing that limits you to light weapons is being swallowed whole.
I understand, just saying that I wasn't paying attention and didn't saw the mistake. Player, by the way, is ok with it. Some new roleplay options for him.
Name of PC: Himmelsdorf
Class/Level: Elf Arcane Archer 2/Ranger 10/Sorcerer 1
Adventure: Sins of the Saviors
Catalyst: Arkrhyst
Story:
Adding on to the numerous Arkrhyst obituaries on here...
My group made it to Rimeskull this weekend. Having deciphered the Scribbler's Rhyme they immediately went up to the stone circle and activated the Karzoug statue, waking up Arkrhyst. He showed up as they moved on to tinker with the statue of Krune, and the Master Chymist failed his save against Fearful Presence, marking the beginning of a lot of Arkrhyst related misfortune. The Sorcerer was simply unable to beat his Spell Resistance, and Arkrhyst focused his attention on Seelah, the group's new paladin that they saved from the Scribbler. Himmelsdorf, wielding a Staff of Healing, saved Seelah, which drew Arkrhyst's ire. Arkrhyst snatched him up, flew up 200 feet in the air, and breathed on him, killing him, then dropped his lifeless body to the ground. Afterwards the group finally pulled it together - Seelah dispelled Arkrhyst's Displacement, the Master Chymist stopped freaking out, and the Sorcerer started beating Arkrhyst's spell resistance, successfully driving the dragon back into his lair, and ending this week's session. Himmelsdorf was brought back with a Scroll of Resurrection the group found back at Jorgenfist.
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Name of PC: Variel
Class/Level: Elven Mage of the Veil 3
Adventure: Burnt Offerings
Catalyst: A failure to heed the "Adventure Party Golden Rule" assisted by Yeth Hounds.
Story:
The rogue makes an off-hand comment that it's a bit difficult to be sneaky when the rest of the group is so close. The group moves off, back into the central room. The rogue discovers, but doesn't open, the door into Lamashtu's temple.
The party splits up, spreads out, and starts to open different doors. The mage opens the door leading to the Tentamort, discovers it, but does not approach (the Tentamort is oblivious, continuing to catch seagulls). The barbarian remains in the central room. The cleric heads up and discovers the double-doors leading to the Temple.
The rogue meets up with the cleric, and together they open the doors. The cleric moves away and approaches the door leading to the Tentamort area. The rogue moves up to investigate the altar.
Both Yeth Hounds bay. Rogue and barbarian fail their save. Barbarian runs upstairs and away. Rogue runs. Yeth Hound catches up, crits, knocks rogue into negatives. Other Yeth Hound heads up to the cleric, hits, knocks him prone.
Yeth Hounds gang up on cleric, who channels to bring the rogue back up to positive health. The mage moves into line of sight of the Yeth Hounds while invisible. Next round he drops obscuring mist which saves the group from a TPK.
The rogue works back to the altar via the jail cell room to pick up her bow. Barbarian still running. Mage maneuvers to hit both Hounds with Color Spray. Both hounds make the save. Next round, Hound crits against the mage, dropping him. The mage fails his next stabilization roll, which kills him.
The obscuring mist allows the cleric and rogue to hold on long enough for the barbarian to recover and return. Eventually, with the barbarian in the fight, the hounds finally succumb. The group beats a hasty retreat back to Sandpoint. The male elf is reincarnated as a female half-orc.
This weekend my group suffered a near TPK in the Ravenous Crypts of Gluttony in the Runeforge. Honestly, the only reason the group did NOT fully TPK was dumb luck as we will see...
The deaths were a combination of lazy/bad play and bad luck. The "bad play part" - I feel that we're deep enough in this campaign that I didn't really feel bad about it even though my group is new. My group is extremely indecisive and one of my players has a "go go go go" mentality- so when there is a lag in the action, even if it is due to debating a course of action, this player begins to kick doors in and generally play poorly, endangering the group. Hopefully this is the lesson they needed...
In any case I feel that this chapter is markedly more difficult than Fortress of the Stone Giants and aggressively punishes poor play. I communicated as much to my group beforehand so I don't think there were any bad feelings ;)
Name of PC: Seelah and Kaiju (feral mutagenic alter-ego of Blendafiss)
Class/Level: Human Paladin of Iomedae 13 and Half-Elf Alchemist 10/Master Chymist 4
Adventure: Sins of the Saviors
Catalyst: Thassilonian Mummies and Xyoddin Xerriock
Story:
So the group cleared the Abjurant Halls of Envy first and everyone except the Arcane Archer failed saves against the Disjunction Pulse and lost all of their buffs and magical items. Their magical items were restored prior to entering the Ravenous Crypts (though it made for a harrowing fight against the Fiendish Mustard Jelly) but they neglected to reapply their copius amounts of defensive long-duration buffs that they roll around with. This was the first major mistake.
Next, rather than trying to scout ahead into the first room of the Ravenous Crypts (I let the sneaky PC roll a stealth check to crack unlocked doors open just enough to peek inside and see what they're up against - though I only award a true surprise round if the entire group is able to pull off an ambush) Kaiju the Master Chymist elected to push the doors open loudly and announce their presence. He and the Arcane Archer failed their saves against the Despair Aura and were paralyzed for the maximum duration.
There were no envious characters in the group so I elected to have the mummies swarm Seelah, the paladin instead. Seelah died in a mob of mummies. When Himmelsdorf the Arcane Archer came to he was able to rapidly dispatch the rest with fiery undead-bane arrows....so even with the blunderous entrance into the room I feel that his character failing the save was also instrumental in the deaths.
By the time there were 3 mummies to go, Xyoddin Xerriock showed up to the party and directed the mummies to flank Kaiju. He was barely able to restrain himself from eating Seelah's corpse and elected to try tasting some Half-Elf flesh instead. Himmelsdorf finished off Xyoddin but Kaiju was brought down by the remaining mummies. The grace of Iomedae was able to bring Seelah and Kaiju back, with a message to purge the desecration effect from the crypts in return. These hero points were all the group had left. I chalk these deaths mostly up to poor play, as when the group encountered the second group of mummies the encounter was pretty much trivial.
Name of PC: Himmelsdorf and Kaiju (feral mutagenic alter-ego of Blendafiss)
Class/Level: Elf Arcane Archer 3/Ranger 10/Sorcerer 1, Half-Elf Alchemist 10/Master Chymist 4
Adventure: Sins of the Saviors
Catalyst: Azaven + Save or Die
Story:
These deaths were straight up save or die. Per the written tactics, Azaven opened combat with Finger of Death on a spellcaster. He chose Himmelsdorf, as his telepathic mummies had communicated to him all about his irritating quiver of Undead Bane Arrows. Himmelsdorf failed the save and was blasted with 140 damage, instantly killing him. The rest of the group was able to kill the Devourer and push Azaven to retreat to his Phylactery via Mislead/Gaseous Form, giving the group a chance to heal up and resurrect Himmelsdorf with a scroll of True Resurrection (found in the Emerald Codex of the Therassic Order). This was a mistake- they should have used their Scroll of Resurrection (also from the Codex) rather than jump to the big one but I suppose they really didn't want a negative level.
Anyway Himmelsdorf got up and they found Azaven's Phylactery. Azaven was able to heal to full through a combination of using his Necromantic Deathtrap (which only had 1 charge in it due to the PCs having broken the portal to the Negative Plane earlier) and some quickened Vampiric Touch/Spectral Mage Hand. Azaven then proceeded to cast Prismatic Spray. The PCs failed more saves than they made. The Sorcerer went insane (lucky they found that Scroll of Heal), Himmelsdorf was transported back to the Material Plane (dropped him off at the base of Rimeskull), and Kaiju was blasted with 40 points of acid damage, finishing him off after two back to back Vampiric Touches.
Seelah was able to finish off Azaven - his buffs were dispelled by Kaiju earlier which were previously keeping her from smiting him to the best of her ability.
Name of PC: Seelah and Conna
Class/Level: Human Paladin of Iomedae 13, Stone Giant Sorcerer 8
Adventure: Sins of the Saviors
Catalyst: Return of Azaven!
Story:
As an aside, in our game Conna is younger and more adventurous, and highly eager to pursue Karzoug for what he did to her husband and tribe, so after some impressive roleplay with her back at Jorgenfist she elected to follow the group as their sorcerer. (There was a long bit where the Ranger, who hated giants, came around to them as a whole because of Conna) I was worried at first that she would be too powerful (she has a LOT of HP) but since I controlled her decisions leveling up, she ended up being fine.
Back to the story -
Conna had gone insane but Seelah healed her with a Scroll of Heal. They then rooted around the phylactery, but failed to realize its signficance, so they took the gems and magical items and left. (They also neglected to even make any knowledge rolls about Liches in general, even after learning about Azaven's existence back at the library in Jorgenfist, and again after making a knowledge local check about Xyoddin.)
Meanwhile, Blendafiss had a scroll of Resurrection on his body, but only Blendafiss and Himmelsdorf had Use Magic Device to use it. Conna and Seelah dragged Blendafiss's body back to the main hub of the Runeforge and sheltered in the tunnel where the portal was. Himmelsdorf had no way back into Runeforge - he had the tuning fork to Plane Shift back into Runeforge, but Blendafiss had the scrolls of Plane Shift in his scroll case. Himmelsdorf also could not prepare the needed spells to re-open the portal. His only option was to take the boat back to Sandpoint, which was a month long journey. His plan was to return to Magnimar and hire a cleric to cast Plane Shift using his tuning fork to re-enter the Runeforge.
While Himmelsdorf was on the boat, Azaven resurrected in 10 days in the phylactery, with a "burning need for revenge", as the bestiary puts it. Azaven used divination magic for the next two days to find Seelah and Conna, then hunted the two down with his Devourer in tow. He was a little weaker without his magic items, but he quickly dispatched Conna with Finger of Death and Vampiric Touch. Seelah was able to kill Azaven again, but the Devourer finished Seelah off with Devour Soul, where her soul currently remains now.
The Devourer then took the bodies to Azaven's lair, who regenerated 8 days later, and is currently desecrating the bodies with his foul magics.
The group still has a scroll of Resurrection and Himmelsdorf will likely return to slay the lich (this time for good) and save his brother.
Name of PC: Kaiju (feral mutagenic alter-ego of Blendafiss) [Permanent Character Death]
Class/Level: Half-Elf Alchemist 10/Master Chymist 4
Adventure: Sins of the Saviors
Catalyst: Disintegrate (via Ordikon, the Mithral Mage)
Story:
So last week my group near TPK'd but we realized afterwards that Himmelsdorf, with some rest, could open the doors to Runeforge on his own using a combination of prepared Ranger spells and Sorcerer spells. So he did, and then used the group's last Resurrection scroll to save his brother, Kaiju. Since he didn't need to take the month long trip to Magnimar, Azaven never resurrected to kill Seelah and Conna, that was all retracted out.
This week the group, after destroying Azaven's phylactery, chose the Vault of Greed as their next target since it seemed like a logical choice. They fought the stone golems, which caught the attention of Ordikon. Ordikon rounded the corner to investigate shortly after they cleared the last golem, and per his tactics, opened with Disintegrate + Quickened Mirror Image on Kaiju, his closest target. Kaiju failed the save and was disintegrated into dust. The rest of the group rolled really well against Displacement and forced him to dimension door to safety.
This is the third permanent character death so far in the campaign. The new character will be an adventurer who was turned into a goldfish at some time in the past, then (accidentally) saved by this group of PCs.
Name of PC: Tiny
Race/Class/Level: Half-orc Fighter (Unbreakable) 3
Adventure: Burnt Offerings
Catalyst: Tanglefoot
Story:
After finding Thistletop in the Nettlewood without too much trouble the party began to skulk through the goblin thistle tunnels led by Tiny with his darkvision. Somehow they managed to navigate the tunnels without happening across any resistance. At one point Tiny peered down a tunnel and saw the four goblin dogs but they opted to simply leave them be and continue searching for an exit. Upon finding the bridge the party rogue found and disabled the trap. They then launched a surprise attack on the "killgull" goblins and the martials all raced out to wage a fight on the bridge. Meanwhile the alarm had been raised and everyone they had passed by came to meet them on the bridge including the refugees, dogs, and Gogmurt.
To make a long story short they miraculously defeated this deadly (and CR 8) encounter thanks to the bridge only being two squares wide and forcing a bottleneck with the goblins as well as a well-timed fireball from the sorcerer but not before poor Tiny had his throat ripped out by the druid's animal companion. His death was short-lived, however, as he has the Tenacious Survivor feat and was quickly revived by the sorcerer with a wand of CLW.
Funnily enough, the character concept is to create a character who simply will not die. One who is unbreakable and unkillable. Good job so far.
How did they get past the four goblin dogs in the thicket? It's not much of a "tunnel" to them, more of just "an opening".
Second TPK in Sins of the Saviors so far
Name of PC: Himmelsdorf, Seelah, Conna (permanently incapacitated), Zoltar
Class/Level: Elf Arcane Archer 3/Ranger 10/Sorcerer 1, Human Paladin of Iomedae 13, Stone Giant Sorcerer 8, Peri-blooded aasimar Arcanist 14
Adventure: Sins of the Saviors
Catalyst: Prismatic Spray
Story:
So last time we played (almost a month ago due to players going on vacation) a character died to Disintegrate to Ordikon, the Mithral Mage of Greed. The player rolled a new character, Zoltar, the arcanist. The rest of the group drove Ordikon to dimension door away. Zoltar came running in, freshly transformed back from a mindless goldfish, and pressed on to help hunt Ordikon. The group made short work of Zuzuveg (the party paladin was not having any deals with demons), then recklessly opened the next door to the pool of elemental arcana. Ordikon won initiative, opened with prismatic spray, and the entire party except for Conna failed saves to various effects and died. Conna almost killed Ordikon off before failing a save to baleful polymorph. Again, I emphasized the use of buffs, like Heroism, to help with saves.
We fast forwarded a month. Himmelsdorf’s girlfriend, Shalelu, grew worried and decided to try and find out what happened to her lover. She recruited her old friend, Kyra, and the two new PC characters on this quest. The new group pretty handily dealt with Ordikon and Kyra resurrected the old characters, except for Conna, who was now a mindless goldfish. (Yeah I know that turning her into a goldfish would have altered the Save DC but it was done just for flavor and not to try and kill her).
Zoltar immediately decided he was in over his head as he managed to die only a few minutes after transforming back into his regular self. Himmelsdorf likewise decided at Shalelu’s urgings to retire and move back with her to Sandpoint. Seelah and Kyra stayed behind, eager to continue with the mission to end Karzoug’s evil, along with our new heroes, Malanovka the skald and Crosis the dragon disciple.
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Name of PC: Kyra
Class/Level: Human Cleric of Sarenrae 14
Adventure: Sins of the Saviors
Catalyst: Drowned in heavy armor
Story:
After the Vault of Greed the group went to the Festering Maze of Sloth. The maze consists of walkways and waterways, and at some point the group decided that they needed to swim in order to access the room with the lever controls. Kyra jumped into the putrid water with her heavy armor on and failed enough saves that she drowned to death. They were a lot of saves and every single roll was comically low. The group used their new hero points to save her – no one else could raise dead otherwise.
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Second TPK in Sins of the Saviors so far
Name of PC: Himmelsdorf, Seelah, Conna (permanently incapacitated), Zoltar
Class/Level: Elf Arcane Archer 3/Ranger 10/Sorcerer 1, Human Paladin of Iomedae 13, Stone Giant Sorcerer 8, Peri-blooded aasimar Arcanist 14
Adventure: Sins of the Saviors
Catalyst: Prismatic Spray
Story:** spoiler omitted **...
Your group REALLY needs to go to Magnimar and find a fire sale on Cloaks of Resistance.
Just sayin'.
Awesome stuff, though!
How did they get past the four goblin dogs in the thicket? It's not much of a "tunnel" to them, more of just "an opening".
The goblin dogs were tied down with fraying rope and didn't notice the PCs until they had turned their attention away to move on. I ruled that they would break free to attack them in 4-5 rounds. By the time they had broken free the alarm had been raised.
Name of PC: Caladral Forgedawn
Class/Race/Level: Half-elf Rogue 2, Ranger 1
Adventure: Burnt Offerings
Catalyst: Bruthazmus and annoying overconfidence
After a long night of dungeon crawling Cal's player was much too over confident during his usual check for traps routine. After finding no traps on any of the doors in Thistletop he began declaring that there were no traps on the doors before the check had actually been conducted in a very flippant way. After three or four times of shrugging this off I decided I was sick of his attitude and placed a trap of my own creation above Ripnugget's chamber door. When tripped by an unsuspecting Cal, who's player had declared the door trapless and opened it before I could even roll a check, a rusty horse-chopper flew down and brought him to -1 HP. He was then revived to 7HP.
Later the party was arguing with Cal over his many transgressions towards the party and citizens of Sandpoint. His player has committed many role-playing faux-pas over the course of the AP including threatening the lives of citizens, threatening death on the party sorceror for no good reason, and being an all around jerk to pretty much everyone. This all added up to make him the most hated PC by all and the inner-party strife was seriously taking away from the AP's story enough that a few of my players were starting to be really bothered by it - especially when you consider that the offending player didn't even really seem to care that much. So anyway - all of this arguing in character was taking place just outside of the chamber with Ripnugget's wives and Bruthazmus. Upon making the correct checks to hear them Bruthazmus readied his bow and prepared to fire at the first PC to enter the room. He had heard stories from the goblins that one of the heroes was an elf so he readied both a normal and an elf-bane arrow just in case.
As soon as Cal opened the door he was more or less blown away by Bruthazmus with one shot of an elf-bane arrow bringing him to -11 HP and killing him instantly.
The entire group (including myself and Cal's player) then breathed a huge sigh of relief that he was finally dead and this ordeal over.
For the most part, I'm a neophyte GM. I don't run games that often, and I don't think I've ever had a PC death before. I ended up running RotRL because I grabbed the anniversary edition, and read though it for ideas on how to make better encounters. Since I read it, my friends decreed that I'd run it. This makes getting a TPK on something I added as a bit of a throwaway very unexpected for me...
Name of PC: Amadi, Yulian, Sennin, Ingra and Iorec
Class/Level: Trap Ranger 6, Witch (Medium)6, Hexcrafter Staff Magus 6, World Walker Druid 6, and Cleric of Desna 6
Adventure: Skinsaw Murders
Catalyst: Filler Ghouls and overconfidence (on both the PC and GM sides)
Story: Upon clearing out (and torching) Foxglove Manor, my erstwhile group of adventurers were preparing to head to Magnimar to follow up on the leads that they found while dealing with Aldern. I did some quick math and realized that they wouldn't be level 7 before they got to the Shadow Clock. Feeling that a party of level 6 PC's would be stomped by Xanesha, I decided to add a 'brief' ghoul hunt in. Watching the PC's be more than effective against ghouls so far, I added the Advenced template to them, and stole the Goblin Ghasts stat block from the anniversary edition to use in order to challenge them.
When the PC's returned to Sandpoint, they mentioned the possibility of other ghouls being in the hinterlands to Sheriff Hemlock. So, the next day, as the party was preparing to leave, the good sheriff told them that they has found 2 ghoul dens in between the site of Foxglove Manor and Sandpoint. As they had shown themselves capable with dealing with undead, Sheriff Hemlock was able to talk Mayor Deverin into a bounty on the rogue ghouls, and informed the party of the dens. Naturally, they went to deal with the problem.
The party travelled to what they thought was the older of the 2 dens, dug into a hill near Brinestump Marsh and after a brief cautious scouting, the party began to delve into the den. Most of the den was made to be small chambers with a slew of inter-connected hallways, and submerged tunnels. The PC's began to use their normal plan of following left most wall, but abandoned that after the first submerged tunnel. By the time that the PC's had found the ghouls and ghasts, they were split in 2 adjoining rooms with a wave of Ghouls attacking Amadi and Sennin in one room, while the rest of the party was dealing with the goblin ghasts from behind in the other. Almost immediately, Iorec failed his save against paralysis and was out of the fight for the maximum number of rounds. In the next round, Ingra and Amadi joined the paralyzed ranks, leaving Yulian and Sennin left up. While both of them were able to kill one of the remaining forces, Yulian was paralyzed, and 2 full attacks killed Sennin straight out. At that moment, I tried not to fade to black, but it was a foregone conclusion with coup de graces from the remaining, badly injured ghouls.
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Here're two (about four years old!) from a very infrequent game that started way back in 3.5.
Name of PC familiar: Fig
Class/Levels Species: Tarsier
Adventure: Burnt Offerings
Catalyst: Erylium.
Story: If memory serves, as the party explored the Catacombs they only fought one monster - a sinspawn hiding somewhere near the statue of Alaznist. They made it to Lamashtu's shrine without anyone knowing they were there.
So when the party wizard wanted to get a chipping of obsidian, it was only natural for them to push the entire altar down the stairs. Erylium was immediately alerted and summoned her sinspawn, while behind the party fully 75% of that dungeon's encounters started running to the scene. The party opened the doors and was met with the full force of a fully-buffed quasit sorcerer.
As the monk and wizard slowly whittled down the melee, the druid plinked away at Erylium with her bow. Having only three members, they simply couldn't get past DR 5/cold iron or good often enough to counteract her fast healing. The party did manage to clear out most of the mooks, though, and at the end of the fight it was just Erylium and Koruvus left. I think either the druid or the monk had fallen unconscious. The wizard had, at that point, climbed up to the runewell to slice at Erylium with the statue's masterwork ranseur, but Erylium dodged out of range.
At that point, with one party member down and no way of taking out the quasit with direct damage, the wizard's player decided they had to drown her. Fig leapt out (getting a total somewhere in the high 20s for his Jump check), grapled Erylium, and pulled her to the ground. It actually worked, but Erylium had claws and poison and inflict spells and was able to kill the poor little guy within a round. Before she could fly away again the monk grabbed her, stuck her in the fountain, and held her down while the rest of the party stabbed her to keep her unconscious until she drowned.
After that fight we got the Advanced Player's Guide and I decided to convert the campaign to Pathfinder. In the aftermath of Fig's death, the wizard burned his spellbook and retrained to alchemist.
Name of PC: Aramil
Class/Level: Monk 2
Adventure: Burnt Offerings
Catalyst: Kobolds with guns. And hobgoblins with ranseurs.
Story: The party, with Shalelu, bested the thistle tunnels without any casualties, then paused over the howling hole. The alchemist could see gold down there.
Aramil had a fairly good Strength and no armor check penalty, so he decided to climb down. Unfortunately, he bungled his second or third check and dropped 40 feet, causing a gigantic splash that alerted the bunyip. The alchemist identified the bunyip (though the party had a good laugh about bunny monsters), realized bombs weren't going to be as useful in the water, and jumped down, leaving the druid to descend slowly. Aramil's player began rolling up another character. The bunyip tore Aramil's arm off. The alchemist tore the bunyip's flippers off. Shalelu filled the bunyip with arrows and it sank to the bottom with Aramil, whose player had decided on a kobold with a gun (a fighter rather than a gunslinger, as UC wasn't out yet).
At this point I was the only person who still thought Aramil had a chance to live. Yeah, he was drowning and in negative hps, but if the druid or the alchemist just jumped in and brought him to the surface he was pretty much guaranteed to survive. As she didn't want to take the falling damage, the druid asked the alchemist to pull Aramil to the surface.
There are two things worth noting here: First, Aramil's player now really wanted to play the kobold gun-slinger, and the alchemist's player really wanted to help him generate that character. Second, the alchemist was a lawful evil hobgoblin with a prejudice towards elves.
So the alchemist pulled Aramil to the surface. By hooking his ranseur in the monk's belly. An elf really does not have enough Constitution to survive this sort of duress. Aramil died, Shalelu cut ties, and every copper piece in the bunyip's lair was carefully distributed between the remaining PCs. A little while later, limping back to Sandpoint on the Lost Coast Road, they met a kobold. And he had a gun.